Inside Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book

is the subject of that adaptation. While James is best remembered today as a short form horror author, in his time he was a well respected medievalist scholar responsible for cataloging all kinds of esoteric artifacts, and this connection is apparent in his fiction, which winds detailed descriptions of locations, buildings, art, and ephemera in details of the other worldly. While some are imagined, others are very real. The effect is undeniable, the level of detail in his writing in parts, and

almost documentary quality to the work. The question then becomes, how does one sort out the fact from the fiction. It's actually been quite difficult for a long time for people to separate these things. But it's almost close to meta fiction in the sense that the real and the fictional are so closely entwined in some of the stories that you can't really pick them apart. Author Helen Grant, herself a writer of ghost stories, has turned a lifelong

fascination of the author's work into an interesting project. Whenever she is able, Helen travels to the real places cited in James's stories to see for herself and share with others what elements in his fiction a drawn from the life. In two thousand four, Helen took a trip to a historic French town near the Pyrenees called St. Bertrand de Commange,

the real life setting of Kennan Albert's scrap book. She joined me from her home in Perthshire to talk about that trip, the work of m R James, where this fascination began, and much more. Do you do about of

interviews about m R James UM? I haven't done many interviews about him, and not recently anyway, but I've I've been at a couple of conferences and spoken about him UM, at one of which somebody came up to me and told me, in the manner of somebody delivering a great compliment, that they didn't know that people who were non academics could write that well, so thank you. I think I'm essentially a writer, a novelist, but I also write short

stories as well short ghost stories. But I guess the reason why you're in trusted in me today is because I'm a passionate fan of the English ghost story writer M R. James. I've been a fan of his since I was a kid, when my dad used to retell the stories to us on long car journeys to kind of keep us amused. So they've always been with me.

And some years ago, kind of a propos of this interest, I found myself living quite close to Steinfeld Abbey in Germany and realized that that was the real life setting of one of m. R James's stories, The Treasure of Abbott Thomas. So I went to visit it and wrote an article for the small press magazine Ghosts and Scholars about whether it was like the story is. And after that I kind of got the bit between my teeth

and started to visit his other site. So I visited St. Bertrand de Commage, the Borg and also Marcelia Lahia as well as Steinfeld. Will you tell me which stories those those are pertained to? Right? So obviously Commage relates to cannon All Brick Scrapbook, which we're talking about today. V Ball relates to a story called Number thirteen, um Steinfeld Abbey, The Treasure of Abbott Thomas, and Marsili Lahia stories I have tried to write, which is kind of a fragmentary

sort of thing that he wrote. That's got bits of things he started on and didn't quite finish. I don't I know the other ones. I don't know that one. Well, it's not one of his better known ones. Stories I have tried to read to write. Yes, wow, I'm gonna have to check that sounds so cool. Yeah, do check it out because I think, you know, there's an opportunity there for somebody to finish some of those or to

actually write something. There were things that he kind of started on and had a good idea and didn't really go anywhere in the end. Oh, it's so interesting. And you said your dad would retell them to you in the cars that we taught me. Yes, yes, I mean my father, who's now in his eighties, has some of those stories almost off the batim. I would say, um, and he would, and he would tell them to it. So in a particular favorite was Wailing Well, which I

don't know if you've read that one. Yeah, it was written by Mr James to amuse Um a party of boy Scouts, and it's set in the same sort of camping area that they were camping in, and it's about how there's a well there which is haunted by some sort of quite unpleasant vampiric type of ghosts, and the boys are told, you know, you may camp here, but obviously you mustn't get water from this well. So of course, what does one of them do but go to get

water from the well and Pandora's box. Yeah, exactly. But there's there's a lot of humor in this story which I didn't at all understand when I was a child, So I found this very very curious because there's some bits it's talking about the scout trip and about, for example, they had a life saving competition where they used to tie up one of the smaller boys and throw him into the cuckoo weir and the other boys had to

rescue him. And this particular naughty boy, the one that goes and gets water later on, used to always pretend that he had cramp or something and while he was rolling around on the ground, people will be drowning. And it says in the story that you know it was becoming troublesome for the school because the parents were no longer satisfied with the form letter that they used to send out saying unfortunately your child is dead. And when I was a child, I didn't understand this at all.

I thought, you know, how can they be so cavalier? Now it made sense, but but then it really didn't. How much do you know about m R James's back story? Goodness me, what a question. More than most people do, but a lot less than the experts, I guess, is the answer to that. That's okay, so I know a little bit. I know that he was medievalist scalt right, Yes he was, Yes, King's College, Cambridge or something like Yes,

and and also Eaton College as well. Yeah, and I think I mean in his time he was probably better known as a medievalist than than he was as a short story writer. But now everybody remembers his his short stories. It was kind of a Christmas thing as well, that there was always a ghost story, and that he would read them aloud, so everybody would come around whose rooms or whatever and in the college and listen to them. Um,

that's a very Victorian tradition that the ghost story at Christmas. Absolutely. I mean I think I have heard it said that a ghost story at Christmas is more traditional than a ghost story at Halloween. In fact, I mean that was the time of year that that people associated with ghost stories.

Do Christmas ghost stories in your life, yes, But then I mean I do ghost stories all year round, So you know, I always feel slightly miffed when it gets to Halloween and everybody's all about you know, the vampires and more says and stuff, and I felt, well, you know,

I was into it before it was Cools life. The thing that really gets me about m R James style is that there's so much specificity about the places that he's talking about about the documents that he's describing, uh, and and and the and the figures in in documents, you know, like architectural drawings or like the mesa tant for instance, he's describing you know, this very specific measure tant in this specific catalogue from this you know, this

specific vendor that has like this kind of work and um, and his characters are always so such brilliant. Um, you know, scholars of all this stuff, and they just rattled through all this verbiage that you know, if if you're not you know, at Cambridge studying that kind of stuff, or you know from that are you might have no idea

or not a Catholic. I'm not a Catholic, and so I kind of get it from the context clues, but a lot of it flies by just I don't have the same depth of understandings as he does rating it, but it has this profound effect of I don't know, making it almost feel like a like a documentary. There's there's so much like reality intertwined with with the fiction that it's like what parts did he make up? It is?

I think it's it's actually been quite difficult for a long time for people to separate these things because in his stories there are some real life locations that are very accurately described, and there are some real life locations

that have you know, terrific errors in them. I mean, for example, and the Treasure of Abbott Thomas, he never actually went to Stanfeld Abbey, although I have been myself, um and so he for example, had got the stained glass windows as being in the abbey church, but they weren't. They were in the cloisters. So the ones that he saw later on, when they've been put into um Ashridge House. They didn't actually come from the church, they came from

the cloister, so so that was an error. Some other things. I mean that the church at command is pretty accurately described. The crocodile I don't think has ever hung over the font. It's actually on the wall. We have to go there. We have jump right to the crocodile. So when did you go to Commande Um? I went in that, I think. Let me see, I've written it down here somewhere. I think it was May two thousand and four. Was it expressly to to check out the scene of Kennan Elbrick

and rigorously vet all of the information in his story. Yes, it was, I've been. I mean I I flew down to Um I think to Montpellier from Germany, where we were living at the time, specifically to look at St. Bernt Un the Commands, and I met my father who was who was down there, I think he was staying in Carcasson or somewhere, and we drove to Commands. We stayed there and night, we did the cathedral, exhaust most

of Lee, and then I flew back again. I went down specifically to look at that's very much like you were the Dennis Dune of the story. You realize, like, that's what you did, the same thing that he did. I'm totally going to get myself in the same sort of trouble one of these days to because I have kind of a track record of doing this, um, sort of just flying off to look at these places or traveling off to see them. But yeah, that was when

I went was in two thousand and four. Did you have kind of a hit list of the things that you knew you needed to to see to try and to try and find from the story? Um? Yeah, I guess. I mean I really had no idea until I got there whether it was going to be exactly the same as the story. Um, so there was a lot of stuff in the church that I wanted to see. But the other question was, there's there's certain other places in the story, the Sacristan's house which Denniston goes to. Would

it be possible to identify that? And I spent quite a long time sort of on that particular quest looking for that. So so yes, I did have sort of a hit list of things that I wanted to see. Did Um I think that James himself did go to command straight. Yes he did. Yes, Yeah, he went in March eighteen two, and so he read a story like for four years later or something like that. Yeah, the story was published three years later in March eighteen But

yes he went there. And as it happens, whilst I was in commandage investigating the place, I bought a book which i've I've got here. It's it's in French. It's a very esoteric book. It's by somebody called Louis de Fiance Dagos, who was a baron of somewhere or other. And it's called v a Miracula de Saint BERTRANDU notice history Villa Eliza Victor Commage, which means the life and Miracles of St. Bertrand with a historical notice on the

town and the bishops bishops have come. And this was written in eighteen fifty four, so that it was somewhat before Mr James. It was closer to his visit than my visit was, if you see what I mean. So I also used that in the sense of kind of understanding what the place had been been like in a more kind of a separate description from Mr James. Is that book sounds like the kind of thing that m R. James would mention in a story. Yes, it probably, hope, yes, um.

And it had some fabulous stuff in it. I mean, there's an awful lot of stuff which now I think would seem seem a bit dull, but there was there was some splendid renditions of of the tombs in the cathedral. There was there was one bit that I'll see if I can find it for you, that there's there's a tomb out in in uh in the quadrangle outside, and there's a Latin inscription in it which he translates as there it lies in its tomb, that rose of the world,

now fouled and withered. It no longer gives out its sweet smell, but that which emits from the dust of the tombst Yes, indeed its splendidly morbid. I think, can you describe for me the cathedral itself? I mean, is maybe just maybe just the town even, I mean, like the way he describes the town is very palpable in the story, like as it everything bears the aspect of decaying age something like that. Yeah, And I think it's it's still did to a certain extent. At the time

when I went to see it. I mean it's a peculiar sort of place because I think though originally I believe it had about a thousand inhabitants, it had I think about two hundred at the time that he visited, and I don't think that's that's much different now. And you have basically this sort of very old town clustered around a little hill and at the very top of the hill, and it's a small hill, you know, it's

not a big, sprawling hill. It's a small kind of round hill and on the very top of it is the cathedral, so you can see it from miles and miles around. And the old part of the town is also mostly very old building, sort of stone built building, some of them dating back to the fifteen hundreds or whatever,

so really old. And so you kind of walk up through winding streets and it's when you get to the top of the hill that there is the cathedral, and I think parts of it are Romanesque, so yeah, I mean pretty old, and then sort of later bits grafted on. So there's a little square in front of it, which is very very sleepy. I mean, I wouldn't say that it was decayed so much when when I visited, it's

just very very quiet. There was a nice little hotel there with kind of some chairs and umbrellas outside, but very sleepy. Um. And then a kind of a square in front of the church. You go up to the church and there's there's a big door with a stone kind of stone archway outside it, and a nice carving that you can see on the way in showing and eyes are being with the money bag being swallowed up by some kind of horrible monster or something, so you know, and a nice reminder as you go into church, I

guess to to behave yourself. And then once you get inside the church, it's quite an extraordinary place because although a lot of churches of that age had their rude screens removed, so that's kind of a piece of internal architecture that originally separated um, kind of the general public and the sort of in inverted commas, more important people

who were taking part in the ceremonies. Um. That that's been removed in a lot of churches now so you don't often see them, but there there still is one, and in fact there's an entire kind of wooden church inside the stone one. So you've got this um, this kind of wooden chancel that was built I think by Bishop gen de molion Um. And if you go inside that, it's kind of completely enclosed area made out of polished woods with a kind of mad number of carvings everywhere,

and there's all sorts of things. There's Adam and Eve, there's there's demons, there's um, there's skulls. There's somebody having his bottom smacked with a bunch of birch twigs. I don't know what that one was about, um, and just all sorts of stuff like that as well. I mean, it's an absolute profusion. You could just look at it

for ages. UM. Outside that there's also a massive great church organ up against one wall, and that I believe at the time that Mr James visited was in a very dilapidated state, but in the nineties seventies it was restored m and they now have an organ festival there every year so you can go and listen to fantastic church music inside there. Did you get to hear it? Um? You know, I don't think anybody was playing it when

we went. I've thought about that, um, as I said, and it was it was seventeen years ago that I visited, so so I have to think a little bit about about some of the things I saw. But one of the things that I noticed when I was in there was the accoup sticks inside, and I think that if there had been music playing, I would remember it because

of that. There's a bit in the story where where Denniston is kind of thinking about the environment he's in and kind of slightly uneasy about it, and he says that from time to time he can hear sort of footsteps and voices and stuff like that. And one of the things I noticed was that when you're in that church, you can't hear anything from outside at all, nothing because they're very, very sick stone walls. But inside, um, there's such great acoustics that, you know, a footfall sounds like

a gunshot. So whatever he was hearing in the story was coming from inside the church. So if he thought he heard kind of rustling and footsteps and stuff, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't from outside. It was something inside with him. He says, something like hushed voices and muffled footfalls and all the strange sounds that plagued an old building exactly, So that would all have been inside with him. He does call the Oregon Dilopida the two there's a yeah,

I think he does. Yeah, it's the wooden Church is like inside of the stone Church. Yes, yeah, I mean I'm not an expert on on on church history, though I'm interested in it, but I think that it would have been kind of the officials of the church who were inside, and the choir as well, because there's choir

stalls and stuff like that. Um. And at the point where other churches were having to take this sort of stuff out because it wasn't considered inclusive, what they did instead was to put in another altar outside that so that, um, you know, so that it wasn't necessary to destroy anything for people to take part in in the whole service. Yeah. So so, so that is why it's remained intact. I'm trying to think if there's any other features that particularly

stuck out. There's the there's a tomb of Hugh de Castillon, which is probably the only really fine tomb inside the church, and that's kind of a gothic thing, kind of white marble, with him sort of lying there in state with a sort of canopy thing over his head and under his feet. There's a dragon. I think it's eating a little dog or something. Which is it? Mean? Um, and that, if anything, might have inspired canon all bricks tomb in the story,

because you know that that doesn't in fact exist. Well, uh, what is that? Two? You can see the figure? Yes, yes, it's one of these ones that has a kind of a figure line on top, so it almost looks like there's a kind of um, sort of a table or a box or something other with carvings all around the side, and then on the top there's a figure lining there with I think with folded hands and kind of a

Gothic canopy over the top and these animals under his feet. Wow. There, No, that's not the you know, I grew up in non denominational American churches. We don't have those sorts of things that really used process. Um. Yeah, that's and and and one of the things you wrote about in your article is that there's this there's this blending of like, um, Christian and Catholic iconography and then uh, like pagan carvings and figures and things mixed in, right, Yeah, and that

that is a very strange thing. And you know, it's still I find that difficult to get my head around. Um. Apparently Bishop jen considered himself a humanist. Um. And and that's genderman who's feature who Actually he's a real person that features in the story. He doesn't feature in the story. The person that features in the story is a fictional member of the family called Ulberick. But they I'm sorry, but they mentioned him as a descendant of Yes, yes, but he doesn't. I mean that that's as far as

he features. But but yes, yeah, he was. He was a real person. But there are various sort of characters in there, including rather weirdly, Julius Caesar. I mean, nobody

really knows why that is. Because humanists sometimes considered that Pagans could be considered, in a way kind of Christian if they had the right sort of point of view where you could interpret sort of what they said as being, you know, a search for Christian truth or whatever, then okay, you know, we're going to count these good people as Christians. But you know, Julius Caesar, that was stretching it a bit,

So nobody really knows why that was. But yeah, there's there's there's a lot of these images inside the church. I think there's actually the labors of Heracles as well, So you know, it's hard to know how those fit in. Okay, what about the crocodile. I know you you're already bright and up. It's hard. It's hard to ms the crack and it just it just is a blip in the story, like he doesn't explain the crocodile at all. Yeah, the crocodile is one of um, I believe nine crocodiles which

are preserved in churches in France. Um. And you know, according to the local legends saying Bertrand is supposed to have seen off a crocodile which lived in a nearby river and which was picking off all the young women of the town when they went down there to are supposed to do the washing whenever else they were doing. Um. And he went down to confront the crocodile, armed only with his crosier and kind of hit it on the snout or whatever, after which it became as quiet as

a lamb. And I think they're supposed to have followed him back to the church and died or something like some such thing. Um. Anyway, this this is the local legend, and there is in fact a fairly modern painting in the church that shows this as well. But in actual fact, it's more probable that the crocodile was originally brought back from the Holy Land as a kind of souvenir, and that's why there was a number of churches in France

that have them because of that. And it's a stuffed crocodile that's hanging, it says, hanging over the fine I think in the but you say it's not there, it's not. No, it's actually kind of attached to the wall. Um, and it wasn't particularly close to the font. But of course I don't know me as because it's possible they could have relocated the font since um since Samul James visited.

But having looked at the book by our friend Baron Louis Um, the crocodile has always been there since in that position, since before m R James visited, So I don't think that it's been moved since then. I think it's always been where it was. We're talking about stuff cracked that I'm like picturing like kind of like that quite as large as life like thing that you would win like a you know, at the midway at a carnival, Like it's kind of cute that's just what's in my head,

like a stuffed crocodile. What is it? Is it bigger? Is it scarier? It is quite big, and I mean it does look like a real crocodile. It's not cute looking, and it's not that small really. Um. I mean I remember last year, rather bizarrely, I was staying in an airbnb in Nuremberg at all places, and they had they had a small one in there, but I mean that was sort of you know, this long, it was about two or three ft long. But the one in command is a really big crocodile um and yeah, and quite

scaly looking. So there is always the question of whether there was a painting like the one which Mr James describes in the story showing um st Bertran liberating a man whom the devil had long sought to strangle, and that that doesn't seem to actually exist. I spent a long time in the church trying to decide whether any of the paintings there could have inspired it. And there was a large one behind where the altar now is, which was very sort of large, dark looking painting, but

that didn't have that particular subject. Did I think have Saint Bertra. But but he isn't sort of rescuing somebody from a demon or anything like that. So I think that's invention. Um it's such an embargative phrase because it's like, what do you picture for that the guy whom the devil long sought to strangle? Yeah, something very Gothic. I

really imagine something, something quite nasty. But also I think the fact that the painting is is very kind of dark and obscure is good because that's the sort of thing which if you saw it clearly, would probably just be ludicrous, but if you see it hinted at, it's quite unpleasant. But I mean, whilst I was looking to see whether there was really was a painting like that, I also looked at the there's a kind of a big reliequery to St. Bertrand which is right behind the altar,

and that has a lot of paintings on it. But I didn't think that was such a good candidate. I mean, it does have some of his miracles on there, though not that particular one, but there's dozens of them, so it wasn't one big pitch. So but I mean I looked at it, so I suppose you your project is kind of finding the line like where the fiction been starts.

What's so amazing about him, though, I suppose, is that it's almost close to meta fiction in the sense that the real and the fictional are so closely entwined in some of the stories that you can't really pick them apart. I mean, I'm going to veer off Cannon Aubrick scrapbook for a second here and returned to the Treasure of

Abbot Thomas. But at the beginning of that story there's this massive, great long quotation in Latin which is supposed to come from particular particular book, the certain Norbertinum I think it is or something other from Steinfeld Abbey's library,

and the library has long been lost. But very very early in the twentieth century, when this story was first translated into German and somebody in Germany read read the story for the first time, they thought that he really had read a book from Steinfeld Abbey with with this in it. It was so convincing and so um. You know that the language was so right and the title was right. I mean St. Norbert, who the book was

named after, is the local saint. So it was so convincing that they wrote to him and amongst other things, asked where he'd seen this book, you know. And the weird thing as well, is that's the story that has all these other sort of errors in the sense that steinfeld Abbey isn't the way that he imagined it. So there's all these sort of things kind of mixed in together, and sometimes it's really really difficult to tease apart which things,

which things are true, which things are imagined. Yeah, I think that that that's the wonderful thing about them really is, is they are so very convincing, even the bits which

which are touchingly true. I can imagine this scenario where MRJ is like the end of the day, he's done his whatever, his college work, and he's sitting there at his desk and he's smoking his half a pipe and whatever, and his musing about, you know, what fiction projects, you know, what he wants to dream up, And so many of them seemed like the starting places, like what about my there's this really cool like document or a picture or a book or like piece of a famway that like

I wish I could see, And I don't think I'll ever get too, because I don't think it exists anymore, but like what if it did? Yeah, I agree, and I mean, I think the other thing I like about them is that there's often a very good internal logic and into the stories. And that's partly because he does use things like that. He uses things that, though um, they may be prosaic, they're things like paintings and documents and archives and stuff. You know, they're real bits of evidence.

Whereas if you have a story which is much more about people's feelings, you know, like I went into a creepy place and you know I felt uneasy, but I couldn't really say why. Um, that can also be unsettling, but it's unsettling a different sort of way. And I personally, as a reader, I find his use of internal logic is very satisfying. I believe his stories. They can sometimes be quiet, but but I do believe, and they convinced me quite as good, quite as good, quite as spooky.

It is quite gives people anxiety in films and in audio, you don't you don't say anything for long enough, people started to freak out. I think I think it's interesting. Out of all his stories, the one that gives me the whim whams most is one which I don't know if you've read this one is called a neighbor's Landmark many. I was really proud of myself that I knew like three or four that you listed off the top and

now you're it's fine. But the funny thing about that particular story is that it's full of people sort of saying and then this person told me this, and then they'll say, well again, and that person went off and found this out from this other person, And it's like

a sort of some kind of Russian doll. You know, you're always going through the different layers, and I think that the whole story is actually being related to somebody by somebody else, And then they're relating that that they had stayed with somebody and their host had told them something and then gone off to check with somebody else, and that person who they'd gone to check with the

related something that had happened to his mother. So you know, it's getting further and further and further away from actually being confronted by the ghost. And yet somehow, when the ghost appears, it's right in front of you. I don't know how where about James does that, but it's magical. You think how can that be all this here saying it's still that frightening. I've often wondered about that that that does seem to be you know that that seems

like an extreme example of it. But this, this this Victorian ghost kind of conceder, you know, structural idea of like a lot of times there's a first person narrator that's telling you a story that was told to them, and within that story, there's like a story that's a piece of the story that's told to the person that's telling the story that told to the narrator, and that can go and what you're saying sounds amazing that he just like recognize that just like to get I've often

wondered why that has been implemented so much, especially in like British Victorian ghost stories, and like why it's so effective or if it is so effective, I wonder whether it doesn't share something a bit with the urban legend, because you know, the urban legends that we still tell now are always like that, they always happened to somebody else who's who's closely associated with us, but not quite close enough that you can actually finger the person that

it was. So it's always you know, I had a friend who said her boyfriend's cousin had this happened? You know, it's never actually somebody said, well it was me, you know I was there this happened, you know, as there maybe sort of an element of that. I mean, another one that I can think of is personal Langdon story Firmly Abbey, which if you haven't read that, you can you can read it online. But that is really incredibly frightening.

And that is that is related by somebody who's saying I think he asks if he can share somebody's cabin when they're the sea voyage, and the other blokespit like, well you know, I haven't got your own, um, and he says, well, you know, I can't sleep on my

own anymore, and this is why. And then he explains and um, yeah, so I think it can work really well, it's it's it's it generates all this that sort of layered storytelling generates all these nice moments in Canada albrick because um, all of the characters really are fiercely pragmatic, like, um, you know, like it'll you drop you drop out of Denniston story for a second. You're talking to m M. R James is kind of talking. It's like I showed this picture like to a friend of mine once and

like they're like super sane, Like they're super unimaginative. But like he couldn't even he wouldn't let be alone. He wouldn't, you know. So um And and also the way that you can sort of detach from the beat by beat the timeline of the plot for a second and be like we're gonna have to describe this part of the photo.

And man, it's also he's got like the longest descriptions of paintings, uh, you know, just the longest descriptions of single documents, the mesitants and other great example of it that I feel like few authors could really pull off. But like he obviously like has the cred the ability to do it and also make it like really compelling as it's happening, yeah in Canada. But those are the

parts that I reread over and over. It's like because there's so much in them, and the first time you read you don't even realize like how much how many clues and mysteries there are in every little piece of description. I think this is the thing, And often it's the

little tiny bits that kind of stick with you. I mean, I think with For example, another of his stories, Casting the Rooms, there's a bit where the evil Mr Carswell is showing a magic lantern show to some children with the aim of really ultimately and frightening them off trespassing on his country estate. And he shows them all these horrible pictures and and they're getting nasty as they go along.

And then there's one which the children clearly recognize as a small boy walking through Mr Carswell's estate, and he's pursued and it says and somehow made away with by a horrible hopping creature in white. And this thing is never more clearly seen than that. But I think, and why is it so unpleasant? And I can't even quite put my finger on it. The fact that it's hopping, I mean, that ought to be ludicrous, but it isn't.

There's something so unnatural about that, you know, because if if it were really kind of I don't know, a monster or something, wouldn't it be running on all fours or something like that. But it's not. There's this horrible sort of lopsided, sort of flopping kind of image of it which is really unpleasant. I mean, you have this like you have a stack of books behind you, and there's like one the one decoration. You don't have a

stuff cracking up. You have as like a ceramic bunny, I think, And so I was thinking, big horrible scary easter bunny. Yeah, that we're very hopping. It's the uncanny, right, you know. It's it's like just you just can't quite put your finger on it. It's also it's very very understated.

I mean, when the ghost finally appears in a neighbor's landmark, it said that is describing how how this this old guy's mother always used to have to come back through the woods in the evening with the milk that she got from a nearby farm, and that she would never send any of the children in case they got a fright, because she knew perfectly well what it was in the woods. And and the narrator said, well, you know, did she

never see anything? And and the other one says, well, she said, only but the once when she came back through the wood on the darkest evening it had ever been, and she and when she heard the rustling in the bushes, she felt compelled to look behind her, and she saw something coming on very all in tatters, coming on very I think was it with the two arms held out in front of it, coming on very fast? And with that she ran for the style and told her Flynn

her gown to Flint isn't getting over it. We're slightly misquoted that, I think, But um, but the idea of just this thing coming on very fast. It's not running, it's almost kind of gliding, and with the two arms held out in front of it, I think it's reaching for her, But it doesn't say that. If it said, you know, it was it was running at her at high speed with its arms out, that wouldn't be scary. But the idea that it's coming on very fast, that

really gives me the creeps. The language is expert, Yeah, it's really good. I love it when there's really long Latin passages. That sounded super I should cut that cup. That's not a break super stup. But it just I don't know Latin, but I just especially hearing it Red hearing his audiobooks and things. I just love it when there's all this long Latin and then it's like, this is what the Latin said, and then you just be lying to me every time. But I just I completely

drink the kool and I just buy it. I'm hearing some ancient things that I'm not supposed to know about. I've got this like esoteric information. It's it's super cool. It's like you're in on this joke or you're like in on this like elite club of like oh, those are the things that people talk about in like the back rooms. It's like bridge. You know. It's funny though, because I mean, I'm one of the few probably for dinosaurs, that did actually do Greek and Latin at University that

Oxford many years ago. Um, so yeah, I can vouch for the fact that that that the Latin is what he says it is. I mean, I I like it when he uses these documents because it adds authenticity to the story for me. And um, I mean, if I can draw a comparison, another person that does this is is Henry Rider Haggard. His his novel She, which was made into a Hollywood film very successfully. Um, that begins with a whole load of documents like this, which is

supposedly sort of documenting events over time. And I think there's one of them in Greek and one of them in Latin and something else in I don't know, world, Old English or Anglo Saxon or something. And you know, I think this is a huge thing for anybody to wade through, and modern audiences probably wouldn't stand for it, but I personally like it because I think that it says to me that I'm on this journey too. If I can only decide for these things, and I'll understand

the secret, and I love that. I think it's great to me. I mean haunting, hauntings and extended into possessions and other kinds of sort of supernatural phenomenon. I think I think of them as very specific to place, specific to objects like this was the house that you know, I lived in five years ago and I died here, and this place is imbued with with with you know, a sense of me whatever, a trace of of of me,

even though I'm gone. I mean literally, that's true, and then you take it into whatever you're in the direction you want. But that's like specific to this place, or it's specific to that church, or it's specific to that you know, that photograph or that painting or that um

And that's really where it gets me. And that's what, you know why I think the level of specificity and the sort of dexteriority with which he describes objects in places, and the texture and the powerability of them can be you know, it can feed so much into that horror. So I totally agree. And I mean, having having having visited some of his story locations, I think that's very true. I mean they're all very very evocative places. I mean,

even v Borg. And when I went to v bl to to see the supposed um site of the story number thirteen, I think it was a big shop there now, and they were very surprised when I went in. There was some very nice young MANU. I don't really speak any Danish at all, so I had to sort of start off by saying, I'm terribly sorry, I don't speak Danish. Said that no, no, no, I said it in English, really really pitiful, and I had to just apologize and said like, I'm really sorry, but I can I ask

you about this. And they were super friendly and super nice. But I mean, it was a fashion shop now, But in spite of that, the town itself was well chosen. You could tell that that, you know, notwithstanding how it is now, you could still feel the ancientness of it and the history um, you know it was a super place. Did come on just give you the creeps at all? It's that really super creepy in this story. I wouldn't say the town itself. It's I think like sleepy is

the word. I think. I don't know that he uses the word sleep but I think I got that from your article. But I feel like that's the feeling I get from the James story. I didn't find it super creepy. It was very atmospheric. Because we walked around it after dark and because it was so quiet there was there was there was bats flitting through the streets and this sort of thing. You could you could see them overhead and you could because the night air was very clear,

you could hear cow belts from a long distance. And yeah, you know, it's very very atmospheric. And I remember looking out of the hotel window, I think we stayed at Lopidom, which is one of the two hotels there, and looking out of the back window and you could see kind of the moon above the cathedral and it was very very atmospheric. But I can't say that I felt afraid in any way. I mean, I didn't go into the church and think, well, this strikes me is essentially a

nasty place. I mean, I've been into churches which have given me the creeps big time. When we were in France some years not France, Spain some years ago, we went into one I think it was a cathedral at Gerona, and that um, you know, I couldn't get out of

there fast enough really that that was really creepy. I mean they had things like a giant glass coffin with a wax effigy of a dead person inside, and they had this enormous I think it was an altar piece or something or other that went right up into sort of the darkness of the ceiling with all these sort of tumbled figures carved out of dark wood, and everything was just really creepy and gothic. And I didn't feel comfortable in there. But I didn't feel like that in

in St. Bert under Commanity. It's actually, you know, the church there is quite nice. I feel like there's definitely like a listener base that will be like, Yo, where's that church in Spain? I really want to go. Who is sat bertrand what is he? What is his steal um? Yeah? I mean I think he's he was a local guy. I think his main sort of local miracle was the crocodile one. He was bertrandle Jordan, who became St. Bertrand. And I think that the church dates to his lifetime,

the first part of the church, so it's the twelfth century. Um. But I don't know what his other miracles were, to be honest, I probably ought to know. In the church, there's a whole series of kind of pictures on the altar which show on his relique cory rather behind the altar, which which showed the various kind of events of his life and stuff like that. Um so so yes, in

that sense, he's very very present. Like locally he's kind of the guy in command, but like at this sort of Catholic church at large, he's not really like a figure that people talk about. Um No, I guess not. I mean, I guess there's there's a lot kind of bigger saints, but I mean locally he's very very big.

I mean, there's still quite a lot of people called either Bertrand or if they're female, Bertond there even now, right, you met a Bertrand somewhere I think while you were there, right, yeah, now, this this is this is altogether a bit strange, and this is one of these things which is entirely based on hearsay, but it is the best information that I had.

So whilst I was whilst I was touring the cathedral, I spoke to the then cathedral guides, whose name were Jacques Marrere and Gerard Cluz and they had both retired by two thousand and nine. I have a feeling that one or both of them may have died by now, and I tried to check that up before before this podcast, but I wasn't able to find any information about about

that at all. Um Anyway, I chatted with them entirely in French because neither of them spoke English or any rate wasn't going to admit to being after speak English,

so there's sometimes a difference. Anyway, I chatted with them and I told them why I was there, and somewhat to my surprise, they had actually heard of m R James and they didn't know about the story because you know, sometimes you go to locations and people don't know about him because he's a very English writer, so you know, they may not have anywhere they had heard of him.

And I said to them that amongst other things. I was trying to find out where this this house was that the sacristan is supposed to be living in in the story. And they identified it as the former episcopal palace that was occupied by a family called Rixen's, which

is a very very local name there. And they said that a painter called Bertrand Rixons so again that that name Bertrand had painted, had painted this picture that's inside the church that shows St. Bertrand and the crocodile um, and that he had met him L. James when he was there and had almost certainly taken him back to his to give him I don't know whatever the equivalent of a cup of teas you know, glass of kognac or something. Um. And so that was probably the place

in the story. Um. But this this is really not verifiable at all. I mean I've tried. I mean since then things have moved on a bit. I mean, this was what sort of thirteen years ago or whatever, So no, seventeen years ago actually two thousand and four um. And so I've tried googling it and tried to find out more about it, but I just haven't been able to. There was another painter of the surname Rixon's, who was far more celebrated, who was also involved in the church

in the area. But I don't think that was him. Um. He doesn't have the same first name. I think his name was Jean Um and his work, which I've also seen, was far more sophisticated. So I'm pretty sure he didn't do the thing in the church. UM. But this other guy there's there seems to be no trace of him, and the only work that he did was local commissions. So I only had the guide's words for it that this is even true. Um. But on the other hand,

there is no better information. I mean that was seventeen years ago. Um. The guys have both retired now. UM. I read a report in UM in one of the French newspapers about this when when the second one retired, and um it said rather snarkily that that the place was now being manned by una kit to feminize a team that's now been completely feminized because there was there's three women now running the tourist, the tour guide's office

or whatever. So yes, shock horror, women doing the drab um anyway, so have hunted or a pressed manner, not at all. I've seen pictures of them. There's three of them, um, and the two younger ones looked quite cheerful, and there was one sort of slightly more disgruntled looking older lady. But no, none of them looked looked at all haunted. But but you know they're a lot younger. So um yeah, so so, so that link with these earlier guides, I

guess is gone. I mean, they knew so much that wasn't in any of guide books, and I don't know. I mean that struck me as very much kind of what some of the trips I've done have almost been about is getting the best truth that you can. I mean, if it is never possible to get any more information and that and then that is my my best sort of guess on on where the Sacristan's house was, But it is based on here say, there's no way to

to verify it at all. I did, in fact, knowing that I was going to be on this podcast, I did try emailing the cathedral and asking them if the painting is still there and whether they could confirm the name of the person that painted it, because I thought maybe there's a signature on it, you know, that would help a little bit but I haven't had a reply, so so if I can put it all together, I'm like totally willing to just buy it. I know you have to do, you have to have other evidence, and

God bless you for it. Um m R. James himself goes to Commands in like eight or eight and he's in there and he's looking around and he's maybe dreaming about this story, maybe he don't thought of it yet, and he sees this painting that's really new then, right, this of this of Saint Bridgeman and the crocodile. Maybe he doesn't even see the painting, maybe just gets chatting to the painter. I mean, I'm not sure when the painting dates too. It's a he's a contemporary of James, right,

and he's a contemporary, so he's there. I mean, maybe he's hanging around the square in front of the hotel to command looking for some tourist to pestor who knows. They're both in there and they're just soaking an inspiration because they both did work, you know, from this place. Anyways, they get hanging out, he says, come back, and James like, you got some teas, like I've got knyak. They go back to this, you know, a house that's maybe around

the corner. You you you went to the house where you think, Yes, yeah, I did and photograph the outside of it, but I couldn't go in. I asked about it. And after Bertrand Rickson's died, allegedly the house passed past to a nephew of his and who since died because this was a long time ago, but his wife was still living in the house and they said, no, you can't bother her because she's very, very old. So that

was a yeah, she's just really old. And then what were your your criteria or I mean the criteria friend James, of like, what this Sacriston's house needs to look like? Well, it needs to be a stone built house, though you know most of the ones in the older part of St. Bertrand Dab. But it also needed to be within walking distance of the other places in the story. I mean, clearly, it couldn't be right outside the town walls or anything, because if it was, it would be too far. Right.

He literally walks out the door when the daughter has given him the cross and everything, and please let us walk you home to the hotel, and he's like, I can see it's yeah, he waves them from the steps. Yeah, and they just stand outside on their doorstep just watching him. So clearly it's it's close by. But the other thing is that I think there was supposed to be a coat of arms over the door, so that kind of

narrowed it down a bit. And this episcopal palace did have one, but there was one or two other buildings in the town that did as well, so I had to kind of eliminate them or think why it would be this particular one. So yeah, but that's as far as it goes. Okay, no, but I'm going to suppose it like I'm just gonna suppose all the way through it. So m R James meets Bertrand however in the town or in the church, they have a hanging out there kicking it, and they go back to bertrand Rixon's house.

The stone bill larger and that's it's a little larger than the other buildings. Rights that is that one of the qualifications. Yeah, it's fairly large. And he's in there having this conversation with this guy, and that's where that's where the the dream of this of this of this sacristana, his his daughter's house is going on? This is this is the location that he uses and imagines those characters into. You don't have to say that's true. You're not willing to go all the way out, And then it sure

seems like pretty compelling. It's It's difficult, isn't it, Because I think, on the one hand, when I was writing the article, I have to stick to stuff that has evidence in it. But then there's how I feel about it myself, and in my own eyes, I think this is the candidate. You know, nowhere else was convincing me as being the sacristan's house. And I do think that

it must have been based on a real place. I mean, with so many sort of likely places around the town, what would be that the or the need of Mr James to invent a place. I feel that it was a real one most of the time. If he visited somewhere, I think that he did, you know, base it on at least base it on something real. So yeah, it does seem to be his track record based on everything we've talked about. The hotel that he stays and is

that an accident building? Um the Chapeau Rouge in story um so far as I could discover is a fiction. But that's only in the sense that he called it that. I mean, if he'd stayed, for example, at the Oppidum where we stayed and just called it the Chapeau Rouge. I mean, if I were writing something, that's probably what I would do, because you never know whether somebody's going to get annoyed if you write. You know, if your self written this horrific story and it's all written around

your hotel. He doesn't really describe the hotel except for the the what does he call an innkeeper, Bruce? Yeah, Yeah, because it's it's obviously a female proprietor, because we never actually see see the male and there's various points at which I've sort of wondered the thing that appears to Denniston, there's a question mark could that be a female creature?

Because when he hears something laughing, um, he says that he wishes that the landlad you would have a more cheerful laugh, which sort of suggests that it's quite a feminine sounding laugh, even if it's kind of grim. So, yeah, there's a lot of question marks that I never thought about that connection, because when he so later in this story, when he's at home and he's like looking over the scrap book, and he's knocking his pipe, refilling his pipe and just hanging out, and he's like, God, I wish

that landlady would laugh in a more cheery way. And then earlier, when he's in the church, he he has the impression that he hears laughing high up in the rafters or wherever somewhere. I feel like I always interpreted that as female laughter, but I can't remember if he actually said at that point in the story, this sacristan says something like he he is laughing in the church or whatever, But I still felt that it was it was a little bit doubtful what the gender of the

creature is. I mean, I wrote another article about about this particular story it went in which I went into this in great, great length trying to identify who or what the demon is. But I mean, there's another point in the story at which, um, I think Denniston says that the old man seems very nervous, to the extent that he thinks that it seems something worse than than a termagant wife, and that again as this sort of kind of feminine sort of attributes being applied to to

whatever it is that he's frightened off. And that sort of said to me, is this, you know, is this a female creature? We don't really know. I mean later on when when the sacristan talks about the creature, he says, you know, he was laughing in the church, and he says, I think was it deur foige las vous millfige lais santi. So I've seen him twice, but I've felt him a

thousand times. But all the French words for demon are all masculine, so it may well be that he only describes it as masculine there because of that, so question mark. M R. James's ghost stories generally, which which I absolutely love, are often quite soaked in a very masculine environment. And you know, I'm just not going to, I don't know, sort of argue with that at t I'm going to

enjoy them for what they are. Yeah, you know, I'm certainly not as well read on M. R. James as you, but I have read and listened to a lot of his stories. I can't think of a tremendous amount of female characters. No, I mean there's some. I mean, I think in the Residents in in Whitminster, there's as I think, there's Mary Um and obviously there's sort of people in kind of walk on parts, I suppose, But but yeah, a lot of them are told from the point of

view of men. But like, for instance, I like Algernon Blackwood a lot. He has some short and he's very different style of horror. But I find that he really doesn't write female character as well. When he does, they're often really kind of despicable or dumb, or or or even just sort of nonconsequent, you know, inconsequential, And I don't get that impression from Memory James. But I suppose they are kind of like a lot of like male studios, they're kind of like him. Yeah, I think that's true.

I mean I think, um, I don't think any of the characters that he has, generally speaking, are offensively described. I mean, inasmuch as he was writing in the period that he was writing in, So you know, I suppose if you were going to get into arguing about the fact that you know that the women have the mole gender stereotypical roles or something, but I mean, you know, considering when it is, I don't think that he writes

he writes offensively about any of them. But I think there's a certain there is a certain kind of distance or sort of handling with kid gloves that comes from somebody that maybe wasn't very confident around them. West drapped a bomb and stuff. It wasn't wasn't very comfortable around No, no confident, not not comfortable. I think maybe ne very

confident around around women. Why do you think that? Well, I mean there's huge, huge chooge debates about his orientation, which, yeah, which I wouldn't really sort of enter in on because I'm not an expert enough on kind of the mynu show of his life. It's just my impression really from the way that he writes about the women in the stories that you know they're not they're not centered in it.

It feels like very much a man's world. It's so interesting, you're just gonna just like say that, just move on. I was thinking, because I understand I take your point that, yeah, that that you don't want to wait all the winter as well, you know, maybe being an American and just

not being in this scene. I like have only the faintest idea about how much conversation there is going on about m R. James, Like, I just sort of realized that the well that he's been adapted about a million times up for like the BBC TV radio all kinds of things that a ghost story for Christmas, the like annual BBC special those are like almost always M. R. James stories. It seems like, no, no, that's true. I mean he's he's incredibly popular here and incredibly well known here. Yeah.

Have you ever heard a recording of him speaking? I tried to find one, and I haven't had any luck. Um, I don't think I have no, No, I'm not sure that there is one, and probably now you know, what will happen is fifteen million people writing and tell us that there is in fact one somewhere. But I've never heard one. I hope fifteen million people, because fifteen million right in, I wonder how many are listening. Um, yeah, please if you do. You know, I feel like he

was old enough he lived. I don't know what when he died, but it was in the nineteen thirties. It was the thirties of lead. Yeah, so even if he was on something like radio, there's a probably big chance that it wasn't saved or record it anyway. But it never has No one ever walked up to him with a wax cylinder recordings. I guess not. I guess not. Yeah, they should have. They really should have. Who Yeah, who knows? Maybe in a family archive or something. That's something I

would love to hear. Um this question has I have no way to sort of segue into this, I'm just gonna ask it he makes that he takes this moment in this story to be like the vergier or Sacristan. I'd prefer the later appellation, inaccurate as it. Maybe do you have a sense of what the those words are? Both were foreign to May before this story. Um M,

now you've put me on the spot. Is that I can't tell you what the exact the exact subtle distinction between the mets, but I mean to me, um, a verge just sounds a bit more sort of prosaic, whereas the sacristan sounds a bit more it sounds a bit more archaic and a little bit more mysterious. But I mean, I'm sure that they probably are slightly different definitions for them.

If you look them up in in a church dictionary or something, it's probably Yeah, it's probably super complicated to look at it, sound like a Merriam Webster, like the virguer does it to the left and the sacriston doesn't the right. If I type in verge or versus sagriston, do I get an article about it? We'll do a whole side pope. Now that's sure. There we go. We'll see if this makes sense as now is the difference

between sacristan and verger is that sagriston is a sexton. Well, verger is one who carries the verge or emblem of office, right, okay, But the sexton I thought was usually somebody who's a grave digger. Yeah, okay. The sexton is the officer of a church congregational synagogue, charge with the maintenance of its buildings and all the surrounding graveyard. Okay, so I think sometimes they might be involved in digging grapes as well. If it's a smaller church that is kind of more mysterious.

I think I think you hit the nail on the head. We need to talk about the scrap book a little bit. We haven't even talked about the scrap book. And it's

the name of the story. Um hey, it's like it's just a pitch for a story like it's not the sexiest pitch, like, oh, it's wanted scrap book, but the scrap book is incredible, and it really it's that thing that I kind of was describing earlier that I I personally feel like it's this starting place for m R James, so many m R James story where it's like all these incredible rare thought to be lost, you know, like your wishless, your dream, the thing you lie in that

he would lie in bed maybe and dream about these documents and of incredible origin, all bound together, he says. He even says that like Kennean Alburry probably like just sort of plundered it off from the church library at some point, because there's no library in tow anymore. He just like, you know, at some point went installed all the best bits and hoarded them all in a scrap book. They realized that wasn't a question. I just said, I

just was telling you about this. No, no, no, no, I mean it's it's it's an interesting and quite attractive

thought really. Because one of the things that that happened in Commanderes during the French Revolution, there was a bomb fire made of all of the episcopal papers so that's one of the reasons why sort of some elements of church history there are not that well known um And so the idea that somebody might have removed all the best bits and put them in a volume that had been hidden away somewhere is you know, it is a really marvelous idea, and I think there's probably a bit

of wish fulfillment in that, you know, the idea that something would have survived. When we've slipping in the story of flipping through the book and he's describing all of these documents. You are ten illuminated manuscripts from Genesis, and do all of those things ring about? Do you kind of have meaning? You know what all those things mean

that he's saying, yes, I do. But the thing that really drives me nuts is the bit where he where they take the book out or sort of it's it's wrapped up, and he's looking at it and he and he's thinking, you know, what can it possibly be? You know, can it be this? Can it be that? It's probably nothing, it's probably some you know, some stupid missile of plant in printing or whatever. And I think, yeah, igine, if

I could go to commands and find something like that. Now, you know, because this is the thing, you know, a hundred and twenty years later or whatever that you know, there's there's so much less to discover. Everything has already been taken. So so yeah, that's so it's a really terrible moment. What does that mean the missile has planted? What does that part mean? Um? Well, you've got sort

of different types of kind of church books. You've got books of prayer, You've got um, you've got some that have kind of the bits that you would sing and kind of the bits that you would sing back to oh thank you, um, that you would sing back to people during services and stuff like that. So I think you know, lots of different types of books. Sorry, somebody just brought me a cup of tea, which it's lovely.

I wish that I had an assistant or whoever that bringing a loved one that was just bringing me beverages. But yes, it's very good. Actually I don't always get this service. But the the first one I I can't even say it about to you. The first the thing that you just said, the plant is what is it of Plantain's printing? Planting is the printer? And I think that he was talking about a book that would have been printed in the Middle Ages, and that's just that's

just super common. Yeah, yeah, you know these are lying around all over the place, you know, I hope it's not that. And then when they've got it, when it's when the sacristan is like getting it out of the chest and bringing it to him, it's like, oh, yes, the shape of an anti finner. Now yea, what is an antifinner? I don't know. I think that's one of the ones that has um, that has songs in it.

But let me have a let me have a look, let me look like I didn't Yeah, I didn't know what I was going to ask you all the specific church germanility. Now it's funny actually because I kind of refreshed my mind on a lot of things. So here we go. Oh that's not too bad. And Antifonary is one of the liturgical books intended for use in choro um. It's principally the antiphons used in various parts of the Roman liturgy. So I've better look up what an antiphon is.

I think that basically is just the bits where you sing back to each other. Yeah, a short sentence sung or recited before or after some organticle. So it's got a specific shape and he knows that it's by the shape ape of the of the scrap book that that's not it. Yeah, and then what do you remember all the some of the things that he finds and as he's flipping through, Yeah, I mean from from what I remember, just sort of different bits of illuminated manuscript and whatever.

I can't call to mind exactly what they are. Whenever I read that, I'm always sort of waiting for him to get to the end, and I shore will turn on to the end. Yeah, m and see see the illustration at the back. It's really a hilarious scene to talk about comedy again and and maybe even more so on like a reread, because like you imagine the atmosphere in the room, like the daughter and the sagar Ston are just like on edge, like they're trying to get

someone to take this demon. Yeah, they're going buy it by it, but trying not to seem too eager, and he's just going oh slowly right, Like you could really play it for laughs, you know, if you were to adapt it into a TV show, like a sick arm whatever. He's just turning it so slowly. It's just like a good copy over there. Whatever, let's have a look and see what he actually what he's actually looking at there? Do you have do you maintain paper copies of M. R.

James stories? I've got this one here, which is it's the second or third one I've had, and it's almost falling to pieces because it's been loved so much. Yes, he said that. There's a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of

them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. There were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, which could not be later than a D. Seven hundred, and he goes and there was twenty leaves of ankle writing in Latin, which must belong to some very early unknown Petristic treaties. There's a couple of adjectives in there that I don't know what they mean. Him, Yeah, I don't know what unky writing is. I think that must be a style

of writing. I could look that up in a minute if you like, But must belong to some very early unknown Petristic treatise. So it's it will have been some sort of philosopher philosophical discussion on some aspect of theology from the early Church, which you know, for you and me is probably kind of yawns. Philbert F. M. R. James would have been really exciting. Turn on, turn on to the end? Is there is there basically, and he just it's illuminated. It's illuminated manuscript Yeah, most of it

is illuminated manuscripts. And so he gets on and he gets to the end, and first of all, he's got this this kind of plan that shows the church and the cloisters, and it's got sort of various kind of symbols inked into it, and that kind of you know, should start make him, making him to sort of smell a rat and thinking of something peculiar is going on. And then he turns over the page and then there's

this horrible picture. The horrible picture is interesting too because there's obviously there's symbolism within it that I don't think that necessarily I have all the reference points. I certainly have different reference points than Mr James did that. So like, I know it's it's King Solomon. I know who King Solomon is. And there's five soldiers, one of them is dead.

And then there's the figure on the right that needs to be described at a moment, and obviously James describes it really twice in the story and like the same detail all the way up to like intelligence not of more than a beast, but not of a man, and hair on the fingers and long curled talent nails, and the first thing you see is the massive black hair. And he really does it twice. He somehow pulls off doing basically the same description twice and you don't even

remember the second time. You know, it's all that stuff again. No, yeah, I mean I love that first description though, because apart from I think actually also you have you have that sense with Denniston that you're looking at the picture and you're gradually kind of the nastiness of it is sinking in, because when you first look at it, you see all this hair, and it's not until you've been looking at it for a little while that you see what it's covering,

which is really quite nasty. You know, that slowly sort of sinks in. Do you think that there's I mean, there's got to be a particular reason for for that setting amidst King Solomon with soldiers and the throne and all the sort of specifics of the scene that he's that he that he paints there. Yeah. I mean, basically, I think what this comes down to is that there's a whole kind of tradition of of of legends and

stories about King Solomon and demons and um. One of the one of these is a thing called the Testament of Solomon, which M. L. James was definitely acquainted it, that describes some of these interchanges and um. Supposedly King Solomon built the first temple on the Mountain Jerusalem with the help of demons, and he's supposed to I mean, there's all sorts of legends about this, and I'm not a complete expert on it, but I think he's supposed to have controlled them by means of some kind of

ring or whatever. And there's also some kind of stories as well that later in his life, having kind of lived up until then a folly, very virtuous life, he had um I think, sacrifice to another god or something other, or converted to a different religion in order to marry somebody else, and at that point fell into the hands of demons. So there's a whole load of kind of weird and slightly apocryphal stories about him and demons, and that's probably why he's been chosen here for this. You know,

it's not just any old picture of a demon. There's King Solomon is there with it. Oh that's that someone is to do an HBO series or something. But I mean that's sounds like a crazy yeah, I mean apocryphals. Sure, surely, yeah, you'd revel some feathers with that one. That's not just using the word termagant wife. No, no, no, Um, well, I mean, as I said, I did write another article about this, which is kind of too long to go into here, but it was called The Nature of the Beast.

I was looking specifically at whether we could say that this was a specific demon. You know, is this just any old demon or can we identify who it is? So I looked at loads and loads and loads of stuff. Um, And you know, it's very very speculative because you know, we can't really know what was in Mr James's mind, and I suppose it's possible that he could have put completely random things in though kind of based on his other stories, I think it's unlikely that it was really random. Um,

But I mean the Testament of Solomon. I discussed at some length, and also sort of various other legends about Solomon and the demons as well. Yeah, that's a whole kind of worms really, even the even the idea that Cannon Albreak is this fictional character, but he's a descendant of this real person who in this real town. Like it's like, I suppose that's that's really sort of the aim of your project, right, like to sort of find that place where it's like he starts feathering in the

stuff that's just from his own imagination. I feel like maybe I hit this point too many times, Alady, but like from my vantage point, it's just like someone that's like from a very different place, in a very different ara, with a very different background, but like also just really loves ephemera and and uh and and ghost stories and

I think those things are really often very interconnected. It's so compelling and like I don't even I do care what's real, Like that's why I'm talking to you, but like I also just it's I've swept away by it. It's it's such a it's such a a force, especially hearing out loud because I don't read Latin. Hearing out loud, Uh, someone read through all the Latin and the fringe and

and pull it all together. It's got like a very tight quality, like I think if it's sort of like a like documentary and there's a documentary element in it, because like you learn about this, this town and this

and this old church that are real, actual real places. Yeah, I mean, I I find this fascinating as well, and it and it interests me also because I mean, obviously I'm a writer myself, and I often use real places and real events, though not usually real people, but you know, real places, real settings, real legends and stuff like that to base things on. And I don't put things in the too random, and it's kind of inimical, too inimical to my nature to do that. I like something to

have meanings. I'm a great fan of Victorian literature for this, you know, specific reason. I like everything to be there for a for a purpose. And I feel as though he feels to me as though very much the same sort of writer. I don't think that he put things in because they were random, which is one of the reasons why I'm interested in teasing these things out. At what point did he start inventing? I mean, with some

things like the Treasure of Abbott Thomas. We can know there are there are some books here quoted that didn't exist. But even then you know he's he's written a very very convincing kind of pasticheous part of this imaginable, you know, imaginary book, and so you think, well, it could have existed, and it's convincing, so it feels real. I find that really fascinating. It's a great trick. And he did it over and over and over. I mean he did a

lot of homework. Yes, he clearly he did. If you like this this sort of writing, though, I mean other authors that I would definitely recommender, obviously as Sheridan the Fano, who slightly predates m R James and who Mr James immensely admired. My favorite one is schalkin the Painter, which is a really marvelous story. I think that that's that's brilliantly scary. Um. And there's the old that went with the Fairies. Um, there's Madame Krall's Ghost. I like that

a lot. That's about a little girl who who gets taken on to be an assistant at a house where there's this very rich and slightly um, slightly um. Well, it's difficult to tell whether she actually has dementia or whether she's just tormented by her own thoughts. But this very strange old lady who, because she's so rich, is

constantly indulged because it is extremely frightening. She has his massively great long fingernails, and where's all this huge amount of makeup in spite of the fact that she's about a hundred and five. There's others of his that are sort of better known, like The Familiar, but The Shark and the Painter is my favorite one. First of all Langdon certainly Abby. If you google firmly Abbey, it's th hu r n l e Y And as far as I know, that's the only story he wrote, but it

scares the purchases out of me. Very nasty story. The other person that I think is it is Tom Rolt, who wrote a series of ghost stories under the name LTC Rolt. So it's R. O. L. T Um and I think the his book was called Sleep No More and he's slightly later than M. R. James, though not much later. But there's some great stories in that which are sort of quite James in but they have got

more of an industrial atmosphere. There's one set in factories and canals, and there's a railway one, and those are great because there's an awful lot of people out there doing James and pastiche and you think, well, that does eventually get a bit old, but he's he's done something. It is often James in in flavor, but completely different settings, which is super. That's really good. You said you had

pictures of your trip. I'm not going to, but what I can do is send you a whole bunch of them, and any of them that you want to use, you can use one of them. Bizarrely, but my dad had just taken a candid shot of me talking to one of these old guides and that you know it, and he looks really grumpy and kind of disgruntled and miserable. He's waving his arms around and stuff. But you know, I remember him has been quite a genial guy. But yeah,

there we are in conversation seventeen years ago. They're so similar. And then I'm gonna let you go. There's so similar to the situation that Dennis does in talking with the I mean you you you realize that the great parallel there now and now you're talking about this like as if it's a long time ago. Like next, it's going to be me going to follow in Helen Grant's footsteps

of looking into the naves. Yeah, yeah, you said, do they think you know, like sort of twenty or thirty years down the line, Yeah, this will be you with your grandkids or whatever. Say, oh, yes, I remember talking to that, Helen Groant. Somebody might be doing this with your story someday. You know. Well, I hope so right, Yeah, I mean what more could I want to hope for?

I mean, something to hope for, isn't it. It's like that's like being a pretty, you know, m pleasant ghost like Mr James is a pretty enjoyable ghost in your life hanging around. Absolutely. Ah. Helen Grant's newest novel is Too Near the Death, which is a ghost story set here in Perth Year and in fact uses a lot of the same thing Mr James does in that it's a mix of real stuff and kind of invented stuff. And there's probably more real stuff than there is invented.

You know. Most of the locations are real available now where books are sold. Yeah, I mean in the UK you can get them from Waterstones and black oils in places like that in the States, I'm not sure. Um yeah, obviously the roaded Amazon, and I would imagine that possibly the book Depository or somebody would have them. I mean, in fact, I saw it was listed on Walmart the other day, but I thought, it can't really be even on their website. But you know, there will be somebody.

There will be somebody other than the dreaded Amazon. Find pictures from her trip and the article that inspired this conversation. He was laughing in the church. A visit to St. Bertrand de Commange. On our website, Ephemeral Dutch Show, You're more podcasts from iHeart Radio by visiting the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows