Episode 22 – Two Doctors
This episode Mike & Will put on their thinking caps and puzzle their way through ‘Two Doctors‘ by M.R. James.
Thanks to Kirsty for the excellent readings, and to Alisdair Wood for the great illustration to the left.
Don’t forget to vote on which story you would like to see Stephen Gray and his crew film next, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ by M.R. James or ‘The Willows’ by Algernon Blackwood.
Show notes
- Story Notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
Visit the ever-excellent Ghosts & Scholars for a useful set of notes which shed light on some of the more perplexing aspects of this story. - Gray’s Inn (Wikipedia)
James says he found the papers which make up this story in a dossier addressed to a lawyer in Grey’s Inn. Also see Gray’s Inn on Monty’s World. - Coronet and Bird Crest (MyFamilySilver.com)
The ‘bedsheets’ purchased by Dr Quinn features a bird and coronet, a motif common to a quite a few family crests from this period. - St. Anthony meeting the Satyr (Gallery.ca)
The rector makes reference to ‘Anthony conversing with a satyr’ as featured in the book of Jerome. This is a 1640 engraving of this scene. - An Elicidation (?) of the Plot of ‘Two Doctors’ by Lance Arney (Amazon.co.uk)
This essay features in the collection of essays ‘Warnings to the Curious’ and was a great help to us in researching this story.
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The fragmented story can be a useful device, but on this case I don’t think it works, there are too many gaps between the various parts, and the story falls apart.
That said, the description of the thing that is dug up in the dream is one of the creepiest images James ever came up with.
Well, you did your best, but I fear even you guys can’t make this story really interesting. It’s possibly my modern sensibility, but I want a horror story to build on a single mythos and stick with it, rather than to throw in all sorts of random ickyness in the hope that some of it will stick.
Puzzles can be great stories – I think the detective story model is one that James usefully borrowed with some of his other work – but there does need to be both the ability for the reader to work out what’s going on, and a resolution so that the reader can check his conclusions.
Glad to see you’s are back! I missed these podcasts.
I tried reading this once and just plain didn’t like it.
I think I understand what James was trying for, to reveal a bundle of evidence surrounding an event, that’s great, but this story is almost impenetrable. It’s hard to follow and there’s no real reveal.
Also, I really think The Willows should be made. James is great, but The Willows…oh, The Willows NEEDS a film treatment.
Sorry it has been a while. We did the show quite a few weeks ago – and then realised that it hadn’t actually recorded.
Of all the stories to have to do twice…
Ah no worries! That does suck immensely, I mean, Two Doctors…good God.
I thought one of you’s had died or something. That’d be pretty awkward.
And what’s this about a soundtrack of the show I heard somewhere?
Quarter*master* and the Pit?
I had a lot more fun listening to this podcast than I did reading the story.
Also, I couldn’t stop giggling whenever the guys mentioned the name “Dr. Quinn.” I guess Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was strictly a U.S. show:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Quinn
So yeah, I kept picturing Dr. Quinn as Jane Seymour. I think it improves the story.
In tomb robbing, everything that wasn’t the body was left, since it was property, the body belonging ‘unto God’ so often valuables were left on the burst grave (the grave was never fully opened, a hole wide enough to allow someone to break the coffin lid and haul the contents out being the most effective method for common graves, but not applicable here)
The oddity of someone being buried with favoured bed linen sound like the sort of thing that could crop up in the purview of an antiquary… It rings some bells with me, but I read some odd things in my youth.
And maybe the affable Dr Quinn’s “Dealer” was more than a seller of second hand linen. WE don’t know of Quinn’s other interests, and many doctors of the period had a morbid taste for samples.
Great discussion, and you make a good stab at unravelling various plot strands and ideas. It’s a frustrating story, rather like watching an experimental film by a skilled but somewhat self-indulgent director.
Re: Dr Abell’s friends in the lanes, Dante in his Inferno refers to ‘neutral angels’ that weren’t for God or Lucifer, but only for themselves. Not sure where he got that, but MRJ would have known his Dante, and indeed the mediaeval legends the poet presumably drew upon.
Keep up the good work!
I’ve never thought ‘Two Doctors’ was the worst or weakest MRJ story, but I _am_ sorry that you had to record the episode twice, in this case!
I was wondering — are you planning on covering ‘The Five Jars’? I get the impression it’s often overlooked or excluded, but I think it’s enjoyable and no less spectral & peculiar for being written for someone too young to drink port with (or too female to be caned by?).
I’ve often wondered whether James read Dante – can’t recall a reference. But in the Commedia there’s a phrase about a dream which passes like thunder in the head. I can’t remember where exactly this occurs; but it reminds me of a similar phrase in “The Rose Garden”, for what it’s worth. Does anyone recognise the origin of the clergyman’s reference to the axe moving itself against him who lifts it? It sounds biblical to me, and might be a further clue.
I agree about Abel and the coven – his question “Who brought you?” suggests as much.
Isaiah 10:15
Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.