In Sackcloth Bound:

The History of Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary

From the Unquiet Silence "A letter once a month, drawn from the quiet, but never still"

A companion to bl-literarymagic.com

When M.R. James released his first collection of ghost stories in the winter of 1904, he did so not as a professional author but as a scholar of Latin apocrypha, stained glass, and the manuscript traditions of the Middle Ages. He was, by then, well into his forties. He had already catalogued multiple libraries, translated obscure texts, lectured on archaeology and theology, and directed the Fitzwilliam Museum. His ghost stories, then, came not as the main course but as a sideboard treat, a nod to the Christmas fireside tradition—and yet it is Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary, and not his biblical scholarship, that ensured his literary immortality.

The Impetus: A Grave Blooms Flowers

The immediate catalyst for publication was loss. On Sunday, 5 June 1904, James McBryde—Monty’s dear friend and intended illustrator—died following surgery for appendicitis. He was only twenty-eight. Monty, who had deferred his friend’s enthusiastic ghost story illustrations for nearly a year, was shaken. The project, which Monty had previously delayed by inertia, disinterest, and distraction, now became urgent.

McBryde’s widow, Gwendolen, sent Monty four completed drawings just two days after the funeral. By Friday of the same week, 10 June, Monty had approached publisher Edward Arnold with the manuscript. The publisher responded with unusual speed and enthusiasm. Within twelve days, Arnold was already requesting additional stories to fill out the volume. The tone of the publisher’s letter is unambiguous: "we have greatly enjoyed the stories and must manage to make a book of them somehow, whatever happens." A thin book would fetch 4s.6d.; a full-sized one could command 6s. Commercial viability depended on volume, so Monty was requested to put up additional material.

Monty supplied two more stories: one of them he had originally decided was not of sufficient quality to be included, "Lost Hearts," but it had the advantage of being already written, having first been read to the Chitchat Society in 1893 alongside "Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book." The other, "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas," was written afresh in the summer of 1904. “Treasure,” inspired by stained glass at Ashridge and built on punning onomastic games, was crafted specifically for quiet reading rather than spoken performance and allowed Monty to indulge in visual puzzles best suited to the page. With those, the collection was complete.

Yet it was not McBryde alone who had originally championed publication. At Christmastime 1903, Monty hosted a gathering in his rooms at King’s—a tradition marked by ghost stories and dry witticisms. In attendance was Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin, a rugby “blue” and former chorister who had once played Monty's housekeeper in a college farce. Giblin had returned from a spell of gold prospecting in British Columbia and joined the gathering that year. During one of the readings, Monty shared McBryde’s trial illustration for the book that Monty was not at that time seriously planning to pursue. The idea of publication was raised, and it was Giblin’s strong encouragement that helped tip the balance. He believed the ghost stories were of unusually fine quality and that a book collecting them together would be well received, and his practical advocacy, grounded in affection and robust common sense, played no small part in moving Monty from private readings to public print, but it was the untimely death of McBryde that finally set Monty onto publishing them.

The Book as Object: A Volume for the Season

Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary appeared in Britain on Thursday, 24 November 1904—Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Edward Arnold packaged the book not as ephemeral entertainment but as a “Special Christmas Book.” Instead of a paper dust jacket, it featured two-color embossing on art canvas and boasted yapp binding, a presentation style more commonly reserved for Bibles. A.C. Benson dismissed it as “bound in sackcloth,” but the design was intentional: austere, handsome, tactile.

Its release was followed, three days later, by the posthumous birth of McBryde’s daughter—Jane McBryde McBryde—whom Monty would soon after agree to serve as guardian. He received the news of her arrival while at Eton, observing Founder’s Day, and remarked, with a mix of gallows humor and Edwardian prejudice, “I rather regret its sex, but it must be as it may.” The regret was that McBryde’s child would not be able to enter the all-boy institution of Eton that Monty loved so well. She would, however, grow to be very close to Monty, and he would write his only children’s book, The Five Jars, in the form of a letter to her and would also dedicate it to her.

Reactions: Private, Public, and Transatlantic

Reactions from Monty’s circle were brisk and predictable. Gwen McBryde called the book “beautifully got up.” The Cropper sisters reportedly fought over it, then read it in horrified delight. It gave Eustace Talbot “two bad nights and a jumpy walk on a dark foggy evening.” A.C. Benson liked what he peeped at but, in classic Bensonian fashion, never quite got around to reading the whole.

The first public review appeared in The Daily News on Tuesday, 27 December. The reviewer, a connoisseur of the genre, insisted that “no ghost story should be merely a ghost story.” There must be characters “to sympathise with . . . to fear for . . . to make us shudder when the moment comes.” James’s stories fulfilled the critic’s trinity: serious ghosts, compelling characters, and terror that arrives “straight, hideous, awful . . . alive, clammy, essentially evil.” The verdict was clear: “first-rate ghost stories.”

American response was slower and cooler. The New York Times, upon receipt of the volume, doubted “if antiquaries are the fittest men to tell ghost stories.” While acknowledging a “pretty well-defined creepy feeling,” the reviewer declared that James’s efforts were “not quite the real thing.” The implication, of course, was that antiquarians should stick to their catalogues.

Still, the book sold briskly and went into a second British printing before May 1905. By then, Monty’s own title had changed—from Fellow of King’s College to Provost of the same—and the ghosts, having been released from manuscript, had begun to linger in parlours, libraries, and bedrooms across Britain.

A Literary Contrapasso

It is tempting to read Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary as merely a pastiche of Le Fanu, a nod to the winter tale, or a private amusement made public. But it is also, at its core, a memorial. James McBryde’s name is not on the title page, but his spirit haunts the volume more vividly than any of Monty’s revenants. The illustrations—“the best thing I have ever drawn,” McB said of his “Whistle” sketch—are acts of loving precision. Their creator, who taught himself advanced perspective to satisfy Monty’s spatial demands, never lived to see them in print.

Monty’s response was primarily sentimental with a touch of the practical. He published McBryde’s Troll-Hunt privately, became godfather to his infant daughter, and arranged for a book that, until his friend’s death, was little better than speculative. The stories, composed over a decade of Christmases and read aloud in the Chitchat rooms at Cambridge and around Christmas firesides for his friends, now found permanence in cloth binding, fixed type, and yapp-edged solidity.

In later years, Monty would reflect that a ghost story should be “short, read aloud, and offer a pleasing terror.” But Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary does more. It transforms a private grief into a public genre. It gives form to scholarly unease. It commits to paper the suggestion that affection—like knowledge—once unearthed, cannot be returned.

Ever, your fellow spirit,

Brian Jay Corrigan

Next month: How Shakespeare ‘invented’ Hallowe’en

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