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Birmingham, George A. (pseudonym of James Owen Hannay). Bindon Parva. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, [1925]. First U.S. edition. With twelve-page "Preface to American Readers" not found in the U.K. edition. Octavo, pp. [1-22] 23-319 [320: blank]. Original dark brown cloth, front and spine panels stamped in pistachio green. Small violet ownership rubber stamp on front free endpaper. A fine copy in very good pictorial dust jacket. The U.S. edition is scarcer (and arguably better looking) than the Mills & Boon U.K. edition, which quickly went through at least three printings. #1781. $100. The first of these thirteen loosely-linked stories establishes the narrative frame: an architect is called in to do some restoration work on a small Norman church in Bindon Parva, a fictional small village in Dorset on the south coast of England. Normally, his partner, Darrell, would handle the ecclesiastical jobs -- with great relish -- but he is in bed with influenza. The other partner (our narrator) does "secular" work and regards spiritual matters of any kind, let alone the weirdly supernatural, as best confined between the covers of the Bible. It's this mildly skeptical perspective that provides the perfect dramatic foil for the ensuing stories. These are narrated by the church's Anglican vicar, Sylvester Maturin, who has become so receptive to mystical forces that he is practically a ghost himself -- hardly ever eating or bathing, not from penitential discipline but from sheer lack of interest. In the first story, the architect awakes early one morning and sees Maturin (a name to conjure with, surely, when it comes to supernatural fiction!) saying Mass by himself -- or so one would have thought in a church empty but for the eavesdropping architect. But when Maturin serves the Eucharist the architect sees the chalice passing hands down a line of invisible kneeling communicants. The ensuing stories gradually reveal that Maturin is in touch with the spirits of many of the former vicars of this church, and he tells their stories as they have been told to him. These tales all concern religious themes and forces, naturally (or supernaturally), but most are only marginally "supernatural" in the usual sense of that term as a literary genre. The first story is indisputably weird, though, and quite atmospheric. The contrast of the two narrators gives a piquancy to the writing. Two other short ecclesiastical ghost stories, told to the author after the publication of the English edition, are related by him in the author's preface. The material in general is very pleasantly and professionally told. The author handles weighty matters with a light touch.
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