The Slightly Chilling Adventures of Mr. Batchel

I've been re-reading E.G. Swain's The Stoneground Ghost Tales, which are very pleasant and diverting when you spend a lot of time on Metro trains in the Tyne-Wear area. You can, however, read them while not in motion. The point is that they are a collection of M.R. Jamesian ghost stories that, in some ways, come closest to emulating Monty. This is not surprising, as Swain was present when some of those classics were first read aloud to the Chitchat Society.

Swain's Mr. Batchel, vicar of Stoneground in East Anglia, is a fairly Jamesian figure. A bachelor, clergyman, and antiquarian, Batchel is constantly encountering supernatural phenomena in his parish. Stylistically, Swain is not unlike James, though his prose is less spiky in its humour - as a rule his character studies are kindly. The main difference between James and Swain is essentially that the latter is milder in his approach to horror, where there is horror at all.



Here is a sample of Swain's prose, which I think is reasonably Monty-esque. It's the opening of the first story in the book, 'The Man With the Roller'.

On the edge of that vast tract of East Anglia, which retains its ancient name of the Fens, there may be found, by those who know where to seek it, a certain village called Stoneground. It was once a picturesque village. To-day it is not to be called either a village, or picturesque. Man dwells not in one “house of clay,” but in two, and the material of the second is drawn from the earth upon which this and the neighbouring villages stood. The unlovely signs of the industry have changed the place alike in aspect and in population. Many who have seen the fossil skeletons of great saurians brought out of the clay in which they have lain from pre-historic times, have thought that the inhabitants of the place have not since changed for the better. The chief habitations, however, have their foundations not upon clay, but upon a bed of gravel which anciently gave to the place its name, and upon the highest part of this gravel stands, and has stood for many centuries, the Parish Church, dominating the landscape for miles around. 

Stoneground, however, is no longer the inaccessible village, which in the middle ages stood out above a waste of waters. Occasional floods serve to indicate what was once its ordinary outlook, but in more recent times the construction of roads and railways, and the drainage of the Fens, have given it freedom of communication with the world from which it was formerly isolated.

The Vicarage of Stoneground stands hard by the Church, and is renowned for its spacious garden, part of which, and that (as might be expected) the part nearest the house, is of ancient date. To the original plot successive Vicars have added adjacent lands, so that the garden has gradually acquired the state in which it now appears.

The Vicars have been many in number. Since Henry de Greville was instituted in the year 1140 there have been 30, all of whom have lived, and most of whom have died, in successive vicarage houses upon the present site.

The present incumbent, Mr. Batchel, is a solitary man of somewhat studious habits, but is not too much enamoured of his solitude to receive visits, from time to time, from schoolboys and such. In the summer of the year 1906 he entertained two, who are the occasion of this narrative, though still unconscious of their part in it, for one of the two, celebrating his 15th birthday during his visit to Stoneground, was presented by Mr. Batchel with a new camera, with which he proceeded to photograph, with considerable skill, the surroundings of the house.

And there goes the plot. As is often the case with M.R. James, a commonplace activity - in this case amateur photography - reveals an ancient crime via a ghostly apparition. The story is very obviously influenced by 'The Mezzotint', but the violence is further removed from the reader, as it is from the gentle vicar.

The Stoneground tales are - by and large - about Mr Batchel being a decent human being who handles supernatural phenomena quite well. 'Bone to His Bone' sees the vicar finally give an unquiet soul a Christian burial. It contains some good scenes, notably when Mr Batchel is groping for a box of matches in the dark, and the box is put into his hand. This is one of the few instances when the tactile ghost of M.R. James appears in Swain's work.

History, of course, looms large. 'The Richpins' is about the influence of French prisoners of war on the parish, in which many yeoman families boast Anglicised forms of Gallic names i.e. Richepin. 'The Eastern Window' has a nice, Jamesian feel to its central conceit, a vision in a stained glass window that helps Mr Batchel tackle flood damage afflicting his parishioners. 'The Place of Safety' sees the vicar in search of precious items hidden from the Protestant regime during the Reformation, and introduces the pragmatic Mr Wardle, a friend of Mr Batchel who tells him to forget all the antiquarian stuff and 'read the Daily Mail'.

Swain had some good ideas, and used them rather well. Thus 'The Indian Lamp Shade' casts a strange light that allows a mirror to become a kind of scrying glass. This one has a rather grisly theme, at least by Swain's standards. 'The Rockery' is a little too obvious - 'Gosh, shall we pull up this old stake which actually has a warning label on it?' - but it is well-handled. 'The Kirk Spook' is a humorous little number, rounding off the collection with a picture of parish life.



One story does stand out as distinctly un-Jamesian. 'Lubrietta' sees Mr Batchel visited by a beautiful young woman, Lubrietta Rodria, who is Anglo-Indian i.e. mixed race. Swain makes clear that, for all his bachelor lifestyle, Swain is not immune to feminine charms. Far from it, in fact, as it becomes clear that Lubrietta is out to cajole our hero into doing something slightly naughty. By which I mean give her a passing grade in an exam. Oh, and she's doing it by a kind of astral projection.

All in all, these stories are less imaginative and powerful than M.R. James' ghostly tales, but then that is hardly a condemnation. It's also worth noting that David G. Rowlands produced several more tales of Mr Batchel, and these are at least as good as Swain's originals. You can find them in ebook form, along with many other excellent stories, here.