The new ghost has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit. In the older fiction and drama apparitions spoke seldom, and then merely as ghosts, not as individuals. And ghosts, like kings in drama, were of a dignity and must preserve it in their speech. Or perhaps the authors were doubtful as to the dialogue of shades, and compromised on a few stately ejaculations as being safely phantasmal speaking parts. But compare that usage with the rude freedom of some modern spooks, as John Kendrick Bangs's spectral cook of Bangletop, who lets fall her h's and twists grammar in a rare and diverting manner. For myself, I'd hate to be an old-fashioned ghost with no chance to keep up with the styles in slang. Think of having always—and always—to speak a dead language!
The humorous ghost is not only modern, but he is distinctively American. There are ghosts of all nationalities, naturally, but the spook that provides a joke—on his host or on himself—is Yankee in origin and development. The dry humor, the comic sense of the incongruous, the willingness to laugh at himself as at others, carry over into immaterialization as characteristic American qualities and are preserved in their true flavor. I don't assert, of course, that Americans have been the only ones in this field. The French and English selections in this volume are sufficient to prove the contrary. Gautier's The Mummy's Foot has a humor of a lightness and grace as delicate as the princess's little foot itself. There are various English stories of whimsical haunting, some of actual spooks and some of the hoax type. Hoax ghosts are fairly numerous in British as in American literature, one of the early specimens of the kind being The Specter of Tappington in the Ingoldsby Legends. The files of Blackwood's Magazine reveal several examples, though not of high literary value.
Of the early specimens of the really amusing ghost that is an actual revenant is The Ghost Baby, in Blackwood's, which shows originality and humor, yet is too diffuse for printing here. In that we have a conventional young bachelor, engaged to a charming girl, who is entangled in social complications and made to suffer mental torment because, without his consent, he has been chosen as the nurse and guardian of a ghost baby that cradles after him wherever he goes. This is a rich story almost spoiled by being poorly told. I sigh to think of the laughs that Frank R. Stockton or John Kendrick Bangs or Gelett Burgess could have got out of the situation. There are other comic British spooks, as in Baring-Gould's A Happy Release, where a widow and a widower in love are haunted by the jealous ghosts of their respective spouses, till the phantom couple take a liking to each other and decide to let the living bury their dead. This is suggestive of Brander Matthews's earlier and cleverer story of a spectral courtship, in The Rival Ghosts. Medieval and later literature gave us many instances of a love affair or marriage between one spirit and one mortal, but it remained for the modern American to celebrate the nuptials of two ghosts. Think of being married when you know that you and the other party are going to live ever after—whether happily or no! Truly, the present terrors are more fearsome than the old!
The stories by Eden Phillpotts and Richard Middleton in this collection show the diversity of the English humor as associated with apparitions, and are entertaining in themselves. The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde, is one of his best short stories and is in his happiest vein of laughing satire. This travesty on the conventional traditions of the wraith is preposterously delightful, one of the cleverest ghost stories in our language. Zangwill has written engagingly of spooks, with a laughable story about Samuel Johnson. And there are others. But the fact remains that in spite of conceded and admirable examples, the humorous ghost story is for the most part American in creation and spirit. Washington Irving might be said to have started that fashion in skeletons and shades, for he has given us various comic haunters, some real and some make-believe. Frank R. Stockton gave his to funny spooks with a riotous and laughing pen. The spirit in his Transferred Ghost is impudently deathless, and has called up a train of subsequent haunters. John Kendrick Bangs has made the darker regions seem comfortable and homelike for us, and has created ghosts so human and so funny that we look forward to being one—or more. We feel downright neighborly toward such specters as the futile “last ghost” Nelson Lloyd evokes for us, as we appreciate the satire of Rose O'Neill's sophisticated wraith. The daring concept of Gelett Burgess's Ghost Extinguisher is altogether American. The field is still comparatively limited, but a number of Americans have done distinctive work in it. The specter now wears motley instead of a shroud, and shakes his jester's bells the while he rattles his bones. I dare any, however grouchy, reader to finish the stories in this volume without having a kindlier feeling toward ghosts!
D. S.
New York,
March, 1921.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| [Introduction: The Humorous Ghost] | vii |
| [The Canterville Ghost] | 3 |
| By Oscar Wilde | |
| [The Ghost-Extinguisher] | 51 |
| By Gelett Burgess | |
| [“Dey Ain't No Ghosts”] | 69 |
| By Ellis Parker Butler | |
| [The Transferred Ghost] | 89 |
| By Frank R. Stockton | |
| [The Mummy's Foot] | 109 |
| By Théophile Gautier | |
| [The Rival Ghosts] | 129 |
| By Brander Matthews | |
| [The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall] | 159 |
| By John Kendrick Bangs | |
| [Back from that Bourne] | 175 |
| Anonymous | |
| [The Ghost-Ship] | 187 |
| By Richard Middleton | |
| [The Transplanted Ghost] | 205 |
| By Wallace Irwin | |
| [The Last Ghost in Harmony] | 229 |
| By Nelson Lloyd | |
| [The Ghost of Miser Brimpson] | 247 |
| By Eden Phillpotts | |
| [The Haunted Photograph] | 275 |
| By Ruth McEnery Stuart | |
| [The Ghost that Got the Button] | 295 |
| By Will Adams | |
| [The Specter Bridegroom] | 315 |
| By Washington Irving | |
| [The Specter of Tappington] | 341 |
| Compiled by Richard Barham | |
| [In the Barn] | 385 |
| By Burges Johnson | |
| [A Shady Plot] | 403 |
| By Elsie Brown | |
| [The Lady and the Ghost] | 425 |
| By Rose Cecil O'Neill |