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Contact: [email protected] ‘When the cage came up there was something crouched a-top of it’ The haunted tales of L.T.C. Rolt - A Contextual Analysis by Danny Rhodes Canterbury Christ Church University Thesis submitted for the degree of MA by Research 2018 I. Introduction 1 II. Defining the ghost story 2 III. The ghost story and its Relation to the Gothic 8 IV. M.R. James - What Makes a Good Ghost Story? 12 V. L.T.C. Rolt - The Passing of the Ghost Story 19 VI. A Taxonomical Analysis of the Ghost Stories of M.R. James and L.T.C. Rolt with Wider Literary Connections 28 Horror of the Senses 29 Revulsion 36 Detailed Milieu 45 Proximity, Powerlessness and Forced Voyeurism 47 Landscape and Setting 51 Work and Industry 54 Nature 62 VII. Towards Modern Ghosts 67 VIII. L.T.C. Rolt – A Final Word 70 27,550 Words (Excluding Bibliography) Abstract British writer and historian L.T.C. Rolt’s collection of ghost stories, Sleep No More was published in 1948. His short fiction deserves greater exposure. More than simply a ‘derivative imitation’ of what came before, one could argue the collection provides an end point for the Victorian and Edwardian ghostly tale. Whilst heavily influenced by, and indebted to, the works of Sheridan Le Fanu and M.R. James, Rolt’s tales assuredly re-shape the traditional ghost story from the outdated gothic settings of the past and the academic background of James’s works - the isolated country churches, foreign abbeys and country halls - into the more identifiable surroundings of post-war Britain with its steam trains, canals and factories. Gone too are Le Fanu’s country squires and James’s fusty antiquarians, replaced by railwaymen, steel-workers and motor-racing enthusiasts. It is into this recognisable world populated by ordinary characters that Rolt slips his unease. In doing so, he forges the way, alongside Fritz Leiber for the generation of ‘working-class’ or ‘blue- collar’ stories that follow. Beginning with a close analysis of the key fundamentals of a ghost story as laid down by M.R. James, and juxtaposing those against Rolt’s informative essay The Passing of the Ghost Story (1956) we can see how Rolt’s tales provide a distinctive connection between the traditional ghost stories of James and the industrial short horror fiction of Leiber. Rolt also sets a portion of his tales in isolated Welsh valleys and the Shropshire border country where he was raised. It is in these more wild and brooding locations, more aligned to the works of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, that his tales of ghosts and hauntings are transformed into unsettling, disorientating excursions where ‘angel satyrs’ stir. Introduction Lionel Thomas Caswell Rolt (1910-1974) is best known as a biographer of important engineering figures from the past such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George and Robert Stephenson, non-fiction works on engineering, railways, canals and industrial history and as a key figure in the development of the Inland Waterways Association which he founded along with the writer Robert Aickman and canal historian Charles Hadfield in 1946. He also wrote one collection of ghost stories, Sleep No More, which was published in 1948 by Constable. At the time of publication Michael Sadleir of Constable hailed Rolt as the successor to M.R. James. I would like to make the argument that Rolt’s short collection of just fourteen stories does deserve greater recognition. More than simple imitations of what came before, one could argue the collection of stories provides an end-point for the Victorian and Edwardian ghostly tale. Whilst heavily influenced by, and indebted to, the works of Sheridan Le Fanu and M.R. James, Rolt’s tales assuredly re-route the traditional ghost story away from the outdated gothic settings of the past and the academic background of James’s works - the isolated country churches, foreign abbeys and country halls - into the more identifiable surroundings of post-war Britain with its steam trains, canals and factories. Gone too are Le Fanu’s country squires and James’s fusty antiquarians, replaced by railwaymen, steel-workers and motor-racing enthusiasts. It is into this more recognisable world populated by ordinary characters that Rolt slips his unease and his dread. Alongside Fritz Leiber, Rolt forges a new path for horror towards the urban stories that populate much of the genre today. Page 1 of 85 I. Defining the Ghost Story In his essay The Passing of the Ghost Story first published in The Saturday Book No. 16, 1956, Rolt laments the loss of the ghost story, bemoaning how a ‘venerable branch of the storyteller’s art seems to have fallen into neglect’. There was a time, Rolt mourns, ‘when no Christmas annual or Christmas number of a magazine was considered complete without a ghost story’. Rolt notes that critics in the decade since the end of World War Two seem to put the absence of the ghost story down to ‘materialism and cynicism’, suggesting it is ‘an exhausted form doomed to extinction in a world of science fiction’(Rolt, “Passing”). It is unsurprising that Rolt felt this way. Rolt’s collection of stories had not sold in the quantities both he and his publisher had hoped (so much so that Sleep No More was Rolt’s only excursion into fiction) and the reading public had moved on to new subjects of interest. This is in marked contrast to the early decades of the twentieth century and the Victorian era that preceded it, when published ghost stories were widespread, popular and very much part of the English cultural identity. Before looking more closely at the stories of L.T.C. Rolt it is important to contextualise and consider their place in the wider history of the genre. As we’ve established, a ‘golden age of the ghost story’ (Sullivan) existed between the decline of the Gothic novel in the 1830s and the start of the First World War. Julia Briggs makes the point that ‘the most characteristic form taken by the Gothic from, perhaps, 1830 to 1930 is the ghost story’ (Briggs 122). It is certainly the case that this period contains rich pickings for any ghost story enthusiast, though, as is the case whenever a particular genre of fiction becomes popular, one must carefully sort the strongest material from less successful imitations. In her recent study The Ghost – A Cultural History, Susan Owens tracks the enduring existence of the ghost story from its earliest forms through to the present day and entitles the chapter on the Victorian era as ‘A Haunted Century’ (184). She begins by focussing on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol published in 1843, suggesting ‘Dickens re-fashioned the ghost story for the Victorian era’ (189) with his tale. For the Victorians, Christmas Eve was a time for ghost stories. The roots of this tradition can be unearthed in paganism, the winter solstice or shortest day marking the time on the calendar when the dead were believed to have closest access to the living. Rolt himself recognises this oral tradition, noting that when ‘the winter wind boomed in the chimney…storytellers would…do their best to fright’ (Rolt, “Passing”). Page 2 of 85 John Sutherland points out that ‘The ghost story thrives on that holiday from rationalism, clear thinking and emotional self-restraint, which Christmas induces’ (Sutherland), something the BBC explored to their credit with a series of adaptations of various ghost stories, beginning with Johnathan Miller’s excellent dramatisation of M.R. James’s classic tale Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad first aired on Christmas Eve 1968. Rather than something new, Vic Zoschak observes that there is ‘etymological evidence’ that the tradition of telling ghostly tales in the depths of winter ‘stretches back at least to Shakespeare’s time’ (Zoschak). In Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Marlowe writes: Now I remember those old women’s words Who in my wealth would tell me winter’s tales And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night Similarly, William Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale includes Prince Maximillius remarking, ‘A sad tale’s best for winter; I have one / Of sprites and goblins.’ At the darkest time of the year families would spend the cold winter evenings exchanging stories that ‘ritually exorcised isolation and terror’ (Briggs 126). Note the shift in tone that appears in Jerome K Jerome’s introduction to an anthology of ghost stories, Told After Supper, in which Jerome writes, ‘Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon grave, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood’ (Jerome).