Is there any link between the various supernatural phenomena described in M. R. James' The Residence at Whitminster?

Question

Major spoilers follow for the short story The Residence at Whitminster from M. R. James' collection A Thin Ghost and Others.

This story lists various peculiar goings-on. In order, they are:

• Lord Saul sacrificies a black cockrel, which suggests perhaps devil worship, or a religion such as voodoo.
• "Irish" tales of the second sight, and what is apparently some kind of scrying-glass.
• A pack of dog-like creatures that have apparently been summoned by Saul, and pursue their summoner to his doom.
• The suggestion of an enormous sawfly encountered in the dark.
• A mysterious plague of sawflies that seems to purposefully "attack" a servant, clustering around her eyes.
• "what he brought with him from Ireland," ... "they were such as would strip the skin from the child in its grave"
• the ghost of Saul returning to haunt his old house.

This story has always bothered me because I cannot see any kind of thematic coherence between these things: they feel random and scattershot. James famously wrote of his feelings that some aspects of a successful ghost story must remain mysterious, but he usually limits himself to singular supernatural phenomena and provides a little more insight than he does here.

The connections with Ireland suggest to me some kind of fey creatures may be involves, but they seem extremely malevolent compared to Irish folklore, it's not clear why Saul wants to use the "second sight", or why it seems to cause him to summon these dog-monsters, nor what connection they might have with what he "bought with him". And why any of these should cause the later residents of the house to be menaced by a giant insect is quite beyond me.

Is there some linkage here that makes all of these part of a narrative whole?

Answer 1

I think I've managed to crib together a partial answer from the notes to this story in the collection A Pleasing Terror, which were in turn borrowed from the literary magazine Ghosts and Scholars. You can view them online in the magazine's archive.

The summary is that Lord Saul was a Satanist, and the plagues of flies that visit the house in later years are a reference to Beelzebub, known as The Lord of Flies. There's an image of Beelzebub as a giant fly in the Dictionnaire Infernal, which James is known to have read and is on record as calling it an "appalling book".

The black cockerel is thus to be taken as a satanic sacrifice, allowing Saul to see through the scrying-glass that he has bought with him from Ireland. It is interesting that the notes from Ghosts and Scholars suggest that his magical ritual is in the Hebrew tradition, in which a young boy - in the story his "playmate", Frank - holds the glass, given that the name Beelzebub originates in Hebrew scripture.

To explain the hounds, the notes make reference to a number of sources that describe lesser demons as being dog-like in nature:

in the hierarchy of Hell such personages as Beelzebub commanded hosts of lesser demons in various forms. Traditionally demons whose function was to chasten or avenge were actually referred to as "dogs". Thus the Eumenides were called "Dogs" and Harpies "The Dogs of Great Zeus". In British legend the Gabriel Hounds, Dandy Dogs or Yeth Hounds, part of the Wild Hunt, were supposed to pursue lost souls. MRJ may also have had in mind that classic source work for occultists, The Chaldean Oracles, wherein is found reference to "Dog-faced demons"

Thus we are to infer that Saul has accidentially transgressed in some way during his ritual and, rather than gain the insight he seeks, he has called forth avenging demons which eventually catch and kill him as he is attempting to gain sanctuary in the church. His ghost which then haunts the village is part of his infernal punishment - to be "very cold", as Frank presages it - staring in at the warm parlours of the living.

This draws together most of the phenomena in the story under the banner of Satanic black magic, with the notable exception of the links to Ireland and what Saul "bought with him." The inference may be that he was already commanding lesser demons when he came but quite why James is at pain to emphasise his Irish origins are less clear. It's possible that when the story was written Ireland, which at the time was undergoing the throes of revolution from British rule, was still viewed as a backwards, benighted place where all sorts of suspersticious practice might still hold sway, but that is mere supposition on my part.

Finally, it is noteworthy that this is the first story in the collection A Thin Ghost and Others, and it is Saul's ghost that gives the collection its title: critic and former English professor Michael Kellermeyer describes this volume as James' "puzzle-story phase". His previous tales could all be read as fairly straightforward ghost stories, but this one, and many of the others in the volume, require more work of the reader to fully comprehend.