M. R. James' The Treasure of Abbot Thomas: A Detailed Summary and Literary Analysis

Steinfeld Abbey is a 10^th century monastery located in west-central Germany near the French border. Although it has no legends of a treasure-hiding, alchemist monk, it would not have been surprising to M. R. James had he unearthed such a tradition while he was inventorying the abbey’s ornate stained glass windows in 1904.

From Faust to Frankenstein, German-speaking centers of learning have a long tradition of being associated with scholars who were unsatisfied with the conventional paths of learning – men who skulked in locked rooms, consorting with otherworldly counselors.

Like Canon Alberic, Abbot Thomas is an archetypal character who seems to embody some deep, ancient evil which moderns may be quick to dismiss or downplay. If Alberic represents the sin of sloth – of finding quick fixes to a life of productivity and honest work – then Thomas, undoubtedly, represents the sin of greed.

The story is unique in James’ catalogue in that is crosses over into the always popular “money diggers” genre, popularized by Washington Irving (“Golden Dreams,” “Dolph Heyliger”), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Gold Bug”), Arthur Conan Doyle (“The Musgrave Ritual”), and Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island”).

“Abbot Thomas” was the last entry in James’ first anthology of his annual ghost stories: a collection marked by shocking brutality (“The Mezzotint,” “The Ash-Tree,” “Lost Hearts”), and unrelenting evil (“Count Magnus,” “Oh Whistle”), and while “Abbot Thomas” is certainly no pastoral romp, it does act as a palette cleanser to the woeful gloom of what is arguably his best and most haunting anthology.

James genuinely seems to have fun with this one, developing a hidden code a la Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and luring the reader into a false sense of security by emphasizing the thrill of the hunt – the euphoric rush that nearly all of his antiquarian protagonists fall prey to. And if you aren’t careful, you too may be so swept away by the excitement of uncovering the treasure that you may forget the Abbot’s sinister promise to set a guardian over it.

SUMMARY

Our story begins with a lengthy Latin quotation that details the curious history of a notorious German monk. In the early sixteenth century, the Premonstratensian Abbey of Steinfeld was governed by Abbot Thomas von Eschenhausen, a man remembered for both his architectural improvements and a persistent rumor that he dabbled in both alchemy and treasure-hoarding. According to the chronicle Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum, the abbey scholars long preserved gossip —“de abscondito quodam istius Abbatis Thomæ thesauro”— about a certain cache of gold hidden on the monastery ground by the mysterious (and, indeed, mischievous) abbot.

It was said that while still vigorous in life he had concealed a great mass of gold somewhere in the monastery. When pressed as to its location, he would laugh and reply: “Job, Johannes, et Zacharias vel vobis vel posteris indicabunt” — “Job, John, and Zechariah will tell either you or your successors.” He would sometimes add — perhaps with something of a sinister air — that he "should feel no grudge" against any intrepid seeker who might find it.

The Abbot was also known for installing a great painted window in the east end of the south aisle of the abbey church, and for restoring much of the abbatial house, including digging and adorning a well in its court. He died suddenly in 1529 at the age of seventy-two.

Centuries later, the English gentleman and armchair-antiquary Mr. Somerton becomes interested in tracing painted glass from Steinfeld Abbey that had been dispersed after the French Revolution. In a private chapel in England, he discovers three large figures occupying a window: Job, John the Evangelist, and Zechariah. Three figures with virtually nothing in common. Each holds a scroll or book inscribed with a text. The texts, however, are bizarre misquotations of three unrelated Bible verses.

Job’s scroll reads: “Auro est locus in quo absconditur”—“There is a place for the gold where it is hidden.” John’s book reads: “Habent in vestimentis suis scripturam quam nemo novit”—“They have on their vestures a writing which no man knoweth.” Zechariah’s scroll reads: “Super lapidem unum septem oculi sunt”—“Upon one stone are seven eyes” (the only verse, Zechariah 3:9, which isn't misquoted; and the creepiest of the three).

These figures puzzle Somerton. There seems no obvious theological or symbolic bond between them. The passage about Abbot Thomas provides the clue: these are the very names the Abbot invoked in response to questions about his treasure. Somerton examines the glass carefully and confirms that it matches the style and date of Thomas’s window. The first text about hidden gold suggests that the window itself may conceal the key to the treasure’s location.

Scrutinizing the figures, Somerton notices that each mantle has a broad black border. During cleaning, a broom accidentally scratches one of these borders, revealing yellow-stained letters beneath the black pigment. The black has been painted over after firing and can be removed. Somerton carefully scrapes away the pigment from all three figures and finds that each robe bears a concealed inscription—“a writing on their vestures which nobody knew.”

The revealed letters appear at first to be meaningless strings:

Job: DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT

John: RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTAAESGIAVNNR

Zechariah: FTEEAILNQDPVAIVMTLEEATTOHIOONVMCAAT.H.Q.E.

He notices scratched Roman numerals on the borders indicating the number of letters, confirming the inscription’s deliberate nature. After failed attempts with known cryptographic methods, he reexamines his notes. He recalls the hand gestures of the figures: Job raises one finger, John two, Zechariah three. This suggests a numerical key. Applying a pattern of skipping one letter after the first, two after the next, three after the third, and repeating, he extracts a Latin message:

“Decem millia auri reposita sunt in puteo in atrio domus abbatialis de Steinfeld a me, Thoma, qui posui custodem super ea.

"Gare à qui la touche.”

Translated from Latin and French:

“Ten thousand pieces of gold are laid up in the well in the court of the Abbot’s house of Steinfeld by me, Thomas, who have set a guardian over them.

"Woe to him who touches me.”

Resolving to find the treasure, Somerton travels to Steinfeld with his unimaginative, rustic valet, Brown. They locate the deserted three-sided court south-east of the church and identify the well described in the chronicle: a finely carved structure with reliefs of various biblical well scenes. The well descends some sixty or seventy feet, with stone steps built into the interior wall.

One night, under a full moon, they prepare to descend. Equipped with rope, lantern, crowbar, and tools, they lower themselves into the well, counting the steps. At the thirty-eighth step Somerton notices a slight irregularity in the masonry. Striking it with his crowbar, he dislodges cement and reveals a stone slab engraved with a grotesque cross composed of seven eyes—fulfilling Zechariah’s message: “Upon one stone are seven eyes.”

He pries the slab loose, revealing a cavity beyond. Lighting a candle and waiting for foul air to clear, he glimpses rounded shapes within, like heavy bags. Reaching in, he feels "something curved, that felt—yes—more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently part of a heavy, full thing." He pulls it toward him. As he does so, Brown suddenly cries out in surprise and defensively rushes back upward with the lantern, having seen what he thinks to be an elderly, hollow-faced man peering down into the well and laughing. When Brown reaches the top, no one is there.

Alone in the darkness, Somerton continues pulling. The object slips forward onto his chest and Somerton is suddenly aware that whatever it may be, it is alive — or conscious, at least — and eager to make his acquaintance:

"I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several—I don't know how many—legs or arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out, Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that same step."

He screams and falls backward, held only by the rope harness. Brown, regaining his composure, hauls him up and out of the well...

Somerton is bedridden afterward, shaken and terrified. He describes a second night in which he senses something watching outside his door, accompanied by the same mouldy stench. “There was someone or something on the watch outside my door the whole night,” he says. The smell comes from outside, and faint sounds persist until dawn, when they fade. He concludes that the creature is “a thing of darkness,” powerless in daylight.

Unable to restore the slab himself, he sends for his friend, Mr. Gregory. Gregory arrives and, at Somerton’s request, replaces the engraved stone and secures it firmly. While doing so, he notices among the well-head carvings a bizarrely grotesque, toad-like figure ominously labeled “DEPOSITUM CUSTODI”—“Guard that which is entrusted to thee.”

Somerton recounts the entire story to Gregory and Brown, asserting that the guardian mentioned in the cipher is real. Gregory, having glimpsed shapes in the cavity and heard suspicious sounds at his own door, believes him. The slab is replaced, the entrance sealed, and the treasure left undisturbed beneath the abbey well, guarded by whatever Abbot Thomas set over it.

ANALYSIS

Nearly all of James’ ghost stories build up to a culminating encounter: a “meeting” between a living man and some extra-living entity which represents the subliminal part of his own personality which he refuses to acknowledge. It is utterly likely that James himself would have rejected such a reading as psychobabble worthy of one of his overly theoretical protagonists, but it may also be possible that James’ own discomfort with psychoanalytical interpretations of his stories might have a relationship to his characters discomfort with the snugness with which his beasties cozy up to them: as if they were old friends who had known each other forever.

This is especially clear in stories like “A Warning to the Curious,” “Oh, Whistle,” “Mr Humphreys,” “Count Magnus,” and “Diary of Mr Poynter,” where the entity seems almost gleeful about spending time with its victim, often going so far as to embrace, or – as in “Abbot Thomas” – even press its leathery face against the sputtering antiquarian in a kind of mock kiss.

The psychosexual subtext of this can – and has been – easily be interpreted as expressing a deep anxiety surrounding sexual expression and intimacy, but more than this, I think, is a sort of horror of spiritual intimacy: the bumbling protagonist’s sudden realization that he and this shrouded, bony Thing have more in common than he was ever willing to recognize before it was made absolutely clear through their physical proximity.

In “Oh Whistle,” Parkins learns this when the ghost manifests as his bedfellow; in “Mr Humphreys’ Inheritance” it is made clear when the charred remains of his ancestor scuttle out of a map and reach out for a fatherly embrace; and in “Abbot Thomas,” Somerton is virtually catatonic after the slimy, tentacled guardian wraps its greedy arms around him in recognition and fellowship: they are spiritual brothers reunited by Somerton’s clandestine efforts at recovering the gold.

It is almost as if the toad-like elemental sensed that Somerton loved its horde of gold nearly as much as it did, and pressed its face against his in a bonding embrace over a shared obsession. The analogy is made all the more striking when we consider where this revelation took place – in the depths of a well, an ancient symbol of the unconscious (and it won’t remotely be the last time that James uses such a device – be it a well, pit, tunnel, or maze – to symbolize the subterranean portal to the unconscious).

Having plumbed the depths of his own psyche, Somerton expects to be greeted with something of great worth and value – symbolically, to confirm that he is a man of high character and intellect, worthy of breaking Thomas’ code and extracting his treasure.

Although he does appear to confirm that he is worthy to be Thomas’ successor, he learns this by encountering this unevolved, troglodytic avatar – a ghoulish doppelgänger who illustrates the true nature of Somerton’s meddling: not lofty and aspirational, but vulgar and corrupt. Horrified by this realization (which also appears to be a moral trap laid by Thomas, whose ghost cackles with glee at the sight of Somerton confronting his internal ickiness), Somerton is driven to bed and can’t manage to replace the stone out of fear of once again coming face to face with his supernatural brother.

Revolted and dismayed by this self-discovery, he lets Brown and Gregory – who both notably lack Somerton’s fatal hubris – return the hoard, rather than run the risk of encountering a kindred spirit in the loathsome guardian.

You can read the original story HERE!

And you can find our annotated and illustrated edition of James' best ghost stories HERE!