Transcribe
Translate
Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
been." The uneducated characters are always more obtuse and insensitive to spectral disturbances or horrors than the scholars and gentry, but their very slow-wittedness is employed by James for dramatic effect. He avoids too the mistake many authors make of having certain characters hold up the action and irritate the reader by their logic-tight refusal to accept the evidence of their own eyes or their insistence on finding a "rational" explanation of ghostly phenomena. Their stupidity never extends that low The milieu of James' fiction, as we have seen, is that of contemporary life, and he considered this to be the best rule to follow in writing ghost stories: "I think that, as a rule, the setting should be fairly familiar and the majority of the characters and their talk such as you may meet or hear every day. A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" (8) Now this mode is not absolutely essential to success, but it is characteristic of the majority of successful stories: the belted knight who meets the spectre in the vaulted chamber and has to say 'By my halidom," or words to that effect, has little actuality about him. Anything, we feel, might have happened in the fifteenth century. No; the seer of ghosts must talk something like me and be dressed, if not in my fashion, yet not too much like a man in a pageant, if he is to enlist my sympathy. Wardour Street has no business here. (6) To be sure, James himself wrote ten historical stories, of which half are laid in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries and the rest in the early nineteenth. Their evocation of the spirit of bygone times is masterly, but James achieves it by realistic, not romantic, methods. The dialogue of his historical characters contains no more archaisms than are necessary for accuracy, and the scenes are described in a direct, naturalistic manner that makes the past seem as real and believable as our own lives. The seventeenth century trial scene in "Martin's Close", for example, gives a splendid picture of the times and of the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys (whose language James studied in the records of the State Trials). Jeffreys obviously intrigued James, for he mentions him again in "A Neighbor's Landmark" and obviously bases the character of the wicked judge in "The Rose Garden" on him too, though Jeffreys died in the Tower, not at the probably mythical village of Westfield. The atmospheric value of old historic scenes and associations, as well as his own interest in such things, led James to base his supernatural phenomena on events of a century or more ago in almost all of his stories, even those which take place in modern times. In describing antique objects or transcribing ancient documents, however, he gave full play to his knowledge of the queer antiquarian quirks that such things show to modern minds, for here he could afford to be romantic and grotesque in his style, the better to emphasize the strangeness and age of forgotten times. Looking back at the past from the present requires a different technique from putting oneself into the past. James's mimicry of speech worked just as well for the literary styles of different epochs too--witness the crabbed seventeenth century parable in "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance": However at long and at last they made shift to collect somewhat of this kind: that at first, while the Sun was -- 14 --
Saving...
prev
next
been." The uneducated characters are always more obtuse and insensitive to spectral disturbances or horrors than the scholars and gentry, but their very slow-wittedness is employed by James for dramatic effect. He avoids too the mistake many authors make of having certain characters hold up the action and irritate the reader by their logic-tight refusal to accept the evidence of their own eyes or their insistence on finding a "rational" explanation of ghostly phenomena. Their stupidity never extends that low The milieu of James' fiction, as we have seen, is that of contemporary life, and he considered this to be the best rule to follow in writing ghost stories: "I think that, as a rule, the setting should be fairly familiar and the majority of the characters and their talk such as you may meet or hear every day. A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" (8) Now this mode is not absolutely essential to success, but it is characteristic of the majority of successful stories: the belted knight who meets the spectre in the vaulted chamber and has to say 'By my halidom," or words to that effect, has little actuality about him. Anything, we feel, might have happened in the fifteenth century. No; the seer of ghosts must talk something like me and be dressed, if not in my fashion, yet not too much like a man in a pageant, if he is to enlist my sympathy. Wardour Street has no business here. (6) To be sure, James himself wrote ten historical stories, of which half are laid in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries and the rest in the early nineteenth. Their evocation of the spirit of bygone times is masterly, but James achieves it by realistic, not romantic, methods. The dialogue of his historical characters contains no more archaisms than are necessary for accuracy, and the scenes are described in a direct, naturalistic manner that makes the past seem as real and believable as our own lives. The seventeenth century trial scene in "Martin's Close", for example, gives a splendid picture of the times and of the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys (whose language James studied in the records of the State Trials). Jeffreys obviously intrigued James, for he mentions him again in "A Neighbor's Landmark" and obviously bases the character of the wicked judge in "The Rose Garden" on him too, though Jeffreys died in the Tower, not at the probably mythical village of Westfield. The atmospheric value of old historic scenes and associations, as well as his own interest in such things, led James to base his supernatural phenomena on events of a century or more ago in almost all of his stories, even those which take place in modern times. In describing antique objects or transcribing ancient documents, however, he gave full play to his knowledge of the queer antiquarian quirks that such things show to modern minds, for here he could afford to be romantic and grotesque in his style, the better to emphasize the strangeness and age of forgotten times. Looking back at the past from the present requires a different technique from putting oneself into the past. James's mimicry of speech worked just as well for the literary styles of different epochs too--witness the crabbed seventeenth century parable in "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance": However at long and at last they made shift to collect somewhat of this kind: that at first, while the Sun was -- 14 --
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
