Content area
Full Text
Celebrated author, medievalist, wit, raconteur, Provost of both Cambridge University and Eton College, Montague Rhodes James is described by E. F. Bleiler in his introduction to the Dover edition of Ghost Stones of an Antiquary as "in many ways the epitome of the brilliant but slightly eccentric British scholar," a genuine Renaissance man who produced some of the most popular ghost stories of his or any other generation (5). Distinguished by their nonpareil "urbanity, suaveness, and economy" (Sullivan 90) and found in practically every anthology of the supernatural published on either side of the Atlantic for the last hundred years, James's elegant and measured turn-of-the-century narratives usually recount the tribulations of well-educated Victorian and Edwardian elites who stumble into contact with the otherworldly and then have to cope somehow with the irrational, non-intellectual horrors they have unwittingly, often stupidly, unleashed.
In his wonderfully crafted and harmonious tales, James frequently makes use of man-modified landscapes to append meaning to his stories, to layer, enrich, and deepen their import, in short, to give them "larger reverberations" and render them more than mere pulp thrillers (Sullivan 8). For instance, in "The Ash-tree," easily one of the author's most gruesome and macabre efforts, the powerful English squire class has cleared the primeval forests of East Anglia and turned the virgin wilderness into vast estates and private hunting preserves, with open rolling pastures and rich grazing lands. The towering old-growth forests of ash and oak and elm that once dominated the region have been eliminated, while the land has been partitioned into precisely measured parcels: acres and hectares to be bought and sold as commodities. Thus, in surface appearance at least, the ancient land-once so dark and shadowy, so mystical and inviolate-appears conquered and docile, bludgeoned into submission by the mighty English broadaxe and the muscular backs of the yeomanry until there is nothing left but an insignificant "fringe of woods" surrounding the clear-cut landscape (James, "The Ash-tree" 40). That placidity is all illusory, however, for beneath the surface of this sunny and ordered land lurk what Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Cerf Wagner describe as "the old fears," the displaced pagan beliefs-Celtic and Druid and Wiccan-which once dominated the dark green forests of ancient Britain (Introduction xiv). And, in...