M. R. James

A reserved, scholarly voice whose precise details and casual asides make unease arrive gradually.

M. R. James — ghost stories (1904)

• M. R. James, writerGhost Stories of an Antiquary (1904); the corpus quoted here
• The antiquarian ghost story, registerthe English form of the ghost story told by and about scholars

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), Project Gutenberg ebook 8486. Four contiguous runs from the openings of Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, Lost Hearts, The Mezzotint and The Ash-tree. James died in 1936, so the collection is public domain in the United States and in countries applying life plus seventy.

4 source files, 3,423 words

• Sentences average 12.9 to 38.3 words.
• Sentence lengths vary by at least 7.2 words — short and long in the same paragraph.
• At least 42% of the words in every 500 are distinct.
• Function words stay within 0.058 of the corpus's own distribution.
• Letter patterns stay within 0.218 of the corpus's.
• 9 phrases are banned outright.
• Anything shorter than 150 words is too small to measure.

{
  "schema": "katagami:voice-bands/v1",
  "sentence_length": {
    "mean": [
      12.9,
      38.3
    ],
    "stdev_min": 7.2
  },
  "banned_phrases": [
    "delve",
    "leverage",
    "seamless",
    "game-changer",
    "robust",
    "cutting-edge",
    "in today's fast-paced",
    "it's worth noting",
    "at the end of the day"
  ],
  "punctuation": {
    "exclamations_per_1000_words": [
      0,
      3
    ]
  },
  "type_token_ratio": {
    "min": 0.42,
    "window_words": 500
  },
  "function_words": {
    "max_distance": 0.058
  },
  "char_trigrams": {
    "max_distance": 0.218
  },
  "min_words_to_evaluate": 150
}

---
version: v3.3-lean
kind: voice
name: M. R. James — ghost stories (1904)
slug: james-ghost-stories
corpus:
  consent: public_domain
  author: Montague Rhodes James
  license: public domain (worldwide)
  samples: 4
  provenance: "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), Project Gutenberg ebook 8486. Four contiguous runs from the openings of Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, Lost Hearts, The Mezzotint and The Ash-tree. James died in 1936, so the collection is public domain in the United States and in countries applying life plus seventy."
  files:
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f1-97f9-7e22-9cbd-8d12bb6bb5ea, source: "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book", words: 782}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f1-9c77-7df0-9709-bbffbe3c7b9c, source: "Lost Hearts", words: 868}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f1-a1ff-7f12-ba90-36c15b9fff29, source: "The Mezzotint", words: 951}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f1-a698-7b81-98d3-05e34c39abd9, source: "The Ash-tree", words: 822}
---

# M. R. James — ghost stories (1904)

A scholar telling a story about a colleague, at a level pitch, to people who know the world he is describing. The setting is given as an antiquary would give it: the church, the manuscript, the date, the county. The narrator addresses the reader directly, admits what he does not know, and keeps the same measured tone when the thing arrives as when the library was being described. One sentence out of place does all the work, and it is placed in the middle of a paragraph about something else.

## Never

- Never raises its voice at the moment of the turn
- Never explains what the reader has been shown
- Never invents a document it does not describe
- Never lets the narrator claim knowledge he could not have
- Never ends on a flourish

## Gold standard samples

Each numbered entry is one complete corpus passage, quoted as it stands.

1. Source: Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, 782 words.

   In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place—I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St Bertrand’s Church, and had left two friends, who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive, or rather hunted and oppressed, air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed was that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife.

   However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep in his note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the old man from his _déjeuner_, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.

   “Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”

   “Good heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be thought of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no; two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at all cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”

   “Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself: “you have been warned, and you must take the consequences.”

   Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber, had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, and every now and then whipping round as if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were sometimes.

   “Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. ‘It is he—that is—it is no one; the door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute.”

   Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series illustrating the miracles of St Bertrand. The composition of the picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below, which runs thus:

2. Source: Lost Hearts, 868 words.

   It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a post-chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of Lincolnshire. The little boy who was the only passenger in the chaise, and who jumped out as soon as it had stopped, looked about him with the keenest curiosity during the short interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the hall door. He saw a tall, square, red-brick house, built in the reign of Anne; a stone-pillared porch had been added in the purer classical style of 1790; the windows of the house were many, tall and narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment, pierced with a round window, crowned the front. There were wings to right and left, connected by curious glazed galleries, supported by colonnades, with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane.

   An evening light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many fires. Away from the Hall in front stretched a flat park studded with oaks and fringed with firs, which stood out against the sky. The clock in the church-tower, buried in trees on the edge of the park, only its golden weather-cock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening in early autumn, that was conveyed to the mind of the boy who was standing in the porch waiting for the door to open to him.

   The post-chaise had brought him from Warwickshire, where, some six months before, he had been left an orphan. Now, owing to the generous offer of his elderly cousin, Mr Abney, he had come to live at Aswarby. The offer was unexpected, because all who knew anything of Mr Abney looked upon him as a somewhat austere recluse, into whose steady-going household the advent of a small boy would import a new and, it seemed, incongruous element. The truth is that very little was known of Mr Abney’s pursuits or temper. The Professor of Greek at Cambridge had been heard to say that no one knew more of the religious beliefs of the later pagans than did the owner of Aswarby. Certainly his library contained all the then available books bearing on the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of Mithras, and the Neo-Platonists. In the marble-paved hall stood a fine group of Mithras slaying a bull, which had been imported from the Levant at great expense by the owner. He had contributed a description of it to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, and he had written a remarkable series of articles in the _Critical Museum_ on the superstitions of the Romans of the Lower Empire. He was looked upon, in fine, as a man wrapped up in his books, and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbours that he should ever have heard of his orphan cousin, Stephen Elliott, much more that he should have volunteered to make him an inmate of Aswarby Hall.

   Whatever may have been expected by his neighbours, it is certain that Mr Abney—the tall, the thin, the austere—seemed inclined to give his young cousin a kindly reception. The moment the front-door was opened he darted out of his study, rubbing his hands with delight.

   “How are you, my boy?—how are you? How old are you?” said he—“that is, you are not too much tired, I hope, by your journey to eat your supper?”

   “No, thank you, sir,” said Master Elliott; “I am pretty well.”

   “That’s a good lad,” said Mr Abney. “And how old are you, my boy?”

   It seemed a little odd that he should have asked the question twice in the first two minutes of their acquaintance.

   “I’m twelve years old next birthday, sir,” said Stephen.

   “And when is your birthday, my dear boy? Eleventh of September, eh? That’s well—that’s very well. Nearly a year hence, isn’t it? I like—ha, ha!—I like to get these things down in my book. Sure it’s twelve? Certain?”

   “Yes, quite sure, sir.”

   “Well, well! Take him to Mrs Bunch’s room, Parkes, and let him have his tea—supper—whatever it is.”

   “Yes, sir,” answered the staid Mr Parkes; and conducted Stephen to the lower regions.

   Mrs Bunch was the most comfortable and human person whom Stephen had as yet met in Aswarby. She made him completely at home; they were great friends in a quarter of an hour: and great friends they remained. Mrs Bunch had been born in the neighbourhood some fifty-five years before the date of Stephen’s arrival, and her residence at the Hall was of twenty years’ standing. Consequently, if anyone knew the ins and outs of the house and the district, Mrs Bunch knew them; and she was by no means disinclined to communicate her information.

3. Source: The Mezzotint, 951 words.

   Some time ago I believe I had the pleasure of telling you the story of an adventure which happened to a friend of mine by the name of Dennistoun, during his pursuit of objects of art for the museum at Cambridge.

   He did not publish his experiences very widely upon his return to England; but they could not fail to become known to a good many of his friends, and among others to the gentleman who at that time presided over an art museum at another University. It was to be expected that the story should make a considerable impression on the mind of a man whose vocation lay in lines similar to Dennistoun’s, and that he should be eager to catch at any explanation of the matter which tended to make it seem improbable that he should ever be called upon to deal with so agitating an emergency. It was, indeed, somewhat consoling to him to reflect that he was not expected to acquire ancient MSS. for his institution; that was the business of the Shelburnian Library. The authorities of that institution might, if they pleased, ransack obscure corners of the Continent for such matters. He was glad to be obliged at the moment to confine his attention to enlarging the already unsurpassed collection of English topographical drawings and engravings possessed by his museum. Yet, as it turned out, even a department so homely and familiar as this may have its dark corners, and to one of these Mr Williams was unexpectedly introduced.

   Those who have taken even the most limited interest in the acquisition of topographical pictures are aware that there is one London dealer whose aid is indispensable to their researches. Mr J. W. Britnell publishes at short intervals very admirable catalogues of a large and constantly changing stock of engravings, plans, and old sketches of mansions, churches, and towns in England and Wales. These catalogues were, of course, the ABC of his subject to Mr Williams: but as his museum already contained an enormous accumulation of topographical pictures, he was a regular, rather than a copious, buyer; and he rather looked to Mr Britnell to fill up gaps in the rank and file of his collection than to supply him with rarities.

   Now, in February of last year there appeared upon Mr Williams’s desk at the museum a catalogue from Mr Britnell’s emporium, and accompanying it was a typewritten communication from the dealer himself. This latter ran as follows:

   DEAR SIR, We beg to call your attention to No. 978 in our accompanying catalogue, which we shall be glad to send on approval.

   Yours faithfully, J. W. BRITNELL.

   To turn to No. 978 in the accompanying catalogue was with Mr. Williams (as he observed to himself) the work of a moment, and in the place indicated he found the following entry:

   978.—_Unknown._ Interesting mezzotint: View of a manor-house, early part of the century. 15 by 10 inches; black frame. £2 2s.

   It was not specially exciting, and the price seemed high. However, as Mr Britnell, who knew his business and his customer, seemed to set store by it, Mr Williams wrote a postcard asking for the article to be sent on approval, along with some other engravings and sketches which appeared in the same catalogue. And so he passed without much excitement of anticipation to the ordinary labours of the day.

   A parcel of any kind always arrives a day later than you expect it, and that of Mr Britnell proved, as I believe the right phrase goes, no exception to the rule. It was delivered at the museum by the afternoon post of Saturday, after Mr Williams had left his work, and it was accordingly brought round to his rooms in college by the attendant, in order that he might not have to wait over Sunday before looking through it and returning such of the contents as he did not propose to keep. And here he found it when he came in to tea, with a friend.

   The only item with which I am concerned was the rather large, black-framed mezzotint of which I have already quoted the short description given in Mr Britnell’s catalogue. Some more details of it will have to be given, though I cannot hope to put before you the look of the picture as clearly as it is present to my own eye. Very nearly the exact duplicate of it may be seen in a good many old inn parlours, or in the passages of undisturbed country mansions at the present moment. It was a rather indifferent mezzotint, and an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst form of engraving known. It presented a full-face view of a not very large manor-house of the last century, with three rows of plain sashed windows with rusticated masonry about them, a parapet with balls or vases at the angles, and a small portico in the centre. On either side were trees, and in front a considerable expanse of lawn. The legend _A. W. F. sculpsit_ was engraved on the narrow margin; and there was no further inscription. The whole thing gave the impression that it was the work of an amateur. What in the world Mr Britnell could mean by affixing the price of £2 2s. to such an object was more than Mr Williams could imagine. He turned it over with a good deal of contempt; upon the back was a paper label, the left-hand half of which had been torn off. All that remained were the ends of two lines of writing: the first had the letters—_ngley Hall_; the second,—_ssex_.

4. Source: The Ash-tree, 822 words.

   Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong attraction: with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like the pillared portico—perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the “Grecian” taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.

   But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.

   In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual power of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the mere cruelty of the witch-finders—these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.

   Castringham contributed a victim to the _auto-da-fé_. Mrs Mothersole was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.

   But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house”. She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden was a hare running across the path in the direction of the village.

   On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed, and had gone straight to Mrs Mothersole’s house; but he had had to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed; and he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.

## Signature vocabulary

Reach for these:

- the vocabulary of collections: folio, mezzotint, plate, scrap-book
- English county and cathedral names
- hedges of the careful reporter: I believe, as far as I can ascertain
- the reader addressed as you

These 4 habits identify the register faster than anything else:

- the aside to the reader, in parentheses or between dashes
- a date, a county and a catalogue number given as a matter of course
- the narrator admitting the limits of his information
- the one wrong detail set down in the same tone as the right ones

Words and constructions this voice refuses:

delve, leverage, seamless, game-changer, robust, cutting-edge, in today's fast-paced, it's worth noting, at the end of the day.

## Moves

- Establish the scholar, his errand and his date before anything happens
- Hand the story on from a named source who is not the narrator
- Keep the pitch level across the sentence where the wrong thing appears
- Let a described object carry the information the narrator withholds
- Close a section on an unremarked detail

## Register

- narration: first person, level, addressed to a reader assumed to be present
- description: catalogue-exact about objects, buildings and dates
- the turn: the same tone as the paragraph before it

## Measured fingerprint

Measured over 4 passages and 3423 words. Sentence means run from 18.5 to 28.3 words, with a standard deviation inside each passage of 13.2 to 18.2, so the length varies as much as it averages. Windowed type-token ratio over 500 words sits between 0.52 and 0.57. Per thousand words the corpus carries 7.9 semicolons, 0.9 exclamation marks and 1.5 of the fourteen connectives the checker counts (however, moreover, thus and the rest). The commonest sentence openers are the (17), i (13), it (12), he (12), and (5).

Write to these numbers. The checker below reads them from the corpus and
applies them to anything written in this voice.

```json
{
  "schema": "katagami:voice-bands/v1",
  "sentence_length": {
    "mean": [
      12.9,
      38.3
    ],
    "stdev_min": 7.2
  },
  "banned_phrases": [
    "delve",
    "leverage",
    "seamless",
    "game-changer",
    "robust",
    "cutting-edge",
    "in today's fast-paced",
    "it's worth noting",
    "at the end of the day"
  ],
  "punctuation": {
    "exclamations_per_1000_words": [
      0,
      3
    ]
  },
  "type_token_ratio": {
    "min": 0.42,
    "window_words": 500
  },
  "function_words": {
    "max_distance": 0.058
  },
  "char_trigrams": {
    "max_distance": 0.218
  },
  "min_words_to_evaluate": 150
}
```

## Corpus

The full text of every passage above:

- Passage 1: /api/file/fl-01a087f1-97f9-7e22-9cbd-8d12bb6bb5ea (Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, 782 words)
- Passage 2: /api/file/fl-01a087f1-9c77-7df0-9709-bbffbe3c7b9c (Lost Hearts, 868 words)
- Passage 3: /api/file/fl-01a087f1-a1ff-7f12-ba90-36c15b9fff29 (The Mezzotint, 951 words)
- Passage 4: /api/file/fl-01a087f1-a698-7b81-98d3-05e34c39abd9 (The Ash-tree, 822 words)