A note on “My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” led me in the past to say that M. R. James did not approve of ghostbreaker stories. This is not quite true. In his introduction to Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Stories (1923) he included a note that explained why he excluded three stories:
Note:—I have omitted three other stories of a similar nature, viz: The Mysterious Lodger (Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 50) which, though it contains some excellent detail, is more in the nature of a religious allegory than a ghost story proper; My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure (ibid. 1864) which belongs to a class of which I disapprove—the ghost-story which peters out into a natural explanation; and also a fragment called Hyacinth O’Toole which appeared posthumously in Temple Bar (1884).
The first he excludes because it is a religious allegory and the last because it is a fragment. It is the second one that led to my original statement. “…which belongs to a class of which I disapprove—the ghost-story which peters out into a natural explanation”. This isn’t actually a condemnation of all things ghost buster. He simply did not like the Scooby-Doo story, where the ghost proves to be Principal Dingwell in a mask. If the occult detective should encounter a real ghost (or an unexplained phantom), then I suppose he had no problem. Madam Crowl’s Ghost was in fact a volume of stories by his master and inspiration, J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu created one of the first occult detectives in Dr. Martin Hesselius from In a Glass Darkly (1872).
Why should James be so inclined to dislike an explained ghost story? We have a tendency to think of all Victorian Horror stories as the same thing, lumping in the Gothics of Ann Radcliffe with the ghost stories of Amelia B. Edwards. This is unfortunate because they really are two very separate things. The Gothic, especially the Gothic Explique, was filled with clanking chains and howling demons, but these were explained at the end with rationality. The chains were rattled by a rival who wants the house or the howling is not a werewolf but an insane aunt locked in the tower. After Radcliffe, Horror teased but ultimately proved a fake.
It is this tradition that James is speaking to. When ghost story writers, including the occult detective variety such as E. and H. Heron or William Hope Hodgson, spun tales of ghosts then revealed them to be robbers in the basement or the effects of mold, James gave a thumbs down. As the writer of thirty-plus classic ghost stories, M. R. James is qualified to say what should or should not be in a ghost story. (I admit my own prejudice is with James. I prefer my ghosts real and nasty as hell. As James rails against the explained ghost, I feel the same for the likable ghost. Canterville need not apply.)
So, let’s take a look at “My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” and see what exactly Le Fanu put into that tale. It appeared in The Dublin University Magazine, March 1864.
The plot has Aunt Margaret setting out on a trip to Winderbrooke to look into a renter who has fallen behind on his payments. Margaret gets into a coach with her driver, Tom Teukesbury, and her “prime-minister” or maid, Winnifred Dobbs. The trip is long, over hills that require them to get out and walk to save the horse. Tom gets them lost and they have to stay in a creepy inn called “The Good Woman”. Tom is not allowed and has to back-track a half mile to The Cat an’ Fiddle (filled with drunken men).
The inn is dark, cold and occupied by odd people: the land lady (who doesn’t carry luggage) and her mouthy maid (who has Margaret so angry she will talk to the proprietor in the morning!) and a woman who can’t top crying. So far, the story is pretty humorous, with the aunt and her maid having to share a bed. But the story takes a dark turn at the end.
Hearing a noise, Margaret goes out into the dark hallway. The maid has thrown her candle into the fire so she has no light. Margaret walks around in her nightie (which no self respecting woman would so she can’t call out for help) and gets lost. She can’t remember if it was thirty-five or forty-five steps. A light is seen and the maid comes bearing a dagger! She and another plan to use it on a man. Margaret ducks in a door so she won’t be seen. She thinks she has found her room, crawls in with Winnie Dobbs (who is so cold). Only it isn’t Winnie but a dead man. She screams, runs into a coffin resting near by and faints.
When she wakes she really is in bed with Winnie and an explanation is forthcoming from the author. The dead man was the proprietor of the inn. The crying woman was his widow. Owing much money, since the inn was no longer on the popular road it once was, his body was hidden at the inn. The relatives feared creditors might take possession until payment was made. The dagger was actually a tool for opening the coffin. The next morning Margaret and her companions go to Winderbrooke and everything is settled quickly and well.
Le Fanu writes most of this story with a pleasant sense of humor and color of background. The descriptions of the Irish countryside are interesting and Margaret’s haughty manner with Tom Teukesbury is charming. It is only when we get to the inn that the possibility of horror begins. There is never any suggestion of a ghost or other monster. The biggest thrill is seeing the maid with the dagger. To call this story a ghost story would be quite incorrect. As the title implies, it is an “adventure”.
Now it should be pointed out that Le Fanu wrote ghost stories but he also sold Sensation fiction, an early form of Mystery tale. His novels are often compared to Wilkie Collins and his The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868). This type of thriller has some of the elements of a Mystery story though not so much a detective story. There is no Sherlock Holmes and Watson looking at clues. (Or if there is, they are not central to the tale.) There will be secret marriages, forged wills, and great peril to the heroine.
Like the Gothic novels that proceeded them, the name “Sensation” implies the reader is supposed to feel a sensation or thrilling rise in blood pressure. Le Fanu makes reference to “Ferdinand Count Fathom” and “Bleeding Nun” in this story. The first is a Smollett novel of 1753 and the second is the stage version of M. G. Lewis’s The Monk (1796). Both are considered Gothics and Le Fanu draws in that older tradition in a much smaller way than how Jane Austen parodied Gothics in Northanger Abbey (1817).
James published Madam Crowl’s Ghost in 1923 to bring back to the public the best of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s stories. The master of Irish ghost storytellers had fallen from his pinnacle over the fifty years after his death. James wanted to rectify this, and felt that “My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” was not a piece that would help in regaining lost fame. I suppose I have to agree. “Green Tea” or “The Watcher” are better examples of frisson-causing Horror tales while this one is mostly light and can be seen as quite funny.