“Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” was written by M.R. James and first appeared in National Review (Mar. 1895). Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was the Dean and later provost of King's College in Cambridge and was in his lifetime one of the foremost medievalists in Europe. He is known today as one of the best writers of the supernatural of any century. Although his name is not as widely known as that of H.P. Lovecraft or Henry James (see: “The Turn of the Screw”), the horror cognoscenti esteem his work and see him as one of the first modern writers of supernatural fiction. “Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book” is one of James’ best stories.

In the spring of 1883 an English academic, Dennistoun, arrives at the decayed town of St. Bertrand de Comminges. St. Bertrand is not far from Toulouse and was the site of a bishopric until the French Revolution. Dennistoun has come to St. Bertrand to see its cathedral and to take notes and photographs. To do so he needs the company of the sacristan, a wizened old man who has a “curious, furtive or rather hunted and oppressed air”¹ about him; he keeps looking over behind him, and his shoulders are perpetually hunched, “as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy.”²The verger's nervousness does not infect Dennistoun, who is too absorbed in his photographs and note taking to really become anxious, but he does notice two oddities. Dennistoun later tells the narrator, “Once...I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my sacristan...‘It is he--that is--it is no one; the door is locked,’ was all he said....”³ Dennistoun also examines a painting of St. Bertrand; the picture is faded with age, but the caption of the painting reads, in Latin, “How St. Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought to strangle.”

When the day ends the sacristan invites Dennistoun to his home: “If monsieur is amateur des vieux livres, I have at home something that might interest him.”⁴ Dennistoun, thrilled at the possibility of finding some invaluable and previously lost manuscript, agrees and accompanies the sacristan to his home. The sacristan's daughter, when they come home, is clearly afraid for them, and when told he was laughing in the church is terrified. The sacristan shows Dennistoun a book, a large folio, possibly bound in the late seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauleon on the front. The folio is obviously valuable, containing rare material. But in the back of the book are two sheets of paper which Canon Alberic used for his own work. On one sheet is a plan of part of the church, along with writing in Latin: “Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.”⁵

The book also has a painting of King Solomon confronting something awful. Four of Solomon's troops, quite horrified, surround the something, and a fifth soldier lies dead on the ground; Solomon himself is horrified and disgusted but is confident in his power over the thing. The creature is skeletal but muscular, covered with coarse, thick black hair, taloned claws, burning yellow eyes, and in sum is an “appalling effigy.” Dennistoun is frightened by the picture but is determined to have the book, which the sacristan lets go for the relatively small sum of two hundred and fifty francs. Dennistoun tries to pay more, but the sacristan will only accept two hundred and fifty francs. When Dennistoun leaves the sacristan's daughter presses on him a silver crucifix. Back at the inn the landlady is obviously alarmed at hearing that Dennistoun bought a book from the sacristan. Dennistoun reads the book in his room, charmed by it, but also gripped by a growing feeling of discomfort, resulting in “a conviction that there was someone behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall.”⁶ The crucifix the sacristan's daughter gave him is a bit heavy and so he takes it off. And then he notices an object on the red cloth next to his left elbow. He can't figure out what it is, at first, so he looks closely at it and realizes that it is the hand of the creature in the picture in the book. The creature resolves itself out of the darkness and stands up behind Dennistoun's seat as he flies out of his chair. He is horrified, seized with “the intensest physical fear and the most profound mental loathing,”⁷ and grabs the crucifix; there is a confused moment of the creature moving at him and he screaming, and then he passes out. Two serving men rush in and find him unconscious but alone.

The next morning the sacristan comes in and says, “It is he--it is he! I have seen him myself.” On being questioned he will only say, “Deux fois je l'ai vu; mille fois je l'ai senti.” (“I've seen him twice; I've felt him a thousand times”). Dennistoun later quotes Ecclesiasticus: “Some spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore strokes.”⁸ On the back of the frightful drawing are lines which read

The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by Alberic de Mauleon...o Lord, make haste to help me...Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy. I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694; soon I shall see it for the last time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet....⁹

There are certain names to conjure with among fans of late Victorian and Edwardian horror writers: Algernon Blackwood (whose work is outside the chronological scope of this book), Lord Dunsany (whose work is outside the chronological scope of this book), and Arthur Machen (see: The Dyson Adventures, “The Great God Pan,” The Little People Stories, “The Novel of the White Powder,” “The White People”), among a select few others. M.R. James is at their head, and deservedly so. James’ work can be described as “donnish horror,” in the same way that the work of Michael Innes and other similar writers is described as “donnish mysteries,” but that is not a particularly helpful way to describe James’ work. James puts his knowledge of antiquities to use and often has academics as his main characters, but rather than using an academic setting James usually sends his professorial protagonists out into the world. James’ work is erudite, but he carries his knowledge lightly so that one isn’t bludgeoned with it, but rather informed by it. James’ narrative style is conversational, the phrasing is modern and naturalistic, and his descriptions, though short, are vivid enough to be memorable, and in some cases quotable. He does well at building an ominous environment, so that the reader’s fright builds as the danger does, and revealing that horror at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. James also usually has his protagonist/victim warned about what is to befall him, but the protagonist ignores the warning(s) so that the reader knows what is coming, but the protagonist does not or thinks it unlikely. In James’ hands this does not make the story predictable, but instead heightens the anticipation.

All of these aspects of James’ work are on display in “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book.” Dennistoun is warned about what’s coming but ignores the warnings, which adds to the scare when the demon of the air appears. There are a couple of chilling moments in the story, but the appearance of the demon behind the chair in which Dennistoun is sitting is the best of them. James adds a different type of terror in the picture in the folio and the Latin writing on the picture. In what the writing implies about St. Bertrand and the demon of the night, the reader will likely receive a less visceral and more intellectual chill. Interestingly, James lets the reader know relatively early in the story that Dennistoun survives whatever is going to occur to him, so that the prospect of his death is not one of the concerns of the readers. This in some small way reduces the terror of the story, although it is plenty scary as it is.

The period from, roughly, 1880 to 1920 and especially from 1894 to 1907, is often described as the “Golden Age” of English horror (see: “A Pair of Hands”). Four men–James, Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and Arthur Machen, what can be called the “Machen Quartet”–essentially revolutionized English horror literature. James’ particular contribution was to address the real-life horrors that James’ England was facing and project them into fictional spaces, where they could be suitably handled.

The England of James was the England of Oxford and Cambridge, the enclosed, privileged world of academics and the wealthy. This world was under threat by forces more real than the terrors Machen wrote about: modernity and the inevitable European war. James’ response was to use the traditional horrors he knew so well, ghosts and frights and monsters from the past, as fictional stand-ins for those real-world threats. Scientists and experts were upsetting traditions and accepted wisdom with new, purely scientific methods and worldviews. James’ response in his work was to show the “limits of academic expertise and scientific analysis; they focus upon the terror of moments when the rational worldview fails and collapses.” Though an antiquarian, James always used the modern day for his settings. James insisted that his “actors” must be seen “going about their ordinary business,” implicitly in the present day. Similarly, the dated language of Victorian horror stories was disposed of in what Brian Stableford calls James’ “painstakingly realistic fashion.”¹⁰

One can see all of this in “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” which if not the archetypal M.R. James story¹¹ is certainly in the top three.

Print: M.R. James, Collected Ghost Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Darryl Jones, “Introduction,” in M.R. James, Collected Ghost Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

¹ M.R. James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary (London: E. Arnold, 1905), 4.

² James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 5.

³ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 7.

⁴ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 10.

⁵ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 16.

⁶ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 22.

⁷ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 25.

⁸ James, ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 27.

⁹ James, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” 27.

¹⁰ Nevins, Horror Fiction in the 20^th Century, 10.

¹¹ Arguably “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” is, despite its non-academic setting.