MONTAGUE IN BUNTLEBURY

Being ardent admirers of the work of Montague Rhodes James, we can never resist his lure for long. And whilst we re-read his tales on a regular basis, there are times when speculation cannot be restrained. As the great man himself once wrote:

“It has amused me sometimes to think of the stories which have crossed my mind from time to time and never materialised properly. Never properly: for some of them I have actually written down, and they repose in a drawer somewhere.”

Thus we have occasionally dared to tread in something akin to that drawer, often putting our foot through the bottom of it. Today we explore (for the most part) MRJ’s tales of his fictional cathedral town of Buntlebury, in Suffolk.

1) A STROLL IN SUFFOLK

From various marginalia, Buntlebury seems to be based on the real location of Bury St Edmunds – ‘buntle’ being derived from the Old English byndele, ‘fastening together’ and ‘bury’ being an obvious borrowing, as well as a common place-name suffix, meaning an enclosure. The name Buntlebury is therefore one of MRJ’s wry internal references, as it binds together or encloses several of the stories over which he had some doubts.

We first encounter the location in an untitled and somewhat illegible draft (1891?) which demonstrates how James cannibalised his own ideas for later stories. Note here the casual mention of items and motifs which would feature in other, completed tales:

It could never be said of Mr Pilkington that he exhibited the slightest interest in an invigorating [investigative?] stroll – or even that he would stir himself as far as the cathedral close on foot should a hansom to be had, if truth be told. That his young photographically-minded friend Emmanuel Treves [Poldark, cross out] had persuaded him to contemplate a walking holiday through Suffolk was therefore an astonishment to many in Buntlebury.

“It is… quite a large county,” Mr Pilkington’s landlady confided, whilst measuring starch for her lodger’s collars. “Quite large indeed.”

Mr Pilkington made no reply, for his mind was aswim with the visions which young Treves had placed before him. Ancient and curious mounds which had scarcely been catalogued by the Suffolk Archaeological Society; quaint parish churches which held certain inscriptions, each a warning to the inquisitive, and most of all, the bookshops of Suffolk, which Treves assured him held folios of considerable arcane import, obscure yet canonical gospels, rare unexpurgated copies of the Scrapbook of Solomon, [several other book titles scratched over] and so much more…

And thus it was, despite all protestations and glimmers [dwimmers?] of commonsense, that Mr Pilkington and his companion left Buntlebury equipped only with an oddly inscribed whistle, a marvellously wrought figure of a cat from the cathedral pulpit, a stone carved with seven and a half eyes, a pair of rather heavy binoculars, and a sheet for any spare bed they might encounter.

“For indeed,” said Mr Pilkington to the bemused station-master as they waited for the train to East Bergholt, “What harm can befall us? Why, I have seen the most charming mezzotint of the old manor house which will be our ‘base camp’ as you old soldiers might call it – and scarce any of the figures depicted thereon show the slightest sign of having murdered any children…”

NOTE: Mr Pilkington, named presumably after James Pilkington (1520–1576), the first Protestant Bishop of Durham, does not appear again in MRJ’s stories, abandoned for a more knowledgeable character, Canon Foxthrup of Buntlebury Cathedral.

Canon Foxthrup is both a churchman and an antiquarian, establishing typical Jamesian themes, and turns up in a number of the partial papers. Two may be worthy of presentation, in supposed chronological order:

AN EPISODE NOT VERY NEAR BARCHESTER

It was on the very last day of April, 189- that I was summoned to call upon my noted antiquarian friend Canon Foxthrup of Buntlebury Cathedral. I was not displeased, for I also thought this an opportunity to discuss with him a recent find of mine – an intricately fashioned but defaced egg-strainer, possibly from the reign of Æthelflæd*, Lady of Mercia, unearthed from a long barrow in Derbyshire (where it should not, by its relatively younger nature, have been).

However, on being let into his modest rooms by his daily, I was informed that the revered gentleman was somewhat distressed; I naturally hastened to his study to enquire if I could be of assistance.

There, in the powder-dry air, and surrounded by empty shelves of polished walnut (the canon had a difficult relationship with books, but a fascination with dove-tail joints), I found him scratching away at his desk in a most urgent fashion with his quill pen; Indian ink was spattered over the other papers around him, and – indeed – over a goodly portion of his lined face. Even his extensive whiskers had taken on a more dusky hue than usual.

“Bettleworth, dear Mr Bettleworth,” he said, without looking up. “I am so grateful that you have come. Would you happen to have any silver upon you?”

Rummaging through my pockets, I happened upon a solitary ‘barmaid’s grief’ or double-florin, and passed the item to him – upon which act he slipped the coin onto his tongue, took a draught of ink from the un-stoppered bottle, and swallowed.

“My new doctor, you see.” He sighed. “It was only after I had paid a substantial retainer that I discovered he was a doctor of metallurgy. Still, you never know.”

“Ah, quite. Foxthrup, Mrs Crumble seemed to believe you of troubled spirit. A lack of suitable coinage, or…”

“Do you know the date, Bettleworth?”

I blinked. “Why, yes. It is the fruit of Phoenix dactylifera, a species of palm which is also popular for its fronds, and a source of cellulose – not to be confused with the red date, or Ziziphus jujuba, commonly grown in–”

“Precisely – the thirtieth of April!” The good canon sat back, spilling more ink. “The harbinger of that most curious practice, the Walpurgisnacht ‘sabbath’ conducted in mockery of St Walpurga’s intercessions against witchcraft, with–”

“Yes,” I cried. “That same Walpurga who died exactly one hundred and forty years before Æthelflæd of Mercia’s triumph over the town of Derby, and its release from Danish rule. Then… that curiously wrought egg-strainer I so recently discovered is intimately, even malignly, connected to your studies and to this baleful night!”

Canon Foxthrup peered at me over his glasses. “No. Not in any way whatsoever. Really, Bettleworth, you are such a fabulist. I called you because I had forgotten my Great-Aunt Hortense’s birthday, which is today, and was hoping that you might take my hastily written apology over to her in person.” He held up the stained sheet of paper.

Deflated, I sat down. “This isn’t going to make a very good story for the next college dinner, is it?” I said at last.

The kindly canon licked ink from his lower lip, and smiled. “I would opine, Bettleworth, that from my considerable experience as a scholar and a clergyman, it would be utter tosh.”

Which it is, dear reader.

*Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (c. 870 – 12 June 918) ruled Mercia in the English Midlands from 911 until her death. She was the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and his wife Ealhswith.

A TRUE TALE

In early September of 190-, Canon Foxthrup found himself one evening settled in the Senior Common Room at St Carapace’s College, a large sherry perched at his side. We may gainfully and accurately use that precise expression ‘found himself’, because his avowed intent had been to travel back to Buntlebury that same night. The sheer bustle of scholars after dinner, however, had propelled him hence and into a large leather armchair, leaving him little room – physically or otherwise – to object.

Opposite him, on a strangely carved stool which owed more to Queen Anne than it was likely to admit, sat the canon’s old acquaintance, Dr Rimble.

“I know you to be a chap of broad interests and an open mind.” said Rimble, “Did I ever tell you about the odd experience I had whilst out of college last year?”

The canon confessed that he had not been so honoured, grasped his glass of sherry – oloroso with a touch of woodworm – and prepared himself…

“It was in India, you know.” As he spoke, Rimble cleaned his half-moon glasses on a spare undergraduate essay. “I was on a bicycling holiday near the Nepalese border, a challenging endeavour (considering the terrain) which had already seen me through seven bicycles when I came across one of those dak bungalows which are common in the area. The khansamah, or caretaker, was a simple fellow, whose main interest was the removal of the Raj through the mathematical republicanism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau – but he claimed to cook an excellent kedgeree.

“When I had unpacked, I enquired as to there being any sites of interest in the area. The khansamah confessed that – excepting the ruined Jesuit station, a cursed temple dedicated to Agni the Living, a twelfth century shrine to Prester John, and a series of caves occupied by militant theosophists – there was little to see.

“I therefore resigned myself to an uneventful stay, yet the very first night, stretched out on a simple rattan bed, I was subject to the most curious tugging at my nightshirt, as if some person had urgent need of me. Barely awake, I opened my eyes, intending to chide the khansamah, but there was no one there! An ochre Indian moon threw its light across the empty room, and I hastened to look beneath the bed, but again, discovered nothing. I must have dozed off once more, but surely only moments later, I felt that tugging again.

“Recalling my friend Mr Pilkington’s disturbing experiences with a damp tea towel in a fisherman’s hut at Cleethorpes the previous term, I wondered if I too was being subject to less than natural influences. The rest of my sleep was, as you might imagine, less than satisfactory, and until dawn I turned and shuddered under the sheet, certain that a presence stood over me.

“My mood was further depressed when, dressing myself, I discovered that the khansamah was nowhere to be found. Not only that, but both tyres were missing from my bicycle! Had that mysterious tugging been a sign from some tutelary spirit that I was about to be dispossessed of my sole means of transport? Were the attenuated souls of long-dead Jesuits still watching over any beleaguered white man in those hills? I could not be sure.”

Canon Foxthrup refilled both their glasses. “And what happened next, Rimble?”

The good doctor peered at the canon over his glasses.

“As it happens, the khansamah returned not long after, and explained that – noticing I had a number of punctures – he had taken the tyres to the local bicycle repair shop, and they were now fully inflated and durable. Feeling unnerved, I asked him if he had ever encountered any unnatural influences or disturbances at the dak bungalow? To which he replied that he had not, nor had any previous guests reported such.”

“Most vexing. And the sensations you experienced?”

“Well, my sister later opined that the fish in the kedgeree was probably ‘off’, leading to dreams indistinguishable from our carefully-nurtured reality – but she also later admitted that on the very same night, she had been trying repeatedly to pull the kitchen cat out of the tallboy, where it had wedged itself whilst in search of more herring.”

Rimble shuddered, a distant look in his watery eyes: ‘Tugging away at the damnable creature!’ were her exact words. ‘Tugging away at the damnable creature!’ So who knows? Who knows?”

Canon Foxthrup’s own conclusion, subsequent to some moments’ reflection, and on realising that the sherry decanter was empty, was that if you drank enough oloroso, you could believe anything…

2) SOME IMPROPRIETIES

Here we must tread more carefully. The archives hold also the first few paragraphs of two stories which James must have rejected as being too improper or salacious to complete. By modern standards, they are tame enough, but for sheltered college men, they would not have done:

THE WEST WINDOW

It had long been remarked that the 17th century West Window of Buntlebury Cathedral, depicting as it did three minor saints wearing naught but mistletoe over their privates, had been an unfortunate commission. Whilst certain broad-minded souls opined that some obscure parable might be illustrated by the stained glass in question, common talk in the choir dismissed the entire matter as a result of the generous cellar of the Dean at the time of installation, the Very Reverend Bartelmy Groan, a gentleman said to be often in his cups. Dean Groan’s intemperate relationship with the vine, so the story went, had always been at its worst when the white berries of the mistletoe shone bright upon the bough…

Thus it came about that, during one bleak December in 189-, the noted scholar and antiquarian Canon Foxthrup of Buntlebury was charged with responding to the latest heated petition concerning the West Window. On this unwelcome task the good canon thought long and hard, and finally enquired, of certain craftsmen know to him, if the mistletoes leaves, being fashioned from curiously dull lead, might be peeled away. He did so with some perturbation, caught between the vague hope that an instructive mystery might be revealed, and the equal possibility that the modestly posed saints might, by such an act, be made too immodest for even the hardiest of the congregation.

Reminding himself of the old adage Timendi causa est nescire, and being a gentle but implacable foe of said Ignorance, Canon Foxthrup at last found his steel, and gave instructions that the task should be undertaken only in the hours of darkness, preferably by artisans who had been married long enough to have lost all interest in matters of carnality…

[‘Dear me, no, no…’ scrawled at the end of this fragment in MRJ’s hand]

UNTITLED

Whilst Mr Thackstead had a poor eye for chancel work, and his knowledge of pre-Reformation church architecture was somewhat weak, he was known as one of the most lubricious antiquarians in Suffolk. His rubbings of the rector’s daughter at Preston St Mary, and his acquisition of several curious piece of Belgian stained glass from the widow of the late incumbent at Kettlebaston were considered (by some) to be triumphs of his calling.

Mr Thackstead, a little over six foot tall and inclined to stoop, was hardly likely to be aware that the painter of these pieces, Jean-Baptiste Capronnier*, had also an unfortunate interest in those more carnal activities of which my friend, Canon Foxthrup, once remarked: ‘I may be considered pro-Creation, but I have never entirely approved of procreation.’

Thus it was that the combination of Mr Thackstead’s ‘natural tendencies’ and the residual desires of Capronnier led, inevitably, to the tale I am about to unfold, which would not – I think – suit any of the younger gentlemen present…

*Jean-Baptiste Capronnier (1 February 1814 – 31 July 1891), a Belgian stained glass painter.

capronnier work c.1870. photo copyright alvesgaspar

3) ON OTHER AUTHORS

James had quite strong views on some of his contemporaries in the literary world: “Arthur Machen has a nasty after-taste: rather a foul mind I think, but clever as they make ’em.” He disliked the style of Lovecraft’s critical writings, had a dislike of Modernism, and once described James Joyce as a “charlatan”. We can find only two rough pieces which are relevant to this article.

The first one demonstrates that MRJ was willing to experiment, at least away from the public eye. We are certain that this was never meant for others’ eyes, and was constructed along the lines of that old question ‘How can you know that you hate broccoli, if you have never tried it?’ The piece seems to date itself to the nineteen twenties, presumably after the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses, and seeks to capture the essence of his own ‘A Warning to the Curious’ in a style which no doubt left a sour taste in his throat. It appears that he never attempted this again.

CURIOSITY IS THE WARNING OF IT, TO BE SURE

The linen, the good Irish linen, all a-crumple and snot-faced staring, and it reminding him of Mother Caitlin’s winding sheet, her trussed up like a post-mistress fallen in love with her own wrapping paper. Parkin’s face gurgled, and with each flutter of the fine white cloth, some distant, dusty Ithaca drowned and left a Penelope muttering about the milk having turned again.

– To argue with a bed-sheet is like playing poker with a Jesuit, as Black Padraic said to his cats, not that they were sober enough between their whiskers to listen. I’ll have none of it, but I’ll keep a cheery whistle on these nicotine lips, by Tom, Dick and Harry.

The Colonel thrusts meaty, musty hands into stout tweed pockets, scowling.

– Whistle? Whistle! What is this that comes to the bleary boys and their tunes, however much they prance and wheedle? Naught but an old Devil who’s short on the gas-meter, and daren’t poke in the poor-box. Those Gadites and Simeonites and their pretty little goats, they’d not have been so easy lost had they turned and said boo to any passing Assyrian.

– True words. I’ll give him threepence, then, and a kick up the arse when he shows his face.

Reaching for the flat-iron, the Colonel grinned with all the courage of last night’s porter and a rambunctious kipper that had straddled the breakfast plate.

– We’ll strike him Greek, and make a Trojan of him yet!

– We’ll tune the ocean, and tan his hide. Let me find my trousers first, though, or he’ll follow like a donkey, staring at the moon of my fine backside…

The second seems to be a late attempt by MRJ to moderate H P Lovecraft’s approach and subject matter through use of James’s more restrained style:

A LOOSE CANON

There is a certain pleasing cruelty in the remarks of children, especially those of tender years, who view the world with a logic which would not disgrace many Oxford professors. “Mama, if Emily – whom yesterday cook called an intemperate little b – , may play outside this afternoon, then why mayn’t I?”

Such approaches to ratiocination certainly pleased Canon Foxthrup, late of Buntlebury Cathedral, and fortified him in his resolve to travel to New England in the spring of 191-. He felt – rightly or wrongly – that a robust line in reasoning would serve well to deal with the apparently brash colonial mind, a mind unlikely to be swayed by English understatement and subtlety of phrase.

This bold step had been prompted, initially, by conversation with a stout, wide-lipped chorister of the Buntlebury stalls. The chorister, normally reticent, had assured him that in New England could be found some interesting examples of how communal worship had developed in the colonies since the earliest days of settlement. As Canon Foxthrup had tired of his studies into the various alarming baptismal rites encountered in the smaller villages of East Suffolk – and of lengthy debates over the correct shape for apostle spoons – this had seemed a capital idea.

Thus prepared, the good canon embarked on the long voyage to the quaint – and no doubt delightful – Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth*…

*A clear reference to Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’, written in 1931. As this was not published until much later, we must assume that HPL sent James an early draft of his own.

But enough, enough! cries the good Canon Foxthrup. We shall leave you, dear listener, with a final note that you will find more unlikely revelations in our detailed biography of MRJ’s little-known sister, Miriam Rose James: