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"To Let" and Other Strange Stories
A prolific contributor to the popular periodicals of her day, Bithia Mary Croker was an Irish novelist whose work memorably portrays everyday life in colonial India. Today, she is perhaps best remembered for her ghost stories, twenty of which are presented in this comprehensive collection of Croker's supernatural fiction. So sit back and get ready to enjoy some classic Victorian and Edwardian chills from the darkest reaches of the Empire...
268 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 14, 2018
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About the author
B.M. Croker
190 books11 followersBithia Mary (or May) Croker (née Sheppard, c. 1848-1920) was an Irish novelist, most of whose work concerns life and society in British India. Her 1917 novel The Road to Mandalay, set in Burma, was the uncredited basis for a 1926 American silent film, of which only excerpts survive. She was also a notable writer of ghost stories.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 1, 2018
This book is, as a whole, best considered as being of anthropological interest. By which I mean it illuminates not only a fuller view of the "ghost story on the street" for a certain time period but also contains a vast quantity of colonial/imperialist attitudes embedded not only in the characters themselves but underlying certain thematic approaches (a much stickier issue to fully entangle, where does Bithia Mary Croker live and breathe behind the lines, and how much of it is actually her appeasing a certain audience or playing at certain ironies?). As for this latter aspect, it is most definitely there. I give this not as a trigger warning but only to affirm that the majority of the stories feature well-to-do whites (generally, but not always, British) and invoke a fairly flavored version of people of color: positing them at best as good servants with an only slightly comical twang to their spoken English dialogue, and otherwise mostly as nameless objects to progress the plot and/or the white characters, occasionally by becoming uppity servants and slaves and doing a murder. Indeed, Black Heath includes this note at the start of the book, "Some of the attitudes expressed in these stories, although prevalent at the time of their original publication, would be considered offensive today. The publisher wishes to emphasise that the reproduction of this historical text is in no way intended as an endorsement of these attitudes." Someone interested in late-19th-/early-20th-century British worldviews and prejudices might have a better time than someone who is deeply disturbed by these aspects.
If more of the stories were anything but rote Victorian/Post-Victorian ghost stories - in which a person, probably of money/eminence, comes to a new place for a job or research or vacation or whatever reason, is broadly warned of something "evil" or "bothersome", and then has a [likely singular] encounter with that presence and is forced to flee or feel terrified or generally out of sorts - then it might at least be upheld as interest in that way. Alas, the majority of the stories were well within the pattern. There is death and bloodshed, but much of it is in the past and the present is largely a witness to something that is perhaps scary to the characters inside the tale but not to the reader trying to enjoy it (unless said reader is easily spooked by people in period costume or steps walking across the floor when, gasp, there is no one there to be seen!). This affliction, making ghosts mostly an exercise in experience rather than a tangible entity that brushes the reader against the sense of awe and unknown, holds back at least half of these stories. Someone shows up in a bungalow, which contains a veranda, has a run in with a chowkedar or ignores the warnings of their ayah, has some run-in with another white Brit that gives some warning (and/or some local tries to give a warning), and then wakes up at night (or during a storm) to see something ghostly, possibly, but not always, ghastly.
As an aside, the number of bungalows with verandas in these collection are so fast that you would not be wrong to start associating these terms as something like Croker's "cyclopean" and "eldritch".
There are times, however, where Croker bucks against her own common refrain and these are much more of interest. "The Red Bungalow," the next-to-last story in the collection, is the finest overall, and potentially worth the price of admission for the whole collection (I paid $.99). The warnings are interlaced into the narrative to become increasingly dire, building up a sense of dread better than the more singular ones in the other stories. The ghostly/other-worldly sighting is actually denied the reader, we only see its effects: the death of a beloved child, the mental destruction of another, and the death of a pet monkey. In fact, we do not know at all what the entity is. It is somehow linked to what might be an old temple long gone to ruin, but is it simply - in the usual Croker manner - merely an echo of some past crime or is some ancient malevolence?
The hidden-being-worse-than-the-seen plays partially in "An Unexpected Invitation," as well, for though we know roughly the shape of the spooks, how exactly the protagonist meets his doom is only given as guesswork, as is the real meaning behind the visitation.
There are two stories of people actually heeding the warning in their dreams rather than succumbing to fatalism (see: the dream-omen stories of E.F. Benson if you prefer fatalism in your doom). Neither are spectacular, though "The Red Woolen Necktie" is at least sort of charming.
Several shine because they do dig into social customs or contrivances. "La Carcassonne" is possibly the story of a dour "young maid" who is possessed by a rowdy French woman...or the story of a youngish woman who has been forced to live too frugally and under too watchful an eye who goes a bit wild at her own freedom (Croker wants you know that both are equally likely, though only one is true: which is up to you). "Little Brass God" is more Henry- than M.R. James, but the jealous older woman at the end of her [husband's] career spiting a younger does have a touch of "Casting the Runes" about it (even if the ending is more genteel). Likewise, though "The First Comer" is more of a normal ghost story, the interesting parts are in the social drama which shows Croker's tendency to insert digressions into a story for no reason other than to make comment of social mores. It also contains one of Croker's best lines in this entire collection: "I am an old maid, and am not the least ashamed of the circumstance. Pray, why should women not be allowed the benefit of doubt like men, and be supposed to remain single from choice? I can assure that it is not from want of offers..."
And "The Creaking Board," to give a rounding out of this class of story, is a yarn of the old "joke/bet gone awry" weaving. It spends too long foreshadowing the obvious outcome, but at least the overlong build up gives it time to make you feel properly bad for the young, lovesick accidental manslaughter..er.
One of the most problematic of all the stories, "The North Verandah," [I fuppin' told you she dropped this word a lot], is partially about an abusive slave owner who is killed in the days building to the American Civil War, and can very nearly be thought of as anti-slavery, except it is also heavily dependent on the reader's fear of a hulking, very-dark-skinned black slave. Note, of the several stories in which a servant, slave, or lower-class person commits murder, this is [I think] the only one where anything other greed or uncontrollable emotions was given as reason.
Of the others, pick perhaps three or four to round out the stories of note (since they are all so similar, you are likely to cover the basics tropes of all of them in this way). For my sake, I'd say "The Former Passengers" [for its relatively unique setting: being a river boat], "If You See Her Face" [for its brushing up against a proper sense of dread/evil], and "The Khitmatgar" [for its sense of oddity].
This puts me at recommending roughly 10 of the 20 stories. Some for part, some for the whole. Of the remaining, only a couple are bad with most simply being trifles (and occasionally repetitive trifles). However, as an example of a ghost story scribe that is somewhat forgotten; as an example of a writer who started writing at a time where ghost stories were a bit more cozy and unoffensive but who wrote long enough to see a degree of change in what sort of stories were acceptable; and as an example of a writer who lived in India and so had first-hand experiences (however biased) with race relations and the inner workings of the British circles: there is a lot of stuff to chew upon...just not so much in the stories, themselves.
If more of the stories were anything but rote Victorian/Post-Victorian ghost stories - in which a person, probably of money/eminence, comes to a new place for a job or research or vacation or whatever reason, is broadly warned of something "evil" or "bothersome", and then has a [likely singular] encounter with that presence and is forced to flee or feel terrified or generally out of sorts - then it might at least be upheld as interest in that way. Alas, the majority of the stories were well within the pattern. There is death and bloodshed, but much of it is in the past and the present is largely a witness to something that is perhaps scary to the characters inside the tale but not to the reader trying to enjoy it (unless said reader is easily spooked by people in period costume or steps walking across the floor when, gasp, there is no one there to be seen!). This affliction, making ghosts mostly an exercise in experience rather than a tangible entity that brushes the reader against the sense of awe and unknown, holds back at least half of these stories. Someone shows up in a bungalow, which contains a veranda, has a run in with a chowkedar or ignores the warnings of their ayah, has some run-in with another white Brit that gives some warning (and/or some local tries to give a warning), and then wakes up at night (or during a storm) to see something ghostly, possibly, but not always, ghastly.
As an aside, the number of bungalows with verandas in these collection are so fast that you would not be wrong to start associating these terms as something like Croker's "cyclopean" and "eldritch".
There are times, however, where Croker bucks against her own common refrain and these are much more of interest. "The Red Bungalow," the next-to-last story in the collection, is the finest overall, and potentially worth the price of admission for the whole collection (I paid $.99). The warnings are interlaced into the narrative to become increasingly dire, building up a sense of dread better than the more singular ones in the other stories. The ghostly/other-worldly sighting is actually denied the reader, we only see its effects: the death of a beloved child, the mental destruction of another, and the death of a pet monkey. In fact, we do not know at all what the entity is. It is somehow linked to what might be an old temple long gone to ruin, but is it simply - in the usual Croker manner - merely an echo of some past crime or is some ancient malevolence?
The hidden-being-worse-than-the-seen plays partially in "An Unexpected Invitation," as well, for though we know roughly the shape of the spooks, how exactly the protagonist meets his doom is only given as guesswork, as is the real meaning behind the visitation.
There are two stories of people actually heeding the warning in their dreams rather than succumbing to fatalism (see: the dream-omen stories of E.F. Benson if you prefer fatalism in your doom). Neither are spectacular, though "The Red Woolen Necktie" is at least sort of charming.
Several shine because they do dig into social customs or contrivances. "La Carcassonne" is possibly the story of a dour "young maid" who is possessed by a rowdy French woman...or the story of a youngish woman who has been forced to live too frugally and under too watchful an eye who goes a bit wild at her own freedom (Croker wants you know that both are equally likely, though only one is true: which is up to you). "Little Brass God" is more Henry- than M.R. James, but the jealous older woman at the end of her [husband's] career spiting a younger does have a touch of "Casting the Runes" about it (even if the ending is more genteel). Likewise, though "The First Comer" is more of a normal ghost story, the interesting parts are in the social drama which shows Croker's tendency to insert digressions into a story for no reason other than to make comment of social mores. It also contains one of Croker's best lines in this entire collection: "I am an old maid, and am not the least ashamed of the circumstance. Pray, why should women not be allowed the benefit of doubt like men, and be supposed to remain single from choice? I can assure that it is not from want of offers..."
And "The Creaking Board," to give a rounding out of this class of story, is a yarn of the old "joke/bet gone awry" weaving. It spends too long foreshadowing the obvious outcome, but at least the overlong build up gives it time to make you feel properly bad for the young, lovesick accidental manslaughter..er.
One of the most problematic of all the stories, "The North Verandah," [I fuppin' told you she dropped this word a lot], is partially about an abusive slave owner who is killed in the days building to the American Civil War, and can very nearly be thought of as anti-slavery, except it is also heavily dependent on the reader's fear of a hulking, very-dark-skinned black slave. Note, of the several stories in which a servant, slave, or lower-class person commits murder, this is [I think] the only one where anything other greed or uncontrollable emotions was given as reason.
Of the others, pick perhaps three or four to round out the stories of note (since they are all so similar, you are likely to cover the basics tropes of all of them in this way). For my sake, I'd say "The Former Passengers" [for its relatively unique setting: being a river boat], "If You See Her Face" [for its brushing up against a proper sense of dread/evil], and "The Khitmatgar" [for its sense of oddity].
This puts me at recommending roughly 10 of the 20 stories. Some for part, some for the whole. Of the remaining, only a couple are bad with most simply being trifles (and occasionally repetitive trifles). However, as an example of a ghost story scribe that is somewhat forgotten; as an example of a writer who started writing at a time where ghost stories were a bit more cozy and unoffensive but who wrote long enough to see a degree of change in what sort of stories were acceptable; and as an example of a writer who lived in India and so had first-hand experiences (however biased) with race relations and the inner workings of the British circles: there is a lot of stuff to chew upon...just not so much in the stories, themselves.
June 22, 2023
Not that scary. I hoped for more...I guess when you've read books like Haunting Adeline, Sick fux and Kill Switch, then it takes a lot to scare you. Moreover, there are plenty indian writers that I remember from my scholastic fare days that have delivered scarier narratives. Maybe this was scary for late 19th century people, specifically women of that time.
- M. M
- M. M
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