A School Story - M R James

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A school story by M R. James. Two men in
a smoking room were talking of their private school days.
At our school said, Ah, we had a ghost footmark
on the staircase. What was it like? Oh? Very unconvincing.
Just the shape of a shoe with a square toe.

(00:21):
If I remember right, the staircase was a stone one.
I never heard any story about the thing. That seems
odd when you come to think of it. I didn't
somebody invent one. I wonder you never can tell with
little boys, they have a mythology of their own. There's
a subject for you, by the way, the folklow of
private schools. Yes, the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine

(00:46):
if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories,
for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other,
they would all turn out to be highly compressed versions
of stories out of books nowadays. The Strandon, Piersons and
so on would be extensively drawn upon. No doubt they
weren't born or thought of in my time. Let's see,

(01:08):
I wonder if I can remember the staple ones that
I was told. First, there was the house with a
room in which a series of people insisted on passing
a night and each of them in the morning was
found kneeling in a corner and had just time to say,
I've seen it and died. Wasn't that the house in
Berkeley Square? I dare say it was. Then there was

(01:31):
the man who heard a noise in the passage at night,
opened his door and saw someone crawling towards him on
all fours, with his eye hanging out on his cheek.
There was, besides, let me think, yes, the room where
a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe
mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed
was covered with marks of horseshoes. Also, I don't know why.

(01:55):
Also there was the lady who, unlocking her bedroom door
in a strange house, heard a thin voice among the
bed cutains say now we're shut in for the night.
None of those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder
if they go on still those stories, Oh, likely enough,

(02:15):
with additions from the magazines. As I said, you never heard,
did you of a real ghost at a private school?
I thought not, nobody has ever that I came across
from the way in which you said that, I gather
that you have. I really don't know, but this is
what was in my mind. It happened at my private

(02:36):
school thirty odd years ago, and I haven't any explanation
of it. The school I mean was in London. It
was established in a large and fairly old house, a
great white building with very fine grounds about it. There
were large cedars in the garden, as there are in
so many of the older gardens in the Thames Valley,
and ancient elms in the three or four fields which

(02:56):
we used for our games. I think probably it was
quite an attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their
schools possess any tolerable features. I came to the school
in a September, soon after the year eighteen seventy, and
among the boys who arrived on the same day was
one whom I took to, a Highland boy whom I

(03:16):
will call mc lloyd. I needn't spend time in describing him.
The main thing is that I got to know him
very well. He was not an exceptional boy in any way,
not particularly good at books or games, but he suited me.
The school was a large one. There must have been
from one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty boys there
as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters

(03:39):
was required, and there were rather frequent changes among them.
One term, perhaps it was my third or fourth, a
new master made his appearance. His name was Samson. He
was a tallish, stoutish, pale, black bearded man. I think
we liked him. He had traveled a good deal and
had stories which amused us on our school walk, so
that there was some competition among to get with an

(04:00):
earshot of him. I remember, too, dear me, I've hardly
thought of it since then, that he had a charm
on his watch chain that attracted my attention one day,
and he let me examine it. It was, I now suppose,
a gold Byzantine coin. There was an effigy of some
absurd emperor on one side. The other side had been
worn practically smooth, and he had had cut on it

(04:23):
rather barbarously, his own initials g W S and a
date twenty four July eighteen sixty five. Yes, I can
see it now. He told me he had picked it
up in Constantinople. It was about the size of a florin,
perhaps rather smaller. Well. The first odd thing that happened
was this Samson was doing Latin grammar with us. One

(04:45):
of his favorite methods, perhaps it is rather a good
one was to make us construct sentences out of our
own heads to illustrate the rules he was trying to
make us learn. Of course, that is a thing which
gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent. There
are lots of school stories in which that happens, or
anyhow there might be. But Samson was too good a
disciplinarian for us to think of trying that on with him. Now.

(05:08):
On this occasion, he was telling us how to express
remembering in Latin, and he ordered us each to make
a sentence, bringing in the verb memini I remember. While
most of us made up some ordinary sentence such as
I remember my father, or he remembers his book, or
something equally uninteresting, and I dare say a good many

(05:29):
put down memino, liberal mail, and so forth. But the
boy I mentioned mc lloyd was evidently thinking of something
more elaborate than that. The rest of us wanted to
have our sentences past and to get on to something else,
So some kicked him under the desk, and I, who
was next to him, poked him and whispered to him
to look sharp. But he didn't seem to attend I

(05:50):
looked at his paper and saw he had put down
nothing at all. So I jogged him again, harder than before,
and upbraided him sharply for keeping us all waiting. That
did have some much effect. He started and seemed to
wake up, and then very quickly he scribbled about a
couple of lines on his paper and showed it up
with the rest. As it was the last or nearly
the last to come in, and as Sampson had a

(06:10):
good deal to say to the boys who had ridden Memeniskimus,
patri Meo and the rest of it, it turned out
that the clock struck twelve before he had got to
mc lloyd, and mc lloyd had to wait afterwards to
have his sentence corrected. There was nothing much going on
outside when I got out, so I waited for him
to come. He came very slowly when he did arrive,
and I guess there had been some sort of trouble. Well,

(06:32):
I said, what did you get? Oh, I don't know,
said mc lloyd, Nothing much, But I think Samson's rather
sick with me. Why did you show him up? Some rot?
No fear, he said, It was all right. As far
as I could see, it was like this memento that's
right enough for remember, and it takes a genitive memento

(06:52):
bout de intr kuador taxos what silly rot? I said,
what made you shove that down? What does it mean?
That's the funny part, said mclloyd. I'm not quite sure
what it does mean. All I know is it just
came into my head and I caughked it down. I
know what I think it means, because just before I
wrote it down, I had a sort of picture of

(07:14):
it in my head. I believe it means, remember the
well among the four what are those dark sort of
trees that have red berries on them? Mountain ashes? I
suppose he mean I never heard of them, said mclloyd. No,
I'll tell you es well. And what did Samson say? Why?
He was trully odd about it when he read it.

(07:35):
He got up and went to the mantelpiece and stopped
quite a long time without saying anything, with his back
to me, And then he said, without turning round, and
rather quiet, what do you suppose that means? I told
him what I thought, only I couldn't remember the name
of the silly tree. And then he wanted to know
why I put it down? And I had to say
something or other, and after that he left off talking

(07:57):
about it, and he asked me how long I'd been here,
and where my people lived, and things like that, and
then I came away, but he wasn't looking a bit well.
I don't remember any more that was said by either
of us about this. Next day, mcloy took to his
bed with a chill or something of the kind, and
it was a week or more before he was in
school again, And as much as a month went by

(08:18):
without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not mister
Samson was really startled as mc lloyd had thought, he
didn't show it. I'm pretty sure, of course now, that
there was something very curious in his past history, but
I'm not going to pretend that we boys were sharp
enough to guess any such thing. There was one other
incident of the same kind as the last, which I
told you several times since that day. We had had

(08:41):
to make up examples in school to illustrate different rules,
but there'd never been any row except when we did
them wrong. At last, there came a day when we
were going through those dismal things which people call conditional sentences,
and we were told to make a conditional sentence expressing
a future consequence. We did it right or wrong, and
showed up our bits of paper, and Samson began looking

(09:02):
through them all at once. He got up, made some
sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out by
a door that was just by his desk. We sat
there for a minute or two, and then I suppose
it was incorrect, but we went up I and one
or two others to look at the papers on his desk.
Of course, I thought some one must have put down
some nonsense or other, and Samson had gone off to

(09:24):
report him. All the same, I noticed that he hadn't
taken any of the papers with him when he ran out. Well,
the top paper on the desk was written in red ink,
which no one used, and it wasn't in any one's
hand who was in the class. They all looked at
it mc lloyd and all and took their dying oaths
that it wasn't theirs. Then I thought of counting the

(09:46):
bits of paper, and of this I made quite sudden
that there were seventeen bits of paper on the desk
and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I bagged the
extra paper and kept it, and I believe I haven't
now now you will want to know what was written
on it. It was simple enough and harmless enough. I
should have said, see to non veneris ad me ego

(10:09):
veniam a dee, which means I suppose if you don't
come to me, I'll come to you. Could you show
me the paper, interrupted the listener. Yes I could, but
there's another odd thing about it. That same afternoon I
took it out of my locker. I know for certain

(10:29):
it was the same bit, for I made a finger
mark on it, and no single trace of writing of
any kind was there on it. I kept it, as
I said, And since that time I have tried various
experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used, but
absolutely without result. So much for that. After about half
an hour, Samson looked in again, said he had felt

(10:50):
very unwell, and told us we might go. He came
rather gingerly to his desk and gave just one look
at the uppermost paper, and I suppose he thought he
must have been dreaming. Anyhow, he asked no questions. That
day was a half holiday, and next day Samson was
in school again, much as usual. That night, the third
and last incident in my story happened. We mc lloyd

(11:12):
and I slept in a dormitory at right angles to
the main building. Samson slept in the main building on
the first floor. There was a very bright full moon
at an hour which I can't tell exactly, But some
time between one and two I was woken up by
somebody's shaking me. It was mc lloyd, in a nice
state of mind. He seemed to be in come. He said, come,

(11:34):
there's a burglar getting in through Samson's window. As soon
as I could speak, I said, well, why not call
out and wake everybody up? No, no, he said, I'm
not sure who it is. Don't make a row, Come
and look. Naturally. I came and looked, and naturally there
was no one there. I was cross enough and should

(11:55):
have called mc lloyd plenty of names, only I couldn't
tell why. It seemed to me that there was something wrong,
something that made me very glad I wasn't alone to
face it. We were still at the window looking out,
and as soon as I could, I asked him what
he had heard or seen. I didn't hear anything at all,
he said, but about five minutes before I woke you.

(12:17):
I found myself looking out of this window here, and
there was a man sitting or kneeling on Samson's window
sill and looking in, And I thought he was beckoning.
What sort of man? Mc loyd wriggled. I don't know,
he said, but I can tell you one thing. He
was beastly thin, and he looked as if he was
wet all over, and he said, looking round and whispering

(12:41):
as if he hardly liked to hear himself. I'm not
at all sure that he was alive. We went on
talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept back
to bed. No one else in the room woke or
stirred the whole time. I believe we did sleep a
bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day, and
next day mister Samson was gone, not to be found,

(13:01):
and I believe no trace of him has ever come
to light since. In thinking it over, one of the
oddest things about it all has seemed to me to
be the fact that neither mac lloyd nor I ever
mentioned what we had seen to any third person whatever.
Of course, no questions were asked on the subject, and
if they had been um inclined to believe that we
could not have made any answer. We seemed unable to
speak about it. That is my story, said the narrator.

(13:25):
The only approach to a ghost story connected with the
school that I know. But still I think an approach
to such a thing. The sequel to this may perhaps
be reckoned highly conventional, but a sequel there is, and
so it must be produced. There had been more than
one listener to the story, and in the latter part
of that same year or of the next, one such

(13:47):
listener was staying at a country house in Ireland. One evening,
his host was turning over a drawer full of odds
and ends in the smoking room. Suddenly he put his
hand upon a little box. No, he said, you know
about old things. Tell me what that is. My friend
opened the little box and found in it a thin

(14:07):
gold chain with an object attached to it. He glanced
at the object and then took off his spectacles to
examine it more narrowly. What's the history of this, he asked?
Hard enough was the answer. You know the youth thicket
in the shrubbery well. A year or two back, we
were cleaning out the old well that used to be
in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we've found?

(14:31):
Is it possible that you found a body? Said the visitor,
with an odd feeling of nervousness. We did that. But
what's more, in every sense of the word, we found
too good heavens too. Was there anything to show how
they got there? Was this thing found with them? It
was amongst the rags of the clothes that were on

(14:54):
one of the bodies. A bad business, whatever the story
of it may have been. One body had the arms
tight round the other. They must have been there thirty
years or more long enough before we came to this place,
you may judge we filled the well up fast enough.
Do you make anything of what's cut on the gold
chain you have there? I think I can, said my friend,

(15:17):
holding it to the light. But he read it without
much difficulty. It seems to be g W. S. Twenty
four July eighteen sixty five, and of a school story
by M. R. James