'Do you want to look through a dead man's eyes?'
I mean, if it's no trouble, M.R. James ... I'm game.
For M.R. James in “A View from a Hill” (1925), the past wasn’t exactly prologue. Yet it was always there, provided you look through the right plot delivery device.
James’ ghost story features an everyday English gentleman who discovers an everyday object possesses singularly weird powers. The object is a set of mysteriously made, antique field glasses which reveal a shocking scene from the past. The hero is horrified when he uses them to look for a quiet church and instead spies an active gallows.
That the past (or future) can be experienced through the fantastic was not a new idea in 1925. H.G. Wells gave us The Time Machine (1895). Dickens relied on ghosts in A Christmas Carol (1843). Quite a few other writers had their ideas before that. And after James, the idea that you can see the past, if only you looked for it from the right angle, was picked up by Jack Finney in 1970 for Time and Again. Stories about witnessing or meddling in the dark corners of history are commonplace today.
James’ “A View from a Hill” remains memorable because it provides a chilling answer to a central question: “Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes?”
Maybe not. And what happens when the hero learns how the field glasses were made—it involved boiling, bone, and the local loon—is what give this story its punch.
“A View from a Hill” sent me on another wild goose chase. I’m currently searching for pre-20th century writers who struggled with what to do with the past, whether accessed via a time machine or a melancholy mind. So far, the most curious thought has come from William Cullen Bryant. This 19th century American romantic poet and longtime news editor dreaded what lurked behind us. His poem “The Past” (1854) begins with an anguished cry:
Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Those don’t seem like places and times we should poke with a stick. But where’s the fun in putting down a stick, anyway?
I would have missed M.R. James’ story had it not been for Season 3, Episode 1 of Marlon & Jake Read Dead People, the can’t-miss podcast “where Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, discuss the (dead) authors they love and hate.”
Jake talked about “A View from a Hill.” He’s been on a ghost-story kick lately (jump to 14:25). You can hear the wonder in his voice as he talks about M.R. James’ take on the typical “pastoral English landscape.” It’s more sinister than it seems. Jake says, “There is a creepy malevolence around us, if only we pay attention in that way. … [The story] talks about the idea of seeing history, or seeing bad stuff, in a place that looks pretty and quiet and tranquil. It is one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever read.”
Marlon claims he hasn’t been similarly creeped out in a while; it doesn’t sound like he’s going to take his editor’s reading recommendation, either.
I think the deflection is a ruse. Perhaps Marlon, the writer, is too wise to go where Jake, the editor, wants him to go. Or perhaps, in the next episode, Marlon will gift Jake a strange pair of binoculars. Stay tuned!
And stop looking for dead things.
Another interesting, insightful piece. Makes me shiver.