Day 11 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Familiar’ by Sheridan Le Fanu

In 1929, M. R. James’ essay ‘Some Remarks on Ghost Stories’ appeared in the special Christmas edition of The Bookman. You can read the whole thing here if you are so inclined!

In it he, quite famously, claims that he does ‘not think there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu’s; and among these I should give the first place to ‘The Familiar’ (alias ‘The Watcher’). He isolates three of Le Fanu’s tales as ‘unsurpassed’ among supernatural fiction: ‘The Familiar’, ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Justice Harbottle’. Incidentally (or not), all three appear in the 1872 collection In a Glass Darkly. I should note though that in his 1923 lecture on Sheridan Le Fanu later adapted to print in Ghosts and Scholars 7 (1985) he swaps ‘Carmilla’ out for ‘Squire Toby’s Will’ in the top three. You can read that article here.

If you’re wondering why Sheridan Le Fanu refers to it as ‘alias ‘The Watcher”, it’s because a slightly altered version of the story was published under that name in 1847 in the Dublin University Magazine. You can read that version here. It was published as ‘The Familiar’ along with four other stories in In a Glass Darkly. The collection is loosely connected by references to a Dr. Hesselius, an early occult detective (who isn’t, honestly, very good at his job). One of the main changes between the 1847 and 1872 versions is this Hesselius framing and the added prologue which was not an original (or organic) part of the story. Many of Hesselius’ interventions in cases occur as they do in this story – he receives notes, discusses cases after they happen, ineffectively theorises. In those stories like ‘Green Tea’ where he directly intervenes in the case by ‘treating’ a patient, the result aren’t particularly encouraging! The five stories in the collection are some of his most famous:

1. ‘Carmilla’ – famous sapphic vampire tale
2. ‘Green Tea’ – equally famous demon monkey story
3. ‘Justice Harbottle’ – the comeuppance of a hanging judge. This story is also adapted from an earlier tale called ‘An Account of some Strange Disturbances in an old house in Aungier Street’ (a snappy little title) published in the Dublin University Magazine for 1853. For those interested, you can read it here.
4. ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant’ – a convoluted mystery story involving cunning thieves, foolish young Englishmen on holiday and live burial.
5. ‘The Familiar’

‘The Familiar’ was the crown jewel of the collection to M. R. James, the most successful at ‘inspir[ing] horror’ through ‘a very skillfull use of crescendo’ with ‘the gradual removal of one safeguard after another’ and ‘the victim’s dim forebodings of what is to happen gradually growing clearer’.

The question is – do we agree with the assessment?

For me, personally, the story is strongest at the beginning rather than the end. The looming owl fails to strike fear into my heart, partly because I really like owls and would be pretty excited to find one in my bedroom (as long as he was just chilling and not distressed). I think horror and the emotions it raises is always a personal experience. What works for one person will leave another cold. I’m sure we’ll all have different experiences of the story. The part that I found most effective though was the footsteps. The dark walk home alone at night. The footsteps following. The paranoia growing as nothing is scene. The footsteps that keep pace, that stop when you stop. The protagonist’s growing wariness, his inability to tell when he is hearing something and when he is imagining it, his nerves so tightly wound, his ears pricked for any whisper or echo of a sound… All of that is all too literally familiar. The supernatural revelation, the grumpy man, the spooky owl, the dead returning is all secondary to me. They just don’t do anything for me. But I can feel in my bones that startled sense of horror, like waking in the middle of the night to a noise in an empty house. Le Fanu viscerally creates recreates that feeling in the early part of the story and the shivers take me right through to the end of the story.