THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (57 page)

The
Dies Irae
dies away;

And in the shadow of the door

They see their year-gone victim stand!

His rusty mail drips on the floor;

He beckons with uplifted hand!

The Abbot rose. He could not choose;

He had no voice or strength to pray;

For when the mighty dead command,

The living must perforce obey.

The spectre-knight then gazed around

With stony eye, and hand uprear’d.

‘Farewell,’ said he, ‘till Christmas next!’—

Then knight and Abbot disappear’d.

* * * * *

And thus it is the place is cursed,

And long since fallen to decay;

For ev’ry Christmas Eve the knight

Came back, and took a monk away.

Came back, while yet a blood-stain’d wretch

The holy convent-garb profaned;

Came back while yet a guilty soul

Of all those forty monks remain’d;

And still comes back to earth—if we

The peasants’ story may believe—

And rises from the murky tarn

At midnight every Christmas Eve!

Appendix III

My Home Life

IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED to me that an article descriptive of my ways and doings at home might be acceptable to readers of this journal; and it has furthermore been proposed that I should write the said article myself. There is a straightforward simplicity of purpose about this proposition which commends it to me. Also, it has the recommendation of being quite novel.

As a rule, the person whose home life is to be made the subject of an article is ‘interviewed’ by a gentleman of the press, who cross-examines the victim like an Old Bailey counsel, and proceeds to take an inventory of his furniture, like a bailiff.

Now, it seems to me that the conditions under which such a visit is paid and received are radically unsatisfactory. The person interviewed must be more or less uncomfortably self-conscious, and one cannot help doubting whether the interviewer ever succeeds in seeing his subject and his subject’s surroundings in exactly their normal
dishabille
. It would ask more than Roman virtue not to make the best of one’s self and one’s house when both were sitting for a portrait; and difficult as it is to look natural and feel natural in front of a photographer’s camera, it is ten times more trying
vis-à-vis
of a reporter’s note-book. As for the temptation to ‘pose’, whether consciously or unconsciously, it must be well-nigh irresistible. For my own part, I am but too certain that, instead of receiving such a visitor in my ordinary working costume, and in a room littered with letters and papers, I should have inevitably put on a more becoming gown, and have ‘tidied up’ the library, when the appointed day and hour arrived. Not, however, being put to this test, I will do my best to present myself literally ‘At Home’, and in my habit as I live.

Westbury-on-Trym is a village in Gloucestershire separated from Clifton by about a mile and a half of open down, and distant about four miles from Bristol terminus. It lies in a hollow at the foot of two steep hills, one of which is crowned with the woods of Blaise Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as ‘The Hall’, and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and with justice. It contains some good stained-glass windows, two interesting mediaeval monuments, and an exceptionally fine organ. ‘The Hall’ is quite modern, having been built and endowed, in 1867, by a generous parishioner. The large room seats three hundred people, and is fitted up with an organ as large and beautiful as that in the church close by. Village concerts, penny readings, Lent lectures, charity bazaars, and the like are held here. The building also contains a reading-room and a small library for the use of the working classes. My own first attempts at public reading were made on this village platform, twenty years ago.

A little river flows through the valley, and is crossed by a single bridge in the lower part of the village. This is the Trym—an untidy Trym enough, nowadays—opaque, muddy, and little better than a ditch. Yet it was a navigable river some centuries ago, and, according to tradition, was not unknown to trout. On leaving the village, it takes a southwesterly course through a pleasant bottom of meadow lands, and thence between wooded slopes and a romantic ‘Coombe’, much beloved of artists, till it finally empties itself into the Avon, not far from the mouth of that tidal river.

There are still some remains of a building at the foot of Westbury Hill, which in olden times was second only in age and importance to the church—namely, ‘The College’. This ‘College’ was a religious house, founded as far back as A.D. 798, and probably rebuilt some five centuries later by that famous merchant and public benefactor, William Canynge, of Bristol, who died there as Dean of the College, and was buried in the church. Twenty-five years ago, when I first made its acquaintance, this ‘College’ (a large modernised building with corner turrets) still presented a stately front to the road. At the back was a square bell-tower covered from top to bottom with ivy, and a spacious garden shut in by high walls. It was then a boy’s school, and the big garden used to echo with shouts and laughter on summer evenings. The bell-tower is the most ancient part of the building, and according to local tradition, a subterranean passage leads from the cellarage in the basement to the church on the hillside above. The story is likely enough to be correct; for a passage of some kind there certainly is, and it leads apparently in the direction of the church. A working-man who, with some three or four others, had once tried to explore it, told me several years ago that, beyond the first few yards, the tunnel was completely blocked, and the air so foul that it put the lights out. Whether any subsequent attempt has been made to force a passage, I do not know; but the whole place is sadly changed since the time when I used to cast longing glances at the old green tower from the lane that skirted the garden wall, wishing that I might someday get permission to sit in a corner under a shady tree on the other side of that wall, and sketch the tower. The school has long since broken up for good, and boys and masters have gone their ways. The old house, after standing vacant for years, was bought at last by a little local builder, who ran up a row of smart shops in front of the old turreted façade; let off the house itself in lodgings to poor families; and re-sold the old bell-tower to the village blacksmith. The garden wall being pulled down on that side, the tower now stands at the end of a row of new cottages, forlorn and solitary in the midst of alien surroundings, a forge and anvil in the basement.

As regards the ‘great houses’ of the place, Westbury-on-Trym enjoys a curious monopoly of handsome private mansions. These mansions—spacious, finely built, each standing in its own park-like grounds—were built for the most part by wealthy Bristol merchants during the two last centuries—men of wealth, who needed to reside within an easy drive of the city, and who were content to amass great fortunes without also desiring to become land-owners. The Bristol merchants of the present day no longer care to live so near their business. Railways and steamers enable them to go farther afield; and so the fine old houses of Westbury, Henbury, Redland, Shirehampton, Brislington, and other parishes round about the great commercial centre, have gradually passed into the possession of a class of moneyed gentry who, having neither trade nor land, are attracted by the fine climate and beautiful scenery of this part of England. Some few of these old mansions are renowned for the valuable collections of paintings and other works of art which they contain; as, for instance, at Blaise Castle, there is a fine series of specimens of the old masters purchased at the close of the great war during the first quarter of the present century by Mr Harford, grandfather of the present owner; a series which comprises a fine Guido, several specimens of the Caracci, Salvator Rosa, etc. At Kings-Weston Park, we find the family portraits of the de Cliffords purchased, together with the very fine old house built by Vanbrugh in the time of Charles II, by the late owner, Philip Miles, Esq. At Leigh Court, the gallery, with its famous Leonardo, is known throughout Europe, while many other art treasures are to be found in the possession of private owners round about the neighbourhood.

It is not to be supposed that the writer and subject of this present paper resides in semi-royal state in one of these magnificent old houses. On the contrary, she lives, and has lived for more than a quarter of a century, with a very dear friend, in a small, irregularly built house, which together they have from time to time enlarged and improved, according to their pleasure. That friend—now in her eighty-seventh year—used, in days long gone by, to gather round her table many of the wits and celebrities of fifty years ago; but for her, as for myself, our little country home has been as dear for its seclusion as for the charm of its neighbourhood.

The Larches stands, with some few other houses of like dimensions, on a space of high-level ground to the eastward of the village. It is approached by a narrow lane, beyond which lie fields and open country. Having at first been quite a small cottage, it has been added to by successive owners, and is, consequently, quite destitute of external or internal uniformity. My own library, and the bedrooms above it, are, for the present, the latest additions to the structure, though I hope some day to build on a little room which I shall not venture to call a museum, but which shall contain my Egyptian antiquities and other collections.

The little house stands in one acre of ground, closely walled in, and surrounded by high shrubs and lofty larch trees. It is up and down a straight path in the shade of these larch trees that I take my daily exercise; and if I am to enter into such minor particulars as are dear to the writers and readers of ‘At Home’ articles, I may mention that a dial-register is affixed to the wall of a small grape-house at one end of this path, by means of which I measure off my regular half-mile before breakfast, my half mile after breakfast, and the mile or more with which I finish up my pedestrian duties in the late afternoon. To walk these two miles
per diem
is a Draconian law which I impose upon myself during all seasons of the year. When the snow lies deep in winter, it is our old gardener’s first duty in the morning to sweep ‘Miss Edwards’s path’, as well as to clear two or three large spaces on the lawn, in which the wild birds may be fed. The wild birds, I should add, are our intimate friends and perennial visitors, for whom we keep an open
table d’hôte
throughout the year. By feeding them in summer we lose less fruit than our neighbours; and by feeding them in winter we preserve the lives of our little summer friends, whose songs are the delight of ourselves and our neighbours in the springtime. There are dozens of nests every summer in the ivy which clusters thickly around my library windows; and we even carry our hospitality so far as to erect small rows of model lodging-houses for our birds high up under the eaves, which they inhabit in winter, and in which many couples of sparrows and starlings rear their young throughout the summer.

We will now leave the garden, and go into the house, which stands high on a grassy platform facing the sunny west. We enter by a wooden porch, which, as I write, is thickly covered with roses. As soon as the front door is opened, the incoming visitor finds himself in the midst of modern Egypt, the walls of the hall being lined with Damascus tiles and Cairene woodwork, the spoils of some of those Meshrabeeyeh windows which are so fast disappearing both in Alexandria and Cairo. In a recess opposite the door stands a fine old chair inlaid with ivory and various coloured woods, which some two hundred years ago was the Episcopal chair of a Coptic bishop. The rest of the hall furniture is of Egyptian inlaid work. Every available inch of space on the walls is filled and over-filled with curiosities of all descriptions. On one bracket stand an old Italian ewer and plate in wrought brass work; on another, a Nile ‘Kulleh’ or water bottle, and a pair of cups of unbaked clay; on others again, jars and pots of Indian, Morocco, Japanese, Siût, and Algerian ware. Here also, are a couple of funerary tablets in carved limestone, of ancient Egyptian work; a fragment of limestone cornice from the ruins of Naukratis; and various specimens of Majolica, old Wedgewood, and other ware, as well as framed specimens of Rhodian and Damascus tiles.

If my visitor is admitted at all, which for reasons which I will presently state is extremely doubtful, he passes through the hall, leaving the dining-room to his right and the drawing-room to his left, and is ushered along a passage, also lined with lattice-work, through a little ante-room, and into my library. This is a fair-sized room with a bay of three windows at the upper end facing eastward. My writing-table is placed somewhat near this window; and here I sit with my back to the light facing whomsoever may be shown into the room.

Sitting thus at my desk, the room to me is full of reminiscences of many friends and many places. The walls are lined with glazed bookcases containing the volumes which I have been slowly amassing from the time I was fourteen or fifteen years of age. I cast my eyes round the shelves, and I recognise in their contents the different lines of study which I have pursued at different periods of my life. Like the geological strata in the side of a cliff, they show the deposits of successive periods, and remind me, not only of the changes which my own literary tastes have undergone, but also of the various literary undertakings in which I have been from time to time engaged. The shelves devoted to the British poets carry me back to a time when I read them straight through without a break, from Chaucer to Tennyson. A large number of histories of England and works of British biography are due to a time when I was chiefly occupied in writing the letterpress to
The Photographic Historical Portrait Gallery
—a very beautiful publication illustrated with photographs of historical miniatures, which never reached a second volume, and is now, I believe, extremely scarce. An equally voluminous series of histories of Greece and Rome, and of translations of the Greek and Latin poets, marks the time when I first became deeply interested in classic antiquity. To this phase also belong the beginnings of those archaeological works which I have of late years accumulated almost to the exclusion of all other books, as well as my collection of volumes upon Homer, which nearly fill one division of a bookcase. When I left London some six and twenty years ago to settle at Westbury-on-Trym, I also added to my library a large number of works on the fine arts, feeling, as every lover of pictures must do, that it is necessary, in some way or another, to make up for the loss of the National Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, and other delightful places which I was leaving behind. At this time, also, I had a passion for Turner, and eagerly collected his engraved works, of which I believe I possess nearly all. I think I may say the same of Samuel Prout. Of Shakespeare I have almost as many editions as I have translations of Homer; and of European histories, works of reference generally, a writer who lives in the country must, of course, possess a goodly number. Of rare books I do not pretend to have many. A single shelf contains a few good old works, including a fine black-letter Chaucer, the Venetian Dante of 1578, and some fine examples of the Elizabethan period. I soon found, however, that this taste was far too expensive to cultivate. Last of all, in what I may call the upper Egyptological stratum of my books, come those on Egypt and Egyptian archaeology, a class of works deeply interesting to those who make Egyptology their study, but profoundly dull to everybody else.