An Evening's Entertainment

by M.R. James

M. R. James was born in Kent, England in 1862. James came to writing fiction relatively late, not publishing his first collection of short stories - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) - until the age of 42. Modern scholars now see James as having redefined the ghost story for the 20th century and he is seen as the founder of the 'antiquarian ghost story'. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions with a brand new introductory biography of the author.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Horror

ebook

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Montague Rhodes James, who used the publication name M.R. James, was a noted English mediaeval scholar & provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–18) & of Eton College (1918–36). He's best remembered for his ghost stories which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature. One of James' most important achievements was to redefine the ghost story for the new century by dispensing with many of the formal Gothic trappings of his predecessors, replacing them with more realistic contemporary settings.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

M.R.^James

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in A Warning to the Curious (1925), and probably written soon before to extend the length the collection, M.R. James’ tries something unique—at least for him—in this particular story. He takes one of his kindly old Dickensian character types—in this case a “Grandmother,” mother to the “Squire,” and grandmother to Charles and Fanny—and, instead of employing her for intermittent comic relief (his customary practice), chooses her for his principle narrator instead. His stated objective: to demonstrate what it was like, in the good old days, when grandmothers spun ghostly folk tales by a winter fire.

Grandmother tells Charles and Fanny a story tale with a simple purpose—to explain to them why it is very important never to pick blackberries in a certain lane—but the story itself meanders a bit, sounding more like a bit of local memory than provincial folklore. It begins with a cottage—now torn down, but then near the blackberry lane—occupied by a Mr. Davis and a male friend. The companion was remembered as “a pale, ugly young fellow” who “hadn’t much to say for himself” and the village folk whispered of “one walk in particular that they’d take regularly once a month” where—it was rumored—the graves of Romans soldiers had more than once been unearthed. Mr. Davis and his companion, though, although familiar with the graves, were convinced they were much older than the Romans.

Davis and the man lived like this for three years, taking their regular walks. And then one morning early, a woodman discovered something strange:

[A]nd just where there were some few big oaks in a sort of clearing deep in the wood he saw at a distance a white thing that looked like a man through the mist, and he was in two minds about going on, but go on he did, and made out as he came near that it was a man, and more than that, it was Mr. Davis’s young man: dressed in a sort of white gown he was, and hanging by his neck to the limb of the biggest oak, quite, quite dead: and near his feet there lay on the ground a hatchet all in a gore of blood…. Well, what a terrible sight that was for anyone to come upon in that lonely place! This poor man was nearly out of his wits: he dropped everything he was carrying and ran as hard as ever he could straight down to the Parsonage, and woke them up and told what he’d seen. And old Mr. White, who was the parson then, sent him off to get two or three of the best men, the blacksmith and the churchwardens and what not, while he dressed himself, and all of them went up to this dreadful place with a horse to lay the poor body on and take it to the house. When they got there, everything was just as the woodman had said: but it was a terrible shock to them all to see how the corpse was dressed, specially to old Mr. White, for it seemed to him to be like a mockery of the church surplice that was on it, only, he told my father, not the same in the fashion of it. And when they came to take down the body from the oak tree they found there was a chain of some metal round the neck and a little ornament like a wheel hanging to it on the front, and it was very old looking, they said.

Things get even stranger after that. And Grandmother shares with Charles and Fanny an odd experience of her own, in the days before she married Grandfather. But I’ll just let the old Grandmother tell you the rest herself.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fireside story told by an old grandmother to her two young grandchildren, telling them elements of local folklore of why they were not to go to a certain lane to pick berries.

The tale concerned two men who lived in a cottage nearby. It became known to everyone that these two men were odd, but it later was found that they were devil worshippers with one of them sacrificing the other and then hanging himself. Ever since their violent deaths strange occurrences happened afterwards with the appearance by the place in the lane by where they were buried of large strange black stinging poisonous flies. The story explains to the children why the local folk do not go near there to gather berries anymore.

[Plateresca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is both funny, creepy, and sad, at various points. It is one of those stories that leaves one with a lot of questions, but an interesting read.

[Lynsey Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ohhhhh Mr James, are you delving into the world of folk horror by any chance? As this put me in mind of some of Arthur Machens finer works.

I do now think this maybe one of my fave MR James stories and I have never come across it for today, so today is a good day indeed.

I loved the framing of this, good old Victorian Gothic, with a Grandmother telling her Grandkids a properly nasty bed time story that involved occult practices around a giant carving in a sleepy village and two men (who I think were deffo some kind of witches) ending up dead. And nicely dead to, this was actually quite graphic for a MR James story and also was a departure from the norm as the baddie was in fact a human not a historic monster back for revenge.

A fabulous tale, with great sense of place and setting and some truly troubling touches, the imagery of the young mans death is pure horror and is beautifully done.

BRAVO!Bravo indeed.

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a grandmother telling her grandchildren a rather gruesome horror story right before bedtime.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent short story which features two men who live together thereby inciting the suspicions of the local village community, lurking around burial mounds and adopting strange dress. Some great imagery including flies swarming to pools of congealing blood and corpses wrapped unceremoniously in black velvet and thrown to the bottom of a roadside pit. Folk horror at its best.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I barely even remember much about this one - and I only read it yesterday. Something about a haunted lane. It's just a by-the-numbers tale from M.R. James, I imagine written towards the end of his life, as his peak work is phenomenal.

[Ursula Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good old fashioned scary story with a wonderful frame around it. Evil consumes a man and his ward in a village. Wonderfully narrated by David Collings.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was alright.

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A weird , horror story and humorous by the master.

[Callie M · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange one. Some fun humour, some hints of occult goings-on, but just, not enough build up really. It all goes zero to one hundred a bit quick!

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Available on youtube from HorrorBabble.