ABSTRACT
Ghosts, or, more strictly, troubling presences, artefacts and curios, in M. R. James’s tales mainly inhabit the home-grown haunts of casual visitors: the seaside resort, the secluded country house, the cathedral close. The recurrent attraction, or solace, of “his calm environment” in which the “ominous thing” puts out its head, suggests that James’s typical traveler follows a predictable, even insular, domestic itinerary. Far from marking a consolatory retreat, the act of cycling to the peace of the countryside, a place where conflict is nonetheless audible, brings back former delights even as it accentuates a present sense of disconnection and dis-ease. The private library at Wilsthorpe, which Humphreys aspires to catalogue, is the counterpart of the maze, inviting but frustrating attempts to uncover its hidden pattern. He laments “the extreme unreadableness of a great portion of the collection”, and its strangest holding has a “blank and forbidding” exterior.
