The Antiquary and the Crocodile: Writings About the Stories of M.R. James

by Helen Grant

Helen Grant is a lifelong fan of the ghost stories of Montague Rhodes James; one of her novels, The Glass Demon, was partly inspired by "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas," with its mysterious stained glass windows. She has also written a series of non-fiction articles about the work of M.R.James, and these are now collected in this eBook.

As she relates in the first of these articles, a move abroad found her living within a short distance of the setting of one of MRJ's tales. She could not resist visiting it, and having visited it, she wrote a piece comparing the fictional and real-life location. She went on to visit other foreign settings of MRJ's stories, and to examine other aspects of their backgrounds, including local folklore. The result is a series of eight articles spanning the period 2004 – 2008, with some later updates. All these articles originally appeared in the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter. This eBook was produced with the aim of collecting the articles in one place for the benefit of anyone with a scholarly interest in the stories of M.R.James.

The book is non-fiction but contains a fiction extra, "The Game of Bear."

Helen "My completion of MRJ's unfinished story "The Game of Bear" has already appeared in the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter and in my collection The Sea Change & Other Stories, published in 2013 by Swan River Press. However, I am regularly asked by readers where they can find it, so I thought I would make it available again here. I also feel that as it is a 'collaboration' with the great MRJ himself, it belongs with my examinations of his work."

116 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 18, 2017

About the author

Helen Grant has a passion for the Gothic and for ghost stories. Joyce Carol Oates has described her as 'a brilliant chronicler of the uncanny as only those who dwell in places of dripping, graylit beauty can be.' A lifelong fan of the ghost story writer M.R.James, she has spoken at two M.R.James conferences and appeared at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival. She lives in Perthshire with her family, and when not writing, she likes to explore abandoned country houses and swim in freezing lochs.

Helen's most recent novel Jump Cut was published by Fledgling Press in 2023.

Reviews

[Carole Tyrrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise and well researched project in which author Helen Grant visits towns and villages in Europe to find the locations and possible inspirations for some of M R James’s most disturbing tales.
In the introduction she reminds the reader that these are articles that were instigated by her and her family living near a site featured in an M R James story. This led to a series of articles during 2004-2008 which were first published in the M R James Newsletter. In these she added further sites from the stories and discovered, alas, that there is no Room 13 and no Golden Lion in Viborg. And there seemed to have been a three gabled house in a French village, Marcilly le Hayer at one time but no trace of it now..
The saga of the Steinfeld Abbey glass is a fascinating one. They disappeared, apparently sold off by a German man living in Norwich. It was MRJ who identified them when cataloguing them for an English aristocrat in 1904. Only two pieces have ever returned to the Abbey and most are owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is where I saw the piece that inspired the author’s novel ‘The Glass Demon.’ The author explores the Abbey which has been in the care of the Salvatorean order since 1923.
A visit to St Bertrand de Comminges which is described as a ‘decayed town’ leads the author to ‘The Gallery of Tombs’ (now there’s a possible story title) in which, obviously, there are a number of sarcophagi. Perhaps one of the occupants is lying there waiting for someone to inadvertently disturb them…And yet this small town of only 250 inhabitants possesses one of the nine stuffed crocodiles in France which are designated as national monuments. There are traces of possible inspirations for elements of ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’ such as worn zodiac signs on a column’s capital. But the sacristan’s house does not exist although it could have been modelled on the house of a local artist who is rumoured to have known MRJ.
M R James was an arachnophobe although the creatures appear in several of his stories with his distaste being clearly evident.
I really enjoyed the author’s completion of ‘The Game of Bear’ as it was seamless.
This book is not just for M R fans James but for anyone who enjoys visiting locations in stories and pondering on how they inspired the authors. I have just spent five years living in ‘Dickens Country’ and visited several locations that inspired him including the ‘Great Expectations’ church, St James at Cooling.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholarly and fascinating; Helen Grant is like a literary treasure hunter.

I loved this collection of essays about the great writer of supernatural tales, MR James. The articles presented here are drawn from a mixture of academic and general interest publications, but that should not for a moment put off the general reader. Helen Grant imbues her researches with such an absorbing style that I flew through these pages. My favourites were the travel pieces, written from first hand accounts of such places as St Bertrand de Commignes (setting for Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook) and Viborg (Number 13). In the former especially I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she might be in some mortal danger from a spectral entity lurking around the corner, but happily all she seems to have encountered are friendly and helpful locals. There’s a treat in store with the final story, her own rendering of an incomplete story by MR James called The Game of Bear. Her imagined completion of the tale is so uncannily Jamesean that you could easily have fooled me that it wasn’t an unfinished story after all.