A mirror of Shalott

About the book

A Mirror of Shalott by Robert Hugh Benson is a collection of supernatural tales written in the early 20th century. Framed as an informal symposium in Rome, a circle of Catholic clergy and a lay narrator exchange first‑person accounts of miracles, hauntings, exorcisms, and other uncanny experiences, constantly weighing skepticism against faith; recurring voices include Monsignor Maxwell, Father Meuron, Father Brent, and the Father Rector. The opening of the collection gathers seven priests and a layman around a Roman fireside, where Monsignor Maxwell argues for intellectual caution about the supernatural before the group agrees to tell one story each night. Monsignor’s first tale follows a devout layman who offers himself to bear his brother’s loss of faith, descends into harrowing spiritual darkness marked by an oppressive, almost tangible presence, and dies after a grim struggle, while the brother’s crisis passes and the widow embraces religious life. Father Meuron then recounts an exorcism on a Caribbean island in which the possessed woman violently reacts to holy water and, at the climactic command, food on the table visibly corrupts—after which she is freed. Father Brent tells of a Cornish estuary where an unseen surge drenches the sea-wall and a sleepwalking boy “sees” three blazing‑prowed ships glide past in the night. Next, the Father Rector relates how a notorious artist returns to the sacraments and, as evil influence lifts, abruptly loses taste, talent, and even youth, surviving for a time with faith alone. Finally, Father Girdlestone begins his account of a young Welsh priest dreaming of a moorland basilica when he is seized by an interior certainty that a non‑human presence is watching him from beyond a rock.