Friday 6/28/24
M.R. James's 1904 ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," is his best in part because of how successfully it integrates its various aspects, and because it's more than just a ghost story. The best ghost stories must be more than ghost stories, and "Whistle" is instructive and funny, in addition to being frightening.
The story is about a young professor--his age is important--named Parkins, who decamps to the seaside for a golfing holiday during school break. A colleague had asked him, back at the story's start, if Parkins would check out a site as a favor for an archeological dig the colleague has been considering. The sight concerns an area close to the sea where a Templar preceptory once stood.
Parkins is an academic set in his ways and his beliefs. He's closed off to anything new. Though he's probably in his thirties, he might as well be eighty. To be fair to Parkins, though, he is trying golf, which is a new pursuit for him, and when the colleague asks him to check out the place where the preceptory had stood, he's willing.
Parkins is a bit like Scrooge, in that he's not quite as bad as we might think. That makes the growth that does occur all the more believable. If you think about the 1951 version of Scrooge, for instance, Alastair Sim's title character enjoys a tart and witty line even before his transformation. He's not a lost cause, and neither is Parkins.
One of the reasons why "Whistle" is so successful as a story is that we get the ghost, so to speak, no less than five times, and each time it's in a different way. The spin is never the same. Different people are involved, and different forms of manifestation.
Coming back to the inn late in the day, Parkins makes his first stop at the preceptory, and poking around in the ground he unearths what he realizes is a whistle as the sun starts going down. He's pleased. This went better than he expected it to. Rather than carrying out a task of drudgery, he's had some fun and is now fancying himself as this ace archeologist.
Not wishing to be caught out in the dark, he starts walking back to the inn across the shingle on the beach and notices a fellow traveler trailing in the distance behind him. This traveler seems to be moving in haste, based upon their movements. We get the sense that the traveler appears to be fluttering to Parkins, but the traveler is not closing the distance.
There's something unearthly going on here. Parkins doesn't say that. He doesn't think it. But he's noticed and noted the figure. A seed been planted. But it's Parkins, who began the story by making it very plain to his colleagues--when they were all having dinner--for like the fiftieth time that he doesn't believe in the supernatural. That seed is planted in some hard ground and it's going to take some time for ripening.
But that's the first time we experience the ghost. It might not be a ghost. We know it is, but it might not be. Wiggle room of this nature is effective. Could be...but might not be...but could be. Possibility makes for power in a story.
That night after supper, Parkins inspects the whistle alone in his room. There's some dirt in it, which he taps out on a piece of paper--a detail that speaks to how fastidious he is--and when he goes to the window to dump out the dirt, he sees this figure standing down by the sea and marvels over just how late people stay out at this spot in the world. He's still not clocking on to the idea of, "Oh dear, that's a ghost." We are, with this second instance of dramatic irony and the second manifestation of the ghost.
The third time we experience the ghost is when Parkins returns to his room the next day where the maid is making up both of his beds--because he has two in his room, on account that only a double-bedded room was available when Parkins booked the lodgings for his holiday. Parkins didn't like the idea of having two beds. Again, he's fastidious. Nor did it cheer him that when he was back having dinner at his university, a neighbor of his--Rogers--learned of the double bed situation and basically invited himself to come and stay with Parkins and occupy the second bed. Rogers was also messing with Parkins--in the English parlance, he's the sort who enjoys winding Parkins up. In good fun. Rogers isn't a bad guy, and he actually helps out when he does get to this fictional town of Burnstow (which is clearly based on Felixstowe) where Parkins is spending his vacation.
The maid comments on Parkins using both beds, and he gets defensive, which has more to do with him being flustered than having an issue with the staff. Parkins wouldn't use two beds. He's a one bed man. She says that the bedclothes of this second bed which Parkins insists he didn't sleep in were much disordered, as if someone spent a restless night. We know this is the ghost, or whatever this apparition is. Whatever form it is. We're not sure, exactly, because with this third manifestation there's less consistency as to the form. Previously, it seemed human-esque. But now...apparently it wasn't detectable as anything, despite being feet away from Parkins. As he slept. So it was subtle and quiet enough not to wake him.
Unnerving. The ghost has gained ingress. It has been in Parkins' room. See the progression here? Off in the distance, outside the window, in the next bed as Parkins slept.
Parkins has made friends--of a sort--with a Colonel who is also having a golfing holiday. He's an old school guy. Phlegmatic. Despite being a throwback military type, he's open to the possibility of the supernatural. The Colonel has seen some stuff in his travels. Enough that he's all but taken aback--he's too aware of the ways of the world, though, to be truly taken aback--by Parkins' obduracy. The Colonel is amusing. He'd be a conservative if he was American. Clearly he has some conspiracy theories he nurses. Regardless, though, he thinks Parkins is monkeying about with something he'd do well to avoid. But what can you do? Sometimes you just can't get someone out of their own way.
They come back from golfing together, and there's this young boy on the lawn outside of the inn who is frantic. He's wailing, terrified out of his mind--and he starts hugging the Colonel's leg, too frightened to let go. The Colonel is having none of this, and he's like, "Get a hold of yourself, what's wrong with you?" The boy tells the Colonel and Parkins that he saw this white figure up in the window of the inn.
This is one of my favorite scenes in all of M.R. James's stories. It's sweet and funny and touching and effective, quirky and true to life. The Colonel blunders in his advice to the boy, but he means well. The boy is sent on his way--with some pocket change from the Colonel--and the two men determine that the room the boy was talking about was Parkins' own room.
They enter the inn to inquire if maybe a maid had been changing the bedding and standing in front of the window with a sheet, but no--no one's been in there, they're told.
Parkins is still slow to realize what's going on, but the Colonel is wiser, and takes his leave for the night, by not before first reminding Parkins that he knows where to find him if he needs him.
Later that evening, of course, we get the fifth and final manifestation of the ghost, which has assumed the bedclothes of that second bed as its form. This works really well. Think about what's happening: The sheet is used by the ghost. Everyone has used a sheet to play at being a ghost. James is going back to point the first of our imaginations re: ghosts. The first of the building blocks. And it's convincing because of the progression of forms. And the progression of movement. The manifestations occur at points more or less equidistant from each other in the narrative framework of the story. Design. Balance. This reads like something very well thought out.
So: One ghost, which we experience five different ways. The boy is actually the first witness of whatever this is in non-human form. But that witnessing happens offstage, which itself is a play on the spectral (because the witnessing is not corporeal, you might say). We, the reader, don't observe this event--a physical form of an event. We don't "see" it. We learn of it. Parkins sees this manifestation later on, and we do, too, for the first time--because it's onstage. Then the Colonel does as well--for a second or two. Reader, Parkins, and Colonel, all get to the same place within, say, half a minute.
Parkins has this dreadful ordeal before the Colonel's arrival, but it surely doesn't last for as long as it would have seemed to--especially for him. The Colonel has the room upstairs, so the duration of this event would be however long it would have taken between Parkins crying out and getting from one room down to the other.
You could say, I guess, that there's an after-the-fact ghost, too, or ghost remnant. Rogers shows up, he meets with Parkins and the Colonel for what we're told is a long time in counsel, and then they go out back behind the inn and burn the bedclothes.
This might be my favorite passage in all of James. We left Rogers back at the beginning when he was giving Parkins the business. Like the Colonel, he has a more mature viewpoint of matters than Parkins who thinks--or thought--he had the most mature, worldly viewpoint of anyone, though now he's been disabused of that notion.
James conveys by what he leaves out and what we, in turn, fill in. Rogers wants to assist. We know, too, that the Colonel welcomed his input, so he must have had some respect for him. None of this is spelled out. That's how you do it. You make everything clear--or as clear as it should be--by letting things happen, by positioning, by having us know who the characters are, not as characters, but as people.
