Montague James and the Hounds (Bookhounds of London)

I did say we'd be back to normal this week.

I expect most of you have heard of M.R. James, academic, antiquarian and author of some of the finest ghost stories ever published. For those who haven't, there's plenty of chances to rectify that deficiency; you can even get the books for free on Gutenberg, and there are any number of people doing readings of his work on podcasts and YouTube. OutsideXbox's Luke Westaway is quite good at it, if you have an hour or so to spare. Christopher Lee is even better, but his stuff can be difficult to find.

M.R. James originally created these stories as live performances for his friends at Christmas, a tradition that goes back a long, long way but is probably best remembered through Dickens' Christmas Carol. James then published them to great acclaim, and enjoys the best distinction a writer could hope for; his work is still in print almost a century after his death.

This time out I want to focus on two of his stories and talk about their Bookhounds implications. I shan't spoil. If you haven't read these stories please seek them out.

The first is Martin's Close, first published in 1911's More Ghost Stories.

Some few years back I was staying with the rector of a parish in the West, where the society to which I belong owns property. I was to go over some of this land: and, on the first morning of my visit, soon after breakfast, the estate carpenter and general handyman, John Hill, was announced as in readiness to accompany us. The rector asked which part of the parish we were to visit that morning. The estate map was produced, and when we had showed him our round, he put his finger on a particular spot. 'Don't forget,' he said, 'to ask John Hill about Martin's Close when you get there. I should like to hear what he tells you.' 'What ought he to tell us?' I said. 'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the rector, 'or, if that is not exactly true, it will do till lunch-time.' And here he was called away ...

It transpires there's not just a story, there's a criminal trial.

I made search in the more obvious places. The trial seemed to be nowhere reported. A newspaper of the time, and one or more news-letters, however, had some short notices, from which I learnt that, on the ground of local prejudice against the prisoner (he was described as a young gentleman of a good estate), the venue had been moved from Exeter to London; that Jeffreys had been the judge, and death the sentence, and that there had been some 'singular passages' in the evidence. Nothing further transpired till September of this year. A friend who knew me to be interested in Jeffreys then sent me a leaf torn out of a second-hand bookseller's catalogue with the entry: JEFFREYS, JUDGE: Interesting old MS. trial for murder, and so forth, from which I gathered, to my delight, that I could become possessed, for a very few shillings, of what seemed to be a verbatim report, in shorthand, of the Martin trial.

OK, let's talk about this.

Bookhounds - and horror games in general - sometimes treat manuscripts as though every single one of them's a Necronomicon, bound in human skin and dripping with evil. That's far from being so. People publish anything and everything. Most of it is rubbish. That's why the Hounds are always on the lookout for some unmemorable 18th century tat that they can rip apart and use the binding and papers for something more valuable. However, one man's rubbish is another man's gold. 

Here we have someone who's looking for the transcript of a trial. They can't find a copy anywhere, and it seems there may not be one. Yet by chance a transcript turns up in a second-hand bookseller's shop. It might have been that simple, but James adds an extra hurdle: the text is in the court reporter's shorthand, and not only that but a 17th century version of shorthand. The narrator has to find someone who can translate it so the narrator can have a copy typed out. It's a very neat touch that lends authenticity to the story, and doesn't take more than a sentence to describe.

The second piece is from Two Doctors, which first appears in A Thin Ghost And Others (1920).

It is a very common thing, in my experience, to find papers shut up in old books; but one of the rarest things to come across any such that are at all interesting. Still it does happen, and one should never destroy them unlooked at. Now it was a practice of mine before the war occasionally to buy old ledgers of which the paper was good, and which possessed a good many blank leaves, and to extract these and use them for my own notes and writings. One such I purchased for a small sum in 1911. It was tightly clasped, and its boards were warped by having for years been obliged to embrace a number of extraneous sheets. Three-quarters of this inserted matter had lost all vestige of importance for any living human being: one bundle had not. That it belonged to a lawyer is certain, for it is endorsed: The strangest case I have yet met, and bears initials, and an address in Gray's Inn. It is only materials for a case, and consists of statements by possible witnesses. The man who would have been the defendant or prisoner seems never to have appeared. The dossier is not complete, but, such as it is, it furnishes a riddle in which the supernatural appears to play a part. You must see what you can make of it.

Again, legal papers are the focus of the narrative, but look at how they're introduced. Not even as a manuscript; they're shoved into a ledger and forgotten about, until the narrator picks the ledger up for next to nothing. Three quarters of the inserted matter is useless, which is what's going to happen to the Hounds more often than not; all those bits and bobs they pick up in estate sales and so on, and most of it rubbish. Yet every so often there is something interesting 'and one should never destroy them unlooked at.'

So what can we extract from this?

1) Occult and by extension Mythos lore can appear anywhere.

2) Since Occult and Mythos lore is inextricably interwound with human history, it will appear everywhere, and that includes the most mundane of places. 

3) People publish all sorts of things, and while most of it is uninteresting rubbish you never know where you might find that next scrap of useful material.

4) In the 1930s and previous, people saved damn near everything. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw, never mind bought, a second-hand writing ledger in an antiquarian shop. Most of them barely had space for the books, never mind the not-quite-books. I doubt I'd find one at the Spreadeagle, and frankly if you can't find one there you can't find one anywhere.

With all that in mind:

A Peculiar Gazette

Back issues of old newspapers are often of interest to collectors; you never know when you'll find someone potty on the subject of , say, Huddersfield and desperate for new material. 

The Hounds find a bound collection of early 1800s publication The Star Gazette, best remembered for its series on the London Poor; they had a discount Mayhew on staff who liked writing social commentary but lacked academic rigor. The paper's been defunct since 1868, and the collection's a potential squiz.

There's a section towards the beginning of the collection that has some extra papers interspersed, and it becomes clear to anyone who examines the papers that they're about a scandal that was big in the 1830s: the Thevenot Abduction. 

A fortune-hunting 30-year-old bankrupt, Eustace Thevenot, wanted to marry into money, and did so by abducting 15-year-old textile heiress Devony Walker. He managed to spirit her away from her boarding school and then got her alone at the Thevenot family castle in Scotland, where he persuaded her that her father had consented to the marriage. The pair went from Scotland to Calais, but her outraged family tracked them down and prosecuted. Thevenot went to prison and died there. Devony, released from her marriage, had a short and unhappy life. She married again, and died in childbirth in her early 20s. 

Oral History, Occult or similar, 1 point spend: Devony's story has a peculiar postscript. She was never buried. There is no body in the family crypt; someone stole it. This was hushed up at the time, but became part of local ghost lore after her death. Nobody knows where Eustace Thevenot is buried. Presumably in an unmarked prison grave.

[Loosely based on the real-world Shrigley abduction.]

The Star Gazette has the bare-bones account of the abduction and trial. 

The interspersed papers are an unpublished statement from Devony Walker about her experiences at Thevenot Castle, on a tidal islet up in the Highlands. The statement was collected as part of trial prep, but never introduced at the actual trial. 

In game terms the Walker Papers have the following stats:

1 pool point Occult (skim) or +1 Occult (pore over), no Mythos, no spells. Effectively a short treatise on Geomancy, as understood by Walker who was the subject of various Geomantic rituals that Thevenot tried to cast on her while the two of them were alone at the Castle. 

To anyone without a Mythos pool these rituals seem nonsensical. Thevenot was trying to gain the attention of a water horse or kelpie, and get the creature to bless the marriage.

To anyone with a Mythos pool Thevenot was clearly trying to evoke the spirit of (or essence, or gain the approval of - it's not clear from the text) a sacred dragon, or Lloligor, that in times past had guided the Thevenot family.  

Whether the reader has a Mythos pool or not, it's clear from the papers that Thevenot had a library of occult texts at the Castle, some of which were scarce and valuable even at the time and will be much more valuable in the 1930s. 

Moreover a quick study of History, Library Use or similar (no point spend needed) soon realizes that Thevenot Castle's last occupant, Dacre Thevenot, died in 1916 at the Battle of Ginchy. There's no mention of an estate sale. Those books could be sitting all alone up there in Scotland, waiting to be pinched ...

So long as the Hounds are willing to risk the wrath of the kelpie, of course. But who believes in kelpies?

That's it for me this week. Enjoy!