پنجشنبه ۲۹ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۷:۲۰ ۱۱ بازديد
ssed some wish to see Mrs.
Bargrave's daughter; but when that good lady went to the next door to seek her,
she found on her return the guest leaving the house. She had got without the
door, in the street, in the face of the beast market, on a Saturday, which is market
day, and stood ready to part. She said she must be going, as she had to call upon
her cousin Watson (this appears to be a gratis dictum on the part of the ghost)
and, maintaining the character of mortality to the last, she quietly turned the
corner, and walked out of sight.
Then came the news of Mrs. Veal's having died the day before at noon. Says
Mrs. Bargrave, "I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours." And
in comes Captain Watson, and says Mrs. Veal was certainly dead. And then
come all the pieces of evidence, and especially the striped silk gown. Then Mrs.
Watson cried out, "You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and I
that that gown was scoured"; and she cried that the gown was described exactly,
for, said she, "I helped her to make it up." And next we have the silly attempts
made to discredit the history. Even Mr. Veal, her brother, was obliged to allow
that the gold was found, but with a difference, and pretended it was not found in
a cabinet, but elsewhere; and, in short, we have all the gossip of says I, and
thinks I, and says she, and thinks she, which disputed matters usually excite in a
country town.
When we have thus turned the tale, the seam without, it may be thought too
ridiculous to have attracted notice. But whoever will read it as told by De Foe
himself, will agree that, could the thing have happened in reality, so it would
have been told. The sobering the whole supernatural visit into the language of
the middle or low life, gives it an air of probability even in its absurdity. The
ghost of an exciseman's housekeeper, and a seamstress, were not to converse like
Brutus with his Evil Genius. And the circumstances of scoured silks, broken tea-
china, and such like, while they are the natural topics of such persons'
conversation, would, one might have thought, be the last which an inventor
would have introduced into a pretended narrative betwixt the dead and living. In
short, the whole is so distinctly circumstantial, that, were it not for the
impossibility, or extreme improbability at least, of such an occurrence, the
evidence could not but support the story.
The effect was most wonderful. Drelincourt upon Death, attested by one who
could speak from experience, took an unequaled run. The copies had hung on the
bookseller's hands as heavy as a pile of lead bullets. They now traversed the
town in every direction, like the same balls discharged from a field-piece. In
short, the object of Mrs. Veal's apparition was perfectly attained.—[See The
Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., vol. iv. p. 305, ed. 1827.]
CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK
BY MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES
St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees,
not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the
site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a
certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this
old-world place—I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a
thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from
Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who were less
keen archæologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join
him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy them,
and all three could then pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our
Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to
fill a note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing
and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little
hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was
necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or
sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly
sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge;
and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object
of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man
that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in
France, but in a curious furtive, or rather hunted and oppressed, air which he
had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and
shoulders seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were
expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The
Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed
delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably
henpecked husband. The probabilities, w
Bargrave's daughter; but when that good lady went to the next door to seek her,
she found on her return the guest leaving the house. She had got without the
door, in the street, in the face of the beast market, on a Saturday, which is market
day, and stood ready to part. She said she must be going, as she had to call upon
her cousin Watson (this appears to be a gratis dictum on the part of the ghost)
and, maintaining the character of mortality to the last, she quietly turned the
corner, and walked out of sight.
Mrs. Bargrave, "I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours." And
in comes Captain Watson, and says Mrs. Veal was certainly dead. And then
come all the pieces of evidence, and especially the striped silk gown. Then Mrs.
Watson cried out, "You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and I
that that gown was scoured"; and she cried that the gown was described exactly,
for, said she, "I helped her to make it up." And next we have the silly attempts
made to discredit the history. Even Mr. Veal, her brother, was obliged to allow
that the gold was found, but with a difference, and pretended it was not found in
a cabinet, but elsewhere; and, in short, we have all the gossip of says I, and
thinks I, and says she, and thinks she, which disputed matters usually excite in a
country town.
When we have thus turned the tale, the seam without, it may be thought too
ridiculous to have attracted notice. But whoever will read it as told by De Foe
himself, will agree that, could the thing have happened in reality, so it would
have been told. The sobering the whole supernatural visit into the language of
the middle or low life, gives it an air of probability even in its absurdity. The
ghost of an exciseman's housekeeper, and a seamstress, were not to converse like
Brutus with his Evil Genius. And the circumstances of scoured silks, broken tea-
china, and such like, while they are the natural topics of such persons'
conversation, would, one might have thought, be the last which an inventor
would have introduced into a pretended narrative betwixt the dead and living. In
short, the whole is so distinctly circumstantial, that, were it not for the
impossibility, or extreme improbability at least, of such an occurrence, the
evidence could not but support the story.
The effect was most wonderful. Drelincourt upon Death, attested by one who
could speak from experience, took an unequaled run. The copies had hung on the
bookseller's hands as heavy as a pile of lead bullets. They now traversed the
town in every direction, like the same balls discharged from a field-piece. In
short, the object of Mrs. Veal's apparition was perfectly attained.—[See The
Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., vol. iv. p. 305, ed. 1827.]
BY MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES
St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees,
not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the
site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a
certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this
old-world place—I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a
thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from
Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who were less
keen archæologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join
him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy them,
and all three could then pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our
Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to
fill a note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing
and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little
hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was
necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or
sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly
sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge;
and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object
of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man
that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in
France, but in a curious furtive, or rather hunted and oppressed, air which he
had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and
shoulders seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were
expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The
Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed
delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably
henpecked husband. The probabilities, w
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