An Evening’s Entertainment by M R James

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An Evening’s Entertainment is one of the less well-known ghost stories by M R James. It appeared in his 1925 collection A Warning to the Curious and Other Stories. The main character in a James story is often a fusty academic type, a sort of exaggerated version of himself. That is the general image of his work, but it obscures the fact that the range of characters and settings in his stories is actually rather wider than that.

Here, a James-style narrator opens the story and laments the fact that the old story books are not very specific about ghosts or folklore. He then goes on to imagine how a grandmother might tell a spooky story to the grandchildren in front of the fire before bed, hence the title. The story is indeed, in a phrase that appears early on, “a pleasing terror”.

One of the children has picked blackberries from a lane that the grandmother was told to avoid by her grandmother. Why is there a clump of fruit bushes in the lane? Because there was a cottage there once, which was the site of strange goings-on. It was inhabited by a man who didn’t work and didn’t mix much in the village. One day he brought an odd young man back to live with him. The pair were often seen out and about at all hours in the woods and on the downs above the village.

On the downs there is a human figure carved into the landscape, and many ancient burial mounds. Something the young man lets slip in a conversation suggests that on their nocturnal jaunts there, this unlikely pair are not alone. They seem to be familiar with the appearance of the people who lived there before the Romans.

This is just the beginning of a series of gruesome events, involving pagan worship, violent death, burial at a crossroads and the “lord of flies”, events long remembered in the village giving the patch of ground in the lane its bad reputation.

There are only two carved human figures in England, the Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. I wonder which one James had in mind? Something about this story suggests Sussex to me, perhaps the fact that the figure is referred to as “the old man on the hill”.

James wrote in the preface to his collected ghost stories that he had tried to make his ghosts “act in ways not inconsistent with the rules of folklore”. This particular story is almost the definitive expression of what has come to be known as “folk horror”. It shows, like many of his other tales, that James was particularly skilled at evoking the feel of the English landscape. It rather reminds me of John Masefield’s poem Up on the Downs. I also wonder whether it might have been an influence on Jocelyn Brooke and The Image of a Drawn Sword.  

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

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I have given this poem the title by which it is generally known, because Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)himself did not give it an English title. As an Oxford man of that era, he preferred a Latin one, Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, from the poet Horace. It translates roughly as“the shortness of life forbids us long hopes”.

It was used very memorably in the TV series The Durrells, where it was recited by Keeley Hawes as Louisa Durrell. She was trying to make her squabbling children understand that their life on Corfu was an idyllic sojourn that would not last forever.

Sadly but somewhat appropriately for the author of a poem about the brevity of life, Dowson, who was associated with the decadent movement, died of alcoholism at the age of thirty–two.

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
   Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
   We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
   Within a dream.

The Poplar Field by William Cowper

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They came and did some work on the tall plane trees in my road back in the spring. Men swarmed up on ropes and cut off all the small branches, leaving the trees black and stumpy against the blue sky.

Those trees are so high, they must be older than a lot of the local buildings that surround them. I don’t know just why it had to be done; there will be green shoots again, in time, I thought, but will they come this year?

At least the trees, even in their denuded state, were still there. During the summer, helped by the rain perhaps, they became bushy and green again, and now the leaves are starting to change colour.

You can see why the whole episode made me think of the poem below. Writing towards the end of his life, William Cowper (1731–1800) uses the image of the felled trees replaced by newly grown ones to reflect on the passing of time and life itself, and the impermanence of all things. 

The Poplar Field by William Cowper

The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charmed me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

’Tis a sight to engage me if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.

The Otterbury Incident by C Day Lewis

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I have written elsewhere about A Question of Proof but that was not the only school-set mystery novel by C Day Lewis. The Otterbury Incident was published in 1948 under his own name, rather than his Nicholas Blake pen name, and is aimed at readers of the same age as the characters. It concerns a group of schoolboys who take on a gang of criminals involved in the black market. It is set in the years immediately after the second world war, and the title refers to a bombsite where the boys play an elaborate war game.

If that sounds a bit like an Enid Blyton story, it is much better written, more believable and realistic. Indeed, the narrator is one of the boys. It is also quite funny, particularly when the boys dream up various schemes for making money, after one of them smashes a school window with a football and is ordered to pay for its repair by the headmaster.   

There are hints that the quiet country town of Otterbury where the action takes place is based on Sherborne in Dorset, where Day Lewis himself was a schoolboy, albeit at a rather grander school than the one described here. The town has been untouched by the war, except for one stray bomb that fell, leaving the patch of waste ground known as the “incident”.

It was the first book we were given to read in English when I went to grammar school. I was never really one for fantasy, at that young age preferring stories of people the same age as me doing interesting things. After all, the war games that the boys played in the story were rather similar to the kind of thing we got up to in the local woods. I was brought up on Arthur Ransome, of course. Indeed, I might not now be writing this if my mother had not read Swallows and Amazons aloud to me when I had measles at the age of seven. As the narrator of The Otterbury Incident speculates, where does a story begin?  

Readers of a similar vintage will remember Puffin books with illustrations by Edward Ardizzonne, and this was one of them. A note at the front reveals that it was actually a novelisation of a French film. I had not thought about The Otterbury Incident for a long time, but having enjoyed the Nicholas Blake novels so much, I started to research Day Lewis’ other writings, and discovered that I had actually read him many years earlier.

Now I have a Puffin copy, found via the internet. It is still an enjoyable read, and powerfully nostalgic for me, as it is the same edition I read all those years ago. It was out of print when I was looking for a copy, and I assumed that it was now considered rather old-fashioned. I am pleased to find it has since been re-issued as a Puffin classic, complete with the Ardizzonne illustrations, for a new generation to enjoy.

Day Lewis’ poetry is not so well known today as that of his contemporaries W H Auden and Louis Macneice. It’s strange now to think that when I read The Otterbury Incident at school, he was the poet laureate. Around that time, I went with my parents to see the film Battle of Britain. In those days, prestigious films had a printed programme, like the theatre. In the  programme for this one, there was a poem by Day Lewis, which I have been able to find, again, thanks to the wonders of the internet. I think it is very good and, like a lot of writing by Day Lewis, deserves to be better known today.

The Idlers by Edmund Blunden

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Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) is remembered as one of the soldier-poets of the first world war. He served on the Western Front from May 1916 until the end of the war and, like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, was awarded the Military Cross. After the war, he became an academic and writer.

There is an emphasis on the rural world in much of his work, and his prose memoir Undertones of War has a particular feel for the shattered landscapes of Belgium and France. One of his later books is Cricket Country, an examination of the rural roots of cricket and its abiding significance in English culture.

Gypsies with their brightly painted caravans were a bit of a thing in early twentieth century British art, featuring in works by Augustus John, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and others. The Idlers was published in 1922. One can imagine that the gypsy lifestyle might have seemed attractive to Blunden after his time in the trenches. It’s almost as if he is talking about “dropping out” before that was even a concept.

There’s a strong sense here of a less-developed, less crowded country, where there was room for this sort of life.  

The Idlers by Edmund Blunden

The gipsies lit their fires by the chalk-pit gate anew,
And the hoppled horses supped in the further dusk and dew;
The gnats flocked round the smoke like idlers as they were
And through the goss* and bushes the owls began to churr.

An ell above the woods the last of sunset glowed
With a dusky gold that filled the pond beside the road;
The cricketers had done, the leas all silent lay,
And the carrier’s clattering wheels went past and died away.

The gipsies lolled and gossiped, and ate their stolen swedes,
Made merry with mouth-organs, worked toys with piths of reeds:
The old wives puffed their pipes, nigh as black as their hair,
And not one of them all seemed to know the name of care.

* goss is a form of gorse 

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden

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Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden was published in 1939 and is an extraordinary novel. It is the story of a group of nuns who travel to the Himalayas to try and establish a convent in an abandoned palace there. Not the most promising material for a compelling story, you might think, and yet it is an intense reading experience quite unlike anything else. It’s tempting to see it as a sort of metaphor for empire, but I think it is above all a psychological novel.    

What makes the novel so powerful is that it seems to exert the same hypnotic, trance-like effect over the reader that the environment does over the nuns. The sense of place is so strong that the reader feels they have been transported to the convent in the mountains, with its bell hanging between two wooden poles at the edge of the precipice. Rumer Godden shares with other British writers who spent their formative years in India, such as Rudyard Kipling and Lawrence Durrell, a particular ability to render light and colour in words.

We are in the far north of India, beyond Darjeeling, an extreme environment in the shadow of Kanchenjunga, so high up that the nuns at first experience altitude sickness. The constant wind and the bright light reflected from the mountain snow seem to cast a spell over them so that their sense of time changes and they find themselves daydreaming. It is difficult to keep their attention on their work or their religious obligations.

Nor do the nuns understand the local people, who are more like Tibetans than Indians. Mr Dean, the local agent of empire, warns them that they must not treat any child in their clinic who is actually ill. The locals are used to children dying, he tells them, but if a child who has been treated dies later on, they will blame the nuns. He thinks the whole enterprise is doomed to fail. “I give you until the rains come”. The nuns find their beliefs and ideas unravelling as the environment overwhelms them. Sister Philippa becomes obsessed with planting flowers rather than vegetables in the garden. Sister Blanche becomes so attached to the children who come to the clinic that she longs for a baby of her own.   

Mr Dean is the only other European in the area. The nuns are dependent on him for help and his masculine presence is a disruption in other ways. They do not consider him to be a good man by their standards. He drinks too much, for one thing. He persuades the convent to take in Kanchi, a local girl who may or may not have been his girlfriend. He has “gone native” but this means that he completely understands the way of life and attitudes of the locals, and their pantheistic religion. He believes any attempt at conversion to Christianity to be  pointless. “They think God lives in the mountain”. This is emphasised by the presence of the holy man who sits motionless under his tree overlooking the convent.

There is a good deal of repressed sexuality beneath the surface here. There is a sort of battle of wills going on between Mr Dean and the Mother Superior, Sister Clodagh, but also a feeling that she is attracted to him. The deeply disturbed Sister Ruth makes no attempt to hide her feelings for Mr Dean. Another disruptive masculine presence is the young prince who comes to the convent to complete his education. He wears brightly coloured clothes and he is fond of the perfume Black Narcissus, leading one of the nuns to make that his nickname.

Sister Clodagh finds herself remembering things she has not thought about for many years. Although he looks nothing like him, the young prince reminds her of the man she thought she was going to marry, back home in Ireland. It was finding out that he intended to go to America without her that led to her decision to join the order. These memories are so strong that she is living half in the present with all its difficulties and responsibilities and half in the past. Much of the novel is seen from her point of view, so we experience her sense of memories swamping the present and this is very skillfully conveyed by Rumer Godden.

In the end, the whole situation is too much for all of them, and the mission fails, as the previous mission run by monks failed earlier. Mr Dean has been proved right. The nuns depart a year after they came, leaving the lonely grave of one of the order, their presence in the mountains destined to become just a distant memory for the locals, who will carry on much as before.   

When I Have Fears by Noel Coward

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Some years ago, a dear friend of mine from schooldays died prematurely. He was blessed with an exceptional sense of humour. It is one of the great regrets of my life that I had lost contact with him somewhat.

I wish I had known this poem in those sad days after the funeral. The last three lines of the second verse sum up my feelings exactly. I am sure many people have gained comfort from this poem over the years. It uses straightforward words to express universal emotions.

It may be a surprise that such a poignant meditation on life and death came from the pen of Noel Coward, of all people. There again, one of his best and most enduring plays is Blithe Spirit, which suggests that there may be some kind of survival after death, as do the last two lines here.

Now I think of it, the words blithe spirit apply rather well to my late friend. As someone else who died too young said: “Only the bores stay to the end of the party”.  

When I Have Fears by Noel Coward

When I have fears, as Keats had fears,
Of the moment I’ll cease to be
I console myself with vanished years
Remembered laughter, remembered tears,
And the peace of the changing sea.

When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad
That my life is so nearly done
It gives me comfort to dwell upon
Remembered friends who are dead and gone
And the jokes we had and the fun.

How happy they are I cannot know,
But happy I am who loved them so.

Nocturne by Crosbie Garstin

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Crosbie Garstin? I had never heard of him when I came across this poem in an early twentieth century anthology. Something about Nocturne said “South Africa” to me. I wondered whether he had been there, perhaps as a soldier of the Boer War.

A little research revealed that Crosbie Garstin (1887–1930) was a poet of the first world war and also a novelist. He came from Cornwall and before the war had lived an adventurous, outdoor life in many different parts of the world, including a spell farming in South Africa. He died in a mysterious boating accident in Devon at the age of forty-two.

The poem uses very concentrated language to capture beautifully the feeling of sleeping outdoors under a starry sky round a dying camp fire.

Something about the sense of peace, freedom and closeness to nature is very appealing in these uncertain times, when none of us can be sure about travelling anywhere again.  

Nocturne by Crosbie Garstin

The red flame flowers bloom and die,
   The embers puff a golden spark,
Now and again a horse’s eye
   Shines like a topaz in the dark.

A prowling jackal jars the hush,
   The drowsy oxen chump and sigh —
The ghost moon lifts above the bush
   And creeps across the starry sky.

Low in the south the “Cross” is bright,
   And sleep comes dreamless, undefiled,
Here in the blue and silver night,
   In the star-chamber of the Wild.       

The Water Lady by Thomas Hood

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Thomas Hood (1799–1845) is not really one of the famous names of the romantic era of poetry. His best-known poem today is probably “I Remember, I Remember”, but I have chosen the one below instead.

It uses simple, straightforward language with short lines and almost gives the impression it was written for children. With a haunting, dreamlike feel, it is like a compendium of some of the preoccupations of the romantic poets: the night, the feminine, water, the moment of vision.

It has a strongly visual quality and reads like the verbal equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. I like to think it inspired a painting by a forgotten Victorian artist that is still out there somewhere.

The Water Lady by Thomas Hood

Alas, the moon should ever beam
To show what man should never see!
I saw a maiden on a stream,
And fair was she!

I stayed awhile, to see her throw
Her tresses back, that all beset
The fair horizon of her brow
With clouds of jet.

I stayed a little while to view
Her cheek, that wore in place of red
The bloom of water, tender blue,
Daintily spread.

I stayed to watch, a little space,
Her parted lips if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face
With many a ring.

And still I stayed a little more,
Alas! she never comes again;
I throw my flowers from the shore,
And watch in vain.

I know my life will fade away,
I know that I must vainly pine,
For I am made of mortal clay,
But she’s divine!

Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin

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I think Sunny Prestatyn is one of my favourite Larkin poems. It was included in his 1964 collection, The Whitsun Weddings. I like the humorous tone, with that hint of something darker underneath. There is a disturbing suggestion of real-life violence here. The life of the poster can be taken as the story of a human life.

I can see in my mind’s eye exactly the kind of railway poster that Larkin is referring to. They used bold, primary colours, clean lines and idealised imagery to make British seaside resorts look more attractive than they could ever possibly be in reality. It’s this gap between the ideal and grim reality that the poem is all about. Just how sunny is Prestatyn, on the north Welsh coast, anyway?

We are still in the steam era here, just. And what was Whitsun? It is the Christian festival of Pentecost, taking place eight weeks after Easter Sunday. It therefore moves in the calendar, as Easter does each year. In 1972 the Whitsun bank holiday was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, giving a more predictable date each year, and the word “Whitsun” began to move back into the past, just like steam trains.      

Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin

Come To Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.