What even are chintzes
Apr. 13th, 2018 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI've just re-read an M.R. James story called "The Diary of Mr. Poynter" (you can read it here if you want) and am amused by something that's occurred to me.
The real horror of this story, and what I remembered about it, isn't the fairly random and quickly-sketched monster that appears at the end, but the much more detail and time given to the protagonist being told off by his aunt*, him having to politely host houseguests he doesn't want, and most of all his obligation to shop for carpets, chairs, paint, wallpaper and everything for a new house.
I remember Ramsey Campbell, at the M.R. James conference in Leeds, praising "a rounded something" (the first we hear of the actual monster in the story) as a good line, and it's not bad, but it's nothing like as horrifying as the prospect of being scolded at length about chintzes.
* She seems surprisingly good at articulating emotional labor, though of course she doesn't have that name for it:
"I do think, James, when I am taking all this trouble for you, you might contrive to remember the one or two things which I specially begged you to see after. It’s not as if I was asking it for myself. I don’t know whether you think I get any pleasure out of it, but if so I can assure you it’s very much the reverse. The thought and worry and trouble I have over it you have no idea of, and you have simply to go to the shops and order the things."
And then,
"Then on Saturday we have friends, as you know, coming for tennis. Yes, indeed, you spoke of asking them yourself, but, of course, I had to write the notes, and it is ridiculous, James, to look like that. We must occasionally be civil to our neighbours: you wouldn’t like to have it said we were perfect bears."
The real horror of this story, and what I remembered about it, isn't the fairly random and quickly-sketched monster that appears at the end, but the much more detail and time given to the protagonist being told off by his aunt*, him having to politely host houseguests he doesn't want, and most of all his obligation to shop for carpets, chairs, paint, wallpaper and everything for a new house.
I remember Ramsey Campbell, at the M.R. James conference in Leeds, praising "a rounded something" (the first we hear of the actual monster in the story) as a good line, and it's not bad, but it's nothing like as horrifying as the prospect of being scolded at length about chintzes.
* She seems surprisingly good at articulating emotional labor, though of course she doesn't have that name for it:
"I do think, James, when I am taking all this trouble for you, you might contrive to remember the one or two things which I specially begged you to see after. It’s not as if I was asking it for myself. I don’t know whether you think I get any pleasure out of it, but if so I can assure you it’s very much the reverse. The thought and worry and trouble I have over it you have no idea of, and you have simply to go to the shops and order the things."
And then,
"Then on Saturday we have friends, as you know, coming for tennis. Yes, indeed, you spoke of asking them yourself, but, of course, I had to write the notes, and it is ridiculous, James, to look like that. We must occasionally be civil to our neighbours: you wouldn’t like to have it said we were perfect bears."