The latest from "Michael Robinson Blogs"

Britkitch | Lurgi strikes. "You dirty rotten swines, you!"

2012-01-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

"What time is it Eccles?"

Via: Wikipedia. The Goon Show 3:22 sample - 973kb

"Err, just a minute. I, I've got it written down 'ere on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning. ..."

The home life of our own dear Queen ...

2012-01-25T04:59:00.000-05:00

Two, of a group of six, etchings by Queen Victoria, 1841-45, all on india paper, mounted, with titles, artist initials and dates in the plate.

Via Dominic Winter
'Pussy [Princess Victoria] before going to bed' 9th. April 1843.

Via Dominic Winter 'Victoria' [Princess Victoria]
Signed in the plate with monogram, dated 15/8 [August] 1841.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took up etching in 1840 under the tutelage of the Royal portrait painter Sir George Hayter. Both were competent artists and over the rest of the decade Queen Victoria etched some sixty-two plates and Prince Albert twenty-five. Most compositions were based on paintings and drawings in their collection, but some were also based on each other's sketches. The plates were etched at Windsor Castle and some proof impressions were pulled from a small press there. Occasionally, however, the plates were entrusted to a local printer called Brown who had instructions to return all impressions and plates to the Castle.

The Queen and Prince Albert never intended these very personal etchings to stray outside of a very tight circle of family and friends. Very few etchings by either Royal exist outside of the private collections at Windsor (who have a full set) and the British Museum (who were given a set by King George V). Examples are owned also by the Victoria & Albert Museum as well as small numbers in private hands.

Sold: Dominic Winter, 25 January 2012, Lot 359 £6,600.00 (US$10,322)

Lovin' and caring very deeply ...

2012-01-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

In an interview ranging from the candidate’s shift to a general election tone to the causes of the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal asked Mr. Romney to give his side of the Seamus story. “Uh…,” Mr. Romney said, clearly at a loss for words. “Love my dog.” “That’s all I’ve got for ya,” he added.

But asked to rebut Ms. Collins’ insinuations that he had been mean to his dog, Mr. Romney said, “Oh please. I’ve had a lot of dogs and love them and care for them very deeply.”

At which point his aide said: “We’ve gotta get running.”

~~~~>~~~>--<~~~<~~~~

The official site, and Super Pack, where Rusty gets the message out, "Dogs Against Romney (TM)."

Political Apotheosis | Role Models

2012-01-09T23:02:00.002-05:00

I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament
I always voted at my party's call
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all
No, he never thought of thinking for himself at all
I thought so little, they rewarded me …
Sir Joseph Porter's Song,
W. S. Gilbert, H. M. S. Pinafore, (1878) Act I, 9

Sir George Cockburn, 10th. Bt., 1772-1853, as Rear-Admiral, 1814.
Cockburn is shown wearing rear-admiral’s undress coat and hat, 1812–25 pattern, breeches and hessian boots. The sword appears to be the Naval officer's 1805 pattern with modified stirrup hilt.
Halls, John James (1776-1834) Executed c. 1817. Oil on canvas, 2,390 x 1,485 cm.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. 1940-292

The background shows clearly the burning government buildings in Washington, Capitol, Treasury and the President's mansion. Cockburn accompanied the joint naval and military force under Major-General Ross, which, after the battle of Bladensburg, seized the city of Washington for 24 hours on August 24th. 1814. Cockburn provided support and guidance to the army throughout the campaign and Ross gave credit to Cockburn for the idea of the attack on Washington.

During the war Cockburn habitually read the US newspapers for information and was particularly offended by the ‘National Intelligencer,’ the official paper of the Madison administration, describing his conduct as ‘depraved.’ Instead of burning the building to the ground he sacked the paper’s offices, destroyed the presses and is said to have insisted that the soldiers make special efforts to destroy all the c’s in the type racks to prevent the editors from writing about him.

As part of their reconstruction the shells of the official buildings were painted white to hide the fire damage, subsequently the President's 'executive mansion' became known colloquially as 'the White House.’

The Captains and the Kings depart ...

2012-01-07T00:20:00.000-05:00

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Kipling 'Recessional' (1897)

Charles Urban, 1867-1942, "With our King and Queen Through India," (1912).

The first feature length color motion picture, made in Kinemacolor a process used commercially from 1908 to 1914.

"[Urban's] plan was to recreate the experience and the emotion of the Delhi Durbar as far as might be possible on a London stage. …" writes Luke McKernan. "The Scala stage was turned into a mock-up of the Taj Mahal, with special lighting effects. Music was composed and scored for forty-eight pieces, a chorus of twenty-four, a twenty-piece fife and drum corps, and three bagpipes. Music that had been played at the actual event was used wherever possible, including fanfares. …This was virtual reality – pictures, sound, colour, pomp and circumstance, ... The show at the Scala was going to be better than the real thing. Incidents from the whole royal tour could be selected or ordered according to the length of available programme, so that no one screening might be the same as the next ..." McKernan's essay about the cinematic history of the 1911 Durbar is here ....

Banyan, of The Economist, blogged recently about the Durbar "A HUNDRED years ago Britain’s King George V visited the jewel of his Empire, marking—it later became clear—the zenith of British colonial rule in India. The highlight of his trip, on December 12th 1911, was an enormous and colourful ceremony known as the Delhi Durbar, where local princes paid homage, a 101-gun salute was fired for the King and many thousands gathered to see him crowned as Emperor of India. ... [continued]

Thanks to Hollister Hovey for posting the film clip.

Gin Joints | You must remember this ...

2011-12-31T16:34:00.000-05:00

The fundamental things apply …

no matter what the future brings …

Round up the usual suspects and have a happy New Year!

Of Dots & Cuckoo Clocks

2011-12-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

"People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse. When I read the new reactionaries or hear them speak I’m reminded of Leo Naphta, the consumptive furloughed Jesuit in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, who prowls the corridors of a Swiss sanatorium, raging against the modern Enlightenment and looking for disciples. ...

"Victims? Don't be melodramatic.... Would you really feel any pity
if one of those dots stopped moving forever? ...”

What infuriates Naphta is that history cannot be reversed, so he dreams of revenge against it. He speaks of a coming apocalypse, a period of cruelty and cleansing, after which man’s original ignorance will return and new forms of authority will be established. Mann did not model Naphta on Edmund Burke or Chateaubriand or Bismarck or any other figure on the traditional European right. He modeled him on George Lukács, the Hungarian Communist philosopher and onetime commissar who loathed liberals and conservatives alike. A man for our time."

Mark Lilla "Republicans for Revolution ..."
New York Review of Books

The blogger's lament?

2011-12-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

Now listen here folks, there's one thing sure,
my old pencil won't write no more

Because the lead's all gone, oh the lead's all gone,
oh the lead's all gone, the pencil won't write no more ...

Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon (June 30, 1892 – September 21, 1964) recorded February 20 1936 issued on Okeh 8912 with 'Bo Chatmon' named on label.

Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)

2011-11-23T21:15:00.001-05:00

John James Audubon (1785–1851), Havell plate no. 1, c. 1825.

Watercolor, black ink, graphite, pastel, collage, and gouache with touches of metallic pigment and selective glazing on paper, laid on card. The New-York Historical Society, Purchased for the Society by public subscription from Mrs. John J. Audubon, 1863.17.1

November 11, 2011 - Jan 15 2012. Audubon: National Treasures - The Five Watercolors for the First Fascicle of "The Birds of America"

Bookshop going places | Boatique Bookselling @TheBookBarge

2011-07-13T18:42:00.001-04:00

via guardian.co.uk

The brainchild of Sarah Henshaw. "By setting up on a canal boat," she explained, "we hope to promote a less hurried and harried lifestyle of idle pleasures, cups of tea, conversation, culture and, of course, curling up with an incomparably good Book Barge purchase." I was immediately sold. But why a canal boat? "I hoped that by creating a unique retail space, customers would realise how independent bookshops can offer a far more pleasurable shopping experience than they're likely to find online or on the discount shelves at supermarkets." Story by Lee Rourke continues at The Guardian

The Book Barge's own fascinating site and blog, with more about the history of the project, an itinerary, readings etc., is here

Posted via email from Michael Robinson Blogs

Digs | Hogwarts Prototype -- J. K. Rowling's childhood home for sale

2011-07-13T18:11:00.001-04:00

via properts.co.uk

Church Cottage, Chepstow " ... built as a school house by the Gothic Revival architect, Henry Woodyer, around 1852. The property retains many of its original features." including "useful open under stairs area." Shades of Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging ?

£399,950 Properts, Magor and Chepstow

Posted via email from Michael Robinson Blogs

Britkitch | I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. ...

2011-07-12T06:09:00.001-04:00

via artdaily.org

Paintings, furniture and furnishings which featured in the cult British film Withnail and I (1987) are to be auctioned at Christie’s South Kensington saleroom on Sunday, 31 July 2011, catlaogue , part of the 'Collection of Professor Bernard Nevill,' a pioneer of shabby chic, who owned West House in Glebe Place, designed by Phillip Web in 1868.

"I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. ..."

and here's the trailer -- nothing but a full viewing can do Withnail justice

Posted via email from Michael Robinson Blogs

Henley 2011

2011-07-07T20:10:00.001-04:00

Looking down the course to the Island.

via twitpic.com

Temple Island, a mile and a half downstream of the town of Henley, on one of the most beautiful reaches of the Thames, is the start of the Henley Royal Regatta Course. Amidst rolling water meadows and surrounded by wooded hills, The Temple itself is a delightful folly, designed by James Wyatt as a fishing lodge for Fawley Court, the Christopher Wren house on the Henley Reach.

Ring out the old, ring in the new ...

2010-12-31T15:54:00.001-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Alfred Tennyson
from In Memoriam, 1850
Websites devoted to the bells of London and their ringers, the Ancient Society of College Youths.

Grey Ladies ...

2010-12-30T14:51:00.004-05:00

If you are worried about 'shallow' and social media having turned your brain to a 'fried peanut butter and Banana sandwich', Elvis's favorite according to the Director of the Walters, ...

Paula's Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich

read the NY Times, the newspaper of record with the motto 'All the news that is fit to print.' "IT was a year in which the daughter of one president was married in a largely private ceremony on a gorgeous summer day and one in which the daughter of a possible future president went on a prime-time dance show to give “a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me" ...

The 110 Things New Yorkers Talked About in 2010

Further apologies for the visual infelicities and poor spacing -- Blogger software strikes yet again!

Early pre-digital Americana

2010-12-25T16:08:00.000-05:00

Blog Suspended -- Test Post ia -- ScribeFire

2010-12-19T03:29:00.001-05:00

Until I have an extended period of free time available in the New Year to sort out my difficulties with the blogger interface I will be experimenting with alternate editing plug-ins and posting methods as odd moments permit. Please forgive the inevitable infelicities.

Caspar David Friedrich, German (1774–1840)

Mountain Peak with Drifting Clouds, c. 1835

Oil on canvas, 9-7/8 x 12-1/16 in. (25.0 x 30.6 cm)

Kimbell Art Museum. AP 1984.08

For those insufficiently bored, the stream of idle chatter and links will continue at Facebook and twitter.

Blog Suspended -- Test Post i

2010-12-19T02:18:00.000-05:00

Caspar David Friedrich, German (1774–1840)

Mountain Peak with Drifting Clouds, c. 1835

Oil on canvas, 9-7/8 x 12-1/16 in. (25.0 x 30.6 cm)

Kimbell Art Museum. AP 1984.08

For those insufficiently bored, the stream of idle chatter and links will continue at Facebook and twitter.

A Digital Christmas ...

2010-12-17T13:49:00.002-05:00

Season's Greetings -- Blog Suspended

2010-12-14T13:10:00.008-05:00

Astronauts Schirra and Stafford played "Jingle Bells" with these
and pretended to see a UFO called Santa Claus.

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, Washington DC
Inventory number: A19670148001

Part of the harmonica and bell set carried by astronauts Walter "Wally" Schirra and Tom Stafford aboard Gemini 6 in December of 1965. The mission was to test the docking and maneuvering capability of the Gemini spacecraft.

I have become completely fed up with tolerating the degree of frustration, and very many hours of time wasted, now over 200, necessary to cope with multiple random problems and inconsistencies, involving frequent encounters with inaccurate and incomplete sets of 'simple' instructions, working round design infelicities all involving the various means of posting to Blogger and the editor, text-image layout etc., that posting / blogging is suspended. If only the various instruction sets were accurate rather than 'simple' and the results produced from following them were consistent ...

For the foreseeable future all activity will be on twitter and facebook -- minutes or less are required to produce the same effects that requires literally an hour or more interacting with Blogger with no certainty of producing a result.

Testing, Testing ... Technorati Claim in progress

2010-11-10T02:51:00.008-05:00

Mydans, Carl, 1907 - 2004, photographer

Meat Testing, Prince George's County, Maryland.

B&W nitrate negative, Farm Security Administration, August 1935
LC-USF33- 000234-M2 Prints & Photographs, Library of Congress, D.C.

Technorati Claim Token: WEMEXEWB5J8V

Burning man ...

2010-11-06T07:25:00.018-04:00

Windsor Castle from the Lower Court, on the 5th. November

Views of Windsor, Plate No. 4. [London]: P[aul]. Sandby, Septr. 1st. 1776

Etching and aquatint, 13 3/8 x 19 1/8 in. (339 x 486 mm.)

1904.08.1975.4 British Museum, London.

When Paul Sandby published this plate he was a leader in aesthetic innovation; this is an early use of aquatint etching, c. 1774/5 Sandby had refined the technique to enabled him to imitate the delicate effects of watercolor washes. A night scene of popular celebration, or misrule, it is also an expression of Edmund Burke’s aesthetic 'sublime', (1757), as are many of the night plates in Hamiltion’s Campi phlegræi issued in Naples the same year, and the night and volcano paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby. In the year of the United States ‘Declaration’ -- 'A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people' -- Sandby, shows the frolicking throng contained between the stones of the ancient structures of church and state well worn-in by centuries of tradition while a closed, presumably royal, coach with postilions passes by unmolested; he prefigures the argument and concerns of Burks’s 'Reflection on the Revolution in France' (1790) on the importance and use of tradition to incorporate, permit and contain popular outbreaks of raw emotion. Nerdy History Girl, Susan H. Scott’s, post today is a detailed account of the origins of ‘Bonfire Night.’ She ends with a moving plea for tolerance and mutual respect, one that has solid foundation in the early history of the United States.

Paul Sandby, 1731- 1809, and his elder brother and first teacher Thomas, 1721 - 1798, came from Nottingham and are examples of eighteenth century provincial ‘new men’ buoyed by innate talent and access to education. Both first worked as military surveyors, Thomas as Chief Engineer attached to the Duke of Cumberland, later becoming Cumberland’s active Deputy Ranger of Windsor Park making numerous plans for building and landscape works at Windsor that survive – he was a foundation Royal Academician and first Professor of Architecture; the first of what is now a commonplace, the Professor of Architecture who lectures to society, publishes grand theoretical projects to great acclaim and also is an occasional indifferent practitioner.

Paul, employed by the Board of Ordinance as an official draftsman to the Military Survey of the Highlands, a part of Cumberland's campaign following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 to subdue and control the area, made maps which relied on symbols, rather than drawings of mountains and other features, that were the forerunners of the type of carefully measured and surveyed map still used by all today. He produced also numerous view as a landscape artist which combined bird's eye and topographical approaches with a cartographic one, that enabled the military to visualize the layout of the land more clearly than the usual type of map or plan accompanied only by measurements or profile views - and , later,when drawing master at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich was prepared when necessary to act as an engineering draftsman. On return to London, c.1752, he began a career as a landscape draftsman and painter, thought in the eighteenth century to be an inferior genre, and attempted in such compositions as “An Historical Landscape representing the Welch Bard in the Opening of Mr. Gray’s Celebrated Ode” to elevate landscape to the more celebrated genre of History, but without success, he remained a 'tradesman.' Windsor was a frequent subject, his landscapes always have a detailed and careful observation of human activity showing a society living harmoniously with its surroundings, even in his careful depictions of the military encampments in London following the Gordon Riots of 1780.

Near Chareton, Devon

Ink and watercolor on paper, 9 5/8 x 12 3/8 in. (245 x 313 mm.)

1904.08.1957 British Museum, London

His many images of the English country, created in the London studio, served to propagate an enduring image of England as the stable land of the happy rural seat, with the eighteenth century adoption of Horace and Roman virtue. (Now channeled via Merchant Ivory, and others, Paul Sandby's vision is lovingly embraced today by Janeite, the National Trust and stately homeowner alike, visually opulent but little more sophisticated than the old hymn, "All things bright and beautiful, ...God made them high and lowly, And ordered their estate," the unwashed mob of visitors served still in the stables or famyard but in today's commercial world are not now accepted as an integral component of the natural order but pay both for food and admission.)

Paul Sandby’s prestige as a ‘mere’ landscape painter and the emotional intensity of his involvement was an encouragement to a later generation, notably Turner the grand curmudgeon of British painting, and as an artist working in military and state service he was a precursor to a long and distinguished continuing tradition of Official War Artists, -- officialdom, prodded by Ken Clark subsequently ‘Lord Clark of Civilization,’ recognized by WWII that “war .. so detailed and complex in its mechanism, requires interpreting [by artists] as well as recording." Now there is PowerPoint:

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter." So I blog on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

But we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ...

2010-11-02T00:41:00.000-04:00

"And when, to the amazement of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit, many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body, and a dying face. And doubtless many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel. "Do these bones live? or can that soul organize that tongue, to speak so long time as the sand in that glass will move towards its centre, and measure out an hour of this dying man’s unspent life? Doubtless it cannot." And yet, after some faint pauses in his zealous prayer, his strong desires enabled his weak body to discharge his memory of his preconceived meditations, which were of dying; the Text being, "To God the Lord belong the issues from death." Many that then saw his tears, and heard his faint and hollow voice, professing they thought the Text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preached his own Funeral Sermon." ....
{ Deaths duell, or, A consolation to the soule, against the dying life, and liuing death of the body. Deliuered in a sermon at White Hall, before the Kings Maiesty, in the beginning of Lent, 1630. ... Being his last sermon, and called by his Maiesties houshold the doctors owne funerall sermon. London: 1632 }

... “A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent for a Carver to make for him in wood the figure of an Urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and to bring with it a board of the just height of his body. “These being got, then without delay a choice Painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth. – Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this Urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus.” In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bed-side, where it continued and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul’s, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that Church.”

Izaac Walton, Life of John Donne (1640, enlarged 1658)

Monument to John Donne, 1572 -1631

Nicholas Stone, 1586/7 - 1647
South choir aisle, St Paul's Cathedral, London, England

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet X
composed c.1609
pub. Poems, by J. D. VVith elegies on the authors death. (1633).

Orate pro nobis ...

2010-11-01T00:20:00.006-04:00

detail from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,

Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440. Pierpont Morgan Library, NY.

Click on image to enlarge
Ecclesiastical and Military Saints before the throne of God

Kyrie, Missa ‘Pange Lingua' - Josquin des Prez, ca. 1450/5 - 1521

Choir of St Clement's Church, Philadelphia, Maundy Thursday, 2007

Any reduced image such as this, or those in prior posts, misrepresents the effect of viewing, or using, a Book of Hours. The content of text and image interact and, in addition, each form a part of a deeply familiar weekly and annual cycles that were part of the life of individual and wider community. To add to the effect I have inserted, above, a piece of Franco-Flemish polyphony, a style of musical writing beginning in the mid C 14th. that blended sacred and secular elements; compared to chant it offered lively dance rhythms and popular tunes could be used for the setting of religious texts -- the echoes of dissonance were associated with the devil . "The most unusual texts in Catherine's manuscript are the series of Hours and Masses for every day of the week. Medieval Christian tradition associated certain figures or themes with different days. Thus Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, was the Lord's Day; Thursday was connected with the Eucharist since that sacrament was instituted on Holy Thursday; and Monday was the day of the dead, since their torments were suspended on Sunday but recommenced the following day."

Continue to view the full double page, and the entire manuscript, at the Morgan's own site .

Scrapbook, Allhallows Even

2010-10-31T05:41:00.009-04:00

Evisceration of St. Erasmus

Ten Thousand Martyrs and St Acacius

Angel and devil fight over the soul's Book of Life

St Michael weighing a soul while a demon falsifies the balance

St.Michael fights a demon

Souls tormented in purgatory

All details from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,
Netherlands, Utrecht, c. 1440. Pierpont Morgan Library, NY.

Click on any image to enlarge

A volume containing pasted fragments such as these was vividly described in 'Canon Albreric's Scrapbook,' the first story M. R. James read to the Chit Chat Society at King's Cambridge in 1897, also the first story published in his first collection, 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,' the preface is dated 'Allhallows Even, 1904.' The stories are celebrated classics and remain in print.

Montague Rhodes James, a manuscript scholar used and parodied his skill as a cataloger in the relentless chronicling of exact details, architectural, art historical, biblical references, Latin quotations, joking footnotes even, { 'Details of this kind are not common in the great work of the Sammarthani.' } which are mingled with an equally precisely rendered rising strangeness recounted with the same precision and emotional distance. All is meshed with a dry wit, the story concludes: “I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun's view of the events I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus: 'Some spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore strokes.' On another occasion he said: 'Isaiah was a very sensible man; doesn't he say something about night monsters living in the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.' …

James himself would read out loud by the light of a single flickering candle that would gutter and extinguish dramatically with his closing words. Read it out loud in the same way yourself, I dare you, the text is here.