Blog-o-ween 2023: "The Crown Derby Plate" by Marjorie Bowen

Today for Blog-o-ween 2023, we continue to trudge across the misty moors by the light of the full moon, our walking stick firmly in hand, and our scarf pulled around our throats to fight off the chill in the air. The superstitious old carriage driver wouldn’t go any further than the crumbling stone wall back there at the crossroads, dash him, so we had to light out on foot in hopes of making it to the ancient family manse in time for Christmas dinner.

That’s right, kiddies, it’s time for another old-timey, gothic Christmas ghost story for Halloween. We’ve had our fair share of Yuletide horrors this Blog-o-ween season — classic tales from Robert Shearman, Ramsey Campbell, and A.M. Burrage — so what’s one more, amirite? It’s one thing to put up Xmas decorations in October (I mean, that’s just gauche and morally wrong on many, many levels), but we can be magnanimous enough to accept another spooky Christmastide ghost story for Halloween, can’t we? Just one more? Last one...I promise...

That’s the spirit!! You won’t regret it, I promise. This one is a good Christmas ghost story to go out on. It’s simply told, but very creepy. It concerns an old woman, an almost-complete set of china, and...a fearful smell. Let’s follow Marjorie Bowen to the Hartleys’ estate and see if we can’t find “The Crown Derby Plate.”

“Martha Pym said that she had never seen a ghost and that she would very much like to do so, ‘particularly at Christmas, for you can laugh as you like, that is the correct time to see a ghost.’”

Miss Pym, visiting her cousins, Mabel and Clara, for the Christmas holidays, is told that an old Miss Lefain has moved into a house out on marshes. This Miss Lefain is supposed to be very eccentric, and she, like Miss Pym, is a collector of china. It was many years ago that Miss Pym bought an entire Crown Derby tea service at an auction at that very house, known as “Hartleys.” It was a perfect collection, save for the fact that it was missing one plate. A plate that was supposedly hidden in the house somewhere. Why shouldn’t Miss Pym take a run over to Hartleys and ask Miss Lefain if she has found the missing Crown Derby plate? Her cousin tries to talk her out of it:

“Miss Lefain, she declared, was a recluse, an odd creature who might greatly resent such a visit and such a request.

“‘Well, if she does I can but come away again,’ smiled Miss Pym. ‘I suppose she can't bite my head off, and I rather like meeting these curious types — we've got a love for old china in common, anyhow.’

“‘It seems so silly to think of it — after all these years — a plate!’

“‘A Crown Derby plate,’ corrected Miss Pym. ‘It is certainly strange that I didn't think of it before, but now that I have got it into my head I can't get it out. Besides,’ she added hopefully, ‘I might see the ghost.’”

Uh-oh.

So, off Miss Pym goes to Hartleys. Once there, she see the state that the house is in:

“The house sprang up suddenly on a knoll ringed with rotting trees, encompassed by an old brick wall that the perpetual damp had overrun with lichen, blue, green, white colours of decay...

“It was a square-built, substantial house with ‘nothing wrong with it but the situation,’ Miss Pym decided, though it was not very attractive, being built of that drab plastered stone so popular a hundred years ago, with flat windows and door, while one side was gloomily shaded by a large evergreen tree of the cypress variety which gave a blackish tinge to that portion of the garden.

“There was no pretence at flower-beds nor any manner of cultivation in this garden where a few rank weeds and straggling bushes matted together above the dead grass; on the enclosing wall which appeared to have been built high as protection against the ceaseless winds that swung along the flats were the remains of fruit trees; their crucified branches, rotting under the great nails that held them up, looked like the skeletons of those who had died in torment.”

Miss Pym is greeted by an old woman. Miss Lefain, surely, Miss Pym assumes. The woman admits to receiving few visitors and to being quite lonely. Miss Pym accepts the woman’s invitation and enters the decrepit house.

In the poor light of the interior of Hartleys, Miss Pym notes that Miss Lefain was

“most dreadfully old, older than any human being had the right to be, why, she felt young in comparison—so faded, feeble, and pallid was Miss Lefain.

“She was also monstrously fat; her gross, flaccid figure was shapeless and she wore a badly cut, full dress of no colour at all, but stained with earth and damp where Miss Pym supposed she had been doing futile gardening; this gown was doubtless designed to disguise her stoutness, but had been so carelessly pulled about that it only added to it, being rucked and rolled ‘all over the place’ as Miss Pym put it to herself.

“Another ridiculous touch about the appearance of the poor old lady was her short hair; decrepit as she was, and lonely as she lived she had actually had her scanty relics of white hair cropped round her shaking head.”

Miss Pym can’t be too bothered by Miss Lefain’s appearance, however. Not when there’s the matter of the missing Crown Derby plate to be taken care of. The old woman tells Miss Pym that she hid the plate away, and that if Miss Pym stays a while longer and talks, then she can have the plate. This is too good an opportunity to pass up, so Miss Pym follows the old woman up the stairs to where the plate is hidden. But why, if the old woman lives in Hartleys, is everything — beds, tables, chairs — covered in dust sheets? And why are there no fires set? And what is that smell that Miss Pym suddenly notices: “a fearful smell — something damp rotting somewhere”?

Miss Pym soon discovers the answers to those questions, but...at least she got her plate, right? Right?

Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long was born in 1885 on Hayling Island in Hampshire, England. Her alcoholic father left the family when she was young and was later found dead in the streets of London. She, along with her sister and their unaffectionate mother, lived in poverty.

At the age of sixteen, Bowen (which was one of many pseudonyms she used) wrote her first novel The Viper of Milan. So violent was the historical novel, that several publishers refused to touch it because they considered it inappropriate that so young a woman should have written it. Of course, eventually it was published in 1906, and, of course, eventually it became a bestseller. After that, Bowen was able to support her family through her writing.

And write she did.

Her works numbered over 150 volumes and covered such genres as historical fiction, gothic horror, mysteries, and popular history. She continued to be well-regarded after her death in 1952 by writers and critics such as Graham Greene, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and Fritz Leiber.

“The Crown Derby Plate” is perhaps her best known work. It’s been included in several Christmas-themed anthologies such as Christmas Ghosts (1987), Horror for Christmas (1992), and Mistletoe & Mayhem: Horrific Tales for the Holidays (1993). Bowen herself published the tale in her collections The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales (1933) and The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories (1949). It was also published by Arkham House in the 1976 collection Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales. You can also find the story here at Project Gutenberg.

I’m very surprised that none of the old time radio shows adapted Bowen’s tale, but you can listen to Tony Walker read it on his excellent Classic Ghost Stories Podcast:

As I said, “The Crown Derby Plate” is the final Christmas ghost story of this year’s Blog-o-ween. I hope you enjoyed it. Now, it’s time to take down the tree, pack up the stockings, toss out the mistletoe, and get on with stories that have less to do with Santa Claus and more to do with Satan’s claws, if you know what I mean? Until tomorrow, then...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!