Here is a link to the story, which you might want to read instead of the first 900 words of this and here is a link to a word about our Hauntography project.
Firstly, mostly to get them out of the way, two boring anecdotes.
Semi-irrelevant anecdote #1:
Once when I was working in Waterstones in Oxford, I sold lovely David Mitchell a book of M R James’ ghost stories. The end.
Semi-irrelevant anecdote #2:
I went to a supposedly haunted school. more »
To read the story, click here; to read about our ‘hauntography’ project, click here.
There are female visitations aplenty, of course, and female servants and relatives and bystanders, and a wife or two, and of course the witch in The Ash Tree: but Mrs Anstruther is very close to the only time in 30-odd in M. R. James stories that a woman is protagonist-victim; and when it’s not what he considers manstuff that gets the demon’s motor running. The other — that I’m aware of — is a rarely anthologised fragment called The Experiment: and we never actually meet the woman character in that.
But we very much do meet Mrs Anstruther — she’s the one strong character, and everyone else (such as her husband) we only really recognise in terms of their relationship with her. At its simplest, the story is this: Mrs A wants to convert a neglected corner of her small estate into a rose garden; orders the gardener to remove the decayed garden seat and uproot an old post attached to it; something is disturbed, which brings unpleasantness… more »
Anyone reading these stories in canonical order should by now have a good idea of how they tend to play out. An aged antiquary finds or hears of the existence of a peculiar ancient artefact and in the course of further investigation, prompted either by avarice or simple scholarly curiousity, unwittingly awakens some eldritch horror who torments him, often to the death, either as punishment for his greed or out of mere supernatural malice.
On first approach The Tractate Middoth seems like it’s going to follow this pattern nicely. The title obviously refers to the artefact which will cause all the trouble, and it’s nicely esoteric and sinister sounding. And on the very first line our antiquary is introduced, a Mr John Eldred, elderly and male of course and sporting a fine set of piccadilly weepers (a wonderful term whose meaning is surely apparent even if you’ve never come across it before) and indeed seeking after the titular Tractate. But he is unable to procure it for someone else has got there first, someone perhaps of sinister aspect. Has Mr Eldred already unwittingly set malevolent forces in motion? Is there a ghoul in waiting for him? more »
ledge in FT /The Brown Wedge • 5 Comments
