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_ There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit
when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never
been. For, my acquaintance with those spots is of such long
standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a
nature, that I take a particular interest in assuring myself that
they are unchanged.
I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island, yet I frequently return
there. The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it is
uninhabited by any descendants of the grave and courteous
Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has
relapsed into its original condition. Not a twig of its wicker
houses remains, its goats have long run wild again, its screaming
parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many flaming colours
if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters
of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued by his
two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs. After comparing
notes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island
and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it
contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though
his track on the memorable evening of his landing to set his
captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about until it
was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits
failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on
which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated captain
pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore, that
was to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his
seclusion in that lonely place. So is the sandy beach on which the
memorable footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up
their canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public
dinners, which led to a dancing worse than speech-making. So is
the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a goblin
appearance in the dark. So is the site of the hut where Robinson
lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured
those first agonies of solitude, which--strange to say--never
involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so very remarkable,
that perhaps he left out something in writing his record? Round
hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the
tropical sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical sky,
saving in the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless.
Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France
and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the
ground was covered with snow, draw up my little company among some
felled trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train
of gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three or four
score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness around us.
Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that dismal region and
perform the feat again; when indeed to smell the singeing and the
frying of the wolves afire, and to see them setting one another
alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold them rolling in the
snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their
howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen
wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.
I was never in the robbers' cave, where Gil Blas lived, but I often
go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it
used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly
cursing in bed. I was never in Don Quixote's study, where he read
his books of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants,
and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet you
couldn't move a book in it without my knowledge, or with my
consent. I was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little old
woman who hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah to
go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make it my business
to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever. I
was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed
to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because every
other boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this
Academy, to see him let down out of window with a sheet. So with
Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of
being usually misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and
the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and
many hundreds of places--I was never at them, yet it is an affair
of my life to keep them intact, and I am always going back to them.
But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations
of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my
experience in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no
account, by the quantity of places and people--utterly impossible
places and people, but none the less alarmingly real--that I found
I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old,
and used to be forced to go back to at night without at all wanting
to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than
the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find
our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced
to go back to, against our wills.
The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful
youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain
Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the
Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in
those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no
general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best
society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission
was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with
tender brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused both
sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers; and
when his bride said, 'Dear Captain Murderer, I ever saw flowers
like these before: what are they called?' he answered, 'They are
called Garnish for house-lamb,' and laughed at his ferocious
practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the
noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then
displayed for the first time. He made love in a coach and six, and
married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white
horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden
by the harness. For, the spot WOULD come there, though every horse
was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot was
young bride's blood. (To this terrific point I am indebted for my
first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads on the
forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting and
revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with his
wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical
custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.
Now, there was this special feature in the Captain's courtships,
that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if
she couldn't by nature or education, she was taught. Well. When
the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and
silver pie-board, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk
sleeves to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter
and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of
materials for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out
none. Then said the lovely bride, 'Dear Captain Murderer, what pie
is this to be?' He replied, 'A meat pie.' Then said the lovely
bride, 'Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.' The Captain
humorously retorted, 'Look in the glass.' She looked in the glass,
but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with
laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade her
roll out the crust. So she rolled out the crust, dropping large
tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she
had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to
fit the top, the Captain called out, 'I see the meat in the glass!'
And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the
Captain cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and
peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it
to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones.
Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until
he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first
didn't know which to choose. For, though one was fair and the
other dark, they were both equally beautiful. But the fair twin
loved him, and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one.
The dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but
she couldn't; however, on the night before it, much suspecting
Captain Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden wall, and
looked in at his window through a chink in the shutter, and saw him
having his teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and
heard him make his joke about the house-lamb. And that day month,
he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin's head off, and
chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put
her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and
picked the bones.
Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the
filing of the Captain's teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke.
Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was
dead, she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged. So,
she went up to Captain Murderer's house, and knocked at the knocker
and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door,
said: 'Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved
you and was jealous of my sister.' The Captain took it as a
compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly
arranged. On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his
window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this
sight she laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the
shutter, that the Captain's blood curdled, and he said: 'I hope
nothing has disagreed with me!' At that, she laughed again, a
still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and search
made, but she was nimbly gone, and there was no one. Next day they
went to church in a coach and twelve, and were married. And that
day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut
her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and
salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and
ate it all, and picked the bones.
But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly
poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads' eyes and
spiders' knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last
bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over
spots, and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning bluer,
and being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from
floor to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o'clock in
the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it,
all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and
went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain
Murderer's house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had
filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped
away.
Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in my
early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental
compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark
twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in
his blue and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from floor
to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me
acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my
terrors, and used to begin, I remember--as a sort of introductory
overture--by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long
low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in
combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to
plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear
the story again just yet. But, she never spared me one word of it,
and indeed commanded the awful chalice to my lips as the only
preservative known to science against 'The Black Cat'--a weird and
glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the
world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who was endowed
with a special thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine.
This female bard--may she have been repaid my debt of obligation to
her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!--reappears in my
memory as the daughter of a shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though
she had none on me. There was something of a shipbuilding flavour
in the following story. As it always recurs to me in a vague
association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved
for dull nights when I was low with medicine.
There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard,
and his name was Chips. And his father's name before him was
Chips, and HIS father's name before HIM was Chips, and they were
all Chipses. And Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil
for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of
copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather had
sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny
nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and
Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same
direction on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family
for a long, long time. So, one day, when young Chips was at work
in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old
Seventy-four that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented
himself, and remarked:
'A Lemon has pips,
And a Yard has ships,
And _I_'ll have Chips!'
(I don't know why, but this fact of the Devil's expressing himself
in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.) Chips looked up when he
heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes that
squinted on a terrible great scale, and that struck out sparks of
blue fire continually. And whenever he winked his eyes, showers of
blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like
flints and steels striking lights. And hanging over one of his
arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel
of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of
copper, and sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat that could
speak. So, the Devil said again:
'A Lemon has pips,
And a Yard has ships,
And _I_'ll have Chips!'
(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of
the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.)
So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with his work. 'What
are you doing, Chips?' said the rat that could speak. 'I am
putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away,'
said Chips. 'But we'll eat them too,' said the rat that could
speak; 'and we'll let in the water and drown the crew, and we'll
eat them too.' Chips, being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-
war's man, said, 'You are welcome to it.' But he couldn't keep his
eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails;
for nails and copper are a shipwright's sweethearts, and
shipwrights will run away with them whenever they can. So, the
Devil said, 'I see what you are looking at, Chips. You had better
strike the bargain. You know the terms. Your father before you
was well acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and
great-grandfather before him.' Says Chips, 'I like the copper, and
I like the nails, and I don't mind the pot, but I don't like the
rat.' Says the Devil, fiercely, 'You can't have the metal without
him--and HE'S a curiosity. I'm going.' Chips, afraid of losing
the half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, 'Give
us hold!' So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the
rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished. Chips sold the
copper, and he sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but
whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers
dropped it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain. So,
Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one
day with a great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and the
iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he turned the scalding
pitch into the pot, and filled it full. Then, he kept his eye upon
it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty
days, and then he heated the pitch again and turned it back into
the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more,
and then he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty
days more, and then they gave it him out, red hot, and looking like
red-hot glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat in it, just the
same as ever! And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a
jeer:
'A Lemon has pips,
And a Yard has ships,
And _I_'ll have Chips!'
(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with
inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now felt
certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat,
answering his thought, said, 'I will--like pitch!'
Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made
off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn't keep its word. But, a
terrible thing happened next day. For, when dinner-time came, and
the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long
pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat--not
that rat, but another rat. And in his hat, he found another; and
in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his
coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And from
that time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the
rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at
work, and sat on his tools while he used them. And they could all
speak to one another, and he understood what they said. And they
got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and
into his beer, and into his boots. And he was going to be married
to a corn-chandler's daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he
had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it; and when he put
his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was
broken off, though the banns were already twice put up--which the
parish clerk well remembers, for, as he handed the book to the
clergyman for the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over
the leaf. (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down
my back, and the whole of my small listening person was overrun
with them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of
my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two
of those vermin in it.)
You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even
all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what the rats were
doing, wherever they were. So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when
he was at his club at night, 'Oh! Keep the rats out of the
convicts' burying-ground! Don't let them do that!' Or, 'There's
one of them at the cheese down-stairs!' Or, 'There's two of them
smelling at the baby in the garret!' Or, other things of that
sort. At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard,
and could get no other work. But, King George wanted men, so
before very long he got pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken
off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to
sail. And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near
her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen
the Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right under
the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a
sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea;
and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
and his exact words were these: 'Chips ahoy! Old boy! We've
pretty well eat them too, and we'll drown the crew, and will eat
them too!' (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would have
asked for water, but that I was speechless.)
The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don't know where that
is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you. (Here I felt
myself an outcast from a future state.) The ship set sail that
very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chips's
feelings were dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No
wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral.
The Admiral giv' leave. Chips went down on his knees in the Great
State Cabin. 'Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment's
loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed
ship, and her name is the Coffin!' 'Young man, your words are a
madman's words.' 'Your Honour no; they are nibbling us away.'
'They?' 'Your Honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness
where solid oak ought to be! Rats nibbling a grave for every man
on board! Oh! Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty
children?' 'Yes, my man, to be sure.' 'Then, for God's sake, make
for the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all
stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you
with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall
never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children more.'
'My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, take care
of this man!'
So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for
six whole days and nights. So, then he again asked leave to speak
to the Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. He went down on his knees
in the Great State Cabin. 'Now, Admiral, you must die! You took
no warning; you must die! The rats are never wrong in their
calculations, and they make out that they'll be through, at twelve
to-night. So, you must die!--With me and all the rest!' And so at
twelve o'clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, and a
torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they all
went down, every living soul. And what the rats--being water-rats-
-left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an
immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse touched
the beach and never came up. And there was a deal of seaweed on
the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them
and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in these thirteen
words as plain as plain can be:
'A Lemon has pips,
And a Yard has ships,
And _I_'ve got Chips!'
The same female bard--descended, possibly, from those terrible old
Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling
the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages--
made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back
to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have
avoided. This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had
occurred to her own relations. Politeness towards a meritorious
family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an
air of authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life.
There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding
death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who
'went to fetch the beer' for supper: first (as I now recall it)
assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its
hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly
surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition--not because I deemed
it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too
large to bear--I feebly endeavoured to explain away. But, on
Mercy's retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was
her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and resigned
myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.
There was another narrative describing the apparition of a young
woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young woman
until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that its
bones (Lord! To think of its being so particular about its bones!)
were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required them to be
interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound
ten, in another particular place. This narrative I considered--I
had a personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases
at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the
intrusion of young women requiring ME TO bury them up to twenty-
four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week? But my
remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by
informing me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn't say
'I don't believe you;' it was not possible.
Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to
make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning. And
really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago--
now I come to think of it--that I was asked to undertake them once
again, with a steady countenance. _
Read next: CHAPTER XVI - ARCADIAN LONDON
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