The Mezzotint quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary categories best describe "The Mezzotint"?

   • Realism, Everyday Life & Plain Detail
   • Detective Fiction, Clues & a Solved Case
   • Correct answer: Antiquarian Ghost Story, Horror & Dread
   • Satire, Social Comedy & College Wit
   • Historical Romance, Old Families & Love

   Antiquarian Ghost Story, Horror & Dread is the best fit. A scholar who collects old pictures of English places finds that one of them shows something dreadful, and the history behind it comes from an old guide-book and an old man's memory. James is remembered as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story, and this tale first appeared in his collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904). The fear builds slowly, stage by stage.

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2. 2

   Question 2. When the mezzotint first arrives, what does Williams think of it?

   • He thinks it a rare early print, cheap at the price the dealer asks
   • Correct answer: He thinks it dull amateur work, and far too dear at two guineas
   • He thinks it a fine copy of a painting his museum already owns
   • He thinks it a forgery, and means to report the dealer for it

   The narrator calls it "a rather indifferent mezzotint" and says "The whole thing gave the impression that it was the work of an amateur." Williams tells Binks, "Well, I think I should buy it if the price was five shillings," and calls it "a wretched engraving." He plans to find out what house it shows and then "send it back to Mr. Britnell" with some sharp remarks.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst form of engraving known."

   • Correct answer: A print from a metal plate, in soft tones of light and dark
   • A quick pencil sketch made outdoors in front of a scene
   • A small portrait painted in oils on a thin wooden panel
   • A photograph printed in brown tones on heavy paper

   A mezzotint is a kind of engraving: a picture printed from a worked metal plate, in soft tones of light and dark rather than in sharp lines. The story itself calls it a "form of engraving." The catalogue lists it as an "Interesting mezzotint: View of a manor-house."

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does the paper label on the back of the picture tell Williams?

   • The engraver's full name and the year the plate was made
   • The name of the family who had owned the picture before
   • Correct answer: Only the ends of a name: part of a Hall in Sussex or Essex
   • The price the dealer first paid for it at an auction sale

   The left-hand half of the label had been torn off, and "All that remained were the ends of two lines of writing": the first ended in the letters ngley Hall, the second in ssex. Williams tells Binks it is "Somethingley Hall, either in Sussex or Essex. Half the name's gone, you see." He grumbles that the name "may be anything from Guestingley to Langley."

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5. 5

   Question 5. Over tea on Saturday, what does Professor Binks notice in the picture that Williams had missed?

   • A light burning in one of the upper windows of the house
   • Correct answer: A head at the very edge of the picture, facing the house
   • A date and a name hidden in the shading of the trees
   • A carriage drawn up in front of the door of the house

   Binks says, "I should have thought there were figures, or at least a figure just on the edge in front." Williams looks: "Just the head, in the very front of the picture." It is "hardly more than a black blot on the extreme edge of the engraving—the head of a man or woman, a good deal muffled up, the back turned to the spectator, and looking towards the house." And "Williams had not noticed it before."

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6. 6

   Question 6. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "It was a rather indifferent mezzotint"

   • Not caring one way or the other about something
   • Very costly, priced well above its true worth
   • Old and faded, worn down by many years of use
   • Correct answer: Of poor or ordinary quality, not good at all

   Here indifferent means mediocre, of poor quality. It does not mean uncaring. The narrator goes on to say that "an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst form of engraving known," and that the picture looked like "the work of an amateur."

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7. 7

   Question 7. What price does Mr. Britnell ask for the mezzotint?

   • Five shillings
   • Ten guineas
   • Half a guinea
   • Correct answer: Two guineas

   The catalogue entry ends with the price "£2 2s." and Williams complains that "for some unearthly reason he wants two guineas for it." Five shillings is what Williams says he would pay. By Sunday he has changed his tune: "I'm beginning to think two guineas is not a very exorbitant price for it now."

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8. 8

   Question 8. Late on Saturday evening, a guest named Garwood looks at the picture. What happens?

   • He sees nothing odd, and laughs at the price that the dealer has put on such a dull engraving
   • He offers to buy it from Williams, and carries it off to his own rooms for the rest of the night
   • Correct answer: He praises the work and finds the figure grotesque, but Williams is too busy to look at it again
   • He sees the figure move, and leaves in a hurry before the evening's game of cards is finished

   Garwood says, "It's really a very good piece of work, Williams," and adds that "the figure, though it's rather too grotesque, is somehow very impressive." Williams, busy with drinks, "was unable to come across the room to look at the view again." The next day Garwood states that the figure "was clear of the edge of the picture, but had not got far across the lawn."

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9. 9

   Question 9. Some time past midnight, Williams looks at the picture alone. What does he see?

   • Correct answer: A figure in the middle of the lawn, crawling on all fours toward the house
   • A figure walking away from the house along the drive, under the trees
   • A figure at an upper window of the house, looking out toward him
   • Two figures on the front steps of the house, as if knocking at the door

   "In the middle of the lawn in front of the unknown house there was a figure where no figure had been at five o'clock that afternoon. It was crawling on all-fours towards the house, and it was muffled in a strange black garment with a white cross on the back." The sight made him "very nearly drop the candle on the floor." The narrator sums it up: "It was indubitable—rankly impossible, no doubt, but absolutely certain."

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does Williams do before he goes to bed that night?

    • He wraps the picture up again and leaves it to be sent straight back to the dealer
    • Correct answer: He writes and signs an account of the change, and locks the picture in a drawer
    • He hangs the picture on his bedroom wall so that he can keep watch on it all night
    • He wakes his neighbor Nisbet and asks him to sit up with the picture until morning

    He carries the picture "across the passage to a second set of rooms which he possessed." There "he locked it up in a drawer, sported the doors of both sets of rooms, and retired to bed; but first he wrote out and signed an account of the extraordinary change which the picture had undergone." A written, signed record is the first step in the careful method he follows all weekend.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "Sported (the doors)" mean in this story?

    • Decorated the doors in the colors of his college
    • Left the doors standing wide open all night long
    • Showed off the doors proudly to visiting friends
    • Correct answer: Shut the outer doors, as a sign to keep others out

    In a college, to sport the door is to shut the outer door of one's rooms as a sign that one is out or not to be disturbed. On Sunday the friends are "slightly annoyed to see that the door of his rooms was unsported," until they remember that the skips come early on Sundays. This sense has nothing to do with games or with wearing something proudly.

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12. 12

    Question 12. On Sunday morning, Williams asks Nisbet to describe the picture closely. What does Nisbet report?

    • Correct answer: No figure anywhere, but one ground-floor window standing open
    • The figure back at the very edge, just where Binks first saw it
    • The figure standing at the front door with one hand raised to knock
    • A second figure on the lawn, crawling after the first toward the house

    Asked about figures, Nisbet says, "Not a thing." Then: "Why, one of the windows on the ground-floor—left of the door—is open." Williams cries, "My goodness! he must have got in," and checks for himself: "There was no figure, and there was the open window." Nisbet then signs his description, and reads the statement Williams wrote the night before.

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13. 13

    Question 13. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "Describe it, if you don't mind, rather minutely."

    • Minute by minute, as time passes
    • Very briefly, in as few words as possible
    • Correct answer: In close detail, leaving nothing out
    • Quietly, so that no one else can hear

    Minutely (pronounced my-NOOT-lee) means in close, careful detail. It comes from minute in the sense of tiny, not the minute of a clock. Williams wants an exact description from a fresh witness, so he does not tell Nisbet what he saw: "I'll tell you why afterwards."

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14. 14

    Question 14. At about five on Sunday, Williams, Nisbet and Garwood gather round the picture. What do they see?

    • The window still open, and a pale face pressed to the glass from inside
    • Correct answer: The window shut, and the figure striding toward the front, carrying a child
    • The window broken, and the figure lying still in the middle of the lawn
    • The window open, and a woman at the front door calling across the lawn

    "The window that had been open was shut, and the figure was once more on the lawn." Now "it was erect and stepping swiftly, with long strides, towards the front of the picture," its arms "tightly clasped over an object which could be dimly seen and identified as a child, whether dead or living it was not possible to say." The skip Filcher saw it first and called it "this skelinton here, or whatever it is, carrying off the pore baby."

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15. 15

    Question 15. What does Murray's Guide to Essex say about the Francis family of Anningley Hall?

    • The family sold the Hall in 1802 and moved away to live in London
    • Correct answer: The family died out after the last heir disappeared as a baby in 1802
    • The family's last son was hanged in 1802 for shooting a keeper
    • The family lost everything in 1802 when the Hall burned to the ground

    The guide says "The family is now extinct, the last heir having disappeared mysteriously in infancy in the year 1802." The father, Mr. Arthur Francis, "was locally known as a talented amateur engraver in mezzotint." He lived shut away at the Hall and was found dead in his studio on the third anniversary of the loss, "having just completed an engraving of the house." The guide says nothing about a poacher or a hanging; that part comes from Green.

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16. 16

    Question 16. According to what Green says "used to be said in the place," what happened to the poacher Gawdy?

    • He fled to London and was never seen in Essex again
    • He was turned off the estate and died poor in a nearby town
    • He was pardoned by the judge and later became a keeper
    • Correct answer: He shot one of Francis's keepers and was hanged soon after

    Green says Francis drove the poachers off his estate, "all but one." That man, Gawdy, was "the last remains of a very old family." One night the keepers caught him, and Gawdy "was unlucky enough, poor chap! to shoot a keeper." Green goes on: "poor Gawdy was strung up in double-quick time," and was buried "on the north side of the church." All of this is Green's memory of local talk, not something the narrator states as fact.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • Nisbet photographs the picture on Sunday.

      Happened

      Nisbet offers, "I can do the photographing myself," and the narrator reports that "Nisbet proceeded to photograph the picture."

    • Williams calls in the police to watch the picture.

      Didn't happen

      No police appear. The three friends keep the matter to themselves, since any rumor "would bring the whole of the Phasmatological Society about their ears."

    • Filcher says he would not hang the picture where his little girl could see it.

      Happened

      The skip tells Williams, "it ain't the pictur I should 'ang where my little girl could see it, sir."

    • On Sunday morning, Nisbet sees the figure crawling across the lawn.

      Didn't happen

      Asked about a figure on the grass, Nisbet answers, "Not a thing." What he sees is an open window.

    • Garwood's statement of what he saw is written down and signed.

      Happened

      Williams fetches Garwood, and "A document to this effect was then drawn up and signed."

    • The narrator calls the figure a ghost.

      Didn't happen

      The word ghost never appears in the story. The narrator calls the figure "it" and "the appearance," Williams calls it "the creature," and Filcher calls it a "skelinton."

    • Late on Sunday night, Williams finds the house's name in a guide-book.

      Happened

      "At 11.30 p.m. he read from Murray's Guide to Essex" the entry on Anningley and the Francis family.

    • The figure is seen carrying the child back into the house.

      Didn't happen

      The last time the figure is seen, it is striding "towards the front of the picture" with the child. After Hall, "the figure was gone, and the house was quiet under the moonbeams." No one sees it go back into the house, and the story never says where it went.

    • The picture is later tested for invisible ink.

      Happened

      The narrator says it "has been treated with a view to discovering whether sympathetic ink has been used in it, but without effect." Sympathetic ink is invisible ink.

    • The picture is destroyed after that weekend.

      Didn't happen

      The narrator says that "the picture is now in the Ashleian Museum."

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18. 18

    Question 18. When the figure strides toward the front of the picture on Sunday, how much of its face can the watchers see?

    • Correct answer: Only a white dome-like forehead and a few straggling hairs
    • Only its eyes, which seem to stare straight out at them
    • Its whole face, pale and grinning, lit by the moon
    • None of it, because its back is turned toward the viewer

    "The black drapery hung down over its face so that only hints of that could be seen, and what was visible made the spectators profoundly thankful that they could see no more than a white dome-like forehead and a few straggling hairs." The face is never shown. Many readers see this holding back as one of James's key methods: what the reader is not shown can frighten more than what is.

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19. 19

    Question 19. Green calls Gawdy "the last of his line," and reports the idea that someone meant to take Francis's boy "and put an end to his line, too." Which theme do these words most clearly point to?

    • Correct answer: Revenge, with one family line ended in answer to another one
    • Trust, and the danger of taking strangers into the house at night
    • Hard work, and how a family builds its fortune up from nothing
    • Reunion, and the joy of a family brought together after years

    Gawdy's family ends with his hanging, and according to the plan Green reports, Francis's family is meant to end too. The guide confirms that the Francis family "is now extinct." Many readers see this as revenge that mirrors the hanging: one ended line for another. Green himself guesses that "it looks more as if old Gawdy had managed the job himself," but that is his supposition; the story never confirms who the figure is.

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20. 20

    Question 20. What does the narrator say has become of the picture since that weekend?

    • It went back to Mr. Britnell, who sold it to a buyer in Essex
    • It was burned by Williams after Green told him the Hall's story
    • Correct answer: It is in the Ashleian Museum, and has never been known to change
    • It hangs in Williams's rooms, and moves once a year on that night

    "I have only to add that the picture is now in the Ashleian Museum." It was tested for sympathetic ink "but without effect," Mr. Britnell "knew nothing of it save that he was sure it was uncommon," and "though carefully watched, it has never been known to change again." The story ends on these flat, factual notes.

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