The setting is a real and very small town (pop. -1,000) in the French Pyrenees in the year 1883. The total number of characters in the story is also small, barely reaching double figures. The theme of the story is that of a demonic bargain of two centuries before and the power such has over a descendant of the individual who made that bargain. This is the very barest outline of 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' - the ONLY one of the eight stories in M. R. James's first and best collection - 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' - that I have NEVER seen dramatised. In my view, the story contains sufficient plot and backstory and the three main characters are well enough developed for the creation of a successful forty-five minute adaptation WITHOUT additions or subtractions. I feel that the ending of last year's offering, 'The Mezzotint', was marred by the final scene which was quite unlike anything James wrote. This type of conclusion (in which the main character HAS to come to a sticky end) also somewhat spoiled the ending of 1974's adaptation of James's 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' - however effective in itself that conclusion might have been! It is worth noting that the above fate befalls the leading character in only three of the eight stories in 'Antiquary': 'Lost Hearts', 'The Ash-tree' and, yes, 'Count Magnus'.
The three main characters referred to above are an Englishman named Dennistoun , who is a typical, well-educated Jamesian protagonist, the sacristan of the cathedral church of St. Bertrand de Comminges (and, by implication, a descendant of the titular character) and the sacristan's daughter. The three scenes of the story are the cathedral church itself, the home of the sacristan and his daughter and the hotel at which Dennistoun is staying - all within a hundred yards of each other and forming, as well as one can judge, the points of an imaginary isosceles or even an equilateral triangle! This arrangement of internal settings enables the events of the story to be recounted in a taut, increasingly tension-filled fashion leading to a denoument in which, as one would expect of James, the ultimate manifestation of horror is of the briefest but nevertheless hideously intense duration.
I would very much like to see Mr. Mark Gatiss bring this unacknowledged classic (either the first or second ghost story M. R. James ever wrote) to the screen for perhaps the very first time ever!
The three main characters referred to above are an Englishman named Dennistoun , who is a typical, well-educated Jamesian protagonist, the sacristan of the cathedral church of St. Bertrand de Comminges (and, by implication, a descendant of the titular character) and the sacristan's daughter. The three scenes of the story are the cathedral church itself, the home of the sacristan and his daughter and the hotel at which Dennistoun is staying - all within a hundred yards of each other and forming, as well as one can judge, the points of an imaginary isosceles or even an equilateral triangle! This arrangement of internal settings enables the events of the story to be recounted in a taut, increasingly tension-filled fashion leading to a denoument in which, as one would expect of James, the ultimate manifestation of horror is of the briefest but nevertheless hideously intense duration.
I would very much like to see Mr. Mark Gatiss bring this unacknowledged classic (either the first or second ghost story M. R. James ever wrote) to the screen for perhaps the very first time ever!