An Evening's Entertainment

"An Evening's Entertainment"
Short story by M. R. James
"An Evening's Entertainment" was first published in A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories in 1925
Text available at Wikisource
Country	England
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Publication
Published in	A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories
Publisher	Edward Arnold
Media type	Print (hardback)
Publication date	1925

"An Evening's Entertainment" is a horror short story by the English writer M. R. James, first published in his book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories in 1925.

Plot summary

In the framing device for the story, a woman tells her grandchildren that if they sit quietly and avoid waking their father she will take them to pick blackberries the next day. After her grandson says that the best blackberries are to be found "in the little lane that goes up past Collins's cottage", she tells him he must never pick blackberries in that lane. When the children ask why not, she tells them a story which her mother had told her.

Long ago a man named Davis had lived in a cottage on the lane. Davis was independently wealthy, and did not associate with the other people of the parish. One day, a young man moved into his cottage; the relationship between the two men is unclear. The two men are known to roam around the downland and woods late at night and early in the morning, and regularly visit a hill figure, camping there overnight during the summer. When the squire remarks that the hillside must be lonely during the night, the young man replies "we don't want for company at such times". Mr Davis speculates that the barrows on the down predate the Romans.

Around three years later a woodcutter finds the body of the young man hanging from an oak tree in a clearing deep in the woods, dressed in a white gown and with a bloody hatchet at his feet. When a party led by the parson, Mr. White, go to retrieve the body, they find an old-looking "little ornament like a wheel" hanging on a chain round its neck. A boy is sent to Davis' cottage to notify him, but is found lying in the village street. When the horse on which the body is being transported nears Davis' cottage it rears with fear, throwing the body to the ground. When the party carry the young man's body into the cottage, they find Davis' body lying on a table bound with linen bands, with an axe wound in the chest. Searching the house, they find sleeping potions in the cottage; it is surmised that the young man drugged and murdered Mr. Davis, then killed himself out of remorse. Papers found in the cottage suggest that the men were guilty of idolatry.

The residents of the parish are unwilling to have Davis and the young man buried in the churchyard; it is agreed to bury the two men at a crossroads. While transporting the bodies, patches of blood from Mr. Davis' body fall on the lane. The next day, the squire rides past the lane and finds that the patches of blood are covered with large black flies. The squire orders that the patches be covered with clean earth from the churchyard. As the earth is thrown onto the blood, the flies disperse in a solid cloud, the sexton remarks "Lord of flies". The squire arranges for the cottage and its contents to be burned.

Following these events, people claim to see the ghosts of Davis and the young men in the wood and in the lane, particularly in the spring and autumn. One March, the grandmother and her future husband are walking in the lane and she is bitten on the back of her hand by a large fly, causing her hand and arm to swell up. A "wise man" from a nearby village visits and cures her hand; he remarks that "When the sun's gathering his strength [...] and when he's in the height of it, and when he's beginning to lose his hold, and when he's in his weakness, them that haunts about that lane had best to take heed to themselves." The grandmother hears of other people suffering similar incidents, but notes they are growing less frequent.

The story closes with the grandmother sending the children to bed, telling them "that's the reason [why] I won’t have you gathering me blackberries, no, nor eating them either, in that lane; and now you know all about it, I don’t fancy you'll want to yourself."

Publication

"An Evening's Entertainment" was first published in James' 1925 book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories. S. T. Joshi suggests it was written specifically to "flesh-out" the book. In 1931, it was collected in James' book The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James.

Reception

"An Evening's Entertainment" forms part of what critic Michael Kellermeyer describes as James' "puzzle-story phase," consisting of oblique tales that require an unusual amount of interpretation. S. T. Joshi observes that it is "one of the relatively few tales by [James] that do not involve an actual ghost", adding "...the tale, in spite of its almost flippant opening, carries powerful implications of horror under its seemingly bland surface." Jim Moon describes the story as an attempt to recreate "lost folklore". Rosemary Pardoe describes the story as "...an oddity in that it is the closest [James] ever came to straight-forward grand guignol."

Adaptations

On 31 October 1964, Erik Bauersfeld's radio drama The Black Mass broadcast an adaptation of "An Evening's Entertainment" on KPFA and KPFK.

External links

• The full text of An Evening's Entertainment at Wikisource
• "An Evening's Entertainment" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "An Evening's Entertainment" episode of The Black Mass