*-s::t.
■^.;:sj^.
THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS OR MIRTH AND MARVELS
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2008 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/endsingoldsbylegOOingorich
V-A
Prefatory Note
by the Illustrator
In 1898 Messrs. Dent and Co. first published the " Ingoldsby Legends," with about one hundred illustrations of mine. This book has met with a very satisfactory reception, but the publishers have felt with me that, with the addition of some new drawings, a careful overhauling would make it worthy of publication in a more important form, in which greater prominence could be given to the illustrations by better and larger reproductions, including a greater number of illustrations in colour.
To this end the following has been done :
The frontispiece and the coloured illustration facing page 508 have been specially drawn, and all the other illustrations in colour have been worked on to a considerable extent, and specially coloured for this edition. A few illustrations in the earlier edition have been omitted, and in their place have been added those facing page 254 and on pages vi, 25, 37, 316, 320 and 333.
Many of the pen drawings have been reconsidered and worked on again — those which have been worked on to any great extent being now signed with both dates, 1898 and 1907. Of the rest, reproductions on a larger scale have been made in all but a few cases, and the text has been revised and entirely reset for this edition.
ARTHUR RACKHAM. Hampstead, 1907.
Publishers' Note
It has been the desire of the Publishers to here present the " Ingoldsby Legends " in something like an " Edition Definitive de Luxe,"
It has been carefully read with the edition finally corrected by the Author, and has been re-set in a fine type, while Mr. Arthur Rackham, in his hundred illustra- tions, has entered heartily into the wild humour and phantasy of this favourite old classic.
The coloured pictures, which owe so much to their delicacy of tint and fine line drawing, have all been repro- duced by the Graphic Photo Engraving Co. in the latest and highest development of the three-colour work, and the Publishers owe them thanks for their great care in copying these originals and for their adequate and admir- able results. The colour printing has been done by Messrs. McFarlane and Erskine of Edinburgh, and the text by the Ballantyne Press of London, to whom also the Publishers wish to acknowledge their obligations.
as
List of Contents
FIRST SERIES
The Spectre of Tappington .......
The Nurse's Story .........
Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story
Grey Dolphin ..........
The Ghost . ........
The Cynotaph .........
Mrs. Botherby's Story .......
Legend of Hamilton Tighe .......
The Witches' Frolic ........
Singular Passage in the Life of the late Henry Harris, D.D. The Jackdaw of Rheims .......
A Lay of St. Dunstan .......
A Lay of St. Gengulphus .......
The Lay of St. Odille .......
A Lay of St. Nicholas .......
The Lady Rohesia ........
The Tragedy .........
Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the Coronation . The " Monstre " Balloon .......
Hon. Mr. Sucklethumbkin's Story .....
Some Account of a New Play ......
Mr. Peters's Story .........
I
2+ 32
4' S8 68
74 98 102 116 136 141 150 161 168 176 184 191 194 198
202 211
SECOND SERIES
|
The Black Mousquetaire . |
.... 228 |
|
Sir Rupert the Fearless |
250 |
|
The Merchant of Venice . |
260 |
|
The Auto-da-f£ .... |
• ■ 272 |
|
The Ingoldsby Penance |
290 |
|
Netley Abbey .... |
30s |
|
Fragment . . . . . |
310 |
IX
List of Contents
Page
Nell Cook . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Nursery Reminiscences .......... 319
Aunt Fanny ............ 322
Misadventures at Margate .......... 331
The Smuggler's Leap ........... 335
Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie ......... 34.3
The Babes in the Wood .......... 356
The Dead Drummer ........... 362
A Row IN AN Omnibus (Box) ......... 374
The Lay of St. Cuthbert .......... 379
The Lay of St. Aloys 391
The Lay of the Old Woman Clothed in Grey ..... 402
Raising the Devil 418
Saint Medard 420
THIRD SERIES
The Lord of Thoulouse The Wedding-Day The Blasphemer's Warning The Brothers of Birchington The Knight and the Lady The House-Warminc ! ! The Forlorn One Jerry Jarvis's Wig Unsophisticated Wishes
428 441 456
4-76 488 498 5"
512
527
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Hermann; or, the Broken Spear
Hints for an Historical Play
Marie Mignot
The Truants
The Poplar
New-Made Honour
My Letters
The Confession
Epigram
Song .
Epigram
Song .
As I Laye A-Thynkynge
529
533 53S 539 540
540 54+ 545 545 546
547 547
List of Illustrations
COLOURED DRAWINGS
" Hey ! up the chimney, lass ! Hey after you ! " (p. io8)
There's an old woman dwells upon Tappington Moor
To Tappington mill-dam ........
One kick ! — ?it was but one ! — but such a one ....
If Orpheus first produced the waltz ......
The little man had seated himself in the centre of the circle upon thi If any one lied, — or if any one swore .....
A flood of brown-stout he was up to his knees in .
And the maids cried " Good gracious, how very tenacious!"
These stiles sadly bothered Odille ......
What, indeed, could she do ? .
Into the bottomless pit he fell slap ......
The Duchess shed tears large as marrow-fat peas
He bounced up and down .......
Tumble out of their beds in affright .....
Wandering about and " Boo-hoo "-ing .....
Or making their court to their Polls and their Sues
The horn . . . Was blown with a loud twenty-trumpeter power
Witches and warlocks, ghosts, goblins and ghouls
Made one grasshopper spring to the door — and was gone !
But found nothing at all, save some carp — which they fried
Sir Thomas, her Lord, was stout of limb .....
A grand pas de deux Performed in the very first style by these two When a .score of ewes had brought in a reasonable profit
xi
Tofact page
FronUspiect
large
skull
26
30 46 62
94 14.0 148 160 162 164
174 184 202 302
358 364 382 396
412
480 488 508 526
Xll
List of Illustrations
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED WITH TINT
Then there was a pretty to-do, heads flew one way — arms and legs another
And there were gossips sitting there, By one, by two, by three
Heedless of grammar they all cried, " That's him " .
Peep'd through the key-hole, and — what saw he there r .
He rescued a maid from the Dey of Algiers .
Poor Blogg went on bobbing and ducking
They'd such very odd heads and such very odd tails
They came floating about hirti like so many prawns
How you'd frown Should a ladle-full fall on your crown
His first thought was to throw it into the pig-stye .
We carved her initials .......
As I lay a-thynkynge, he rode upon his way .
To face page
52 106
136 144
206 216
250
*S4 346
SH
539 548
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
Around, and around, and around they go ....
The fair Caroline .........
Whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling
Came close behind him, and with the flat side of the spade— .
Hand in hand The murderers stand, By one, by two, by three !
The identical face of his poor defunct Wife ! .
"Gentlemen ! Look at the Clock !!!"
He meditated a mighty draft .....
" Emmanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me ! " " Make much of your steed, Robert Shurland ! " He hated it like poison ......
Beckon'd the Cobbler with its wan right hand Head-piece — The Cynotaph .....
A cow may yet be sometimes seen galloping like mad
Never was man more swiftly disrobed
Monogram ........
The Coachman thinks he is driving Old Nick .
Head-piece — Singular passage in the Life of the late Henry Harris,
D.D
Page
vi 6 13 23 25 37 39 42 43 54 61
6S 68
74 92
97
98
116
List of Illustrations
Head-piece — The Jackdaw of Rheims ....
That little Jackdaw hops off with the ring ! .
They can't find the ring ! ......
A Pentacle
First the long beard from the chin they shear'd
Gaily the Lord Abbot smiled ......
In the pantry was the holy man discovered, — at his devotions
"Whack"
She did not mind death, but she could not stand pinching
The poor little page, too, himself got no quarter
Head-piece — Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the Coronation
Which made all the pious Church-Mission folks squall
A litter of five ........
He would then sally out in the streets for " a spree "
Grandville acted on it, and order'd his Tandem
Miss Una Von — something ......
She was borne off, but stuck, By the greatest good luck. In an oak-tree They heard somebody crying, " Old Clo' ! " . Tail-piece — The Auto-da-fe .....
Head-piece — The Ingoldsby Penance
Subjecting his back To thump and to thwack
He puts his thumb unto his nose, and he spreads his fingers out !
Throughout that Entry dark doth roam Nell Cook's unquiet Sprite
He look'd askew, and did eschew both stool, and bench, and chair .
Squibb'd my pantaloons and stockings .....
Gave me — several slaps behind .......
A Frill like a fan had by no means been banish'd .
" Ads cuss it ! I've spoiled myself now by that 'ere nasty gusset ! "
'Twas in Margate last July, I walked upon the pier
It's very odd that Sailor-men should wear those things so loose
A Custom-house officer close by his side ...
" Yield thee ! now yield thee, thou Smuggler Bill ! "
Till "Battle Field" swarms like a Fair .
The two Misses Tickler of Clapham Rise !
Head-piece — The Dead Drummer ....
To roost all that night on the murderer's gibbet
XIU
Fase 136
'37
•39 142
•53 171 177 •83 187 189 191 199 211 229 245 257
259 263
289
291
299
314 316 318 320 321
323 325
331 333 338 340 351 357 362
372
XIV
List of Illustrations
Tail-piece — The Lay of St. Cuthbert ....
Bid the bandy-legg'd sexton go run for the May'r !
An " Old Woman clothed in grey " . .
He enlarged so, his shape seem'd approaching a sphere .
The " natives " he found on the Red-Sea shore
In the midst sits the doctor ......
The soapy-tail'd sow ... ...
The Squire .........
They dash'd up the hills, and they dash'd down the dales Ledger in hand, straight " Auld Hornie " appears . Tail-piece — The Knight and the Lady ....
Sir Christopher Hatton he danced with grace
Page
39°
398
403
415 424
435 445 446
462 482
497 498
Preface to First Series
To Richard Bentley, Esq,
My Dear Sir, —
You wish me to collect into one single volume certain rambling extracts from our family memoranda, many of which have already appeared in the pages of your Miscellany. At the same time you tell me that doubts are entertained in certain quarters as to the authenticity of their details.
Now with respect to their genuineness, the old oak chest, in which the originals are deposited, is not more familiar to my eyes than it is to your own ; and if its contents have any value at all, it consists in the strict veracity of the facts they record.
To convince the most incredulous, I can only add, that should business — pleasure is out of the question — ever call them into the neighbourhood of Folkestone, let them take the high road from Canter- bury to Dover till they reach the eastern extremity of Barham Downs. Here a beautiful green lane diverging abruptly to the right will carry them through the Oxenden plantations and the unpretending village of Denton, to the foot of a very respectable hill — as hills go in this part of Europe. On reaching its summit let them look straight before them — and if among the hanging woods which crown the opposite side of the valley, they cannot distinguish an antiquated Manor-house of Eliza- bethan architecture, with its gable ends, stone stanchions, and tortuous chimneys rising above the surrounding trees, why — the sooner they procure a pair of DoUond's patent spectacles the better.
If, on the contrary, they can manage to descry it, and, proceeding some five or six furlongs through the avenue, will ring at the Lodge- gate — they cannot mistake the stone lion with the Ingoldsby escutcheon (Ermine, a saltire engrailed Gules) in his paws — they will be received with a hearty old English welcome.
The papers in question having been written by different parties, and at various periods, I have thought it advisable to reduce the more
XV
xvi Preface to First Series
ancient of them into a comparatively modern phraseology, and to make my collateral ancestor, Father John, especially, " deliver himself like a man of this world " ; Mr. Maguire, indeed, is the only Gentleman who, in his account of the late Coronation, retains his own rich vernacular. As to arrangement, I shall adopt the sentiment expressed by the Constable of Bourbon four centuries ago, teste Shakspeare, one which seems to become more fashionable every day,
" The Devil take all order ! !— I'll to the throng ! "
Believe me to be,
My dear Sir, Yours, most indubitably and immeasurably,
THOMAS INGOLDSBY. Tappington Everard, Jan. 20th, 1840.
Preface to the Second Edition
To Richard Bentley, Esq.
My Dear Sir,^
I SHOULD have replied sooner to your letter, but that the last three days in January are, as you are aware, always dedicated, at the Hall, to an especial battue, and the old house is full of shooting-jackets, shot-belts, and " double Joes." Even the women wear percussion caps, and your favourite (?) Rover, who, you may remember, examined the calves of your legs with such suspicious curiosity at Christmas, is as pheasant-mad as if he were a biped, instead of being a genuine four- legged scion of the Blenheim breed. I have managed, however, to avail myself of a lucid interval in the general hallucination (how the rain did come down on Monday !), and as you tell me the excellent friend whom you are in the habit of styling " a Generous and Englightened Public " has emptied your shelves of the first edition, and " asks for m.ore," why, I agree with you, it would be a want of respect to that very respectable personification, when furnishing him with a further supply, not to en- deavour at least to amend my faults, which are few, and your own, which are more numerous. I have, therefore, gone to work con amore, supplying occasionally on my own part a deficient note, or elucidatory stanza, and on yours knocking out, without remorse, your superfluous rs, and now and then eviscerating your colon.
My duty to our illustrious friend thus perform.ed, I have a crow to pluck with him, — Why will he persist — as you tell me he dees persist — in calling me by all sorts of names but those to which I am entitled by birth and baptism — my " Sponsorial and Patronymic appellations," as Dr. Pangloss has it ?■ — Mrs. Malaprop complains, and with justice, of an " assault upon her parts of speech : " but to attack one's very existence — to deny that one is a person in esse, and scarcely to admit that one may he a person in fosse, is tenfold cruelty ; — " it is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging ! "■ — let me entreat all such likewise to remember that, as Shakspeare beautifully expresses himself elsewhere —
xvii
XVIU
Preface to the Second Edition
I give his words as quoted by a very worthy Baronet in a neighbouring county, when protesting against a defamatory placard at a general election —
" Who steals my purse steals stuff !^ 'Twas mine — 'tisn't his — nor nobody elses ! But he who runs away with my Good Name, Robs me of what does not do him any good, And makes me deuced poor ! ! " *
In order utterly to squabash and demolish every gainsayer, I had thought, at one time, of asking my old and esteemed friend, Richard
Lane, to crush them at once with his magic pencil, and to transmit my features to posterity, where all his works are sure to be " delivered according to the direction ; " but somehow the noble-looking profiles which he has recently executed of the Kemblc family put me a little out of conceit with my own, while the undisguised amusement which my " Mephistopheles Eyebrow," as he termed it, afforded him, in the " full face," induced me to lay aside the design. Besides, my dear Sir, since, as has well been observed, " there never was a married man yet who had not somebody remarkably like him walking about town," it is a thousand to one but my lineaments might, after all, out of sheer
• A reading which seems most unaccountably to have escaped the researches of all modern Shakspeareans, including the rival editors of the new and illustrated versions.
Preface to the Second Edition xix
perverseness be ascribed to anybody rather than to the real owner. I have therefore sent you, instead thereof, a very fair sketch of Tappington, taken from the Folkestone road (I tore it last night out of Julia Simpkin- son's album) ; get Gilks to make a wood-cut of it. And now, if any miscreant (I use the word only in its primary and " Pickwickian " sense of " Unbeliever,") ventures to throw any further doubt upon the matter, why, as Jack Cade's friend says in the play, " There are the chimneys in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it ! "
" Why, very well then — we hope here be truths ! " Heaven be with you, my dear Sir ! — I was getting a little excited ; but you, who are mild as the milk that dews the soft whisker of the new- weaned kitten, will forgive me when, wiping away the nascent moisture from my brow, I " pull in," and subscribe myself.
Yours quite as much as his own,
THOMAS INGOLDSBY.
Tappington Everard,
Feb. 2, 1843.
jTirst Series
The Spectre of Tappington
" It is very odd, though ; what can have become of them ? " said Charles Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an old-fashioned bedstead, in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house ; " 'tis confoundedly odd, and I can't make it out at all. Why, Barney, where are they ? — and where the d — 1 are you ? "
No answer was returned to this appeal ; and the Lieutenant, who was, in the main, a reasonable person, — at least as reasonable a person as any young gentleman of twenty-two in " the service " can fairly be expected to be, — cooled when he reflected that his servant could scarcely reply extempore to a summons which it was impossible he should hear.
An application to the bell was the considerate result ; and the foot- steps of as tight a lad as ever put pipe-clay to belt sounded along the gallery.
" Come in ! " said his master. — An ineffectual attempt upon the door reminded Mr. Seaforth that he had locked himself in. — " By Heaven ! this is the oddest thing of all," said he, as he turned the key and admitted Mr. Maguire into his dormitory.
" Barney, where are my pantaloons ? "
" Is it the breeches ? " asked the valet, casting an inquiring eye round the apartment ; — " is it the breeches, sir ? "
" Yes ; what have you done with them f "
" Sure then your honour had them on when you went to bed, and it's hereabout they'll be, I'll be bail ; " and Barney lifted a fashionable tunic from a cane-backed arm-chair, proceeding in his examination. But the search was vain : there was the tunic aforesaid, — there was a smart-looking kerseymere waistcoat ; but the most important article of all in a gentleman's wardrobe was still wanting.
" Where can they be ? " asked the master, with a strong accent on the auxiliary verb.
" Sorrow a know I knows," said the man.
" It must have been the Devil, then, after all, who has been here and carried them off ! " cried Seaforth, staring full into Barney's face.
I A
2 The Spectre of Tappington
Mr. Maguire was not devoid of the superstition of his countrymen, still he looked as if he did not quite subscribe to the sequitur.
His master read incredulity in his countenance, " Why, I tell you, Barney, I put them there, on that arm-chair, when I got into bed ; and, by Heaven ! I distinctly saw the ghost of the old fellow they told me of, come in at midnight, put on my pantaloons, and walk away with them."
" May be so," was the cautious reply.
" I thought, of course, it was a dream ; but then, — ^where the d — ^1 are the breeches ? "
The question was more easily asked than answered. Barney renewed his search, while the lieutenant folded his arms, and, leaning against the toilet, sunk into a reverie.
" After all, it must be some trick of my laughter-loving cousins," said Seaforth.
" Ah ! then, the ladies ! " chimed in Mr. Maguire, though the observation was not addressed to him ; " and will it be Miss Caroline, or Miss Fanny, that stole your honour's things ? "
" I hardly know what to think of it," pursued the bereaved lieutenant, still speaking in soliloquy, with his eye resting dubiously on the chamber- door. " I locked myself in, that's certain ; and — but there must be some other entrance to the room — pooh ! I remember — the private staircase ; how could I be such a fool ? " and he crossed the chamber to where a low oaken doorcase was dimly visible in a distant corner. He paused before it. Nothing now interfered to screen it from observa- tion ; but it bore tokens of having been at some earlier period concealed by tapestry, remains of which yet clothed the walls on either side the portal.
" This way they must have come," said Seaforth ; " I wish with all my heart I had caught them ! "
" Och ! the kittens ! " sighed Mr. Barney Maguire.
But the mystery was yet as far from being solved as before. True, there was the " other door ; " but then that, too, on examination, was even more firmly secured than the one which opened on the gallery, — two heavy bolts on the inside effectually prevented any coup de main on the lieutenant's bivouac from that quarter. He was more puzzled than ever ; nor did the minutest inspection of the walls and floor throw any light upon the subject : one thing only was clear, — the breeches were gone ! " It is very singular," said the Heutenant.
*******
Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard is an antiquated
The Spectre of Tappington 3
but commodious manor-house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A former proprietor had been High-sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of his life, and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper's daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore ; while an ineradicable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be connected. A stranger guest — so runs the legend- arrived unexpectedly at the mansion of the " Bad Sir Giles." They met in apparent friendship ; but the ill-concealed scowl on their master's brow told the domestics that the visit was not a welcome one. The banquet, however, was not spared ; the wine-cup circulated freely, — too freely, perhaps, — for sounds of discord at length reached the ears of even the excluded serving-men as they were doing their best to imitate their betters in the lower haU. Alarmed, some of them ventured to approach the parlour ; one, an old and favoured retainer of the house, went so far as to break in upon his master's privacy. Sir Giles, already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his absence, and he retired ; not, however, before he had distinctly heard from the stranger's lips a menace that " There was that within his pocket which could disprove the knight's right to issue that or any other command within the walls of Tapton."
The intrusion, though momentary, seemed to have produced a beneficial effect ; the voices of the disputants fell, and the conversation was carried on thenceforth in a more subdued tone, till, as evening closed in, the domestics, when summoned to attend with lights, found not only cordiality restored, but that a still deeper carouse was meditated. Fresh stoups, and from the choicest bins, were produced ; nor was it till at a late, or rather early hour, that the revellers sought their chambers.
The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favourite apartment of Sir Giles himself. Scandal ascribed this preference to the facility which a private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded him, in the old knight's time, of following his wicked courses unchecked by parental observation ; a consideration which ceased to be of weight when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate and actions. From that period Sir Giles had established himself in what were called the " state apartments ; " and the " oaken chamber " was rarely tenanted, save on occasions of extraordinary festivity, or when the yule log drew an unusually large accession of guests around the Christmas hearth.
4 The Spectre of Tappington
On this eventful night it was prepared for the unknown visitor, who sought his couch heated and inflamed from his -midnight orgies, and in the morning was found in his bed a swollen and blackened corpse. No marks of violence appeared upon the body ; but the livid hue of the lips, and certain dark-coloured spots visible on the skin, aroused suspicions which those who entertained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy, induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles's confidential leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution ; the body was buried in peace ; and though some shook their heads as they wit- nessed the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers ; men's minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day, while the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating to itself a title which the very elements joined with human valour to disprove, soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance of the nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.
Years rolled on : the " Bad Sir Giles " had himself long since gone to his account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate hne ; though a few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the estate. Rumours, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands were at one time rife ; but they died away, nothing occurring to support them : the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family, and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard, in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone occurred, after a long-intervening period, to revive the memory of these transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old planta- tion, for the purpose of raising on its site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the execution of their task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose ; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.
Whether the squire was more successful in deciphering them was never known ; he certainly never alluded to their contents ; and little would have been thought of the matter but for the inconvenient memory of one old woman, who declared she heard her grandfather say that when the " stranger guest " was poisoned, though all the rest of his clothes were there, his breeches, the supposed repository of the supposed
The Spectre of Tappington 5
documents, could never be found. The master of Tapton Everard smiled when he heard Dame Jones's hint of deeds which might impeach the validity of his own title in favour of some unknown descendant of some unknown heir ; and the story was rarely alluded to, save by one or two miracle-mongers, who had heard that others had seen the ghost of old Sir Giles, in his night-cap, issue from the postern, enter the adjoining copse, and wring his shadowy hands in agony, as he seemed to search vainly for something hidden among the evergreens. The stranger's death-room had, of course, been occasionally haunted from the time of his decease ; but the periods of visitation had latterly become very rare, — even Mrs. Botherby, the housekeeper, being forced to admit that, during her long sojourn at the manor, she had never " met with anything worse than herself ; " though, as the old lady afterwards added upon more mature reflection, " I must say I think I saw the devil onci?."
Such was the legend attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial cousin Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company's second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ancestral portraits, and, among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles himself. The gallant commander had that very morning paid his first visit to the house of his maternal uncle, after an absence of several years passed with his regiment on the arid plains of Hindostan, whence he was now returned on a three years' furlough. He had gone out a boy, — he returned a man ; but the impression made upon his youthful fancy by his favourite cousin remained unimpaired, and to Tapton he directed his steps, even before he sought the home of his widowed mother, — comforting himself in this breach of filial decorum by the reflection that, as the manor was so little out of his way, it would be unkind to pass, as it were, the door of his relatives without just looking in for a few hours.
But he found his uncle as hospitable and his cousin more charming than ever ; and the looks of one, and the requests of the other, soon precluded the possibility of refusing to lengthen the " few hours " into a few days, though the house was at the moment full of visitors.
The Peterses were there from Ramsgate ; and Mr., Mrs., and the two Miss Simpkinsons, from Bath, had come to pass a month with the family ; and Tom Ingoldsby had brought down his college friend the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin, with his groom and pointers, to take a fortnight's shooting. And then there was Mrs. Ogleton, the rich young widow, with her large black eyes, who, people did say, was
6 The Spectre of Tappington
setting her cap at the young squire, though Mrs. Botherby did not believe it ; and, above all, there was Mademoiselle Pauline, her femme de chambre, who " tnon-Dieu'd " everything and everybody, and cried, " Quel horreur ! " at Mrs. Botherby's cap. In short, to use the last- named and much respected lady's own expression, the house was " choke- full " to the very attics, — all, save the " oaken chamber," which, as the lieutenant expressed a most magnanimous disregard of ghosts, was forthwith appropriated to his particular accommodation. Mr. Maguire meanwhile was fain to share the apartment of Oliver Dobbs, the squire's ^^^^ own man : a jocular proposal of joint
occupancy having been first indignantly rejected by " Mademoiselle," though preferred with the " laste taste in life " of Mr. Barney's most insinuating brogue.
m * m * *
" Come, Charles, the urn is absolutely getting cold ; your breakfast will be quite spoiled : what can have made you so idle ? " Such was the morning saluta- tion of Miss Ingoldsby to the militaire as he entered the breakfast-room half an hour after the latest of the party.
" A pretty gentleman, truly, to make an appointment with," chimed in Miss Frances. " What is become of our ramble to the rocks before breakfast ? " " Oh ! the young men never think of keeping a promise now," said Mrs. Peters, a little ferret-faced woman with underdone eyes.
" When I was a young man," said Mr. Peters, " I remember I always
made a point of "
" Pray how long ago was that ? " asked Mr. Simpkinson from Bath. " Why, sir, when I married Mrs. Peters, I was — ^let me see — I
was-
" Do pray hold your tongue. P., and eat your breakfast ! " in- terrupted his better half, who had a mortal horror of chronological references ; it's very rude to tease people with your family affairs."
The lieutenant had by this time taken his seat in silence, — a good- humoured nod, and a glance, half-smiling, half-inquisitive, being the extent of his salutation. Smitten as he was, and in the immediate presence of her who had made so large a hole in his heart, his manner
The Spectre of Tappington 7
was evidently distrait, which the fair Caroline in her secret soul attributed to his being solely occupied by her agremens, — how would she have bridled had she known that they only shared his meditations with a pair of breeches !
Charles drank his coffee and spiked some half-dozen eggs, darting occasionally a penetrating glance at the ladies, in hope of detecting the supposed waggery by the evidence of some furtive smile or conscious look. But in vain ; not a dimple moved indicative of roguery, nor did the slightest elevation of eyebrow rise confirmative of his suspicions. Hints and insinuations passed unheeded, — more particular inquiries were out of the question : — the subject was unapproachable.
In the meantime, " patent cords " were just the thing for a morning's ride ; and, breakfast ended, away cantered the party over the downs, till, every faculty absorbed by the beauties, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him. Lieutenant Seaforth of the Bombay Fencibles bestowed no more thought upon his breeches that if he had been born on the top of Ben Lomond.
* * * * * * * .
Another night had passed away; the sun rose brilliantly, forming with his level beams a splendid rainbow in the far-off west, whither the heavy cloud, which for the last two hours had been pouring its waters on the earth, was now flying before him.
" Ah ! then, and it's little good it'll be the claning of ye," apos- trophised Mr. Barney Maguire, as he deposited, in front of his master's toilet, a pair of " bran-new " jockey boots, one of Hoby's primest fits, which the lieutenant had purchased in his way through town. On that very morning had they come for the first time under the valet's depuriating hand, so little soiled, indeed, from the turfy ride of the preceding day, that a less scrupulous domestic might, perhaps, have considered the application of " Warren's Matchless," or oxahc acid, altogether superfluous. Not so Barney : with the nicest care had he removed the slightest impurity from each polished surface, and there they stood, rejoicing in their sable radiance. No wonder a pang shot across Mr. Maguire's breast, as he thought on the work now cut out for them, so different from the light labours of the day before ; no wonder he murmured with a sigh, as the scarce-dried window-panes disclosed a road now inch-deep in mud, " Ah ! then, it's little good the claning of ye ! " — for well had he learned in the hall below that eight miles of a stiff clay soil lay between the Manor and Bolsover Abbey, whose picturesque ruins,
" Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay,"
8 The Spectre of Tappington
the party had determined to explore. The master had already com- menced dressing, and the man was fitting straps upon a light pair of crane-necked spurs, when his hand was arrested by the old question, " Barney, where are the breeches ? " They were nowhere to be found !
Mr. Seaforth descended that morning, whip in hand, and equipped in a handsome green riding-frock, but no " breeches and boots to match " were there : loose jean trowsers, surmounting a pair of diminu- tive Wellingtons, embraced, somewhat incongruously, his nether man, vice the " patent cords," returned, like yesterday's pantaloons, absent without leave. The " top-boots " had a holiday.
" A fine morning after the rain," said Mr. Simpkinson from Bath.
" Just the thing for the 'ops," said Mr. Peters. " I remember when I was a boy "
" Do hold your tongue, P.," said Mrs. Peters, — advice which that exemplary matron was in the constant habit of administering to " her P.," as she called him, whenever he prepared to vent his reminiscences. Her precise reason for this it would be difficult to determine, unless, indeed, the story be true which a little bird had whispered into Mrs. Botherby's ear, — Mr. Peters, though now a wealthy man, had received a liberal education at a charity school, and was apt to recur to the days of his muffin-cap and leathers. As usual, he took his wife's hint in good part, and " paused in his reply."
" A glorious day for the ruins ! " said young Ingoldsby. " But, Charles, what the deuce are you about ? — you don't mean to ride through our lanes in such toggery as that ? "
" Lassy me ! " said Miss Julia Simpkinson, " won't you be very wet ? "
" You had better take Tom's cab," quoth the squire.
But this proposition was at once overruled ; Mrs. Ogleton had already nailed the cab, a vehicle of all others the best adapted for a snug flirtation.
" Or drive Miss Julia in the phaeton ? " No ; that was the post of Mr. Peters, who, indifferent as an equestrian, had acquired some fame as a whip while travelling through the midland counties for the firm of Bagshaw, Snivelby, and Ghrimes.
" Thank you, I shall ride with my cousins," said Charles, with as much nonchalance as he could assume, — and he did so ; Mr. Ingoldsby, Mrs. Peters, Mr. Simpkinson from Bath, and his eldest daughter, with her album, following in the family coach. The gentleman-commoner
The Spectre of Tappington 9
" voted the affair d — d slow," and declined the party altogether in favour of the gamekeeper and a cigar. " There was ' no fun ' in looking at old houses ! " Mrs. Simpkinson preferred a short sejour in the still-room with Mrs. Botherby, who had promised to initiate her in that grand arcanum, the transmutation of gooseberry jam into Guava jelly. * # # * # * ^ *
" Did you ever see an old abbey before, Mr. Peters ? "
" Yes, miss, a French one ; we have got one at Ramsgate ; he teaches the Miss Joneses to parley-voo, and is turned of sixty."
Miss Simpkinson closed her album with an air of ineffable disdain.
Mr. Simpkinson from Bath was a professed antiquary, and one of the first water ; he was master of Gwillim's Heraldry, and Milles's " History of the Crusades " ; knew every plate in the Monasticon ; had written an essay on the origin and dignity of the office of overseer, and settled the date of a Queen Anne's farthing. An influential member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose " Beauties of Bagnigge Wells " he had been a liberal subscriber, procured him a seat at the board of that learned body, since which happy epoch Sylvanus Urban had not a more indefatigable correspondent. His inaugural essay on the Presi- dent's cocked hat was considered a miracle of erudition : and his account of the earliest application of gilding to gingerbread, a masterpiece of antiquarian research. His eldest daughter was of a kindred spirit : if her father's mantle had not fallen upon her, it was only because he had not thrown it off himself ; she had caught hold of its tail, however, while it yet hung upon his honoured shoulders. To souls so congenial, what a sight was the magnificent ruin of Bolsover ! its broken arches, its mouldering pinnacles, and the airy tracery of its half-demolished windows. The party were in raptures ; Mr. Simpkinson began to meditate an essay, and his daughter an ode : even Seaforth, as he gazed on these lonely relics of the olden time, was betrayed into a momentary forgetfulness of his love and losses ; the widow's eye-glass turned from her cicisbeo's whiskers to the mantling ivy : Mrs. Peters wiped her spectacles ; and " her P." supposed the central tower " had once been the county jail." The squire was a philosopher, and had been there often before ; so he ordered"out the cold tongue and chickens.
" Bolsover Priory," said Mr. Simpkinson, with the air of a connois- seur,— " Bolsover Priory was founded in the reign of Henry the Sixth, about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition under- taken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was
lo The Spectre of Tappington
enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to wliich he gave his own name of Bowlsover, or Bee-owls-over (by corruption Bolsover), — a Bee in chief, over three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne hy this distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre."
" Ah ! that was Sir Sidney Smith," said Mr. Peters ; " I've heard tell of him, and all about Mrs. Partington, and "
" P., be quiet, and don't expose yourself ! " sharply interrupted his lady. P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.
" These lands," continued the antiquary, " were held in grand serjeantry by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey "
" Lassy me ! how nice ! " said Miss Julia. Mr. Peters licked his lips.
" Pray give me leave, my dear — owls and honey, whenever the king should come a rat-catching into this part of the country."
" Rat-catching ! " ejaculated the squire, pausing abruptly in the mastication of a drumstick.
" To be sure, my dear sir : don't you remember that rats once came under the forest laws — a minor species of venison ? ' Rats and mice, and such small deer,' eh ? — Shakspear, you know. Our ancestors ate rats ; (" The nasty fellows ! " shuddered Miss Julia in a parenthesis) and owls, you know, are capital mousers "
" I've seen a howl," said Mr. Peters ; " there's one in the Sohological Gardens, — a little hook-nosed chap in a wig, — only its feathers and "
Poor P. was destined never to finish a speech.
" Do be quiet ! " cried the authoritative voice, and the would-be naturalist shrank into his shell, like a snail in the " Sohological Gardens."
" You should read Blount's ' Jocular Tenures,' Mr. Ingoldsby," pursued Simpkinson. " A learned man was Blount ! Why, sir, his Royal Highness the Duke of York once paid a silver horse-shoe to Lord Ferrers "
" I've heard of him," broke in the incorrigible Peters ; " he was hanged at the old Bailey in a silk rope for shooting Dr. Johnson."
The antiquary vouchsafed no notice of the interruption ; but, taking a pinch of snuff, continued his harangue.
" A silver hores-shoe, sir, which is due from every scion of royalty who rides across one of his manors ; and if you look into the penny county histories, now publishing by an eminent friend of mine, you will find that Langhale in Co. Norf. was held by one Baldwin per saltum sufflatum, et fettum ; that is, he was to come every Christmas into Westminster Hall, there to take a leap, cry hem ! and "
The Spectre of Tappington ii
" Mr. Simpkinson, a glass of sherry ? " cried Tom Ingoldsby, hastily.
" Not any, thank you, sir. This Baldwin, surnamed Le "
" Mrs. Ogleton challenges you, sir ; she insists upon it," said Tom, still more rapidly ; at the same time fiUing a glass, and forcing it on the sgavant, who, thus arrested in the very crisis of his narrative, received and swallowed the potation as if it had been physic.
" What on earth has Miss Simpkinson discovered there' ? " con- tinued Tom ; " something of interest. See how fast she is writing."
The diversion was effectual ; every one looked towards Miss Simp- kinson, who, far too ethereal for " creature comforts," was seated apart on the dilapidated remains of an altar-tomb, committing eagerly to paper something that had strongly impressed her : the air, — the eye " in a fine frenzy rolling," — all betokened that the divine afflatus was come. Her father rose, and stole silently towards her.
" What an old boar ! " muttered young Ingoldsby ; alluding, perhaps, to a slice of brawn which he had just begun to operate upon, but which, from the celerity with which it disappeared, did not seem so very difficult of mastication.
But what had become of Seaforth and his fair Caroline aU this while ? Why, it so happened that they had been simultaneously stricken with the picturesque appearance of one of those high and pointed arches, which that eminent antiquary, Mr. Horseley Curties, has described in his " Ancient Records " as " a Gothic window of the Saxon order ; " — and then the ivy clustered so thickly and so beautifully on the other side, that they went round to look at that ; — and then their proximity deprived it of half its effect, and so they walked across to a little knoll, a hundred yards off, and in crossing a small ravine, they came to what in Ireland they call a " bad step," and Charles had to carry his cousin over it ; — and then, when they had to come back, she would not give him the trouble again for the world, so they followed a better but more circuitous route, and there were hedges and ditches in the way, and stiles to get over, and gates to get through ; so that an hour or more had elapsed before they were able to rejoin the party.
" Lassy me ! " said Miss Julia Simpkinson, " how long you have been gone ! "
And so they had. The remark was a very just as well as a very natural one. They were gone a long while, and a nice cosey chat they had ; and what do you think it was all about, my dear miss ?
" O, lassy me ! love, no doubt, and the moon, and eyes, and night- ingales, and "
Stay, stay, my sweet young lady ; do not let the fervour of your
UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY
12 The Spectre of Tappington
feelings run away with you ! I do not pretend to say, indeed, that one or more of these pretty subjects might not have been introduced ; but the most important and leading topic of the conference was — Lieutenant Seaforth's breeches.
" Caroline," said Charles, " I have had some very odd dreams since I have been at Tappington."
" Dreams, have you ? " smiled the young lady, arching her taper neck like a swan in pluming. " Dreams, have you ? "
" Ay, dreams, — or dream, perhaps, I should say ; for, though repeated, it was still the same. And what do you imagine was its subject ? "
" It is impossible for me to divine," said the tongue ; — " I have not the least difficulty in guessing," said the eye, as plainly as ever eye spoke.
" I dreamt — of your great grandfather ! "
There was a change in the glance — " My great grandfather ? "
" Yes, the old Sir Giles, or Sir John, you told me about the other day : he walked into my bedroom in his short cloak of murrey-coloured velvet, his long rapier, and his Raleigh-looking hat and feather just as the picture represents him : but with one exception."
" And what was that ? "
" Why, his lower extremities, which were visible, were — those of a skeleton."
" Well."
" Well, after taking a turn or two about the room, and looking round him with a wistful air, he came to the bed's foot, stared at me in a manner impossible to describe, — and then he — he laid hold of my pantaloons ; whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling ; and strutting up to the glass, seemed to view himself in it with great complacency. I tried to speak, but in vain. The effort, however, seemed to excite his attention ; for, wheeling about, he showed me the grimmest-looking death's head you can well imagine, and with an indescribable grin strutted out of the room."
" Absurd ! Charles. How can you talk such nonsense ? "
" But, Caroline, — the breeches are really gone."
On the following morning, contrary to his usual custom, Seaforth was the first person in the breakfast parlour. As no one else was present, he did precisely what nine young men out of ten so situated would have done ; he walked up to the mantelpiece, established himself upon the rug, and subducting his coat-tails one under each arm, turned towards the fire that portion of the human frame which it is considered equally
The Spectre of Tappington
13
indecorous to present to a friend or an enemy. A serious, not to say anxious, expression was visible upon his good-humoured countenance, and his mouth was fast buttoning itself up for an incipient whistle, when little Flo, a tiny spaniel of the Blenheim breed, — the pet object of Miss Julia Simpkinson's affections, — bounced out from beneath a sofa, and began to bark at — his pantaloons.
They were cleverly "built," of a light grey mixture, a broad stripe^' of the most vivid scarlet travers- ing each seam in a perpen- dicular direction from hip to ankle, — in short, the regi- mental costume of the Royal Bombay Fencibles. The animal, educated in the country, had never seen such a pair of breeches in her life — Omne ignotum -pro magnifico! The scarlet streak, inflamed as it was by the reflection of the fire, seemed to act on Flora's nerves as the same colour does on those of bulls and turkeys ; she advanced at the pas de charge, and her voci- feration, like her amazement, was unbounded. A sound kick from the disgusted officer changed its character, and induced a retreat at the very moment whenj,the mistress of the pugnacious quadruped entered to the rescue.
" Lassy me ! Flo ! what is the matter ? " cried the sympathising lady, with a scrutinising glance levelled at the gentleman.
It might as well have lighted on a feather bed. — His air of imper- turbable unconsciousness defied examination ; and as he would not, and Flora could not, expound, that injured individual was compelled to pocket up her wrongs. Others of the household soon dropped in, and clustered round the board dedicated to the most sociable of meals ; the urn was paraded " hissing hot," and the cups which " cheer, but not inebriate," steamed redolent of hyson and pekoe ; muffins and
14 The Spectre of Tappington
marmalade, newspapers and Finnon haddies, left little room for observa- tion on the character of Charles's warlike " turn-out." At length a look from Caroline, followed by a smile that nearly ripened to a titter, caused him to turn abruptly and address his neighbour. It was Miss Simp- kinson, who, deeply engaged in sipping her tea and turning over her album, seemed, like a female Chrononotonthologos, " immersed in cogibundity of cogitation." An interrogatory on the subject of her studies drew from her the confession that she was at that moment employed in putting the finishing touches to a poem inspired by the romantic shades of Bolsover. The entreaties of the company were of course urgent. Mr, Peters. " who liked verses," was especially per- severing, and Sappho at length compliant. After a preparatory hem ! and a glance at the mirror to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, the poetess began : —
" There is a calm, a holy feeling, Vulgar minds can never know,
O'er the bosom softly stealing — Chasten'd grief, delicious woe !
Oh ! how sweet at eve regaining Yon lone tower's sequester'd shade.
Sadly mute and uncomplaining — "
— ^Yow ! — yeough ! — yeough ! — yow ! — yow ! yelled a hapless sufferer from beneath the table. — It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds ; and if " every dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet, — a favourite pug, — whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow ! yow ! yow ! continued the brute, — a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than was given him by the muse of Simpkinson ; the other only barked for company. Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when Tom Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost in the material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on the cock of the urn. Quivering with emotion, he gave it such an unlucky twist, that the fuU stream of its scalding contents descended on the gingerbread hide of the unlucky Cupid. — ^The confusion was complete ; — the whole economy of the table disarranged ; — the com- pany broke up in most admired disorder ; — and " Vulgar minds will never know " anything more of Miss Simpkinson's ode till they peruse it in some forthcoming Annual.
Seaforth profited by the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused this " stramash " by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where
The Spectre of Tappington 15
he had a word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young gentlemen was neither brief in its duration nor unimportant in its resvdt. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with Tom Ingoldsby's sister ; secondly, that the lady had referred him to " papa " for his sanction ; thirdly and lastly, his nightly visitations, and consequent bereavement. At the two first items Tom smiled auspiciously ; at the last he burst out into an absolute " guffaw."
" Steal your breeches ! — Miss Bailey over again, by Jove," shouted Ingoldsby. " But a gentleman, you say, — and Sir Giles too, — I am not sure, Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honour of the family ! "
" Laugh as you will, Tom, — be as incredulous as you please. One fact is incontestible, — the breeches are gone ! Look here — I am reduced to my regimentals ; and if these go, to-morrow I must borrow of you ! "
Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us ; — assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. Tom composed his features on the instant, and repUed with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing, might have cost him five shillings.
" There is something very queer in this, after aU. The clothes, }'OU say, have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick ; and, ten to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the, way, I heard something yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in the plot."
It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually rung his bell three several times that very morning before he could procure his attendance. Mr. Maguire was forthwith summoned, and underwent a close examination. The " bobbery " was easily explained. Mr. Oliver Dobbs had hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on between the gentleman from Munster and the lady from the Rue St. Honore. Mademoiselle had boxed Mr. Maguire's ears, and Mr. Maguire had pulled Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had not cried Mon Dieu ! And Mr. Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong ; and Mrs. Botherby said it was " scandalous," and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen ; and Mr. Maguire had got hold of the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin's powder-flask, and had put large
1 6 The Spectre of Tappington
pinches of the best double Dartford into Mr. Dobbs's tobacco-box ; — and Mr. Dobbs's pipe had exploded, and set fire to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap ; — and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the slop-basin, " barring the wig " ; — and then they were all so " cantankerous," that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden ; and then — then Mr. Barney had seen a ghost ! !
"A what ? you blockhead ! " asked Tom Ingoldsby.
" Sure then, and it's meself will tell your honour the rights of it," said the ghost-seer. " Meself and Miss Pauline, sir, — or Miss Pauline and meself, for the ladies comes first anyhow, — we got tired of the hobstroppylous skrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn't know a joke when they seen one : and we went out to look at the comet, — that's the rory-bory-alehouse, they calls him in this country, — and we walked upon the lawn — and divil of any alehouse there was there at all ; and Miss Pauline said it was because of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn't we see it better beyonst the trees ? — and so we went to the trees, but sorrow a comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it."
" A ghost ? And what sort of a ghost, Barney ? "
" Och, then, divil a lie I'll tell your honour. A taU ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist, — though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn't there at all ; — and ' Barney,' says he to me, — 'cause why he knew me, — ' Barney,' says he, ' what is it you're doing with the colleen there, Barney ? ' — ^Divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and cried murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of course meself was in a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering with him any way ; so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a flame of fire ! "
Mr. Maguire's account was received with avowed incredulity by both gentlemen ; but Barney stuck to his text with unflinching perti- nacity. A reference to Mademoiselle was suggested, but abandoned, as neither party had a taste for delicate investigations.
" I'll tell you what, Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after Barney had received his dismissal, " that there is a trick here, is evident ; and Barney's vision may possibly be a part of it. Whether he is most knave or fool, you best know. At all events, I will sit up with you to-night and see if I can convert my ancestor into a visiting acquaintance. Meanwhile your finger on your lip 1 "
The Spectre of Tappington 17
" 'Twas now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead."
Gladly would I grace my tale with decent horror, and therefore I do beseech the " gentle reader " to believe that if all the succedanea to this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe it only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the sober and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is true, into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered on three sides with black oak wainscotting, adorned with carvings of fruit and flowers long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons ; the fourth side is clothed with a curious remnant of dingy tapestry, once elucidatory of some Scriptural history, but of which not even Mrs. Botherby could determine. Mr. Simpkinson, who had examined it carefully, inclined to believe the principal figure to be either Bathsheba, or Daniel in the lions' den ; while Tom Ingoldsby decided in favour of the King of Bashan. All, however, was conjecture, tradition being silent on the subject. — A lofty arched portal led into, and a little arched portal led out of, this apartment ; they were opposite each other, and each pos- sessed the security of massy bolts on its interior. The bedstead, too, was not one of yesterday, but manifestly coeval with days ere Seddons was, and when a good four-post " article " was deemed worthy of being a royal bequest. The bed itself, with all the appurtenances of palliasse, mattresses, &c., was of far later date, and looked most incongruously comfortable ; the casements, too, with their little diamond-shaped panes and iron binding had given way to the modern heterodoxy of the sash-window. Nor was this all that conspired to ruin the costume, and render the room a meet haunt for such " mixed spirits " only as could condescend to don at the same time an Elizabethan doublet and Bond Street inexpressibles.
With their green morocco slippers on a modern fender, in front of a disgracefully modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in " shawl pattern " dressing gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with the high cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of abomina- tion, called a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth of one, and in the right-hand corner of the mouth of the other ; — an arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney without that unmerciful " funking " each other, which a less scientific disposition of the weed would have induced. A small Pembroke table filled up the intervening space between them, sustaining at each extremity, an elbow and a glass of toddy ; — thus in " lonely pensive contemplation " were the two
B
1 8 The Spectre of Tappington
worthies occupied, when the " iron tongue of midnight had tolled twelve."
" Ghost-time's come ! " said Ingoldsby, taking from his waistcoat pocket a watch like a gold half-crown, and consulting it as though he suspected the turret-clock over the stables of mendacity.
" Hush ! " said Charles ; " did I not hear a footstep ? "
There was a pause : — there was a footstep — it sounded distinctly — it reached the door — it hesitated, stopped, and — passed on.
Tom darted across the room, threw open the door, and became aware of Mrs. Botherby toddling to her chamber, at the other end of the gallery, after dosing one of the housemaids with an approved julep from the Countess of Kent's " Choice Manual."
" Good night, sir ! " said Mrs. Botherby.
" Go to the d — 1 ! " said the disappointed ghost-hunter.
An hour — ^two — rolled on, and still no spectral visitation ; nor did aught intervene to make night hideous ; and when the turret-clock sounded at length the hour of three, Ingoldsby, whose patience and grog were alike exhausted, sprang from his chair, saying, —
" This is all infernal nonsense, my good fellow. Deuce of any ghost shall we see to-night ; it's long past the canonical hour. I'm off to bed ; and as to your breeches, I'll insure them for the next twenty-four hours at least, at the price of the buckram."
" Certainly. — Oh ! thankee ; — to be sure ! " stammered Charles, rousing himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.
" Good-night, my boy ! Bolt the door behind me ; and defy the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender ! "
Seaforth followed his friend's advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated ; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum naturd, and adorned the person of their lawful prorpietor.
Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance ; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite " out of the wood." — Seaforth was yet within its verge.
A rap at Tom Ingoldsby's door the following morning startled him as he was shaving ; — he cut his chin.
" Come in, and be d — d to you ! " said the martyr, pressing his
The Spectre of Tappington 19
thumb on the scarified epidermis. — The door opened, and exhibited Mr. Barney Maguire.
" Well, Barney, what is it ? " quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.
" The master, sir "
" Well, what does he want ? "
" The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour."
" Why, you don't mean to tell me — By Heaven, this is too good ! " shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. " Why, Barney, you don't mean to say the ghost has got them again ? "
Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility ; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.
" Faith, then, it's gone they are, sure enough ! Hasn't meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divil a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at all : — I'm bothered entirely ! "
" Hark'ee ! Mr. Barney," said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream " incarnadine the multitudinous " lather that plastered his throat, — " this may be all very well with your master, but you don't humbug me, sir : — tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes ? "
This abrupt transition from " lively to severe " certainly took Maguire by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman's gentleman.
" Me ? is it meself, then, that's the ghost to your honour's thinking?" said he, after a moment's pause, and with a slight shade of indignation in his tones : " is it I would stale the master's things, — and what would I do with them ? "
" That you best know : — what your purpose is I can't guess, for I don't think you mean to ' stale ' them, as you call it ; but that you are concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this blood ! — give me a towel, Barney."
Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. " As I've a sowl, your honour," said he solemnly, " little it is meself knows of the matter : and after what I seen "
" What you've seen ! Why, what have you seen ? — Barney, I don't want to enquire into your flirtations ; but don't suppose you can palm off your saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me ! "
" Then, as sure as your honour's standing there I saw him : and why wouldn't I, when Miss Pauline was to the fore as well as meself, and "
20 The Spectre of Tapplngton
" Get along with your nonsense, — leave the room, sir ! "
" But the master ? " said Barney imploringly ; " and without a breeches ? — sure, he'll be catching cowld ! "
" Take that, rascal ! " replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of panta- loons at, rather than to, him : " but don't suppose, sir, you shall carry on your tricks here with impunity ; recollect there is such a thing as a tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate."
Barney's eye flashed fire, — he stood erect, and was about to speak ; but, mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.
*
" Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, " this is now past a joke ; to-day is the last of my stay ; for, notwithstanding the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend ! In the meantime tell me candidly, — I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend, — am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing ? have you not a hand in "
" No, by heaven ! Seaforth ; I see what you mean : on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself : and if your servant "
" Not he : — if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it."
" If there be a trick ? Why, Charles, do you think "
" I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers ; nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."
" Seaforth ! " said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, " I will — But hush 1 here are the girls and my father. — I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the governor : carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards."
Tom's diversion was successful ; he carried off the ladies en masse to look at a remarkable specimen of the class Dodecandria Monogynia, — which they could not find : — while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried " the Governor's " outworks by a coup de main. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack : suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent ; the botanical party was soon overtaken ; and the arm of Caroline, whom
The Spectre of Tappington 21
a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnaean name of a daffy-down-dill/ had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own.
" What was the world to them, Its noise, its nonsense, and its ' breeches ' all ? "
Seaforth was in the seventh heaven ; he retired to his room that night as happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not so Tom Ingoldsby : the mystery, — for mystery there evidently was, — had not only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of the previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was undisguised. To-night he would " ensconce himself," — not indeed " behind the arras," — for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed to the wall, — but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the room, and, by leaving the door ajar, would give to its occupant a view of all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghost-hunter take up a position, with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.
At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his concealment, the lieutenant enter his room, and, after taking a few turns in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his thoughts were mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed slowly to disrobe himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk stock, were gradually discarded ; the green morocco slippers were kicked off, and then — ay, and then — his countenance grew grave ; it seemed to occur to him all at once that this was his last stake, — nay, that the very breeches he had on were not his own, — that to-morrow morning was his last
and that if he lost them A glance showed that his mind was made
up : he replaced the single button he had just subducted, and threw himself upon the bed in a state of transition — half chrysalis, half grub.
Wearily did Tom Ingoldsby watch the sleeper by the flickering light of the night-lamp, till the clock, striking one, induced him to increase the narrow opening which he had left for the purpose of observation. The motion, slight as it was, seemed to attract Charles's attention ; for he raised himself suddenly to a sitting posture, listened for a moment, and then stood upright upon the floor. Ingoldsby was on the point of discovering himself, when, the light, flashing full upon his friend's coun- tenance, he perceived that, though his eyes were open, " their sense was shut," — that he was yet under the influence of sleep. Seaforth
22 The Spectre of Tappington
advanced slowly to the toilet, lit his candle at the lamp that stood on it, then, going back to the^.-^bed's foot, appeared to search eagerly for something which he could not find. For a few moments he seemed restless and uneasy, walking round the apartment and examining the chairs, till, coming fully in front of a large swing-glass that flanked the dressing-table, he paused, as if contemplating his figure in it. He now returned towards the bed ; put on his slippers, and, with cautious and stealthy steps, proceeded towards the little arched doorway that opened on the private staircase.
As he drew the bolt, Tom Ingoldsby emerged from his hiding- place ; but the sleep-walker heard him not ; he proceeded softly down stairs, followed at a due distance by his friend ; opened the door which led out upon the gardens ; and stood at once among the thickest of the scrubs, which there clustered round the base of a corner turret, and screened the postern from common observation. At this moment Ingoldsby had nearly spoiled all by making a false step : the sound attracted Seaforth's attention, — he paused and turned : and as the full moon shed her light directly upon his pale and troubled features, Tom marked, almost with dismay, the fixed and rayless appearance of his eyes: —
" There was no speculation in those orbs That he did glare withal."
The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure him ; he turned aside ; and from the midst of a thickset laurustinus, drew forth a gardener's spade, shouldering which he proceeded with great rapidity into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain point where the earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he set himself heartily to the task of digging, till, having thrown up several shovelfuls of mould, he stopped, flung down his tool and very composedly began to disencumber himself of his pantaloons.
Up to this moment Tom had watched him with a wary eye : he now advanced cautiously, and, as his friend was busily engaged in dis- entangling himself from his garment, made himself master of the spade. Seaforth, meanwhile, had accomplished his purpose : he stood for a moment with
" His streamers waving in the wind,"
occupied in carefully rolling up the small-clothes into as compact a form as possible, and aU heedless of the breath of heaven, which might certainly be supposed, at such a moment, and in such a plight, to " visit his frame too roughly."
He was in the act of stooping low to deposit the pantaloons in the
The Spectre of Tappington
23
grave which he had been digging for them, when Tom Ingoldsby came close behind him, and with the flat side of the spade — * • *
The shock was effectual ; — never again was Lieu- tenant Seaforth known to act the part of a somnam- bulist. One by one, his breeches, — his trousers, — his pantaloons, — his silk - net tights, — his patent cords, — • his showy greys with the broad red stripe of the Bombay Fencibles were brought to light, — rescued from the grave in which they had been buried, like the strata of a Christmas pie ; and, after having been well aired by Mrs. Botherby, became once again effective.
The family, the ladies especially, laughed ; — the Peterses laughed ; — the Simpkinsons laughed ; — Barney Maguire cried " Botheration ! " and Ma'mselle Pauline, " Mon Dieu ! "
Charles Seaforth, unable to face the quizzing which awaited him on all sides, started off two hours earlier than he had proposed : — he soon returned, however ; and having, at his father-in-law's request, given up the occupation of Rajah-hunting and shooting Nabobs, led his blushing bride to the altar.
Mr. Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at the Grand Junction Meeting of S(avans, then congregating from all parts of the known world in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity, — a little too much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen, — ^was highly spoken of, and narrowly escaped obtaining a Bridge- water prize.
24 The Nurse's Story
Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as bridesmaids on the occasion ; ' the former wrote an efithalamium, and the latter cried " Lassy me ! " at the clergyman's wig. — Some years have since rolled on ; the union has been crowned with two or three tidy little off -shoots from the family tree, of whom Master Neddy is " grandpapa's darling," and Mary-Anne mamma's particular " Sock." I shall only add, that Mr. and Mrs. Seaforth are living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond of each other, can possibly do : and, that since the day of his marriage Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors o' nights, — though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim of his young wife, Tom in- sinuates that the fair Caroline does stiU occasionally take advantage of it so far as to " slip on the Breeches."
It was not till some years after the events just recorded, that Miss Mary-Anne, the " pet Sock " before alluded to, was made acquainted with the following piece of family biography. It was communicated to her in strict confidence by Nurse Botherby, a maiden niece of the old lady's, then recently promoted from the ranks in the still-room, to be second in command in the Nursery department.
The story is connected with a dingy wizen-faced portrait in an oval frame, generally known by the name of " Uncle Stephen," though from the style of his cut-velvet, it is evident that some generations must have passed away since any living being could have stood towards him in that degree of consanguinity.
The Nurse's Story The Hand of Glory
" Malefica quaedam auguriatrix in Anglia fuit, quam demones horribiliter extraxerunt, et imponentes super equum terribilem, per aera rapuerunt ; Clamoresque terribiles (ut ferunt) per quatuor ferme miliaria audiebantur." — Nuremb. Chron.
On the lone bleak moor. At the midnight hour, Beneath the Gallows Tree,
Hand in hand The Murderers stand By one, by two, by three !
And the Moon that night With a grey, cold light Each baleful object tips ;
One half of her form Is seen through the storm, The other half's hid in Eclipse !
And the cold Wind howls. And the Thunder growls.
The Hand of Glory
25
'S^'-^ti»>cr hy^
And the Lightning is broad and bright ;
And altogether It's very bad weather, And an unpleasant sort of a night !
" Now mount who list, And close by the wrist Sever me quickly the Dead Man's fist ! —
Now climb who dare Where he swings in air, And pluck me five locks of the Dead Man's hair ! "
There's an old woman dwells upon Tappington Moor, She hath years on her back at the least fourscore, And some people fancy a great many more ; Her nose it is hook'd. Her back it is crook'd, Her eyes blear and red : On the top of her head Is a mutch, and on that A shocking bad hat. Extinguisher-shaped, the brim narrow and flat !
25
2 6 The Nurse's Story
Then, — My Gracious ! — her beard ! — it would sadly perplex
A spectator at first to distinguish her sex ;
Nor, I'll venture to say, without scrutiny could he
Pronounce her, off-handed, a Punch or a Judy.
Did you see her, in short, that mud-hovel within,
With her knees to her nose, and her nose to her chin,
Leering up with that queer indescribable grin.
You'd lift up your hands in amazement, and cry,
" — Well ! — I never did see such a regular Guy ! "
And now before That old Woman's door,
Where nought that's good may be. Hand in hand. The Murderers stand
By one, by two, by three ! Oh ! 'tis a horrible sight to view, In that horrible hovel, that horrible crew, By the pale blue glare of that flickering flame, Doing the deed that hath never a name !
'Tis awful to hear Those words of fear ! The pray'r mutter'd backwards, and said with a sneer I (Matthew Hopkins himself has assured us that when A witch says her pray'rs, she begins with " Amen.") —
— 'Tis awful to see On that Old Woman's knee The dead, shrivell'd hand, as she clasps it with glee ! —
And now, with care. The five locks of hair From the skull of the Gentleman dangling up there,
With the grease and the fat Of a black Tom Cat
She hastens to mix. And to twist into wicks, And one on the thumb, and each finger to fix. — (For another receipt the same charm to prepare. Consult Mr Ainsworth and Petit Albert.)
" Now open lock To the Dead Man's knock ! Fly bolt, and bar, and band ! —
Nor move, nor swerve Joint, muscle, or nerve. At the spell of the Dead Man's hand ! Sleep all who sleep ! — Wake all who wake ! — But be as the Dead for the Dead Man's sake ! ! "
There's an old woman dwells upon Tappington Moor
- IW ' tli^f^^Jmmmm^a/^itm
The Hand of Glory 27
All is silent ! aU is still,
Save the ceaseless moan of the bubbling rill
As it wells from the bosom of Tappington Hill ;
And in Tappington Hall Great and Small, Gentle and Simple, Squire and Groom, Each one hath sought his separate room. And sleep her dark mantle hath o'er them cast, For the midnight hour hath long been past !
All is darksome in earth and sky,
Save, from yon casement, narrow and high,
A quivering beam On the tiny stream Plays, like some taper's fitful gleam By one that is watching wearily.
Within that casement, narrow and high, In his secret lair, where none may spy. Sits one whose brow is wrinkled with care, And the thin grey locks of his failing hair Have left his little bald pate all bare ;
For his full-bottom'd wig Hangs bushy and big On the top of his old-fashion'd, high-back'd chair.
Unbraced are his clothes, Ungarter'd his hose. His gown is bedizened with tulip and rose. Flowers of remarkable size and hue. Flowers such as Eden never knew ; — And there, by many a sparkling heap
Of the good red gold. The tale is told What powerful spell avails to keep That care-worn man from his needful sleep '
Haply, he deems no eye can see
As he gloats on his treasure greedily, —
The shining store Of glittering ore. The fair Rose-Noble, the bright Moidore, And the broad Double Joe from ayont the sea, — But there's one that watches as well as he ;
For, wakeful and sly, In a closet hard by.
2 8 The Nurse's Story
On his truckle-bed lieth a little Foot-page, A boy who's uncommonly sharp of his age,
Like young Master Horner, Who erst in a corner
Sat eating a Christmas pie : And while that Old Gentleman's counting his hoards, Little Hugh peeps through a crack in the boards !
* # # # #
There's a voice in the air, There's a step on the stair, The old man starts in his cane-back'd chair ;
At the first faint sound. He gazes around, And holds up his dip of sixteen to the pound.
Then half arose From beside his toes His little pug-dog with his little pug nose. But, ere he can vent one inquisitive sniff. That little pug-dog stands stark and stiff.
For low, yet clear. Now fall on the ear, — Where once pronounced for ever they dwell, — The unholy words of the Dead Man's spell !
" Open lock To the Dead Man's knock !
Fly bolt, and bar, and band !
Nor move, nor swerve Joint, muscle, or nerve, At the spell of the Dead Man's hand ! Sleep all who sleep ! — Wake all who wake ! — But be as the Dead for the Dead Man's sake ! "
Now lock, nor bolt, nor bar avails.
Nor stout oak panel thick-studded with nails.
Heavy and harsh the hinges creak.
Though they had been oil'd in the course of the week ;
The door opens wide as wide may be.
And there they stand. That murderous band. Lit by the light of the Glorious Hand, By one ! — by two ! — by three !
They have pass'd through the porch, they have pass'd through
the hall, Where the Porter sat snoring against the wall ; The very snore froze In his very snub nose. You'd have verily deem'd he had snored his last When the Glorious Hand by the side of him past !
The Hand of Glory 29
E'en the little wee mouse, as it ran o'er the mat At the top of its speed to escape from the cat,
Though half dead with affright, Paused in its flight And the cat that was chasing that little wee thing Lay crouch'd as a statue in act to spring !
And now they are there, On the head of the stair, And the long crooked whittle is gleaming and bare ! — I really don't think any money would bribe Me the horrible scene that ensued to describe.
Or the wild, wild glare Of that old man's eye,
His dumb despair, And deep agony.
The kid from the pen, and the lamb from the fold, Unmoved may the blade of the butcher behold ; They dream not — ah, happier they ! — that the knife. Though uplifted, can menace their innocent life ; It falls ; — the frail thread of their being is riven. They dread not, suspect not, the blow till 'tis given. — But, oh ! what a thing 'tis to see and to know That the bare knife is raised in the hand of the foe, Without hope to repel, or to ward off the blow ! — — Enough ! — let's pass over as fast as we can The fate of that grey, that unhappy old man !
But fancy poor Hugh, Aghast at the view
Powerless alike to speak or to do !
In vain doth he try To open the eye That is shut, or close that which is clapt to the chink. Though he'd give all the world to be able to wink ! — No ! — for all that this world can give or refuse, I would not be now in that little boy's shoes, Or indeed any garment at all that is Hugh's ! — 'Tis lucky for him that the chink in the wall He has peep'd through so long, is so narrow and small !
Wailing voices, sounds of woe Such as follow departing friends,
That fatal night round Tappington go, Its long-drawn roofs and its gable ends :
Ethereal Spirits, gentle and good.
Aye weep and lament o'er a deed of blood.
30 The Nurse's Story .
'Tis early dawn — the morn is grey,
And the clouds and the tempest have pass'd away,
And aU things betoken a very fine day ;
But, while the lark her carol is singing,
Shrieks and screams are through Tappington ringing !
Upstarting all Great and small. Each one who's found within Tappington Hall, Gentle and Simple, Squire or Groom, All seek at once that old Gentleman's room ;
And there on the floor, Drench'd in its gore, A ghastly corpse lies exposed to the view. Carotid and jugular both cut through !
And there, by its side, 'Mid the crimson tide. Kneels a little Foot-page of tenderest years ; Adown his pale cheeks the fast-falling tears Are coursing each other round and big, And he's staunching the blood with a full-bottomed wig ! Alas ! and alack for his staunching ! — 'tis plain, As anatomists tell us, that never again Shall life revisit the foully slain. When once they've been cut through the jugular vein.
# * * # #
There's a hue and a cry through the County of Kent, And in chase of the cut-throats a Constable's sent. But no one can tell the man which way they went, There's a little Foot-page with that Constable goes, And a little pug-dog with a little pug nose.
* * * • *
In Rochester town, At the sign of the Crown, Three shabby-genteel men are just sitting down To a fat stubble-goose, with potatoes done brown ;
When a little Foot-page Rushes in, in a rage, Upsetting the apple-sauce, onions, and sage. That little Foot-page takes the first by the throat. And a little pug-dog takes the next by the coat. And a Constable seizes the one more remote ; And fair rose-nobles and broad moidores, The Waiter pulls out of their pockets by scores, And the Boots and the Chambermaids run in and stare ; And the Constable says, with a dignified air.
To Tappingfon Mill-dam
30 The Nurse's Story
The Hand of Glory 31
" You're wanted, Gen'lemen, one and all,
For that ere precious lark at Tappington Hall ! "
There's a black gibbet frowns upon Tappington Moor, Where a former black gibbet has frown'd before :
It is as black as black may be,
And murderers there Are dangling in air,
By one ! — by two ! by three !
There's a horrid old hag in a steeplc-crown'd hat,
Round her neck they have tied to a hempen cravat
A Dead Man's hand and a dead Tom Cat !
They have tied up her thumbs, they have tied up her toes,
They have tied up her eyes, they have tied up her limbs ! Into Tappington mill-dam souse she goes.
With a whoop and a halloo — " She swims ! — She swims ! " They have dragg'd her to land, And every one's hand.
Is grasping a faggot, a billet, or brand, When a queer looking horseman, drest all in black, Snatches up that old harridan just like a sack To the crupper behind him, puts spurs to his hack. Makes a dash through the crowd, and is off in a crack ! —
No one can tell. Though they guess pretty well. Which way that grim rider and old woman go. For all see he's a sort of infernal Ducrow ;
And she scream'd so, and cried. We may fairly decide That the old woman did not much relish her ride !
Moral.
This truest of stories confirms beyond doubt That truest of adages — " Murder will out ! " In vain may the blood-spiller " double " and fly, In vain even witchcraft and sorcery try : Although for a time he may 'scape by-and-by He'll be sure to be caught by a Hugh and a Cry !
One marvel follows another as naturally as one " shoulder of mutton " is said " to drive another down." A little Welsh girl, who sometimes makes her. way from the kitchen into the nursery, after listening with intense interest to this tale, immediately started off at score with the sum and substance of what, in due reverence for such authority, I shall call —
Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story " Look at the Clock ! "
FYTTE I.
" Look at the Clock ! " quoth Winifred Pryce,
As she open'd the door to her husband's knock, Then paus'd to give him a piece of advice,
" You nasty Warmint, look at the Clock !
Is this the way, you Wretch, every day you Treat her vs^ho vow'd to" love and obey you ? —
Out all night ! Me in a fright ; Staggering home as it's just getting light ! You intoxified brute ! — you insensible block ! — Look at the Clock ! — Do ! — Look at the Clock ! "
Winifred Price was tidy and clean,
Her gown was a flower'd one, her petticoat green,
Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's ;
Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
Her gown-tail was turn'd up, and tuck'd through the pocket-holes ;
A face like a ferret Betoken'd her spirit : To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young. Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.
Now David Pryce Had one darling vice ; Remarkably partial to anything nice. Nought that was good to him came amiss. Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss !
Especially ale — If it was not too stale I really believe he'd have emptied a pail ;
Not that in Wales They talk of their Ales ; To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you. Being spelt with a C, two Rs, and a W.
That particular day, As I've heard people say, Mr. David Pryce had been soaking his clay. And amusing himself with his pipe and cheroots, The whole afternoon, at the Goat-in-Boots,
32
"Look at the Clock!" 33
With a couple more soakers, Thoroughbred smokers, Both, like himself, prime singers and jokers ; And long after day had drawn to a close. And the rest of the world was wrapp'd in repose, They were roaring out " Shenkin ! " and " Ar hydd y nos " ; While David himself, to a Sassenach tune. Sang, " We've drunk down the Sun, boys ! let's drink down the Moon !
What have we with day to do ?
Mrs. Winifred Pryce, 'twas made for you ! " At length, when they couldn't well drink any more, Old " Goat-in-Boots " showed them the door :
And then came that knock. And the sensible shock David felt when his wife cried, " Look at the Clock ! " For the hands stood as crooked as crooked might be. The long at the Twelve, and the short at the Three !
That self-same clock had long been a bone Of contention between this Darby and Joan ; And often, among their pother and rout. When this otherwise amiable couple fell out,
Pryce would drop a cool hint, With an ominous squint At its case, of an " Uncle " of his, who'd a " Spout."
That horrid word " Spout " No sooner came out Than Winifred Pryce would turn her about,
And with scorn on her lip. And a hand on each hip, " Spout " herself till her nose grew red at the tip.
" You thundering Willin, I know you'd be killing Your wife — ay, a dozen of wives — for a shilling !
You may do what you please. You may sell my chemise, (Mrs. P. was too well-bred to mention her smock) But I never will part with my Grandmother's Clock ! "
Mrs. Pryce's tongue ran long and ran fast ;
But patience is apt to wear out at last.
And David Pryce in temper was quick.
So he stretched out his hand, and caught hold of a stick ;
Perhaps m its use he might mean to be lenient.
But walking just then wasn't very convenient.
So he threw it, instead. Direct at her head ;
It knock'd off her hat ; Down she fell flat ; Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that :
34 Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story
But whatever it was, — ^whether rage and pain
Produced apoplexy, or" burst a vein.
Or her tumble induced a concussion of brain,
I can't say for certain, — but this I can.
When, sober'd by fright, to assist her he ran,
Mrs. Winifred Pryce was as dead as Queen Anne !
The fearful catastrophe Named in my last strophe As adding to grim Death's exploits such a vast trophy. Made a great noise ; and the shocking fatahty. Ran over, like wild-fire, the whole Principality, And then came Mr. Ap Thomas, the Coroner, With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her.
Mr. Pryce to commence His " ingenious defence," Made a " powerful appeal " to the jury's " good sense " :
" The world he must defy Ever to justify Any presumption of ' Malice Prepense ; ' " —
The unlucky lick From the end of his stick He " deplored," — he was " apt to be rather too quick ; " —
But, really, her prating Was so aggravating : Some trifling correction was just what he meant ; — all The rest, he assured them, was " quite accidental ! "
Then he calls Mr. Jones, Who depones to her tones. And her gestures, and hints about " breaking his bones." While Mr. Ap Morgan, and Mr. Ap Rhys
Declared the Deceased Had styled him " a Beast," And swear they had witness'd, with grief and surprise. The allusion she made to his limbs and his eyes.
The jury, in fine, having sat on the body
The whole day, discussing the case, and gin toddy,
Return'd about half-past eleven at night
The following verdict, " We find, Sarve her right ! "
Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Winifred Pryce being dead.
Felt lonely, and moped ; and one evening he said ,
He would marry Miss Davis at once in her stead.
Not far from his dwelling. From the vale proudly swelling. Rose a mountain ; it's name you'll excuse me from telling,
"Look at the Clock !" 35
For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few That the A and the E, the I, O, and the U,
Have really but little or nothing to do ; And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far, On the L, and the H, and the N, and the R.
Its first syllable " Pen," Is pronounceable ; — then Come two L Ls, and two H Hs, two F Fs, and an N, About half a score Rs, and some Ws follow, Beating all my best efforts at euphony hollow : But we shan't have to mention it often, so when We do, with your leave, we'll curtail it to " Pen."
Well — the moon shone bright
Upon " Pen " that night. When Pryce, being quit of his fuss and his fright.
Was scaling its side With that sort of stride A man puts out when walking in search of a bride.
Mounting higher and higher. He began to perspire, Till, finding his legs were beginning to tire.
And feeling opprest By a pain in his chest, He paus'd, and turn'd round to take breath, and to rest : A walk all up hill is apt, we know, To make one, however robust, puff and blow, So he stopp'd and look'd down on the valley below.
O'er fell, and o'er fen. Over mountain and glen, AH bright in the moonshine, his eye roved, and then All the Patriot rose in his soul, and he thought Upon Wales, and her glories, and all he'd been taught
Of her Heroes of old, So brave and so bold, — Of her Bards with long beards, and harps mounted in gold ;
Of King Edward the First, Of memory accurst ; And the scandalous manner in which he behaved.
Killing Poets by dozens.
With their uncles and cousins. Of whom not one in fifty had ever been shaved — Of the Court Ball, at which by a lucky mishap, Owen Tudor fell into Queen Katherine's lap ;
And how Mr. Tudor Successfully woo'd her Till the Dowager put on a new wedding-ring, And so made him Father-in-law to the King.
36 Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story
He thought upon Arthur, and Merlin of yore,
On Griffith ap Conan, and Owen Glendour ;
On Pendragon, and Heaven knows how many more.
He thought of all this, as he gazed, in a trice.
And on all things, in short, but the late Mrs. Pryce ;
When a lumbering noise from behind made him start.
And sent the blood back in full tide to his heart,
Which went pit-a-pat
As he cried out " What's that ? " —
That very queer sound ? —
Does it come from the ground ? Or the air, — from above, — or below, — or around ? —
It is not like Talking, It is not like Walking, It's not like the clattering of pot or of pan. Or the tramp of a horse, — or the tread of a man, — Or the hum of a crowd, — or the shouting of boys, — It's really a deuced odd sort of a noise ! Not unlike a cart's, — but that can't be ; for when Could " all the King's horses, and all the King's men," With Old Nick for a waggoner, drive one up " Pen " ?
Pryce, usually brimful of valour when drunk,
Now experienced what schoolboys denominate " funk."
In vain he look'd back On the whole of the track He had traversed ; a thick cloud, uncommonly black, At this moment obscured the broad disc of the moon, And did not seem likely to pass away soon ;
While clearer and clearer, 'Twas plain to the hearer, Be the noise what it might, it drew nearer and nearer, And sounded, as Pryce to this moment declares, Very much " like a Coffin a-walking up stairs."
Mr. Pryce had begun To " make up " for a run, As in such a companion he saw no great fun.
When a single bright ray Shone out on the way He had passed, and he saw, with no little dismay, Coming after him, bounding o'er crag and o'er rock, The deceased Mrs. Winifred's " Grandmother's Clock ! ! " 'Twas so J — it had certainly moved from its place. And come, lumbering on thus, to hold him in chase ; 'Twas the very same Head, and the very same Case, And nothing was altered at all — but the Face !
(C
Look at the Clock !
37
In that he perceived, with no little surprise, The two little winder-holes turned into eyes Blazing with ire, Like two coals of fire ; And the " Name of the Maker " was changed to a Lip, And the Hands to a Nose with a very red tip.
No ! — he could not mistake it, — 'twas She to the life ! The identical face of his poor defunct Wife !
One glance was enough Completely " Quant, suff." As the doctors write down when they send you their " stuff,"- Like a Weather-cock whirled by a vehement puff,
David turned himself round ; Ten feet of ground He cleared, in his start, at the very first bound 1
I've seen people run at West-End Fair for cheeses — I've seen Ladies run at Bow Fair for chemises —
38 Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story
At .Greenwich Fair twenty men run for a hat,
And one from a Bailiff much faster than that —
At foot-ball I've seen lads run after the bladder —
I've seen Irish Bricklayers run up a ladder —
I've seen little boys run away from a cane —
And I've seen (that is, read of) good running in Spain ;*
But I never did read Of, or witness, such speed As David exerted that evening. — Indeed All I have ever heard of boys, women, or men, Falls far short of Pryce, as he ran over " Pen ! "
He reaches its brow, — He has past it, — and now Having once gained the summit, and managed to cross it, he Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity ;
But, run as he wiU, Or roll down the hill, That bugbear behind him is after him still ' And close at his heels, not at all to his liking, The terrible clock keeps on ticking and striking,
Till, exhausted and sore, He can't run any more. But falls as he reaches Miss Davis's door. And screams when they rush out, alarm'd at his knock, " Oh ! Look at the Clock !— Do !— Look at the Clock ! ! "
Miss Davis look'd up, Miss Davis look'd down, She saw nothing there to alarm her ; — a frown
Came o'er her white forehead. She said, " It was horrid A man should come knocking at that time of night, And give her Mamma and herself such a fright ; —
To squall and to bawl About nothing at all ! " She begg'd " he'd not think of repeating his call :
His late wife's disaster By no means had past her," She'd " have him to know she was meat for his Master ! " Then regardless alike of his love and his woes, She turn'd on her heel and she turn'd up her nose.
Poor David in vain Implored to remain. He " dared not," he said, " cross the mountain again."
Why the fair was obdurate
None knows, — to be sure, it Was said she was setting her cap at the Curate ; —
* I-run is a town said to have been so named from something of this sort.
" GENTLEMEN ! LOOK AT THE CLOCK ! ! ! "
40 Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story
Be that as it may, it is certain the sole hole
Pryce found to creep into that night was the Coal-hole !
In that shady retreat With nothing to eat, And with very bruised limbs, and with very sore feet,
All night close he kept ; I can't say he slept ; But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept ;
Lamenting his sins, And his two broken shins, Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins, And her he once thought a complete Rara Avis, Consigning to Satan, — viz., cruel Miss Davis !
Mr. David has since had a " serious call," He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all. And they say he is going to Exeter Hall
To make a grand speech, And to preach and to teach People that " they can't brew their malt liquor too small ! " That an ancient Welsh Poet, one Pyndar ap Tudor, Was right in proclaiming " Ariston men Udor ! "
Which means " The pure Element
Is for Man's belly meant ! " And that Gin's but a Snare of Old Nick the deluder !
And " still on each evening when pleasure fills up," At the old Goat-in-Boots, with Metheglin, each cup,
Mr. Pryce, if he's there, Will get into " The Chair," And make all his quondam associates stare By calling aloud to the Landlady's daughter, " Patty, bring a cigar, and a glass of Spring Water ! " The dial he constantly watches ; and when The long hand's at the " XII.," and the short at the " X."
He gets on his legs, Drains his glass to the dregs, Takes his hat and great-coat off their several pegs. With his President's hammer bestows his last knock. And says solemnly — " Gentlemen !
" Look at the Clock ! ! ! "
The succeeding Legend has long been an established favourite with all of us, as containing much of the personal history of one of the greatest ornaments of the family tree.
To the wedding between the sole heiress of this redoubted hero and" a direct ancestor is it owing that the Lioncels of Shurland hang so lovingly parallel with the Saltire of the Ingoldsbys, and now form as cherished a quartering in their escutcheon as the " dozen white lowses " in the " old coat " of Shallow.
Grey Dolphin
A Legend of Sheppey
" He won't — won't he ? Then bring me my boots ! " said the Baron.
Consternation was at its height in the castle of Shurland — a caitiff had dared to disobey the Baron ! and — the Baron had called for his boots !
A thunderbolt in the great hall had been a bagatelle to it.
A few days before, a notable miracle had been wrought in the neighbourhood ; and in those times miracles were not so common as they are now ; — no royal balloons, no steam, no railroads, — while the few Saints who took the trouble to walk with their heads under their arms, or to pull the Devil by the nose, scarcely appeared above once in a century ; so the affair made the greater sensation.
The clock had done striking twelve, and the Clerk of Chatham was untrussing his points preparatory to seeking his truckle-bed ; a half-emptied tankard of mild ale stood at his elbow, the roasted crab yet floating on its surface. Midnight had surprised the worthy functionary while occupied in discussing it, and with his task yet un- accomplished. He meditated a mighty draft : one hand was fumbling with his tags, while the other was extended in the act of grasping the jorum, when a knock on the portal, solemn and sonorous, arrested his fingers. It was repeated thrice ere Emmanuel Saddleton had presence of mind sufficient to inquire who sought admittance at that untimeous hour.
" Open ! open ! good Clerk of St. Bridget's," said a female voice, small, yet distinct and sweet, — an excellent thing in woman.
The Clerk arose, crossed to the doorway, and undid the latchet.
On the threshold stood a Lady of surpassing beauty : her robes were rich, and large, and full ; and a diadem, sparkling with gems that shed a halo around, crowned her brow : she beckoned the Clerk as he stood in astonishment before her.
" Emmanuel ! " said the Lady ; and her tones sounded like those of a silver flute. " Emmanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me ! "
The worthy Clerk stared aghast at the vision ; the purple robe, the cymar, the coronet, — above all, the smile ; no, there was no mistaking her ; it was the blessed St. Bridget herself !
41
42
Grey Dolphin
And what could have brought the sainted lady out of her warm shrine at such a time of night ? and on such a night ? for it was as dark as pitch, and, metaphorically speaking, " rained cats and dogs." Emmanuel could not speak, so he looked the question. " No matter for that," said the Saint, answering to his thought. " No matter for that, Emmanuel Saddleton ; only follow me, and you'll see ! " The Clerk turned a wistful eye at the corner-cupboard.
" Oh 1 never mind the lantern, Emmanuel : you'll not want it : but you may bring a mattock and a shovel." As she spoke, the beautiful apparition held up her delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper fingers issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would have plunged a whole gas company into despair — it was a " Hand of Glory," * such a one as tradition tells us yet burns in Rochester Castle every St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring individuals who have watched in Gundulph's Tower, hoping to find it, and the treasure it guards ; — but none of them ever did.
" This way, Emmanuel ! " and a flame of peculiar radiance streamed from her little finger as it pointed to the pathway leading to the churchyard.
Saddleton shouldered his tools, and followed in silence.
The cemetery of St. Bridget's was some half-mile distant from the Clerk's domicile, and adjoined a chapel dedicated [to that illustrious lady, who, after leading but a so-so life, had died in the odour of sanctity. Emmanuel Saddleton was fat and scant of breath, the mattock was heavy, and the Saint walked too fast for him ; he paused to take second wind at the end of the first furlong.
" Emmanuel," said the holy lady good-humouredly, for she heard him puffing ; rest awhile, Emmanuel, and I'll tell you what I want with you." Her auditor wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and looked all attention and obedience.
" Emmanuel," continued she, " what did you and Father Fothergill,
* One of the uses to which this mystic chandelier was put, was the protection of secreted treasure. Blow out all the fingers at one puff and you had the money.
Grey Dolphin
43
and the rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me ? He died in mortal sin, Emmanuel ; no shrift, no unction, no absolution : why, he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must howk him up again, Emmanuel ! "
" To be sure, madam, — my lady, — that is, your holiness," stammered Saddleton, trem- bling at the thought of the task assigned to him. " To be sure, your ladyship ; only — that is "
" Emmanuel," said the Saint, " you'll do my bidding ; or it would be better you had ! " and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a hawk, and a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little finger. The Clerk shook in his shoes ; and, again dashing the cold perspiration from his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious guide. * * * *
The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St. Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own arm-chair, the fire out, and — the tankard of ale out too ! Who had drunk it ? — ^where had he been ? — how had he got home f — all was a mystery ! — he remembered " a mass of things, but nothing distinctly ; " all was fog and fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had dug up the Grinning Sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled ; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre ; — Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted ; the chapel of Rainham forsaken ; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's shrine, and Emmanuel Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous piety of that one week than he had pocketed during the twelve preceding months.
44 Grey Dolphin
Meanwhile the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a pendulum between Sheerness and GiUingham Reach. Now borne by the Medway into the Western Swale, — now carried by the refluent tide back to the vicinity of its old quarters, — it seemed as though the River god and Neptune were aimusing themselves with a game of sub- aqueous battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine shuttlecock. Fo some time the alternation was kept up with great spirit, tiU Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish " Nor'-wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning worse than ever. Tidings of the god-send were of course carried instantly to the castle ; for the Baron was a very great man ; and if a dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the Baron would have kicked him, the said warder, from the topmost battlement into the bottommost ditch, — a descent of peril, and one which " Ludwig the leaper," or the illustrious Trenck himself might well have shrunk from encountering.
" An't please your lordship -" said Peter Periwinkle.
" No, villain ! it does not please me ! " roared the Baron.
His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Feversham oysters, — he doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet despatched more than twenty dozen of the " natives."
" There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the Seneschal.
The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head ; but paused in the act, and said with much dignity, —
" Turn out the fellow's pockets ! "
But the defunct had before been subjected to the double scrutiny of Father Fothergill, and the Clerk of St. Bridget's. It was iU gleaning after such hands ; there was not a single maravedi.
We have already said that Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of the Isle of Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the mainland, was a man of worship. He had rights of free-warren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe ; and all waifs and strays belonged to him in fee simple.
" Turn out his pockets ! " said the Knight.
" An't please you, my lord, I must say as how they was turned out afore, and the devil a rap's left."
" Then bury the blackguard ! "
" Please your lordship, he has been buried once."
Grey Dolphin 45
" Then bury him again, and be ! " The Baron bestowed a
benediction.
The Seneschal bowed low as he left the room, and the Baron went on with his oysters.
Scarcely ten dozen more had vanished when Periwinkle reappeared.
" An't please you, my lord, Father Fothergill says as how that it's the Grinning Sailor, and he won't bury him anyhow."
" Oh ! he won't — won't he ? " said the Baron. Can it be wondered at that he called for his boots ?
Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of Shurland and Minster, Baron of Sheppey in comitatu Kent, was, as has been before hinted, a very great man. He was also a very little man ; that is, he was relatively great, and relatively Httle, — or physically little, ahd metaphorically great, — like Sir Sidney Smith and the late Mr. Bonaparte. To the frame of a dwarf he united the soul of a giant, and the valour of a gamecock. Then, for so small a man, his strength was prodigious ; his fist would fell an ox, and his kick — oh ! his kick was tremendous, and, when he had his boots on, would, to use an expression of his own, which he had picked up in the holy wars, — would " send a man from Jericho to June." — He was bull-necked and bandy-legged ; his chest was broad and deep, his head large, and uncommonly thick, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his nose retrousse with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking the Baron could not be called handsome, but his tout ensemble was singularly impressive : and when he called for his boots, everybody trembled and dreaded the worst.
" Periwinkle," said the Baron, as he encased his better leg, " let the grave be twenty feet deep ! "
" Your lordship's command is law."
" And, Periwinkle," — Sir Robert stamped his left heel into its receptacle, — " and. Periwinkle, see that it be wide enough to hold not exceeding two ! "
" Ye — ye. — yes, my lord."
" And, Periwinkle, — tell Father Fothergill I would fain speak with his Reverence."
" Ye — ye — ^yes, my lord."
The Baron's beard was peaked ; and his mustaches, stiff and stumpy, projected horizontally like those of a Tom Cat ; he twirled the one, he stroked the other, he drew the buckle of his surcingle a thought tighter, and strode down the great staircase three steps at a stride.
The vassals were assembled in the great hall of Shurland Castle ; every cheek was pale, every tongue was mute ; expectation and perplexity
46 Grey Dolphin
were visible on every brow. What would his lordship do ? — Were the recusant anybody else, gyves to the heels and hemp to the throat were but too good for him : — but it was Father Fothergill who had said " I won't ; " and though the Baron was a very great man, the Pope was a greater, and the Pope was Father Fothergill's great friend — some people said he was his uncle.
Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said " I won't," it was the exception ; and, like all other exceptions, only proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augus- tine persuasion ; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and over- spread the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, — stood five feet four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was moreover a personage of singular piety ; and the iron girdle, which, he said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. — ^When he arrived, Sir Robert was pacing up and down by the side of a newly opened grave.
" Benedicite ! fair son," — (the Baron was as brown as a cigar,) — " Benedicite ! " said the Chaplain.
The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment. " Bury me that grinning caitiff there ! " quoth he, pointing to the defunct.
" It may not be, fair son," said the Friar ; " he hath perished without absolution."
" Bury the body ! " roared Sir Robert.
" Water and earth alike reject him," returned the Chaplain ; " holy St. Bridget herself "
" Bridget me no Bridgets ! — do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling ;
or, by the Piper that played before Moses " The oath was a fearful
one ; and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword. — " Do me thine office, I say. Give him his passport to Heaven ! "
" He is already gone to Hell ! " stammered the Friar.
" Then do you go after him ! " thundered the Lord of Shurland.
His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No ! — the trenchant blade, that had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chine, disdained to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk ;
One kick ! — it was but one ! — but such
a one
Grey Dolphin 47
— it leaped back again ; — and as the Chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror, the Baron gave him a kick ! — one kick ! — it was but one ! — • but such a one ! Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five degrees ; then, having reached its highest point of eleva- tion, sunk headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend gentleman had possessed such a thing as a neck, he had infallibly broken it ; as he did not, he only dislocated his vertebrae, — but that did quite as well. He was as dead as ditch-water !
" In with the other rascal ! " said the Baron, — and he was obeyed ; for there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it ; twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and the sinner. " Now sing a requiem who list ! " said the Baron, and his lordship went back to his oysters.
The vassals at Castle Shurland were astounded, or, as the Seneschal Hugh better expressed it, " perfectly conglomerated," by this event. What ! murder a monk in the odour of sanctity, — and on consecrated ground too ! — ^They trembled for the health of the Baron's soul. To the unsophisticated many it seemed that matters could not have been much worse had he shot a bishop's coach-horse ; — all looked for some signal judgment. The melancholy catastrophe of their neighbours at Canterbury was yet rife in their memories : not two centuries had elapsed since those miserable sinners had cut off the tail of the blessed St. Thomas's mule. The tail of the mule, it was well known, had been forthwith affixed to that of the Mayor ; and rumour said it had since been hereditary in the corporation. The least that could be expected was, that Sir Robert should have a friar tacked on to his for the term of his natural life ! Some bolder spirits there were, 'tis true, who viewed the matter in various lights, according to their different tempera- ments and dispositions ; for perfect unanimity existed not even in the good old times. The verderer, roistering Hob Roebuck, swore roundly, " 'Twere as good a deed as eat to kick down the chapel as well as the monk." — Hob had stood there in a white sheet for kissing Giles Miller's daughter. — On the other hand, Simpkin Agnew, the bell-ringer, doubted if the devil's cellar, which runs under the bottomless abyss, were quite deep enough for the delinquent, and speculated on the probability of a hole being dug in it for his especial accommodation. The philosophers and economists thought, with Saunders McBuUock, the Baron's bag- piper, that " a feckless monk more or less was nae great subject for a clamjamphry," especially as " the supply considerably exceeded the demand ; " while Malthouse, the tapster, was arguing to Dame Martin that a murder now and then was a seasonable check to population,
48 Grey Dolphin
without which the Isle of Sheppey would in time be devoured, like a mouldy cheese, by inhabitants of its own producing. — Meanwhile, the Baron ate his oysters and thought no more of the matter.
But this tranquillity of his lordship was not to last. A couple of Saints had been seriously offended ; and we have all of us read at school that celestial minds are by no means insensible to the provocations of anger. There were those who expected that St. Bridget would come in person, and have the friar up again, as she did the sailor ; but perhaps her ladyship did not care to trust herself within the walls of Shurland Castle. To say the truth, it was scarcely a decent house for a female Saint to be seen in. The Baron's gallantries, since he became a widower, had been but too notorious ; and her own reputation was a little blown upon in the earlier days of her earthly pilgrimage : then things were so apt to be misrepresented : in short, she would leave the whole affair to St. Austin, who, being a gentleman, could interfere with propriety, avenge her affront as well as his own, and leave no loophole for scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have had his scruples, though of their precise nature it would be difficult to determine, for it were idle to suppose him at all afraid of the Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the Baron out, — had his boots been out of the ques- tion ; — so he resolved to have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just within the walls of Canterbury, and presented himself in a vision to its abbot. No one who has ever visited that ancient city, can fail to recollect the splendid gateway which terminates the vista of St. Paul's-street, and stands there yet in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train of miniature artillery which now adorns its battlements is, it is true, an ornament of a later date ; and is said to have been added some centuries after by a learned but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of shooting any wiser man than himself who might chance to come that way. Tradition is silent as to any discharge having taken place, nor can the oldest inhabitant of modern days recollect any such occurrence.* Here it was, in a handsome chamber, immediately over the lofty archway, that the Superior of the monastery lay buried in a brief slumber snatched from his accustomed vigils. His mitre — for he was a Mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament — rested on a table beside him ; near it stood a^silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made him more than
* Since the appearance of the first edition of this Legend " the guns " have been dismounted. Rumour hint? at som? slarjn on the part of the Town Council.
Grey Dolphin 49
usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in all the colours of the rainbow.
" Anselm ! " — said the beatific vision, — " Anselm ! are you not a pretty fellow to lie snoring there, when your brethren are being knocked at head, and Mother Church herself is menaced ? — It is a sin and a shame. Anselm ! "
" What's the matter ? — Who are you ? " cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes, which the celestial splendour of his visitor had set a-winking. " Ave Maria ! St. Austin himself ! — Speak, Beatissime ! what would you with the humblest of your votaries f "
" Anselm ! " said the Saint, " a brother of our order, whose soul Heaven assoilzie ! hath been foully murdered. He hath been igno- miniously kicked to the death, Anselm ; and there he lieth cheek-by- jowl with a wretched carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for unseemly grinning. — Arouse thee, Anselm ! "
" Ay, so please you, Sanctissime / " said the Abbot. " I will order forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty Paters, and thirty Jves.^'
" Thirty fools' heads ! " interrupted his patron, who was a little peppery.
" I will send for bell, book, and candle "
" Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. — Write me now a letter to his Holi- ness the Pope in good round terms, and another to the Coroner, and another to the Sheriff, and seize me the never-enough-to-be-anathe- matised villain who hath done this deed ! Hang him as high as Haman, Anselm ! — up with him ! — down with his dwelling-place, root and branch, hearthstone and roof-tree, — down with it all, and sow the site with salt and sawdust ! "
St. Austin, it will be perceived, was a radical reformer.
" Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's elo- quence : " ay, marry will I, and that instanter. But there is one thing you have forgotten, most Beatified — the name of the culprit."
" Robert de Shurland."
" The Lord of Sheppey ! Bless me ! " said the Abbot, crossing himself, " won't that be rather inconvenient ? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a powerful ; — blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and "
" What is that to you, since yours wiU not be of the number ? "
" Very true, Beatissime ! — I will don me with speed, and do your bidding."
" Do so, Anselm ! — fail not to hang the baron, burn his castle,
* D
50 Grey Dolphin
confiscate his estate, and buy me two large wax candles for my own particular shrine out of your share of the property."
With this solemn injunction the vision began to fade.
" One thin^ more ! " cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
" What is that ? " asked the Saint.
" O Be ate Augustine, or a fro nobis ! "
" Of course I shall," said St. Austin. " Pax vobiscum ! " — and Abbot Anselm was left alone.
Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been murdered, — two friars — ten — twenty ; a whole convent had been assaulted, — sacked, — burnt, — all the monks had been killed, and all the nuns had been kissed ! — Murder ! — fire ! — sacrilege ! Never was city in such an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, all was noise and hub- bub. " Where was it ? "— " When was it ? "— " How was it ? " The Mayor caught up his chain, the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his spectacles. " Who was he ? " — " What was he ? " — " Where was he ? " — he should be hanged, — he should be burned, — he should be broiled, — he should be fried, — he should be scraped to death with red-hot oyster-shells ! " Who was he ? " — " What was his name ? "
The Abbot's Apparitor drew forth his roll and read aloud : — " Sir Robert de Shurland, Knight banneret, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord of Sheppey."
The Mayor put his chain in his pocket, the Aldermen took off their gowns, the Town Clerk put his pen behind his ear. — It was a county business altogether : — the Sheriff had better call out the fosse comitatus.
While saints and sinners were thus leaguing against him, the Baron de Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin ; nor was his appetite more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather longer over his meal than usual : luncheon-time came, and he was ready as ever for his oysters : but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his first half-dozen when the warder's horn was heard from the barbican.
" Who the devil's that ? " said Sir Robert. " I'm not at home, Periwinkle. I hate to be disturbed at meals, and I won't be at home to anybody."
" An't please your lordship," answered the Seneschal, " Paul Prior hath given notice that there is a body "
" Another body 1 " roared the Baron. " Am I to be everlastingly
Grey Dolphin 51
plagued with bodies ? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the moat ! "
" So please you, my lord, It is a body of horse, — and — and Paul says there is a still larger body of foot behind it ; and he thinks, my lord, — that is, he does not know, but he thinks — and we all think, my lord, that they are coming to — to besiege the castle ! "
" Besiege the castle ! Who ? What ? What for ? "
" Paul says, my lord, that he can see the banner of St. Austin, and the bleeding heart of Hamo de Crevecoeur, the Abbot's chief vassal ; and there is John de Northwood, the sheriff, with his red-cross engrailed ; and Hever, and Leybourne, and Heaven knows how many more ; and they are all coming on as fast as ever they can."
" Periwinkle," said the Baron, " up with the drawbridge ; down with the portcullis ; bring me a cup of canary, and my nightcap. I won't be bothered with them. I shall go to bed."
" To bed, my lord ? " cried Periwinkle, with a look that seemed to say, " He's crazy 1 "
At this moment the shrill tones of a trumpet were heard to sound thrice from the champaign. It was the signal for parley : the Baron changed his mind ; instead of going to bed, he went to the ramparts.
" Well, rapscallions ! and what now ? " said the Baron.
A herald, two pursuivants, and a trumpeter, occupied the foreground of the scene ; behind them, some three hundred paces off, upon a rising ground, was drawn up in battle array the main body of the ecclesiastical forces.
" Hear you, Robert de Shurland, Knight, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord of Sheppey, and know all men, by these presents, that I do hereby attach you, the said Robert, of murder and sacrilege, now, or of late, done and committed by you, the said Robert, contrary to the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity : and I do hereby require and charge you, the said Robert, to forthwith surrender and give up your own proper person, together with the castle of Shurland aforesaid, in order that the same may be duly dealt with according to law. And here standeth John de Northwood, Esquire, good man and true, sheriff of this his Majesty's most loyal county of Kent, to enforce the same, if need be, with his fosse comitatus "
" His what ? " said the Baron.
" His fosse comitatus, and "
" Go to Bath ! " said the Baron.
A defiance so contemptuous roused the ire of the adverse commanders. A volley of missiles rattled about the Baron's ears.
52 Grey Dolphin
Nightcaps avail little against contusions. He left the walls, and returned to the great hall.
" Let them pelt away," quoth the Baron ; " there are no windows to break, and they can't get in." — So he took his afternoon nap, and the siege went on.
Towards evening his lordship awoke, and grew tired of the din. Guy Pearson, too, had got a black eye from a brick-bat, and the assailants were clambering over the outer wall. So the Baron called for his Sunday hauberk of Milan steel, and his great two-handed sword with the terrible name ; — it was the fashion in feudal times to give names to swords : King Arthur's was christened Excalibar ; the Baron called his Tickletoby, and whenever he took it in hand it was no joke.
" Up with the portcuUis ! down with the bridge ! " said Sir Robert ; and out he sallied, followed by the elite of his retainers. Then there was a pretty to-do. Heads flew one way — arms and legs another ; round went Tickletoby ; and, wherever it alighted, down came horse and man : the Baron excelled himself that day. All that he had done in Palestine faded in the comparison ; he had fought for fun there, but now it was for life and lands. Away went John de Northwood ; away went William of Hever, and Roger of Leybourne. — Hamo de CreveccEur, with the church vassals and the banner of St. Austin, had been gone some time. — ^The siege was raised, and the Lord of Sheppey was left alone in his glory.
But brave as the Baron undoubtedly was, and total as had been the defeat of his enemies, it cannot be supposed that La Stoccata would be allowed to carry it away thus. It has before been hinted that Abbot Anselm had written to the Pope, and Boniface the Eighth piqued himself on his punctuality as a correspondent in all matters connected with church discipline. He sent back an answer by return of post ; and by it all Christian people were strictly enjoined to aid in exterminating the offender, on pain of the greater excommunication in this world and a miUion of years of purgatory in the next. But then, again, Boni- face the Eighth was rather at a discount in England just then. He had affronted Longshanks, as the loyal lieges had nicknamed their monarch ; and Longshanks had been rather sharp upon the clergy in consequence. If the Baron de Shurland could but get the King's pardon for what, in his cooler moments, he admitted to be a peccadillo, he might sniff at the Pope, and bid him " do his devilmost."
Fortune, who, as the poet says, delights to favour the bold, stood his friend on this occasion. Edward had been, for some time, collecting
THEN THERE WAS A PRETTY TO-UO, HEADS KLEW ONE WAY — ARMS AND LEGS ANOTHER.
Grey Dolphin 53
a large force on the coast of Kent, to carry on his French wars for the recovery of Guienne ; he was expected shortly to review it in person ; but, then, the troops lay principally in cantonments about the mouth of the Thames, and his Majesty was to come down by water. What was to be done ? — the royal barge was in sight, and John de Northwood and Hamo de Crevecoeur had broken up aU the boats to boil their camp-kettles. — A truly great mind is never without resources.
" Bring me my boots ! " said the Baron.
They brought him his boots, and his dapple-grey steed along with them. Such a courser ! all blood and bone, short-backed, broad- chested, and, — but that he was a little ewe-necked, — faultless in form and figure. The Baron sprang upon his back, and dashed at once into the river.
The barge which carried Edward Longshanks and his fortunes had by this time nearly reached the Nore : the stream was broad and the current strong, but Sir Robert and his steed were almost as broad, and a great deal stronger. After breasting the tide gallantly for a couple of miles, the Knight was near enough to hail the steersman.
" What have we got here ? " said the King. — " It's a mermaid," said one. — " It's a grampus," said another. — " It's the devil," said a third. — But they were aU wrong ; it was only Robert de Shurland. " Grammercy," quoth the King, " that feUow was never born to be drowned ! "
It has been said before that the Baron had fought in the Holy wars ; in fact, he had accompanied Longshanks, when only heir apparent, in his expedition twenty-five years before, although his name is unaccount- ably omitted by Sir Harris Nicolas in his list of crusaders. He had been present at Acre when Amirand of Joppa stabbed the prince with a poisoned dagger, and had lent Princess Eleanor his own tooth-brush after she had sucked out the venom from the wound. — He had slain certain Saracens, contented himself with his own plunder, and never dunned the commissariat for arrears of pay. — Of course he ranked high in Edward's good graces, and had received the honour of knighthood at his hands on the field of battle.
In one so circumstanced it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as the killing of a frowzy friar would be much resented, even had he not taken so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted, of course, as soon as asked ; and so it would have been had the indict- ment drawn up by the Canterbury Town Clerk, viz., " That he the said Robert de Shurland, &c., had then and there, with several, to wit, one
54
Grey Dolphin
thousands, pairs of boots, given sundry, to wit, two thousand, kicks, and therewith and thereby killed divers, to wit, ten thousand, Austin friars," been true to the letter.
Thrice did the gallant grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert de Winchelsey, the chancellor, and archbishop to boot, was making out, albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was sufficiently long to enable His Majesty, who, gracious as he was, had always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services, to come ; and that, if life were now spared him, common decency must oblige him to make himself useful. Before the archbishop, who had scalded his fingers with the wax in affixing the great seal, had time to take them out of his mouth, all was settled, and the Baron de Shurland had pledged himself to be forthwith in readiness, cum suis, to accompany his liege lord to Guienne.
With the royal pardon secured in his vest, boldly did his lordship turn again to the shore ; and as boldly did his courser oppose his breadth of chest to the stream. It was a work of no common difficulty or
danger ; a steed of less " mettle and bone " had long since sunk in the effort : as it was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's chamfrain more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts of the noble animal showed his distress ; each instant they became more loud and frequent ; when his hoof touched the strand, and "the horse and his rider" stood once again in safety on the shore.
Rapidly dismounting, the Baron was loosening the girths of his demi- pique, to give the pant- ing animal breath, when
Grey Dolphin 55
he was aware of as ugly an old woman as he had ever clapped eyes upon, peeping at him under the horse's belly.
" Make much of your steed, Robert Shurland ! Make much of your steed ! " cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger. " Groom to the hide, and corn to the manger ! He has saved your life, Robert Shurland, for the nonce ; but he shall yet be the meanj of your losing it, for all that ! "
The Baron started : " What's that you say, you old faggot ? " — He ran round by his horse's tail ; — the woman was gone 1
The Baron paused ; his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles ; he looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word " Humbug ! " — then slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the direction of the castle.
The appearance, and still more the disappearance, of the crone, had however made an impression ; every step he took he became more thoughtful. " 'Twould be deuced provoking, though, if he should break my neck after all." — He turned and gazed at Dolphin with the scrutinizing eye of a veterinary surgeon. — " I'll be shot if he is not groggy ! " said the Baron.
With his lordship, like another great Commander, " Once to be in doubt, was once to be resolved : " it would never do to go to the wars on a rickety prad. He dropped the rein, drew forth Tickletoby, and, as the enfranchised Dolphin, good easy horse, stretched out his ewe-neck to the herbage, struck off his head at a single blow. " There, you lying old beldame ! " said the Baron ; " now take him away to the knacker's." * • • * * * *
Three years were come and gone. King Edward's French wars were over ; both parties, having fought till they came to a standstill, shook hands ; and the quarrel, as usual, was patched up by a royal marriage. This happy event gave his Majesty leisure to turn his attention to Scotland, where things, through the intervention of William Wallace, were looking rather queerish. As his reconciliation with Philip now allowed of his fighting the Scotch in peace and quietness, the monarch lost no time in marching his long legs across the border, and the short ones of the Baron followed him of course. At Falkirk, Tickletoby was in great request ; and in the year following, we find a contemporary poet hinting at his master's prowess under the walls of Caerlaverock,
(Bitt ens iv. acttminej ILC tcau ISobett tie Sfjurlanti 3Sti kant seoit gut \t ri^efaal i^e semfaloit l)ome ke gometlle.
56 Grey Dolphin
A quatrain which Mr. Simpkinson translates,
" With them was marching The good Robert de Shurland, Who, when seated on horseback, Does not resemble a man asleep ! "
So thoroughly awake, indeed, does he seem to have proved himself, that the bard subsequently exclaims, in an ecstasy of admiration,
&i it eetoie une pucelctte 3c It tionroi'e ctwr rt cora STant eat te lu bong U rtcorg.
" If I were a young maiden, I would give my heart and person, So great is his fame ! "
Fortunately the poet was a tough old monk of Exeter ; since such a present to a nobleman, now in his grand climacteric, would hardly have been worth the carriage. With the reduction of this stronghold of the Maxwells seem to have concluded the Baron's military services ; as on the very first day of the fourteenth century we find him once '■ more landed on his native shore, and marching, with such of his retainers as the wars had left him, towards the hospitable shelter of Shurland Castle. It was then, upon that very beach, some hundred yards distant from high-water mark, that his eye fell upon something like an ugly old woman in a red cloak ! She was seated on what seemed to be a large stone, in an interesting attitude, with her elbows resting upon her knees, and her chin upon her thumbs. The Baron started : the remembrance of his interview with a similar personage in the same place some three years since, flashed upon his recollection. He rushed towards the spot, but the form was gone ; — nothing remained but the seat it had appeared to occupy. This, on examination, turned out to be no stone, but the whitened skull of a dead horse ! — A tender remembrance of the deceased Grey Dolphin shot a momentary pang into the Baron's bosom ; he drew the back of his hand across his face ; the thought of the hag's prediction in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One word alone issued from his lips, elucidatory of what was passing in his mind, — it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful followers, — that word was " Gammon ! " The skuU bounded across the beach till it reached the very margin of the stream ; — one instant more, and it would be engulfed for ever. At that moment a loud " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " was distinctly heard by the whole train to issue
Grey Dolphin 57
from its bleached and toothless jaws ; it sank beneath the flood in a horse laugh !
Meanwhile Sir Robert de Shurland felt an odd sort of sensation in his right foot. His boots had suffered in the wars. Great pains had been taken for their preservation. They had been " soled " and " heeled " more than once ; — had they been " goloshed," their owner might have defied Fate ! Well has it been said that " there is no such thing as a trifle." A nobleman's life depended upon a question of ninepence.
The Baron marched on ; the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked off his boot ; — a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe !
The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with characteristic decision, would hobble on to Shurland ; his walk increased the inflammation ; a flagon of aqua vitce did not mend matters. He was in a high fever ; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe pre- sented the appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot ; by dinner-time it had deepened to beet-root ; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death, had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side ; but the Baron was too far gone in the dead-thraw to recognise either. He died as he lived, unconquered and unconquerable. His
last words were — " Tell the old hag she may go to ." Whither
remains a secret. He expired without fully articulating the place of her destination.
But who and what was the crone who prophesied the catastrophe ? Ay, " that is the mystery of this wonderful history." — Some say it was Dame Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma ; others, St. Bridget herself ; others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom conjured up by conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving' an opinion.
And what became of the Clerk of Chatham ? — Mr. Simpkinson avers that he lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his inkhorn about his neck, for " setting boys copies." In support of this he adduces his name " Emmanuel," and refers to the historian Shakspear. Mr. Peters, on the contrary, considers this to be what he calls one of Mr. Simpkinson's " Anacreonisms," inasmuch as, at the introduction of Mr. Cade's reform measure, the Clerk, if alive, would have been hard upon two hundred years old. The probability is, that the unfortunate alluded to was his great-grandson.
58
The Ghost
Margaret Shurland in due course became Margaret Ingoldsby, her portrait still hangs in the gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome, but shrewish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's temperament ; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, owches, and Saracen ear-rings ; the barony, being a male fief, reverted to the Crown.
In the abbey-church at Minster may yet be seen the tomb of a recumbent warrior, clad in the chain-mail of the 13th century.* His hands are clasped in prayer ; his legs, crossed in that position so prized by Templars in ancient, and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a soldier of the faith in Palestine. Close behind his dexter calf lies sculp- tured in bold relief a horse's head ; and a respectable elderly lady, as she shows the monument, fails not to read her auditors a fine moral lesson on the sin of ingratitude, or to claim a sympathising tear to the memory of poor " Grey Dolphin ! "
It is on my own personal reminiscences that I draw for the following story ; the scene of its leading event was most familiar to me in early life. If the principal actor in it be yet living, he must have reached a very advanced age. He was often at the Hall, in my infancy, on professional visits. It is, however, only from those who " prated of his whereabouts " that I learned the history of his adventure with
The Ghost
There stands a City, — neither large nor small.
Its air and situation sweet and pretty ; It matters very little — if at all —
Whether its denizens are dull or witty, Whether the ladies there are short or tall.
Brunettes or blondes, only, there stands a city ! — ■ Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute That there's a Castle and a Cobbler in it.
* Subsequent to the first appearance of the foregoing narrative, the tomb alluded to has been opened during the course of certain repairs which the church has undergone. Mr. Simp- kinson, who was present at the exhumation of the body within, and has enriched his collection with three of its grinders, says the bones of one of the great toes were wanting. He speaks in terms of great admiration at the thickness of the skull, and is of opinion that the skeleton is that of a great patriot much addicted to Lundy-foot.
The Ghost 59
A fair Cathedral, too, the story goes,
And kings and heroes lie entomb'd within her ;
There pious saints, in marble pomp repose.
Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a Sinner ;
There, too, full many an Aldermanic nose Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner ;
And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket,
— ^Till four assassins came from France to crack it.
The Castle was a huge and antique mound,
Proof against all th' artillery of the quiver. Ere those abominable guns were found,
To send cold lead through gallant warriors' liver. It stands upon a gently rising ground.
Sloping down gradually to the river. Resembling (to compare great things with smaller) A well-scooped, mouldy Stilton cheese, — but taller.
The keep, I find, 's been sadly alter'd lately,
And, 'stead of mail-clad knights, of honour jealous,
In martial panoply so grand and stately.
Its walls are filled with money-making fellows,
And stuff'd, unless I'm misinformed greatly.
With leaden pipes, and coke, and coals, and bellows ;
In short, so great a change has come to pass,
'Tis now a manufactory of Gas.
But to my tale. — Before this profanation.
And ere its ancient glories were cut short all, A poor hard-working Cobbler took his station
In a small house, just opposite the portal ; His birth, his parentage, and education,
I know but little of — a strange, odd mortal ; His aspect, air, and gait, were all ridiculous ; His name was Mason — he'd been christened Nicholas.
Nick had a wife possessed of many a charm,
And of the Lady Huntingdon persuasion ; But, spite of all her piety, her arm
She'd sometimes exercise when in a passion ;
6o The Ghost
And, being of a temper somewhat warm,
Would now and then seize, upon small occasion, A stick, or stool, or anything that round did lie , And baste her lord and master most confoundedly.
No matter ! — 'tis a thing that's not uncommon,
'Tis what we all have heard, and most have read of, —
I mean, a bruizing, pugilistic woman, Such as I own I entertain a dread of,
— And so did Nick, — ^whom sometimes there would come on A sort of fear his Spouse might knock his head off,
Demolish half his teeth, or drive a rib in,
She shone so much in " facers " and in " fibbing."
" There's time and place for all things," said a sage, (King Solomon, I think,) and this I can say.
Within a well-roped ring, or on a stage. Boxing may be a very pretty Fancy,
When Messrs. Burke or Bendigo engage ;
— 'Tis not so well in Susan, Jane, or Nancy : —
To get well mill'd by any one's an evil,
But by a lady — 'tis the very Devil.
And so thought Nicholas, whose only trouble, (At least his worst,) was this his rib's propensity,
For sometimes from the alehouse he would hobble. His senses lost in a sublime immensity
Of cogitation — then he couldn't cobble —
And then his wife would often try the density
Of his poor skull, and strike with all her might.
As fast as kitchen-wenches strike a light.
Mason, meek soul, who ever hated strife. Of this same striking had a morbid dread,
He hated it like poison — or his wife — A vast antipathy ! — but so he said —
And very often, for a quiet life,
On these occasions he'd sneak up to bed,
Grope darkling in, and, soon as at the door
He heard his lady — he'd pretend to snore.
The Ghost
One night, then, ever partial to society, Nick, with a friend (another jovial fellow,)
Went to a Club — I should have said Society — At the " City Arms," once call'd the Porto Bello ;
A Spouting party, which, though some decry it, I Consider no bad lounge when one is mellow ;
There they discuss the tax on salt, and leather.
And change of ministers and change of weather.
6i
In short, it was a kind of British Forum, Like John Gale Jones's, erst in Piccadilly,
Only they managed things with more decorum. And the Orations were not quite so silly ;
Far different questions, too, would come before 'em, Not always Politics, which, will ye nill ye.
Their London prototypes were always willing.
To give one quantum suff. of — for a shilling.
62 The Ghost
It more resembled one of later date,
_ And tenfold talent, as I'm told in Bow Street,
Where kindlier natured souls do congregate,
And, though there are who deem that same a low street. Yet, I'm assured, for frolicsome debate
And genuine humour it's surpassed by no street, When the " Chief Baron " enters, and assumes To " rule " o'er mimic " Thesigers " and " Broughams."
Here they would oft forget their Ruler's faults. And waste in ancient lore the midnight taper,
Inquire if Orpheus first produced the Waltz, How Gas-lights differ from the Delphic Vapour,
Whether Hippocrates gave Glauber's Salts,
And what the Romans wrote on ere they'd paper ; —
This night the subject of their disquisitions
Was Ghosts, Hobgoblins, Sprites, and Apparitions.
One learned gentleman, a " sage grave man,"
Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, " sheath'd in steel ; " —
His well-read friend, who next to speak began. Said, " That was Poetry, and nothing real ; "
A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal ;
Of sheeted spectres spoke with shorten'd breath,
And thrice he quoted " Drelincourt on Death."
Nick smoked, and smoked, and trembled as he heard The point discuss'd, and all they said upon it.
How, frequently, some murder'd man appear'd. To tell his wife and children who had done it ;
Or how a Miser's ghost, with grisly beard.
And pale lean visage, in an old Scotch bonnet,
Wander'd about to watch his buried money !
When all at once Nick heard the clock strike One, — he
Sprang from his seat, not doubting but a lecture Impended from his fond and faithful She ;
Nor could he well to pardon him expect her. For he had promised to " be home to tea ; "
If Orpheus first produced the waltz
^f0
""■^"^^r--
|
w |
H |
K |
|
1^ |
^ |
^mm |
|
1 |
*■ *i2i^it«^ £*■' .^iBBfe^.a^. |
|
r |
"\ |
|
|
>'4'' |
,'■' ' ' - '■ \ |
The Ghost 63
But having luckily the key o' the back door,
He fondly hoped that, unperceived, he Might creep up stairs again, pretend to doze, And hoax his spouse with music from his nose.
Vain, fruitless hope ! — ^The wearied sentinel
At eve may overlook the crouching foe. Till, ere his hand can sound the alarum-bell
He sinks beneath the unexpected blow ; Before the whispers of Grimalkin fell,
When slumb'ring on her post, the mouse may go ; — But woman, wakeful woman, 's never weary, — Above all, when she waits to thump her deary.
Soon Mrs. Mason heard the well-known tread ;
She heard the key slow creaking in the door, Spied, through the gloom obscure, towards the bed
Nick creeping soft, as oft he had crept before ; When, bang, she threw a something at his head.
And Nick at once lay prostrate on the floor ; While she exclaim'd with her indignant face on, — " How dare you use your wife so, Mr. Mason ? "
Spare we to tell how fiercely she debated,
Especially the length of her oration, — Spare we to tell how Nick expostulated,
Roused by the bump into a good set passion, So great, that more than once he execrated,
Ere he crawl'd into bed in his usual fashion ; — ^The Muses hate brawls ; suffice it then to say. He duck'd below the clothes — and there he lay !
'Twas now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards groan, and graves give up their dead.
And many a mischievous, enfranchised Sprite Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead,
And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight. To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed.
Sleeping perhaps serenely as a porpoise.
Nor dreaming of this fiendish Habeas Corpus.
64 The Ghost
Not so our Nicholas, Hs meditations > Still to the same tremendous theme recurred, The same dread subject of the dark narrations, N, Which, back'd with such authority, he'd heard ; Lost in his own horrific contemplations,
He ponder'd o'er each well-remember'd word ; When at the bed's foot, close beside the post, He verily believed he saw — a Ghost !
Plain and more plain the unsubstantial Sprite To his astonish'd gaze each moment grew ;
Ghastly and gaunt, it rear'd its shadowy height, Of more than mortal seeming to the view.
And round its long, thin, bony fingers drew A tatter'd winding sheet, of course all white ;
The moon that moment peeping through a cloud,
Nick very plainly saw it through the shroud !
And now those matted locks, which never yet Had yielded to the comb's unkind divorce,
Their long-contracted amity forget. And spring asunder with elastic force ;
Nay, e'en the very cap, of texture coarse.
Whose ruby cincture crown'd that brow of jet,
Uprose in agony — the Gorgon's head
Was but a type of Nick's up-squatting in the bed.
From every pore distill'd a clammy dew.
Quaked every limb, — the candle too no doubt,
En regie, would have burnt extremely blue. But Nick unluckily had put it out ;
And he, though naturally bold and stout, In short, was in a most tremendous stew ; —
The room was fiU'd with a sulphureous smell.
But where that came from Mason could not tell.
All motionless the Spectre stood, — and now Its rev'rend form more clearly shone confest ;
From the pale cheek a beard of purest snow Descended o'er its venerable breast ;
The Ghost
65
The thin grey hairs, that crown'd its furrow'd brow, ^^Told of years long gone by. — An awful guest It stood, and with an action of command, Beckon'd the Cobbler with its wan right hand.
" Whence, and what art thou,
Execrable Shape ? " Nick might have cried,
could he have found a
tongue. But his distended jaws could
only gape. And not a sound upon the
welkin rung : His gooseberry orbs seem'd
as they would have
sprung Forth from their sockets, —
like a frightened Ape He sat upon his haunches,
bolt upright. And shook, and grinn'd, and
chatter'd with affright.
And still the shadowy finger,
long and lean, Now beckon'd Nick, now
pointed to the door ; And many an ireful glance,
and frown, between. The angry visage of the
Phantom wore. As if quite vex'd that Nick
would do no more Than stare, without e'en ask- ing, " What d'ye mean ? " Because, as we are told, — a
sad old joke too, — Ghosts, like the ladies, " never speak till spoke to."
Cowards, 'tis said, in certain situations. Derive a sort of courage from despair.
66 The Ghost
And then perform, from downright desperation, Much more than many a bolder man would dare,
Nick saw the- Ghost was getting in a passion. And therefore, groping till he found the chair.
Seized on his awl, crept softly out of bed,
And foUow'd quaking where the Spectre led.
And down the winding stair, with noiseless tread, The tenant of the tomb pass'd slowly on,
Each mazy turning of the humble shed Seem'd to his step at once familiar grown,
So safe and sure the labyrinth did he tread As though the domicile had been his own.
Though Nick himself, in passing through the shop.
Had almost broke his nose against the mop.
Despite its wooden bolt, with jarring sound.
The door upon its hinges open flew ; And forth the Spirit issued, — yet around
It turn'd as if its follower's fears it knew, And, once more beckoning, pointed to the mound,
The antique Keep, on which the bright moon threw With such effulgence her mild silvery gleam. The visionary form seem'd melting in her beam.
Beneath a pond'rous archway's sombre shade. Where once the huge portcuUis swung sublime,
'Mid ivied battlements in ruin laid. Sole, sad memorials of the olden time.
The Phantom held its way, — and though afraid Even of the owls that sung their vesper chime,
Pale Nicholas pursued, its steps attending.
And wondering what on earth it all would end in.
Within the mouldering fabric's deep recess
At length they reach a court obscure and lone ; —
It seem'd a drear and desolate wilderness. The blacken'd walls with ivy all o'ergrown ;
The night-bird shriek' d her note of wild distress, Disturb'd upon her solitary throne.
As though indignant mortal step should dare,
So led, at such an hour, to venture there !
The Ghost • 67
— ^The Apparition paused, and would have spoke,
Pointing to what Nick thought an iron ring. But then a neighbouring chanticleer awoke,
And loudly 'gan his early matins sing ; And then " it started like a guilty thing,"
As that shrill clarion the silence broke. — We know how much dead gentlefolks eschew The appalling sound of " Cock-a-doodle-do ! "
The vision was no more — and Nick alone —
" His streamers waving " in the midnight wind,
Which through the ruins ceased not to groan ;
— His garment, too, was somewhat short behind, —
And, worst of all, he knew not where to find
The ring, — ^which made him most his fate bemoan ; —
The iron ring, — no doubt of some trap door,
'Neath which the old dead Miser kept his store.
" What's to be done ? " he cried, " 'Twere vain to stay
Here in the dark without a single clue — Oh, for a candle now, or moonlight ray !
'Fore George, I'm vastly puzzled what to do," (Then clapped his hand behind) — " 'Tis chilly too —
I'll mark the spot, and come again by day. What can I mark it by ? — Oh, here's the wall — The mortar's yielding — here I'll stick my awl ! "
Then rose from earth to sky a withering shriek,
A loud, a long protracted note of woe. Such as when tempests roar, and timbers creak,
And o'er the side the masts in thunder go ; While on the deck resistless billows break.
And drag their victims to the gulfs below ; — Such was the scream when, for the want of candle, Nick Mason drove his awl in up to the handle.
Scared by his Lady's heart-appalling cry.
Vanished at once poor Mason's golden dream —
For dream it was ; — and all his visions high.
Of wealth and grandeur, fled before that scream —
68 ' The Cynotaph
And still he listens with averted eye,
When gibing neighbours make " the Ghost " their theme ; While ever from that hour they all declare That Mrs. Mason used a cushion in her chair !
Coofound not, I beseech thee, reader, the subject of the following monody with the hapless hero of the tea-urn, Cupid, of " Yow-Yow "-ing memory. Tray was an attached favourite of many years' standing. Most people worth loving have had a friend of this kind ; Lord Byron says he " never had but one, and here he (the dog, not the nobleman) lies ! "
THE ir^CYNOTAPH
Poor Tray charmant ! Poor Tray de mon Ami !
Dog-bury and Vergers.
Oh ! where shall I bury my poor dog Tray,
Now his fleeting breath has passed away ? —
Seventeen years, I can venture to say.
Have I seen him gambol, and frolic, and play,
Evermore happy, and frisky, and gay,
As though every one of his months was May,
And the whole of his life one long holiday —
Now he's a lifeless lump of clay.
Oh ! where shall I bury my faithful Tray ?
I am almost tempted to think it hard That it may not be there, in yon sunny churchyard. Where the green willows wave O'er the peaceful grave. Which holds all that once was honest and brave. Kind, and courteous, and faithful, and true ; Qualities, Tray, that were found in you.
The Cynotaph 69
But it may not be — yon sacred ground, By holiest feelings fenced around, May ne'er within its hallow'd bound Receive the dust of a soul-less hound.
I would not place him in yonder fane. Where the mid-day sun through the storied pane Throws on the pavement a crimson stain ; Where the banners of chivalry heavily swing O'er the pinnacled tomb of the Warrior King, With helmet and shield, and all that sort of thing.
No ! — come what may. My gentle Tray Shan't be an intruder on bluff Harry Tudor, Or panoplied monarchs yet earlier and ruder.
Whom you see on their backs. In stone or in wax. Though the Sacristans now are " forbidden to ax " For what Mister Hume calls " a scandalous tax ; " While the Chartists insist they've a right to go snacks. — No ! — ^Tray's humble tomb would look but shabby 'Mid the sculptured shrines of that gorgeous Abbey.
Besides, in the place They say there's no space To bury what wet-nurses call " a Babby." Even " Rare Ben Jonson," that famous wight, I am told, is interr'd there bolt upright. In just such a posture, beneath his bust. As Tray used to sit in to beg for a crust.
The epitaph, too. Would scarcely do ; For what could it say, but, " Here lies Tray, A very good kind of a dog in his day ? " And satirical folks might be apt to imagine it Meant as a quiz on the House of Plantagenet.
No ! no ! — The Abbey may do very well
For a feudal '* Nob," or poetical " Swell,"
" Crusaders," or " Poets," or " Knights of St. John,"
Or Knights of St. John's Wood, who once went on
To the ©astk of (Sootit HorUe lEglintonnc, Count Fiddle-fumkin, and Lord Fiddle-faddle, " Sir Craven," " Sir Gael," and " Sir Campbell of Saddell," (Who, as poor Hook said, when he heard of the feat, " Was somehow knock'd out of his family-seat : ")
yo The Cynotaph
The Esquires of the body To my Lord Tomnoddy ;
" Sir Fairlie," " Sir Lamb,"
And the " Knight of the Ram," The " Knight of the Rose," and the " Knight of the Dragon,"
Who, save at the flagon. And prog in the wagon. The newspapers tell us did little " to brag on ; " And more, though the Muse knows but little concerning 'em, " Sir Hopkins," " Sir Popkins," " Sir Gage," and " Sir Jerningham," All Preux Chevaliers, in friendly rivalry Who should best bring back the glory of Chi-valry. — — (Pray be so good, for the sake of my song. To pronounce here the ante-penultimate long ; Or some hyper-critic will certainly cry, " The word ' Chivalry ' is but a ' rhyme to the eye.' "
And I own it is clear A fastidious ear Will be, more or less, always annoy'd with you when you in- sert any rhyme that's not perfectly genuine.
As to pleasing the " eye," 'Tisn't worth while to try. Since Moore and Tom Campbell themselves admit " Spinach " Is perfectly antiphonetic to " Greenwich.") — But stay ! — I say ! Let me pause while I may — This digression is leading me sadly astray From my object — A grave for my poor dog Tray !
I would not place him beneath thy walls,
And proud o'ershadowing dome, St. Paul's !
Though I've always consider'd Sir Christopher Wren,
As an architect, one of the greatest of men ;
And, — talking of Epitaphs, — much I admire his,
" Circumspice, si Monumentum requiris ; "
Which an erudite Verger translated to me,
" If you ask for his monument, Sir-come-spy-see ! " —
No ! — I should not know where To place him there ; I would not have him by surly Johnson be ; — Or that queer-looking horse that is rolling on Ponsonby ; —
Or those ugly minxes The sister Sphynxes, Mix'd creatures, half lady, half lioness, ergo, (Denon says), the emblems of Leo and Virgo ; On one of the backs of which singular jumble. Sir Ralph Abercrombie is going to tumble,
The Cynotaph ' 71
With a thump which alone were enough to despatch him, If the Scotchman in front shouldn't happen to catch him.
No ! I'd not have him there, — nor nearer the door, Where the man and the Angel have got Sir John Moore,* And are quietly letting him down through the floor, By Gillespie, the one who escaped, at Vellore,
Alone from the row ; — Neither he, nor Lord Howe Would like to be plagued with a little Bow-wow.
No, Tray, we must yield. And go further a-field ; To lay you by Nelson were downright eflfront'ry ; — — We'll be off from the City, and look at the country.
It shall not be there, In that sepulchred square, Where folks are interr'd for the sake of the air, (Though, pay but the dues, they could hardly refuse To Tray what they grant to Thuggs, and Hindoos, Turks, Infidels, Heretics, Jumpers, and Jews,)
Where the tombstones are placed In the very best taste
At the feet and the head Of the elegant Dead, And no one's received who's not " buried in lead : " For, there lie the bones Of Deputy Jones, Whom the Widow's tears, and the orphan's groans Affected as much as they do the stones His executors laid on the Deputy's bones ;
Little rest, poor knave ! Would Tray have in his grave ;
Since Spirits, 'tis plain. Are sent back again, To roam round their bodies, — the bad ones in pain, — Dragging after them sometimes a heavy jack-chain ; Whenever they met, alarm'd by its groans, his Ghost all night long would be barking at Jones's.
Nor shall he be laid By that cross Old Maid, Miss Penelope Bird, — of whom it is said All the dogs in the parish were ever afraid.
He must not be placed By one so strait-laced
In her temper, her taste. And her morals, and waist. For, 'tis said, when she went up to heaven, and St. Peter,
Who happened to meet her. Came forward to greet her,
* See note at end of " The Cynotaph."
72 The Cynotaph
She pursed up with scorn every vinegar feature, And bade him " Get out for a horrid Male Creature ! " So, the Saint, after looking as if he could eat her. Not knowing, perhaps, very well how to treat her, And not being willing, — or able, — to beat her. Sent her back to her grave till her temper grew sweeter. With an epithet — which I decline to repeat here. No, — if Tray were interr'd By Penelope Bird, No dog would be e'er so be-" whelp " 'd and be-" cur " r'd. — All the night long her cantankerous Sprite Would be running about in the pale moon-light, Chasing him round, and attempting to lick The ghost of poor Tray with the ghost of a stick.
Stay 1 — let me see ! — Ay — here it shall be At the root of this gnarled and time-worn tree.
Where Tray and I Would often lie. And watch the bright clouds as they floated by In the broad expanse of the clear blue sky. When the sun was bidding the world good b'ye ; And the plaintive Nightingale, warbling nigh, Pour'd forth her mournful melody ; While the tender Wood-pigeon's cooing cry Has made me to say to myself, with a sigh, " How nice you would eat with a steak in a pie ! "
Ay, here it shall be ! — far, far from the view Of the noisy world and its maddening crew.
Simple and few. Tender and true The lines o'er his grave. — ^They have, some of them, too, The advantage of being remarkably new.
Epitaph.
Affliction sore Long time he bore, Physicians were in vain ! —
Grown blind, alas ! he'd Some Prussic Acid, And that put him out of his pain !
The Cynotaph 73
Note, Page 71.
In the autumn of 1824, Captain Medwin having hinted that certain beautiful lines on the burial of this gallant officer might have been the production of Lord Byron's Muse, the late Mr. Sydney Taylor, somewhat indignantly, claimed them for their rightful owner, the late Rev. Charles Wolfe. During the controversy a third claimant started up in the person of a soi-disant " Doctor Marshall," who turned out to be a Durham blacksmith, and his pre- tensions a hoax. It was then that a certain " Doctor Peppercorn " put forth his pretensions, to what he averred was the only " true and original " version, viz. :
Not a sous had he got, — not a guinea or note.
And he look'd confoundedly flurried. As he bolted away without paying his shot.
And the Landlady after him hurried.
We saw him again at dead of night.
When home from the Club returning ; We twigg'd the Doctor beneath the light
Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning.
All bare, and exposed to the midnight dews.
Reclined in the gutter we found him ; And he look'd like a gentl man taking a snooze,
With his Marshall cloak around him.
" The Doctor's as drunk as the d ," we said.
And we managed a shutter to borrow ; We raised him, and sigh'd at the thought that his head
Would " consumedly ache " on the morrow.
We bore him home, and we put him to bed.
And we told his wife and his daughter To give him, next morning, a couple of red
Herrings, with soda-water. —
Loudly they talk'd of his money that's gone,
And his Lady began to upbraid him ; But little he reck'd, so they let him snore on
'Neath the counterpane just as we laid him.
We tuck'd^him in, and had hardly done
When, beneath the window calling, We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun
Of a watchman " One o'clock ! " bawling.
Slowly and sadly we all walk'd down
From his room in the uppermost story ; A rushlight we placed on the cold hearth-stone,
And we left him alone in his glory ! !
Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores. — Virgil. I wrote the lines — •* * owned them — he told stories !
Thomas Ingoldsby.
Mrs. Botherby's Story
The Leech of Folkestone
Reader, were you ever bewitched ? — I do not mean by a " white wench's black eye," or by love potions, imbibed from a ruby lip ; — but, were you ever really and bond fide bewitched, in the true Matthew Hopkins sense of the word ? Did you ever, for instance, find yourself from head to heel one vast complication of cramps ? — or burst out into sudorific exudation like a cold thaw, with the thermometer at zero ? — Were your eyes ever turned upside down, exhibiting nothing but their whites ? — Did you ever vomit a paper of crooked pins ? or expectorate Whitechapel needles ? — ^These are genuine and undoubted marks of possession ; and if you never experienced any of them, — why, " happy man be his dole ! "
Yet such things have been : yea, we are assured, and that on no mean authority, still are.
74
The Leech of Folkestone 75
The World, according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh. In this last- named, and fifth quarter of the globe, a Witch may still be occasionally discovered in favourable, i.e., stormy, seasons, weathering Dungeness Point in an egg-shell, or careering on her broomstick over Dymchurch wall. A cow may yet be sometimes seen galloping like mad, with tail erect, and an old pair of breeches on her horns, an unerring guide to the door of the crone whose magic arts have drained her udder. — I do not, however, remember to have heard that any Conjuror has of late been detected in the district.
Not many miles removed from the verge of this recondite region, stands a collection of houses, which its maligners call a fishing-town, and its well-wishers a Watering-place. A limb of one of the Cinque Ports, it has (or lately had) a corporation of its own, and has been thought considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills ; Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. Its streets, lanes, and alleys, — fanciful distinctions without much real difference, — are agreeable enough to persons who do not mind running up and down stairs ; and the only inconvenience, at all felt by such of its inhabitants as are not asthmatic, is when some heedless urchin tumbles down a chimney, or an impertinent pedestrian peeps into a garret window.
At the eastern extremity of the town, on the sea-beach, and scarcely above high-water mark, stood, in the good old times, a row of houses then denominated " Frog-hole." Modern refinement subsequently euphonized the name into " East-street ; " but " what's in a name ? " — the encroachments of Ocean hav'e long since levelled all in one common ruin.
Here, in the early part of the seventeenth century, flourished in somewhat doubtful reputation, but comparative opulence, a compounder of medicines, one Master Erasmus Buckthorne ; the effluvia of whose drugs from within mingling agreeably with the " ancient and fish-like smells " from without, wafted a delicious perfume throughout the neighbourhood.
At seven of the clock, on the morning when Mrs. Botherby's narrative commences, a stout Suffolk " punch," about thirteen hands and a half in height, was slowly led up and down before the door of the pharma- copolist by a lean and withered lad, whose appearance warranted an opinion, pretty generally expressed, that his master found him as useful in experimentalizing as in household drudgery ; and that, for every pound avoirdupois of solid meat, he swallowed, at least, two pounds
76 Mrs, Botherby's Story
troy-weight of chemicals and galenicals. As the town clock struck the quarter, Master Buckthorne emerged from his laboratory, and, putting the key carefully in to his pocket, mounted the surefooted cob aforesaid, and proceeded up and down the acclivities and declivities of the town with the gravity due to his station and profession. When he reached the open country, his pace was increased to a sedate canter, which, in somewhat more than half an hour, brought " the horse and his rider " in front of a handsome and substantial mansion, the numerous gable- ends and bayed windows of which bespoke the owner a man of worship, and one well to do in the world.
" How now, Hodge Gardener ? " quoth the Leech, scarcely drawing bit ; for Punch seemed to be aware that he had reached his destination and paused of his own accord ; " How now, man ? How fares thine employer, worthy Master Marsh ? How hath he done ? How hath he slept ? — My potion hath done its oflficc ? Ha ! "
" Alack ! ill at ease, worthy sir — ill at ease," returned the hind ; " his honour is up and stirring ; but he hath rested none, and com- plaineth that the same gnawing pain devoureth, as it were, his very vitals : in sooth he is ill at ease."
" Morrow, doctor ! " interrupted a voice from a casement opening on the lawn. " Good morrow ! I have looked for, longed for, thy coming, this hour and more ; enter at once ; the pasty and tankard are impatient for thine attack ! "
" Marry, Heaven forbid that I should baulk their fancy 1 " quoth the Leech sotto voce, as, abandoning the bridle to honest Hodge, he dismounted, and followed a buxom-looking handmaiden into the breakfast parlour.
There, at the head of his well-furnished board, sat Master Thomas Marsh, of Marston Hall, a Yeoman well respected in his degree : one of that sturdy and sterling class which, taking rank immediately below the Esquire (a title in its origin purely military,) occupied, in the wealthier counties, the position in society now filled by the Country Gentleman. He was one of those of whom the proverb ran :
" A Knight of Cales, A Gentleman of Wales,
And a Laird of the North Countree ; A Yeoman of Kent, With his yearly rent,
Will buy them out all three ! "
A cold sirloin, big enough to frighten a Frenchman, filled the place of honour, counter-checked by a game-pie of no stinted dimensions ;
The Leech of Folkestone 77
while a silver flagon of " humming-bub," — viz., ale strong enough to blow a man's beaver off, — smiled opposite in treacherous amenity. The sideboard groaned beneath sundry massive cups and waiters of the purest silver ; while the huge skull of a fallow deer, with its branching horns, frowned majestically above. All spoke of affluence, of comfort, — all save the master, whose restless eye and feverish look hinted but too plainly the severest mental or bodily disorder. By the side of the proprietor of the mansion sat his consort, a lady now past the bloom of youth, yet still retaining many of its charms. The clear olive of her complexion, and " the darkness of her Andalusian eye," at once betrayed her foreign origin ; in fact, her " lord and master," as husbands were even then, by a legal fiction, denominated, had taken her to his bosom in a foreign country. The cadet of his family. Master Thomas Marsh, had early in life been engaged in commerce. In the pursuit of his vocation he had visited Antwerp, Hamburg, and most of the Hanse Towns ; and had already formed a tender connection with the orphan offspring of one of old Alva's officers, when the unexpected deaths of one immediate, and two presumptive, heirs placed him next in succes- sion to the family acres. He married, and brought home his bride ; who, by the decease of the venerable possessor, heart-broken at the loss of his elder children, became eventually lady of Marston Hall. It has been said that she was beautiful, yet was her beauty of a character that operates on the fancy more than the affections ; she was one to be admired rather than loved. The proud curl of her lip, the firmness of her tread, her arched brow and stately carriage, showed the decision, not to say haughtiness, of her soul ; while her glances, whether lighten- ing with anger, or melting in extreme softness, betrayed the existence of passions as intense in kind as opposite in quality. She rose as Erasmus entered the parlour, and, bestowing on him a look fraught with meaning, quitted the room, leaving him in unrestrained communication with his patient.
" 'Fore George, Master Buckthorne ! " exclaimed the latter, as the Leech drew near, " I will no more of your pharmacy ; — burn, burn, — gnaw, gnaw, — I had as lief the foul fiend were in my gizzard as one of your drugs. Tell me, in the devil's name, what is the matter with me ! "
Thus conjured, the practitioner paused, and even turned somewhat pale. There was a perceptible faltering in his voice, as, evading the question, he asked, " What say your other physicians ? "
" Doctor Phiz says it is wind, — Doctor Fuz says it is water, — and Doctor Buz says it is something between wind and water."
" They are all of them wrong," said Erasmus Buckthorne.
jS Mrs. Botherby's Story
" Truly, I think so," returned the patient. " They are manifest asses ; but you, good Leech, you are a horse of another colour. The world talks loudly of your learning, your skill, and cunning in arts the most abstruse ; nay, sooth to say, some look coldly on you therefore, and stickle not to aver that you are cater-cousin with Beelzebub himself."
" It is ever the fate of science," murmured the professor, " to be maligned by the ignorant and superstitious. But a truce with such folly ; let me examine your palate."
Master Marsh thrust out a tongue long, clear, and red as beetroot. " There is nothing wrong there," said the Leech. " Your wrist : — no ; — the pulse is firm and regular, the skin cool and temperate. Sir, there is nothing the matter with you ! "
" Nothing the matter with me, Sir Totecary ? — But I tell you there is the matter with me, — much the matter with me. Why is it that something seems ever gnawing at my heart-strings ? — Whence this pain in the region of the liver ? — Why is it that I sleep not o' nights, — rest not o' days ? Why ? "
" You are fidgety. Master Marsh," said the doctor.
Master Marsh's brow grew dark ; he half rose from his seat, supported himself by both hands on the arms of his elbow-chair, and in accents of mingled anger and astonishment repeated the word " Fidgety ! "
" Ay, fidgety," returned the doctor calmly. " Tut, man, there is nought ails thee save thine own overweening fancies. Take less of food, more air, put aside thy flagon, call for thy horse ; be boot and saddle the word ! Why, — hast thou not youth ? "
" I have," said the patient.
" Wealth and a fair domain ? "
" Granted," quoth Marsh cheerily.
" And a fair wife ? "
<(
Yea," was the response, but in a tone something less satisfied.
" Then arouse thee, man, shake off this fantasy, betake thyself to thy lawful occasions, — use thy good hap, — follow thy pleasures, and think no more of these fancied ailments."
" But I tell you, master mine, these ailments are not fancied. I lose my rest, I loathe my food, my doublet sits loosely on me, — these racking pains. My wife, too, — when I meet her gaze, the cold sweat
stands on my forehead, and I could almost think^ " Marsh paused
abruptly, mused awhile, then added, looking steadily at his visitor, " These things are not right ; they pass the common. Master Erasmus Buckthorne."
A slight shade crossed the brow of the Leech, but its passage was
The Leech of Folkestone 79
momentary ; his features softened to a smile, in which pity seemed slightly blended with contempt. " Have done with such foUies, Master Marsh. You are well, an you would but think so. Ride, I say, hunt, shoot, do anything, — disperse these melancholic humours, and become yourself again."
" Well, I will do your bidding," said Marsh thoughtfully. " It may be so ; and yet, — but I will do your bidding. Master Cobbe of Brenzet writes me that he hath a score or two of fat ewes to be sold a pennyworth ; I had thought to have sent Ralph Looker, but I will essay to go myself. Ho, there ! — saddle me the brown mare, and bid Ralph be ready to attend me on the gelding."
An expression of pain contracted the features of Master Marsh as he rose and slowly quitted the apartment to prepare tor his journey ; while the Leech, having bidden him farewell, vanished through an opposite door, and betook himself to the private boudoir of the fair mistress of Marston, muttering as he went a quotation from a then newly published play,
" Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou own'dst yesterday."
Of what passed at this interview between the Folkestone doctor and the fair Spaniard, Mrs. Botherby declares she could never obtain any satisfactory elucidation. Not that tradition is silent on the subject, — quite the contrary ; it is the abundance, not paucity, of the materials she supplies, and the consequent embarrassment of selection, that makes the difficulty. Some have averred that the Leech, whose character, as has been before hinted, was more than threadbare, employed his time in teaching her the mode of administering certain noxious com- pounds, the unconscious partaker whereof would pine and die so slowly and gradually as to defy suspicion. Others there were who affirmed that Lucifer himself was then and there raised in propria persona, with all his terrible attributes of horn and hoof. In support of this assertion, they adduce the testimony of the aforesaid buxom housemaid, who protested that the hall smelt that evening like a manufactory of matches. All, however, seemed to agree that the confabulation, whether human or infernal, was conducted with profound secrecy, and protracted to a considerable length ; that its object, as far as could be divined, meant anything but good to the head of the family : that the lady, moreover,
8o Mrs. Botherby's Story
was heartily tired of her husband ; and that, in the event of his removal by disease or casualty, Master Erasmus Buckthorne, albeit a great philosophist, would have no violent objection to " throw physic to the dogs," and exchange his laboratory for the estate of Marston, its live stock included. Some, too, have inferred that to him did Madame Isabel seriously incline ; while others have thought, induced perhaps by subsequent events, that she was merely using him for her purposes ; that one Jose, a tall, bright-eyed, hook-nosed stripling from her native land, was a personage not unlikely to put a spoke in the doctor's wheel ; and that, should such a chance arise, the Sage, wise as he was, would, after all, run no slight risk of being " bamboozled."
Master Jose was a youth well-favoured, and comely to look upon. His office was that of page to the dame ; an office which, after long remaining in abeyance, has been of late years revived, as may well be seen in the persons of sundry smart hobbledehoys, now constantly to be met with on staircases and in boudoirs, clad, for the most part, in garments fitted tightly to the shape, the lower moiety adorned with a broad stripe of crimson or silver lace, and the upper with what the first Wit of our times has described as " a favourable eruption of buttons." The precise duties of this employment have never, as far as we have heard, been accurately defined. The perfuming a handkerchief, the combing a lap-dog, and the occasional presentation of a sippet-shaped billet doux, are, and always have been, among them ; but these a young gentleman standing five foot ten, and aged nineteen " last grass," might well be supposed to have outgrown. Jose, however, kept his place, perhaps because he was not fit for any other. To the conference between his mistress and the physician he had not been admitted ; his post was to keep watch and ward in the ante-room ; and, when the interview was concluded, he attended the lady and her visitor as far as the court-yard, where he held, with all due respect, the^stirrup for the latter, as he once more resumed his position on the back of Punch.
Who is it that says " little pitchers have large ears ? "jjs Some deep metaphysician of the potteries, who might have added that they have also quick eyes, and sometimes silent tongues. There was a little meta- phorical piece of crockery of this class, who, screened by a huge elbow- chair, had sat a quiet and unobserved spectator of the whole proceed- ings between her mamma and Master Erasmus Buckthorne. This was Miss Marian Marsh, a rosy-cheeked laughter-loving imp of some six years old ; but one who could be mute as a mouse when the fit was on her. A handsome and highly polished cabinet of the darkest ebony occupied a recess at one end of the apartment ; this had long been a
The Leech of Folkestone 8 i
great subject of speculation to little Miss. Her curiosity, however, had always been repelled ; nor had aU her coazing ever won her an inspection of the thousand and one pretty things which its recesses no doubt contained. On this occasion it was unlocked, and Marian was about to rush forward in eager anticipation of a peep at its interior, when, child as she was, the reflection struck her that she would stand a better chance of carrying her point by remaining ferdue. Fortune for once favoured her : she crouched closer than before, and saw her mother take something from one of the drawers, which she handed over to the Leech. Strange mutterings followed, and words whose sound was foreign to her youthful ears. Had she been older, their import, perhaps, might have been equally unknown. — After a whUe there was a pause ; and then the lady, as in answer to a requisition from the gentleman, placed in his hand a something which she took from her toilet. The transaction, whatever its nature, seemed now to be complete, and the article was carefully replaced in the drawer from which it had been taken. A long, and apparently interesting, con- versation than took place between the parties, carried on in a low tone. At its termination. Mistress Marsh and Master Erasmus Buckthorne quitted the boudoir together. But the cabinet ! — ay, that was left unfastened ; the folding-doors still remained invitingly ex- panded, the bunch of keys dangling from the lock. In an instant the spoiled child was in a chair ; the drawer, so recently closed, yielded at once to her hand, and her hurried researches were rewarded by the prettiest little waxen doU imaginable. It was a first-rate prize, and Miss lost no time in appropriating it to herself. Long before Madame Marsh had returned to her Sanctum, Marian was seated under a laurestinus in the garden, nursing her new baby with the most affectionate solicitude.
• .i. ■ m * * # *
" Susan, look here ; see what a nasty scratch I have got upon my hand," said the young lady, when routed out at length from her hiding-place to her noontide meal.
" Yes, Miss, this is always the way with you ! mend, mend, mend, — nothing but mend ! Scrambling about among the bushes, and tearing your clothes to rags. What with you, and with madam's farthingales and kirtles, a poor bower-maiden has a fine time of it I "
" But I have not torn my clothes, Susan, and it was not the bushes ; it was the doU : only see what a great ugly pin I have pulled out of it ! and look, here is another ! " As she spoke, Marian drew forth one of those extended pieces of black pointed wire, with which, in the days of
F
82 Mrs. Botherby's Story
toupees and pompoons, our foremothers were wont to secure their fly-caps and head-gear from the impertinent assaults of " Zephyrus and the Little Breezes."
" And pray, Miss, where did you get this pretty doU as you call it ? " asked Susan, turning over the puppet, and viewing it with a scrutinising eye. ' Mamma gave it me," said the child. — ^This was a fib !
" Indeed ! " quoth the girl thoughtfully ; and then, in half soliloquy, and a lower key, " Well ! I wish I may die if it doesn't look like master ! — But come to your dinner. Miss ! Hark ! the bell is striking One ! "
Meanwhile Master Thomas Marsh, and his man Ralph, were thread- ing the devious paths, then, as now, most pseudonymously dignified with the name of roads, that wound between Marston Hall and the frontier of Romney Marsh. Their progress was comparatively slow ; for though the brown mare was as good a roadster as man might back, and the gelding no mean nag of his hands, yet the tracts, rarely traversed save by the rude wains of the day, miry in the " bottoms," and covered with loose and roUing stones on the higher grounds, rendered barely passable the perpetual alternation of hUl and valley.
The master rode on in pain, and the man in listlessness ; although the intercourse between two individuals so situated was much less restrained in those days than might suit the refinement of a later age, little passed approximating to conversation beyond an occasional and half-stifled groan from the one, or a vacant whistle from the other. An hour's riding had brought them among the woods of Acryse ; and they were about to descend one of those green and leafy lanes, rendered by matted and over-arching branches alike impervious to shower or sun- beam, when a sudden and violent spasm seized on Master Marsh, and nearly caused him to fall from his horse. With some difficulty he succeeded in dismounting, and seating himself by the road side. Here he remained for a full half-hour in great apparent agony ; the cold sweat rolled in large round drops adown his clammy forehead, a universal shivering palsied every limb, his eye-balls appeared to be starting from their sockets, and to his attached, though duU and heavy serving-man, he seemed as one struggling in the pangs of impending dissolution. His groans rose thick and frequent ; and the alarmed Ralph was hesitating between his disinclination to leave him, and his desire to procure such assistance as one of the few cottages, rarely sprinkled in that wild country, might afford, when, after a long-drawn sigh, his master's features as suddenly relaxed ; he declared himself better, the pang