Some argue that M.R. James was one of the finest ghost story authors to have ever put pen to paper. One of James’s most important achievements was to take the homely ‘country house’ Victorian ghost story and to empower it with a new malevolent, masculine, middle class bite. Where Rhoda Broughton found herself pursued on a Grand Tour by nothing more terrifying than a mesmerising man with an awfully big nose; - where Louisa Molesworth swooned at the appearance of a rippling dress in the oak-panelled drawing room; - where Edith Nesbit ran screaming down a country lane because she was being chased by a ghostly car that rattled along at the breakneck speed of fifteen miles per hour - M.R. James propelled his characters into an arena of dark horror and savage violence. His monstrous creations not only touched their victims, they crawled over them, and then tore open their sleek white throats with bestial talons. One might even argue that James was personally responsible for gilding the mainstream ghost story with a particular brand of dark edged, violent masculinity.
During the nineteenth century female writers contributed significantly to the over production of pedestrian ghost stories, perhaps by way of pursuing half-hearted literary careers. For every talented ‘high brow’ Vernon Lee there were alas half a dozen Countess Of Munsters, dullard writers who inflicted upon their captive audience tales of such unmitigated turgidity that one must assume that they only got published because of silken string-pulling. Thus we have a paper legacy comprising acres of crushingly awful ghost stories by the likes of Marie Corelli, Florence Marryat, Lettice Galbraith, Mary Wilkins, Gertrude Atherton, Theo Gift et al, many of which served to dumb down the ghostly tradition to previously unplumbed levels of tepidity. Even good writers such as Edith Nesbit, Amelia Edwards or Rhoda Broughton were capable of composing lazy routine efforts. The average children’s fairy tale had arguably more bite or horror than the typical ‘Golden Age’ ghost story. It was not for nothing that Robert Aickman, ghost story connoisseur and editor of the first eight Fontana ghost story collections, said that there only ‘thirty or forty first-class ghost stories’ worth reprinting.
This conspiracy of insipidness can be traced to a wish to emulate in short story form the innovative accomplishments of their worthy female predecessors, such as Ann Radcliffe, Catherine Crowe, the Brontes, Clara Reeve and Mary Shelley. These successful novelists had pioneered an important artistic emancipation via the romantic gothic novel. Unfortunately during the late Victorian period many female writers sought to lazily distill many of the clichéd trappings from the oft-cited but rarely-read masterpieces penned by their foremothers e.g. crumbling country mansions, lonely misunderstood female heroines, sexless existences, and of course, the obligatory ancestral curse. In keeping with the gothic romance, these disciples kept their readers on medieval tenterhooks until very last page, where the ghost or apparition was often revealed to be of such ambiguity or benignity that one wonders whether the authoresses had in fact intended the ethereal entities to be companions rather than demons.
Whilst the Brontes of this world may have contributed hugely towards defining mainstream literature (in terms of style, theme and readership), their influence on the ghostly and horrific tradition is less distinct than that of many of their male counterparts. Take M.G. Lewis, for example. Where Mary Shelley diluted her horrors by making Frankenstein a beautiful creation that engaged upon long discourses about wider political and social issues, ‘Monk’ Lewis created a work in which murder, rape and all manner of unrestrained horrors assail the reader in quick, unrelenting succession. The work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu too is drenched in harrowing supernatural horror and dark psychological exploration; although handled with the utmost subtlety, there is little in thematic terms that can be deemed restrained. Evil uncles prey upon naïve female cousins, ostensibly for money, but an underlying theme of sexual domination is ever present; lesbian vampires seduce vulnerable adolescent daughters; cruel, murderous judges are driven into madness by terrifying hallucinations; children are abducted by demonic supernatural agencies; etcetera. In ‘Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’, Robert Louis Stevenson liberated the repressed bestial aspects of the male psyche in a novel that was contemporaneous to the horrors being perpetrated in the East End of London by Jack-The-Ripper; and no one who has read Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ can have missed the underlying theme of sexual frustration that riddles this brilliantly disturbing and often under-rated novel.
The presence of direct or indirect themed sexuality is notably absent from most Victorian feminist literature and sets the work of both sexes during this period distinctly apart. Female authors of ghost stories from this era are often branded the ‘grim maids’ of literature, and for good reason. Their work was often sexless.
In male supernatural fiction sexuality is often associated with two other masculine preoccupations: violence and horror. Certainly this is the case with Lewis, Le Fanu and Stoker, where amongst the not-so veiled references to rape, fellatio, incest, necrophilia and all manner of other erotic sexual perversion, we have much head-chopping, throat-cutting, impalement, medieval torture, child abduction, etcetera. In the pens of gratuitous hacks or mediocre writers the portrayal of these adult issues would be deemed either ugly or laughable (as in the case of ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ or indeed contemporary American horror fiction). And one can quite understand why the greater majority of women preferred not to write about these issues. Yet these darker sides of the male psyche do exist: we read about war and violent crime every day of the week. However, it is obviously it is a question of choice whether or not one opts to write about these unpleasant issues, and whilst there should be no moral obligation requiring anyone to do so, those who do decide to explore these darker issues should not be discriminated against. Only through exploration and investigation can we hope to achieve understanding.
Admittedly the dividing line between psychological exploration and gratuitous revelry may be a subjectively ambiguous one in the literary world, but most good writers seem to know instinctively how to stay on the right side of it. The glorification of violence – in particular, the glorification of sexual violence – is perhaps the least appealing development in modern horror fiction, and this is perhaps why mainstream critics approach a once-great genre with so many misgivings.
Many nineteenth century male authors were therefore responsible for imbuing the supernatural tale with sexuality and violence. They were less concerned with the romantic idyll than their female counterparts. Set against this backdrop, M.R. James burst upon the scene during the early part of the twentieth century with his own unique brand of violent ghost story.
Although James claims to have been uninterested in sex (branding the inclusion of sex in a ghost story as ‘tedious’), one can in fact intuit many subtle Freudian references in James’ work.
Colin Wilson in ‘The Strength To Dream’ (1962) wrote: "Had M.R. James, for example, guessed that [his] stories ....are full of symbols of repressed homosexuality' he might paradoxically have written with far more inhibition, or not have written at all."
James almost certainly had no conscious awareness of the psycho-sexual implications of his work. Though he was six years younger than Freud, his mentality was wholly pre-Freudian. We should be thankful that he was not a subscriber to such theories: had his fiction been cautiously toned down then it quite certainly would have made it less frightening. Additionally it would be harder for us to analyse. Finally, an additional consideration is that speculation about these darker issues would have undoubtedly offended James, not least because he appears to have been in denial about his darker personality traits in the first place.
The case is very strong for arguing that James was a misogynist (albeit a misogynist motivated by an intellectual disdain of women rather than through any deep-seated fear or hatred). Equally compelling is the fact that he persistently cultivated romantic relationships with male adolescents throughout the course of his life (though whether or not he actually consummated his affairs is less clear). Certainly one can deduce from his writings that he wanted to: the stories hint at powerful sexual urges. Several of his close friends were sexually active homosexuals – Arthur and Fred Benson, for example – so he can hardly have existed in sexual ignorance, despite his ivory tower. However, when one reflects that not only was homosexuality illegal one hundred years ago, but that it was deemed so serious a crime that a custodial sentence and social ruin were imposed anyone prosecuted for such a misdemeanour, the absence of any factual evidence corroborating James’ sexual proclivities is understandably thin on the ground. Was it likely that he would ever admit to even a single gay affair, let alone to seducing any of his youthful charges? No, such an admission would be unthinkable. Might his peers or pupils talk of their affairs with him? Again, this would be extremely unlikely. For several decades after James’ death anyone admitting to first-hand knowledge of homosexuality would expose themselves to prosecution and recrimination.
Not for nothing was homosexuality called ‘the Blackmailer’s Charter’.
When Bram Stoker died it was given out that he had expired from ‘exhaustion’. However, several decades later his death certificate actually revealed this euphemism to be syphilis e.g. a sexually transmitted disease. This means that Stoker must have had affairs or else consorted with prostitutes. Furthermore, we know that whilst his wife, though generally thought to be very beautiful, was in fact frigid. This, incidentally, is the key to unlocking ‘Dracula’; this is why the novel seethes with sexual tension. For although Stoker may not have been getting much sexual release at home, he was by virtue of his managing the Lyceum Theatre moving in circles that teemed with beautiful young actresses. It must have been excruciatingly painful.
Le Fanu appears to have unwittingly disclosed an unhealthy but genetically pre-ordained obsession with female siblings, notably an adoring and possibly romantic interest in his own sister, and a sexual interest in his wife’s sister (as can be intuited from biographies and his own prose). In ‘Carmilla’, the alluring female vampire of that same name strikes up an affectionate sisterly relationship with her host’s daughter before initiating her into a predatory sexual relationship. Lesbianism and incest are famously implicit. Voyeurism too, especially when viewed in the context of the famous original illustrations that accompanied the story on its initial publication in The Dark Blue (1872). One of these features a father rushing into his daughter’s bedroom: as he frowns in rage or horror, the reader’s eyes are drawn irresistibly to the girl’s half naked form, her breasts daringly exposed, as she lies swooning on her bed.
Undoubtedly Le Fanu’s subtle infatuations were a result of his being brought up in a suffocating atmosphere of inbreeding and isolation, where incestuous inter-marriage and cautious social interaction had long been perpetuated by way of preserving jealously guarded wealth within the family. Indeed, incestuous relationships were far from unique amongst the literazzi e.g. Lord Byron, whose infatuation for his half-sister is well documented (Byron’s own father also had an affair with his own sister). The Le Fanu’s, a withered branch of the Hugenot dynasty, were trapped helplessly within the confines of tradition and genteel poverty. A morbid awareness of this fell heavily upon the writer of the family. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s work is drenched with an overpowering sense of futility, corruption and moribundity.
Le Fanu differs from Stoker and James in one important respect. Le Fanu appears o have deliberately employed sexuality and violence as themes in his work, whereas the other two appear to have done so unwittingly. I would argue that because of this, Le Fanu is the better writer.
Thus an adult perspective on sexuality and violence appears to exist in the male ghost story as practised by the cutting-edge proponents of the genre. M.R. James was no exception. The masculine propensity for developing the violent sexually-charged supernatural story exists in the work of Arthur Machen ( by virtue of the subversive sexual innuendo in The Great God Pan, The Inmost Light and The Three Imposters), Maurice Level (and other purveyors of the ‘conte cruel’), Herbert Russell Wakefield (infamous for his portrayal of rampant misogyny and sadistic predation), William Hope Hodgson (with regard the metaphors for sexual abuse which exist in his supernatural novels), all the way through to an acknowledged modern-day master of the form, Robert Aickman.
***
To term M.R. James’s contribution to the genre as mere ‘ghost stories’ is surely a misnomer because there are very few ghosts in his tales. A more appropriate nomenclature might be ‘demon stories’ given James’s preoccupation with creating sinister visitations that dispense unpleasant and gruesome retribution upon disfavoured characters. As James was known to disfavour rationalised or ambiguous conclusions in a ghost story, it should come as no surprise to the reader that his own tales invariably culminate in the terrifying materialisation of a supernatural entity seeking vengeance. What does come as a surprise, however, is the extreme nature of the violence employed, especially from one who argued for reticence in ghost story writing (as James famously did), and from one who sought to take the moral high ground by avoiding conventional profanity, excessive bloodletting and deliberate sexual connotation. Yet for all that, Jamesian violence is particularly harrowing and discomfortingly realistic.
One could imagine that were James entertaining his local vicar to afternoon tea – much amiable, mundane banter amongst the chintzes and Earl Grey – James might be busily engaged in half-subconsciously creating a hirsute demonised skeleton with glittering red eyes, who might leap out from behind the chaise longue to tear out his host’s throat with its teeth. Only James would not have put it like that. He might have said:
‘...Long says that before he could issue any warning, the fiend fell upon the vicar. Indeed, Long says that he became quite paralysed with fear himself, unable to intervene, forced instead to stare at the unfolding horror like a voyeur. It was many weeks before he was able to give anyone us account of what did happen. It is not something I like to talk about myself after nightfall. But when he could be made to talk, Long said this: you know those leeches that you see in old medical books, the ones that doctors use to bleed their patients? Well, Long likened the attack to one that a giant leech might make, were a leech the size of a large dog to fasten itself to the neck of a man, and feed, as this one did. Despite the horror of this, the thing that really did for Long was the dreadful silence, which was broken only by an occasional muffled sob from the victim. But eventually even that stopped when the creature finally clambered back down from his victim, fixing Long with a cold satiated stare before loping back off into the shadows.
‘Of course, the authorities never found anything, and the local diocese hushed up he matter as best they could. An inquest of ‘accidental death’ was returned. Several years later I happened to run into the coroner at a book viewing in town, and got the rest out of the story out of him: about how the vicar’s neck had been slit open from chin to chest like a burst cherry, and all about the strange claw marks which were found on the shoulders; serrations that had pierced both cloth and skin....’
(NB. When this essay first appeared in Weirdly Supernatural 2 the noted bookseller Ken Cowley called the above Jamesian excerpt ‘excellent’, ranking it with the best of Jamiesian pastiches. Ed.)
In addition to the sleight-of-hand depiction of graphic violence, the basic plots of many James tales reveal disturbing subconscious preoccupations. In preparation for this article I sketched out the following list, and whilst by no means exhaustive, it may nevertheless illustrate this point:
The Story Of An Appearance And A Disappearance
Features an extremely disturbing dream sequence involving a Punch & Judy show. The last murder possesses particularly strong sexual overtones e.g. rape and murder.
A Warning To The Curious
Paxton is found dead on the beach, having had his jaw smashed to pieces and his mouth crammed with pebbles.
Lost Hearts
Very disturbing metaphor for child abuse: black magician tears the hearts out of live adolescent children.
Count Magnus
A ‘beautiful man’ has his face sucked off by a horrible creature.
The Haunted Dolls House
A voyeur watches mesmerised as two children are murdered in their beds.
The Mezzotint
Child abduction and murder.
Casting The Runes
Children terrified by Mr Karswell’s magic lantern show, including a slide where he depicts a child being murdered.
Residence At Whitminster
One of James’s most disturbing tales and certainly one of the most revealing. Not only has James borrowed heavily from several high profile ghost stories - Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ (the sexual predator relative fostered upon naïve innocents), Machen’s ‘The Great God Pan’ (the gypsy woman who imparts secret knowledge and the depiction of a sexually predatory young adolescent à la Helen Vaughan) and Richard Marsh’s ‘The Beetle’ (the central horror of the tale, a large tactile insect that introduces itself in a scene lifted from the original novel) - but he wreaks a dark, sadistic vengeance upon an adolescent boy, having him chased by demons that claw at his back and leave him for dead, half naked and bloody-legged, evoking classic ‘bloody bottoms’ flagellation imagery.
Martin’s Close
Ann Clarke, a poor disadvantaged simpleton, is seduced by a selfish nobleman and then has her throat cut by him when her attention becomes tiresome. Revealing his tactile misogyny, James makes Ann Clarke horribly ugly. This is James’ only tale to feature overt heterosexuality.
Diary Of Mr Poynter
A character has their hair plucked from their head. James seemed to dislike hair and the ageing process. The majority of his demons are old, thin and hairy.
Many of M.R. James’s stories feature the distant and cold narration of stressful, frightening experiences which are inflicted upon others for the reader’s delectation. However, the stories do step up a gear and become heatedly passionate when vengeance is meted out. Only then does the narrative tempo increase. Elsewhere, emotions and feelings are held in check at all times. For example, in ‘A Warning To The Curious’, Paxton breaks down sobbing such is the unbearable pressure to which he has been subjected following his discovery of the Anglo-Saxon crown. The sympathy extended by the narrator and Henry Long cannot possibly be deemed enthusiastic and appears to spring from a sense of reluctant middle class wish to mitigate public displays of emotion rather than through genuine concern. By common consent, demonstrative shows of emotion or tenderness are palpably absent from James’ tales. Granted he can portray his characters in a lightly affectionate manner when called for, a style that is often employed when gently mocking a working class person, but in the main his writing seems to reflect a need to maintain a stiff upper lip at all times, thus denying any deeper psychological tensions.
It is therefore legitimate to query James’ apparent fascination with fictional violence and cruelty. The stories could be viewed as subliminal exorcisms of irrepressible urges. But the key to unlocking the truth must surely lie in whether James was reflecting upon abuse he had suffered, witnessed, inflicted - or wished to inflict.
At inquests or during official investigations in James tales, his heroes are usually tersely economic with the truth in order to protect the reputation of a respected establishment or individual. Coroners, policemen and doctors seem happy to accept the briefest of dry facts. The word of a Jamesian character appears to command much respect, especially if that character is of a similar social standing to that of James himself. James’ characters believe that they are obliged to lie because they know that complete disclosure would only give rise to unnecessary or troublesome speculation about events which cannot be explained. On a subconscious level this would appear to imply that James may himself have supported the practise of covering-up if it was for the greater good. Given James’ close involvement in many school and college affairs it is unthinkable that he would not have come across cases of bullying or abuse that might embarrass or compromise those establishments. How would James have preferred those incidents be dealt with? If we are to believe his ghost stories, he would appear to advocate covering them up.
Returning to the earlier question – was James a victim, witness, inflictor or fantasist with regard to violence and cruelty? – one can reasonably dismiss the former. He was unlikely to have been a victim of violence. According to various sources James was a precocious, confident, even arrogant child, and such traits are uncommon in one who is bullied. Additionally, it is highly unlikely that James would have written about violence in quite the way he did had he been victim. In contrast, James seems to extract an exquisite, complex pleasure from inflicting pain and vengeance upon those who offend the Jamesian eye; and even where the victim is portrayed sympathetically, James nevertheless implies that there is something inevitable and morally justifiable about the retribution.
Is it more likely that James witnessed violence and suffered in silence, exorcising the demons via the ghost stories? I remain unconvinced about this. Surely he would have used the ghost stories as a platform for condemning violence if that were the case? In contrast, James appears to condone the violent demise of this book-thief or that grave-robber. ‘That’s what you get for playing with fire’ is one of the constant themes underlying his work.
Via a process of elimination one must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that James possessed a cruel streak himself. It is a streak that peeks out frequently via the ghost stories. Although claiming to only have ‘quickly’ glanced at Paxton’s face in the climax to ‘A Warning To The Curious’, James’ narrator informs us that ‘His mouth was full of sand and stones, and his teeth and jaws were broken to bits’. It’s not enough that Paxton is dead, James gives us the full ‘Monty’: broken teeth, sand and pebbles. As a reader, the full horror of the situation is brilliantly – if unpleasantly – conveyed. The reader can quite literally taste the grit in his or her mouth.
But where does this cruel depiction of violence come? Certainly the old established public boarding schools have a famous reputation for facilitating bullying, as typified in numerous well-known mediums e.g. Lindsay Anderson’s film If and both the novel and film of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. However, James thoroughly enjoyed his own schooldays, and although corporal punishment at his preparatory school Temple Grove was commonplace (Arthur Benson claimed it was ‘too severe’), James was apparently never once beaten himself. Might James might have been a bully himself? It would certainly fit in with the documented arrogance. James biographer Michael Cox documents two incidents bullying perpetrated by James at Temple Grove:
‘At some point he was reported for bullying, which Waterfield (the authoritarian headmaster) said he would have disbelieved had he not examined the victim’s bruises for himself. There was another incident towards the end of his time at Temple Grove, when he and a chum of his, Hubert Brinton, ‘humbugged’ another boy.’
Indeed, James’s first experience of Eton was when he took a scholarship examination in 1876. Cox advises:
‘The Temple Grove candidates had to put up with some hostility as they came out of the scholarship examination from a mob of Lower Boys, who jeered, made unfeeling remarks, and even offered physical violence in the form of kicks.’
James quickly settled into the routine. Despite having been a fag himself the previous term, he could not disguise a ‘superior’ tone in a letter in Autumn 1877:
‘The nine new people this half are nothing remarkable and very bad hands at keeping up a fire. Punishment with a siphon will henceforth be adopted.’
And then in November 1878, James was one of ten boys reported to the Headmaster for harassing a boy called Brooks. It seems that bullying quickly became a part of his life.
In preparing this article I discussed these issues with a former Etonian and he replied as follows:
‘When he was a boy at Eton, as a member of Sixth Form and "Pop" (the Eton Society, a self-elected group of Eton prefects), James would have been entitled to beat other boys. Even in my time, both Sixth Form (of which I was a member) and Pop had their own particular brands of cane (Pop being knobblier), and particularly sadistic members of these select groups would fag a boy up the High Street to ‘New and Lingwood's’ (the tailor's where, oddly enough, you could buy these instruments of torture - only in England!) to purchase a cane with which they were to be beaten. Opportunities for sadism abounded. No wonder Swinburne, an Etonian of a slightly earlier generation, developed a lifelong obsession with flaggelation and even wrote poems about it .’
In a BBC documentary made shortly before his death, the Conservative MP Alan Clark was asked whether Eton had been good preparation for a career in politics. ‘It was excellent,’ replied Clark. Eton had been ‘brutal’ but it had taught him all about ‘deceit’. In particular, he cited ‘the pleasure to be had from inflicting pain upon others.’
M.R. James’ innate arrogance surfaced on numerous occasions, causing a series of unpleasant diplomatic dilemmas for his tutors to resolve. He forged documents, laid boastful claim to minor academic discoveries, and composed a translation of a forgettable Ethiopic text which he promptly sent off to Queen Victoria with a personal dedication. This self-conceit is perhaps best typified by the following boast made in a contemporary letter sent to his parents:
‘In Translation I made no mistake but introduced a new interpretation of one passage which may stagger the Examiners. I argued hotly with the Tutor, and he could not answer me.’
By the time that James had progressed to Kings College, Cambridge his tutors appear to have suppressed the bullying and toned down the more visible aspects of conceit. One side effect of this transformation appears to have been a burgeoning romantic interest in the fellow students whom he might previously have bullied. James quickly formed a strong emotional attachment with a boy called Stuart St Clair Donaldson. James himself wrote in 1882:
‘I then called upon St Clair....He eventually came to my rooms and I speedily originated a rag by hanging his hat on the coal scuttle. Marshall and Thomas thought my book cases were falling and came to see if they could render any assistance. We were at that moment somewhat mixed on the hearthrug.’
At meetings of the Twice A Fortnight club (TAF), Cyril Alington (later to become a Head Master of Eton and Dean of Durham) censored a recollection in the club notes by St Clair Donaldson ‘for reasons of piety’ in which he (Donaldson) writhed on the floor - ‘ with Monty James’s long fingers grasping at his vitals.’ Clearly James found succour in these romantic entanglements, most notably in his subsequent well-documented relationship with James McBryde.
We therefore have evidence that James bullied some of his peers and that he was attracted to others. Psychologists frequently link cruel behaviour to a sexual urge to dominate. Furthermore, we know that the object of adoration can swiftly and imperceptibly become the object of hate or derision, especially in the mind of one fixated or obsessed. James struggled against the obsessive idèe fixee throughout his school-life, harbouring delusional fantasies which occasionally alarmed his tutors. Thus whilst James’s sentimental relationships with some boys could be seen as an expression of romantic love, the bullying of others (or indeed the cruelty in his stories) can be viewed as an expression of Freudian sexual desire.
James shrewdly learnt to moderate his behaviour as he matured into adulthood. However, the aggressive desire to dominate other men occasionally peeked through, as evidenced by his waspish attacks on the literary integrity of Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and E.F. Benson. In affairs of the heart, James also appears to have become far more reticent with passing years. But would the suppression of these powerful emotions result in the complete elimination of those urges, or might it lead to subconscious frustration?
The violence in James’ work often bursts out in a savage fashion. After ambiguous, teasing references to supernatural horrors in prose that is neat, clipped and carefully controlled, the demons suddenly leap out of James’ imagination to inflict horrible physical retribution. Faces are sucked off, teeth are smashed in, hair is plucked, throats are slit, children have hearts torn out from their living bodies. These psychopathic attacks appear to provide some form of emotional release for James. Where Sax Rohmer would typically place a beautiful and desirable English girl in the hands of an insidious, lascivious Oriental, pandering to various obvious sexual fantasies, James’s scenarios are far more complex. Children are frequently the victims in his tales, children murdered by predatory villains and supernatural entities.
Violence against adults in a James tale is usually justified. If the victim is female, she is typically portrayed as a fallen woman of some description e.g. Mrs Mothersole in ‘The Ash-tree’, or Ann Clark in ‘Martin’s Close’; if the victim is male, then archaeological greed or an unhealthy interest in the occult is usually justification enough for a horrible Jamesian death. In both cases, the adults usually get what James as narrator thinks they deserve. How then are we to square the infliction of violence upon children in James’ tales?
Many observers believe that notwithstanding their wider mainstream importance, James’ tales were in fact metaphors for thinly veiled expressions of repressed homosexuality. Anthony Powell, who was at Eton during James's Provostship, suggested in his review of Michael Cox’s biography that "one need not be a professional psychoanalyst to see the ghost stories as some release from feelings held in check..." Powell went on to say that James's seemingly platonic affairs with boys "were fascinating to watch".
If these observations are accurate – and those of us wishing to take an objective perspective should have no reason to doubt them - then they suggest that the violence in James’ stories may have sprung from the suppression of a deep sexual urge. One cannot read H.R. Wakefield without sensing powerful sexual undercurrents of a cruel and sadistic nature, for example. Wakefield appears magnetically attracted to the same fast young women he typically brands as ‘bitch’ or ‘slut’ in his ghost stories. And it is a well-documented piece of literary folklore that Ian Fleming conceived the inspiration for James Bond on the advice of his doctor after becoming plagued by obsessions about sex and violence. Through the medium of writing Fleming found release for his inner demons. It is highly probable that James propitiated his own demons via a similar method; unlike Fleming however he would not have been consciously aware of this exorcism. But the key difference between Fleming, Wakefield and James is that James heavily populated his ghost stories with children.
Clearly James was attracted to youthful men and male adolescents, hence the numerous probable romantic affairs in his youth and early adulthood. Photographs from this era depict James on intimate, affectionate terms with many of his friends, and these images, coupled with the well-documented accounts of his affairs / friendships (both his own accounts and those of others), suggest that James was at this time sexually active. However, James appears to have become progressively more circumspect about public demonstrations of homosexual affection as he grew older, much as he had learnt to suppress juvenile predilections for conceit and bullying in his adolescence. Indeed this moderation was essential given the high profile academic posts that he was soon to hold. Although James’ ghost stories first began to appear in print when he was in his thirties, his first volume of stories did not appear until he was forty-two. It can be no great coincidence that the ghost stories began to materialise in a proper and distinct form at about the same time that his academic career began to take off.
Clearly the ghost stories can be viewed as an outlet for James’ emotional and sexual frustrations. The bestial demons from his stories represent irrepressible passions bursting through the subconscious. James seeks to validate the vicious and often sadistic cruelty that exists in his tales by depicting it as a perverted form of righteous vengeance i.e. the thieving archaeologist gets what he deserves. However, violence remains the lynchpin around which everything revolves. James’ masterful creation of atmosphere is simply scene-setting for the horrific climax that is to follow. His images of supernatural violence and cruelty are the ones that linger most vividly in the memory because they are the most passionately written sections of prose.
In closing, I should like to quote from two illuminating Jamesian texts. Whilst both pieces illustrate James’s ability to convey a sense of supreme terror, the latter exhibits James’ preoccupation with images of protracted cruelty in a style that must surely qualify as sadistic (James attributed the inspiration for this particular story to a dream), where the former hints more openly at sexual fantasy (depicting as it does the vengeance meted out to a sexually precocious adolescent boy).
“...That scene closed, and the next was so dark that perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me. But what I seemed to see was a form, at first crouching low among the trees or bushes that were being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a pursuer; and indeed, pursuers were following hard after him. Their shapes were but dimly seen, their number – three or four perhaps – only guessed. I suppose they were on the whole more like dogs than anything else, but dogs such as we have seen they assuredly were not. Could I have closed my eyes to this horror, I would have done so, but I was helpless. The last I saw was the victim darting beneath an arch and clutching at some object to which he clung: and those that were pursuing him overtook him, and I seemed to hear the echo of despair..........two men dashed across to the south door of the minster, there to find Lord Saul clinging desperately to the great ring of the door, his head sunk between his shoulders, his stockings in rags, his shoes gone, his legs torn and bloody.” From The Residence At Whitminster (A Thin Ghost And Other Stories, 1919).
“It is a dream, sir, which I am going to record, and I must say it is one of the oddest I have had..... It began with what I can only describe as a pulling aside of curtains: I found myself seated in a place – I don’t know whether indoors or out. There were people – only a few – on either side of me, but I did not recognize them, or indeed think much about them. They never spoke, but, so far as I remember, were all grave and pale-faced and looked fixedly before them. Facing me there was a Punch and Judy Show, perhaps rather larger than the ordinary ones, painted with black figures on a reddish-yellow ground. Behind it and on each side was only darkness, but in front there was a sufficiency of light. I was ‘strung up’ to a high degree of expectation and looked every moment to hear the pan-pipes and Roo-too-too-it. Instead of that there came an enormous – I can use no other word – an enormous single toll of a bell, I don’t know from how far off – somewhere behind. The little curtain flew up and the drama began.
“I believe someone once tried to re-write Punch as a serious tragedy; but whoever he may have been, this performance would have suited him exactly. There was something Satanic about the hero. He varied his methods of attack: for some of his victims he lay in wait, and to see his horrible face – it was yellowish white, I may remark – peering round the wings made me think of the Vampyre in Fuseli’s foul sketch. To others he was polite and carneying – particularly to the unfortunate alien who can only say Shallabalah – though what Punch said I never could catch. But with all of them I came to dread the moment of death. The crack of the stick on their skulls, which in the ordinary way delights me, had here a crushing sound as if the bone were giving way, and the victims quivered and kicked as they lay. The baby – it sounds ridiculous as I go on – the baby, I am sure, was alive. Punch wrung its neck, and if the choke or squeak which it gave were not real, I know nothing of reality.
“The stage got perceptibly darker as each crime was consummated, and at last there was one murder which was quite done in the dark, so that I could see nothing of the victim, and took some time to effect. It was accompanied by hard breathing and horrid muffled sounds, and after it Punch came and sat on the footboard and fanned himself and looked at his shoes, which were bloody, and hung his head on one side, and sniggered in so deadly a fashion that I saw some of those beside me cover their faces, and I would gladly have done the same. But in the meantime the scene behind Punch was clearing, and showed, not the usual house front, but something more ambitious – a grove of fir trees and the gentle slope of a hill, with a very natural – in fact, I should say a real – moon shining on it. Over this there slowly rose an object which I son perceived to be a human figure with something peculiar about the head – what, I was unable to at first to see. It did not stand on its feet, but began creeping or dragging itself across the middle distance towards Punch, who still sat back to it; and by this time, I may remark (though it did not occur to me at the moment) that all pretence of this being a puppet show had vanished. Punch was still Punch, it is true, but, like the others, was in some sense a live creature......when I next glanced at him he was sitting in malignant reflection; but in another instant something seemed to attract his attention; then indeed did he show unmistakeable signs of terror.....the chase began......at length there came a moment when Punch, evidently exhausted, staggered in and threw himself down among the trees.......his pursuer was not long after him.......catching a sight of the figure on the ground, he too threw himself down – his back was turned to the audience – with a quick motion twitched the covering from his head and thrust his face into that of Punch. Everything on an instant grew dark. There was long, loud shuddering scream, and I awoke.”
The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance (from A Thin Ghost And Other Stories, 1919).
COPYRIGHT CHRISTOPHER BARKER & THE HAUNTED RIVER 2003.
Unpleasant Demons: Violence and Cruelty in the Jamesian Tale
First published in Weirdly Supernatural 2 (2004)
Bibliographical note: The Unpleasant Demons essay below appeared both in print and freely online two years before a similar essay by Ralph Harrington was published. Although Mr Harrington argues a slightly different case, he does appear to have been influenced by the basic premise of Unpleasant Demons (we should point out that whilst Mr Harrington admits to having viewed various pages on this website, he claims that he didn’t actually chance across this particular essay.....)