The First Ghost:

M.R. James and the Chitchat Society Reading of 1893

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

A companion to bl-literarymagic.com

Ghost stories, like cathedrals, require an architecture: A scaffolding of mood, a nave of plausibility, a spire of terror. Montague Rhodes James understood this instinctively, though the mechanism of his understanding would take shape only over time. His first ghost story—which came to be known as “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book”—did not emerge from a midnight inspiration or even a ghostly encounter of his own. It was born, as so many Jamesian marvels were, of place, precision, and the cultivated ambiguity of the scholarly mind.

The story had been written nearly two years before the now-famous public reading of 1893 occurred; it was most likely begun during the Christmas of 1891 in his family home at the Rectory of Great Livermere, Suffolk, and read then in private for his family circle, “Scrap-book” was inspired by a convergence of scholarship and travel. Monty had lately read a supposedly true-life ghost account, Augustus Jessopp’s “An Antiquary’s Ghost Story,” in which a ghostly hand appeared on the desk beside Jessopp while he was poring over a book—exactly the phenomenon that befalls Dennistoun in “Scrap-book.” The tale was sharpened further by Monty’s 1892 visit to Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, a snowbound excursion from Loures-Barousse to the great Romanesque cathedral that inspired the story’s setting. There, he sketched floorplans, took notes, and fell ill—an event which did nothing to blunt the sweetness of the place in his estimation.

But the tale remained unread in public until the Chitchat Society meeting of 28 October 1893.

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The Chitchat Society: Context and Company

The Chitchat was no mere supper club. It was a crucible for the intellectual elite of Cambridge, a gathering of dons, fellows, and promising undergraduates who met regularly to present papers on literature, science, theology, and—when Monty’s influence waxed—supernatural phenomena. Thirteen men were present that evening. Among them were Fred (E.F.) Benson, Dr. Charles Waldstein, and Eustace Talbot. Two newly elected members, Simey and Watkins, attended as well.

Monty had guided the Society’s timbre for years. It was he who had spoken on the grotesque. It was he who had invited Tatham to present his Protestant vision of ghosts. And it was he who—through soft charisma and precise taste—had made it possible to read a ghost story aloud and receive not just indulgence but admiration.

On this night, Monty offered two stories: the elder “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book,” and a new creation, “Lost Hearts.” These were not casual entertainments. They were carefully structured, movingly performed, and meant to be heard rather than read. In the case of “Lost Hearts,” Monty’s soft reading voice conferred narrative authority where the text offered little—bridging the implausibility of a seemingly omniscient narrator with the gravitas of oral tradition.

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Canon Alberic: The Mechanism of Terror

Monty understood that terror must descend in increments. In “Scrap-book,” we see the classic Jamesian progression from the rational to the irrational. At first, Dennistoun mistakes the demonic presence at his elbow for a penwiper. Then perhaps a rat. Then—a giant spider. Only after these reasonable misapprehensions does he glimpse the true horror: the demon’s hand. It is not described at first; it is guessed at, sensed, and then, just as it appears, it retreats.

This is the M.R. James moment—the flash of the supernatural followed by its withdrawal, like a sea-creature breaking the surface and slipping back into the deep. The effect is not shrieking fear but predatory watchfulness. The dread is not extinguished; it is deferred. It remains, circling the edges of the reader’s consciousness like the creature beneath the water, never fully seen again.

Monty knew better than to allow his creatures to overstay their welcome. A lesser writer might have left Dennistoun disemboweled on the flagstones. Monty gives us something far more unnerving: the suggestion that the thing might still be watching, that the danger has not been resolved but merely passed along to the next reader, the next unwary antiquary.

And Monty, ever the antiquary himself, knew what he was doing.

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Narrative Irony and Ghostly Economy

The structure of “Scrap-book” introduces several patterns Monty would use repeatedly: a haunted object, a spectral guardian, and a naive interloper whose curiosity invites terror. The object here—a sacrilegious scrapbook compiled by a possibly damned cleric—represents the Jamesian inclination that textual corruption begets spiritual peril. What has been bound within this book is not merely demonic imagery but a spiritual contagion, a residue of Alberic’s own transgression.

Monty concludes the story with a curious blend of relief and irreverence. Dennistoun, recovering, arranges a Mass for the soul of Canon Alberic—only to protest, in fine Presbyterian fashion, at the expense. The scrapbook is burned. But not before it is photographed, raising new questions. Has the terror been expunged? Or simply translated into a new medium?

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A Ghost Story Read by Candlelight

The Chitchat reading of 1893 is not just the first performance of Monty’s ghost stories; it is the birth of the Jamesian mode itself. The audience was composed of those who shared his intellectual frame, his ironic reserve, his delight in the grotesque when rendered with classical precision. That one member, Simey, resigned the following week may say more about personal taste than literary quality. But the event itself became lore.

What makes this moment so singular is not simply that a ghost story was read aloud—it is that it was this ghost story, by this man, in that room, at that time. The dry voice. The precise diction. The implication that ghosts are real, but their true nature is unknowable. It was a performance and a proposition, a new way of making the supernatural credible.

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A Scholar’s Ghost

By the time Monty became Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum weeks later, he had not only published serious biblical scholarship, catalogued medieval glass, and assisted Jessopp in writing St. William of Norwich—he had also, with the barest hint of mischief, inaugurated a literary tradition. “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” was not simply a ghost story. It was the prototype of a modern form, one born of antiquarianism, irony, moral dread, and academic rigor.

He would refine the pattern. He would complicate it. But never again would he write a story as foundational, as quietly revolutionary, or as self-revealing.

In that first Chitchat reading, Monty presented not merely a tale, but a thesis: that the past is never still, and those who disturb it do so at their peril.

Ever, your fellow spirit,

Brian Jay Corrigan

Next month: M.R. James’ birthday & the unknown

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