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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "In A Glass Darkly" is a seminal collection of supernatural tales that intricately weaves together themes of duality, madness, and the occult within a richly Victorian context. Le Fanu's unique narrative style, characterized by atmospheric detail and psychological depth, immerses the reader in a world where the boundaries between reality and the supernatural blur. The book consists of five interrelated stories, most notably 'Green Tea' and 'The Familiar,' showcasing Le Fanu's mastery in crafting chilling narratives that probe the darker recesses of the human psyche and question the nature of perception itself. Le Fanu, a prominent figure in Gothic literature, drew inspiration from his Irish heritage and the rich folklore of his surroundings. His background, particularly his experiences with the paranormal and his education in Gothic storytelling, profoundly influenced his literary voice. As a forerunner of modern horror, Le Fanu's work has resonated with writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, solidifying his reputation as a key architect of supernatural fiction. Readers with an appreciation for Gothic literature and psychological horror will find "In A Glass Darkly" an enthralling exploration of fear and existential dread. This collection not only offers spine-chilling narratives but also a profound commentary on the complexities of the human experience, making it an essential read for those interested in the eerie and the uncanny. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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In A Glass Darkly
Table of Contents
Introduction
This book explores how the human mind confronts phenomena that seem to touch both the natural and the uncanny. In A Glass Darkly, by the Anglo-Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, assembles a suite of supernatural tales first published in the Victorian era, in 1872. The title invokes a biblical image of partial sight, signaling stories that keep readers poised between doubt and belief. Rather than deliver blunt shocks, Le Fanu fosters a climate of inquiry and unease, encouraging careful attention to hints, pauses, and distortions. The result is an atmosphere in which the ordinary becomes permeable, and explanations remain provisional.
The collection belongs to Gothic and supernatural fiction, and it is structured around a distinctive conceit: each tale appears as a case drawn from the papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a physician with an interest in metaphysical pathology. Set across various European locales and periods, the stories move from parlors and coaching inns to lonely estates and urban chambers, tracing encounters where private fears meet public respectability. Published during a moment of cultural fascination with science, spiritualism, and sensation writing, the volume stages that Victorian conversation within lucid, restrained prose that heightens rather than dissipates dread.
Readers meet witnesses who speak in diaries, letters, and recollections, then see those voices framed by editorial notes and medical observation. The premise is simple and fertile: Hesselius gathers testimonies of persons afflicted by troubling visitations or perplexing events, observing the limits of diagnosis when experience outstrips available theories. The narrative voice is measured and courteous, yet it cultivates unease through detail, silence, and the suggestion of patterns just beyond reach. The overall mood is contemplative and eerie, inviting readers to weigh competing explanations while feeling the pressure of something intimate and invasive drawing ever nearer.
At the core lies a set of themes that feel remarkably durable: the unreliability of perception, the instability of identity, and the strain between psychological interpretation and supernatural possibility. Le Fanu’s cases examine how obsession can distort judgment, how secrecy ferments peril, and how belief systems—medical, religious, familial—offer shelter yet sometimes intensify threat. The biblical resonance of the title underscores the book’s method: we look through imperfect lenses, mistaking reflections for truths or dismissing truths as reflections. Rather than resolve ambiguity, these tales preserve it, allowing readers to inhabit the very uncertainty that defines their characters’ predicament.
Among the five tales, one has become a landmark of vampire literature, and the collection as a whole shows how vampiric and spectral motifs could be approached with psychological tact rather than spectacle. Without relying on overt shocks, Le Fanu develops dread through intimacy, hospitality, and trust, asking how a bond becomes a conduit for danger. The European settings—ranging from genteel drawing rooms to secluded provincial districts—amplify questions about inheritance, class, and the unease of strangers. The stories remain accessible as independent pieces, yet the frame invites readers to see them as variations on how desire, dependency, and fear entwine.
Stylistically, In A Glass Darkly favors indirection: information arrives in deposits—witness statements, marginalia, guarded conversations—so that meaning accrues by inference. Le Fanu’s craft lies in the orchestration of small felicities—a chance meeting, a misread gesture, a disquieting sound—whose cumulative effect is more unsettling than any single apparition. The medico-philosophical angle gives the work a cool, observational surface that contrasts with the emotional turbulence underneath. That tension makes the reading experience immersive: one moves through chambers of suspicion, compassion, and analysis, guided by a temperament that refuses sensationalism and instead cultivates the intellectual pleasures of ambiguity.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions feel timely: How do we evaluate testimony under pressure? When does expertise clarify and when does it condescend? What responsibilities arise when intimacy crosses into influence or coercion? Le Fanu shows how fear thrives in gaps—between disciplines, languages, classes, and generations—and how narrative itself can both expose and conceal. In A Glass Darkly matters now not only as a milestone in Gothic fiction but as a meditation on perception and care. It invites readers to scrutinize what they think they know, to listen closely, and to accept that some truths emerge only at the edges of certainty.
Synopsis (Selection)
In a Glass Darkly, published in 1872, is a collection of five Gothic case histories attributed to the posthumous papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a learned physician whose interests bridge medicine and metaphysics. An editor presents these reports as carefully ordered dossiers, each built from letters, depositions, and personal narratives. The sequence advances from private affliction to public reckoning, concluding with the most widely known case. Rather than argue a doctrine, the arrangement lets the events speak through observed detail, medical notes, and cautious commentary. Together, the files establish a method: attentive observation, collation of testimony, and provisional conclusions about phenomena that trouble the mind and spirit.
The first narrative, Green Tea, concerns the Reverend Mr. Jennings, a conscientious London clergyman whose night studies become accompanied by copious cups of green tea. Soon he perceives, at the margin of vision, a small black monkey whose fixed gaze exerts a wearing pressure on his nerves and conscience. Seeking relief, he consults Dr. Hesselius, who records interviews, prescribes a regimen, and proposes a connection between bodily strain and openings to unseen agencies. As correspondences accumulate, the apparition grows more intrusive, manifesting in public and shadowing sermons. Jennings’s isolation deepens, and the physician’s notes set out practical measures while acknowledging uncertainties in diagnosis.
Hesselius recommends temperance in stimulants, regulated rest, companionship, and devotional steadiness, coupled with specific precautions intended to narrow the avenues by which the influence approaches. He writes to an associate to watch over the patient and to maintain a calm routine, while he frames the case within broader studies of visionary states. The record traces wavering improvement, recurrent alarms, and mounting dread as the presence seems to answer each defense. The narrative moves toward an abrupt crisis that confirms the gravity of such disturbances. Without stating particulars, the papers close on a sober reflection about the limits of counsel when fear overrides reason.
The Familiar follows Captain Barton, a former seafarer living in Dublin, who becomes aware of an invisible follower whose footsteps dog his nights. A small, threatening figure, recalling an old encounter, appears again and again at doors and windows, and calls to him in a husky voice. Clergymen and friends offer practical advice, but the persecution persists, traced through diaries, witness remarks, and a legal memorandum. Visits to places tied to earlier voyages stir associations of a past wrong. As the episodes compress, Barton adopts evasive routes and grows vigilant, yet the watcher closes in, leading to tense pursuits through darkened streets and quays.
Mr. Justice Harbottle presents a jurist of harsh temper whose conduct on the bench has invited enemies and misgivings. He receives a spectral summons to appear before a tribunal where his own double presides, and his sleep is broken by vivid scenes of judgment and sentence. Servants observe his altered habits, colleagues note unease, and papers detail incidents that blur dream and waking. The judge attempts to dismiss the matter as agitation, yet messages arrive with punctual certainty. A climactic vision stages a courtroom in which past cases seem to return for review, pressing toward a reckoning whose precise outcome the file withholds.
The Room in the Dragon Volant shifts to a tale of intrigue rather than overt haunting. Richard Beckett, a young English traveler in post-Napoleonic France, becomes enamored of a beautiful countess reputedly trapped in an unhappy marriage. Installed at the inn of the Dragon Volant, he is drawn into clandestine meetings, masked festivities, and whispers of an imminent elopement. Odd signals, a mysterious carriage, and a chamber with unusual devices suggest a carefully arranged deception. The papers chart Beckett’s credulity, the craft of his new acquaintances, and a plot involving apparent death and inheritance. Suspense arises from misdirection and timing rather than explicit supernatural intervention.
Carmilla returns to overtly preternatural ground in a Styrian setting, narrated by Laura, who lives with her father in a secluded schloss. A carriage mishap brings the graceful Carmilla into their household as a convalescent guest. Affection grows between the young women, yet Carmilla’s secrecy, nocturnal habits, and sudden languors unsettle observers. Nearby villages report wasting illnesses among girls; rumors circulate of an old family whose portrait resembles the visitor. Descriptions linger on dreams of pressure at night and a faint puncture mark that eludes cure. The doctor’s memoranda place these symptoms among documented cases of subtle, periodic predation.
As months pass, a visiting general relates the recent loss of his ward under circumstances mirroring Laura’s household. Accounts are compared, maps consulted, and local folklore about ancestral rites and buried chapels is sifted for guidance. The investigation follows letters, a memorial inscription, and military testimony, progressively aligning the evidence with established vampiric lore. Pursuit focuses on a ruined church and noble tombs associated with the name Mircalla. The dossier conveys the methods employed to identify and counter the threat without detailing the final act. Its emphasis falls on corroboration across witnesses and the convergence of medical, historical, and popular knowledge.
Across these cases, the editorial frame emphasizes Hesselius’s manner of inquiry: attentive to bodily conditions, yet open to immaterial influences that seem to exploit fatigue, guilt, or desire. The progression moves from a scholar’s overstimulation, through stalking and judicial dread, to worldly trickery, and finally to an ancient predatory pattern. Each narrative highlights crucial turns without insisting on a single theory, presenting notes, sworn statements, and observed behavior for the reader’s judgment. The collection’s central impression is cautionary. Human perception proves fallible, motives can be masked, and unseen pressures can derail conduct. We look, as the title suggests, through a pane that distorts what it transmits.
Historical Context
Published in 1872, In a Glass Darkly situates its tales across late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, filtering diverse locales through the case files of the German physician Dr. Martin Hesselius. Time and place shift: Mr. Justice Harbottle evokes Georgian London; The Familiar draws on early nineteenth-century Dublin; The Room in the Dragon Volant unfolds in post-Waterloo France; and Carmilla is set in the Habsburg province of Styria. Although composed in Victorian Britain and Ireland, the collection revisits earlier decades to expose an era of accelerating urbanization, fragile religious authority, and shifting legal and political regimes. The transnational settings allow Le Fanu to juxtapose Protestant Ireland, metropolitan England, Bourbon France, and imperial Austria under a single investigative lens.
The decline of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy frames Le Fanu’s lifetime and informs the book’s pervasive anxieties. Key milestones include the Act of Union (1801), which abolished the Irish Parliament; Catholic Emancipation (1829), which ended many civil disabilities on Ireland’s Catholic majority; the Fenian Rising (1867), signaling militant nationalism; and the Irish Church Act (1869), which disestablished the Church of Ireland in 1871. Born in Dublin in 1814 to a Church of Ireland clergyman, Le Fanu witnessed this erosion of Protestant institutional dominance. The collection’s haunted officials and beleaguered households—especially the beleaguered, secluded mansions in Carmilla—mirror the vulnerabilities of a landowning caste fearful of retribution, exposure, and social isolation amid political change.
The Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) of 1845–1849 reshaped Irish society through mass starvation, disease, and emigration. The potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) devastated subsistence agriculture; approximately one million died and over a million emigrated, with workhouses (established under the 1838 Poor Law) overwhelmed. British policy, associated with Sir Robert Peel and later Charles Trevelyan, drew lasting controversy for limited relief and adherence to laissez-faire. Dublin, where Le Fanu worked as a journalist and editor, became a nexus of political debate and print culture. The stories’ recurrent motifs of spectral hunger, guilt, and social abandonment—especially the pursuit and punishment of compromised elites—resonate with a landscape marked by loss, depopulation, and moral reckoning after catastrophe.
Mid-Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the medicalization of the mind underpins the Hesselius framework and Green Tea. The Fox sisters’ 1848 “rappings,” the British table-turning craze (early 1850s), and mesmerism (James Braid’s “hypnotism,” 1843) popularized inquiry into unseen forces. Concurrently, the Lunacy Acts (1845) expanded asylums and professionalized psychiatry; debates on hallucination, monomania, and nervous disorders proliferated. George M. Beard’s term “neurasthenia” (1869) captured anxieties about urban overstimulation. In Green Tea, Rev. Jennings’s simian apparition, linked by Hesselius to overtaxed nerves and stimulants, dramatizes contemporary disputes about whether visions were demonic, neurological, or suggestive phenomena. The physician-narrator anticipates later psychical research by imposing clinical method on occult testimony.
The Room in the Dragon Volant is anchored in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) and the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830) under Louis XVIII and Charles X. Postwar France saw Allied occupation (1815–1818), political intrigue between Ultras and constitutional monarchists, and a resurgence of criminal fraternities exploiting porous policing on the highways of Île-de-France. The tale’s setting among postwar salons, inns, and funerary rites—where a band of swindlers exploits a credulous English traveler—echoes period anxieties about forged identities, covert networks, and the manipulation of medical procedures (cataleptic “deaths”) amid a society negotiating legitimacy after decades of revolution and empire.
Mr. Justice Harbottle reflects Georgian England’s punitive legal environment—the “Bloody Code,” which by the late eighteenth century made more than 200 offenses capital crimes. Judicial offices were entangled in patronage, with court spectacles from Tyburn (until 1783) to Newgate Gallows reinforcing authority. Reformers like Sir Samuel Romilly (1808–1811) began pruning capital statutes; the Judgement of Death Act (1823) allowed discretionary commutations; and further reductions came in 1832 and 1837, with public executions ending in 1868. Harbottle’s spectral tribunal caricatures a corrupt judge judged by his own system: the story allegorizes institutional cruelty and caprice in a period when legitimacy of punishment—and the moral standing of those who administered it—was under intense scrutiny.
Carmilla engages with Habsburg Central Europe and the earlier “vampire panics” documented in occupied Serbian territories. Investigations into cases like Peter Plogojowitz (Kisilova, 1725) and Arnold Paole (Medvegia, 1726–1727) prompted official reports (e.g., the 1732 Visum et Repertum) and, under Empress Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780), inquiries by physician Gerard van Swieten that led to regulations curbing exhumations and staking. Set in Styria, within the Austrian crown lands, Carmilla uses a decaying schloss, provincial isolation, and aristocratic secrecy to channel Enlightened absolutism’s collision with local superstition. Figures like Baron Vordenburg recall imperial bureaucrat-scholars who cataloged and regulated belief, while the predatory intimacy of the vampire exposes the vulnerabilities of secluded noble households.
As a social and political critique, the collection indicts fragile institutions and exposes the costs of power. Clerical wavering before modern nerves (Green Tea), judicial arrogance collapsing under its own logic (Mr. Justice Harbottle), and aristocratic secrecy preying upon dependents (Carmilla) reveal abuses within churches, courts, and manorial orders. The transnational settings strip elite authority of its mystique: Dublin’s and London’s urban anonymity, Restoration France’s opportunism, and Habsburg provincialism show class privilege as isolating rather than protective. By medicalizing the supernatural through Hesselius, Le Fanu also critiques a technocratic complacency unable to cure moral injury. The book thus registers Victorian-era injustices—sectarian dominance, legal cruelty, and gendered vulnerability—as haunts demanding historical redress.
In A Glass Darkly
Green Tea
Prologue. Martin Hesselius, the German Physician
Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practiced either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honorable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.
In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term “easy circumstances.” He was an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was well-founded.
For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration.
Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago.
It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play.
The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader.
These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there I omit some passages, and shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
Chapter I. Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy.
I met him one evening at Lady Mary Haddock’s. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing.
We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary’s, who, it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him.
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings’ health does break down in, generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly incapacitated.
When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course. We shall see.
Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people I think don’t remember; or, perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I have said, to his manner, and in this glance traveling along the floor there is something both shy and anxious.
A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinized with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding inquiry.
There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly scientific paper.
I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organized substance, but as different in point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death consequently no interruption of the living man’s existence, but simply his extrication from the natural body — a process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection “in power.”
The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts.
In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my caution — l think he perceived it — and I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then became thoughtful for a few minutes.
After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer.
This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by; and in a little time we had got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books and places, having traveled, wish to discourse, it is very strange if they can’t find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me, and led him into conversation. He knew German and had read my Essays on Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say.
This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the world, but his best beloved friends — was cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me.
I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans respecting myself.
We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time but at last he said:
“I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical Medicine — I read them in German, ten or twelve years ago — have they been translated?”
“No, I’m sure they have not — I should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think.”
“I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print.”
“So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although,” I added, laughing, “ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it.”
At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said, guiltily, for a moment.
I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on, I said: “Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests an other, and often sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have still got two or three by me — and if you allow me to present one I shall be very much honoured.”
“You are very good indeed,” he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment: “I almost despaired — I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Pray don’t say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty.”
Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his departure.
Chapter II. The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers
“I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary,” said I, as soon as he was gone. “He has read, traveled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought to be an accomplished companion.”
“So he is, and, better still, he is a really good man,” said she. “His advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at Dawlbridge, and he’s so painstaking, he takes so much trouble — you have no idea — wherever he thinks he can be of use: he’s so good-natured and so sensible.”
“It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in addition to what you have told me, I think I can tell you two or three things about him,” said I.
“Really!”
“Yes, to begin with, he’s unmarried.”
“Yes, that’s right —-go on.”
“He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some rather abstract subject — perhaps theology.”
“Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I’m not quite sure what it was about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for; very likely you are right, and he certainly did stop — yes.”
“And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes tea, at least, did like it extravagantly.”
“Yes, that’s quite true.”
“He drank green tea, a good deal, didn’t he?” I pursued.
“Well, that’s very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost to quarrel.”
“But he has quite given that up,” said I. “So he has.”
“And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?”
“Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near Dawlbridge. We knew them very well,” she answered.
“Well, either his mother or his father — I should rather think his father, saw a ghost,” said I.
“Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius.”
“Conjurer or no, haven’t I said right?” I answered merrily.
“You certainly have, and it was his father: he was a silent, whimsical man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd story it was. I remember it particularly, because I was so afraid of him. This story was long before he died — when I was quite a child — and his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in sometimes, in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawing-room, and I used to fancy there were ghosts about him.”
I smiled and nodded.
“And now, having established my character as a conjurer, I think I must say good-night!” said I.
“But how did you find it out?”
“By the planets, of course, as the gypsies do,” I answered, and so, gaily we said good-night.
Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that he had called at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me.
Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me “professionally,” as they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is supported by Lady Mary’s answers to my parting questions. I should like much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shan’t make myself difficult of access; I mean to return his visit tomorrow. It will be only civil in return for his politeness, to ask to see him. Perhaps something may come of it. Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van L., you shall hear.
Chapter III. Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books
Well, I have called at Blank Street.
On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege, and to call again, I merely intimated that I should try another time, and had turned to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do, whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said, “Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings, for I am sure he wishes to see you.”
The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings, asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes.
This was really a study — almost a library. The room was lofty, with two tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the ceiling. The upper carpet — for to my tread it felt that there were two or three — was a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The bookcases standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable, and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were everywhere, helped this sombre feeling.
While awaiting Mr. Jennings’ arrival, I amused myself by looking into some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these, but immediately under them, with their backs up ward, on the floor, I lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg’s “Arcana Cælestia,” in the original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges. There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a series of sentences indicated by a penciled line at the margin. Of these I copy here a few, translating them into English.
“When man’s interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight.” . . . .
“By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world. From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so on.” . . . .
“There are with every man at least two evil spirits.” . . . .
“With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating. There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping along within it.”
“The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed from the hells, but when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The place where they then are, is in the midst between heaven and hell, and is called the world of spirits — when the evil spirits who are with man, are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every thought and affection of man, and so, in all that the man himself enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their former state.” . . . .
“If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred.” . . . .
“Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith.” . . . .
“Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him.” . . . .
“The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin.”
A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings’ neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was something quite different, and began with these words, Deus misereatur mei —“May God compassionate me.” Thus warned of its private nature, I averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was.
I was reading some pages which refer to “representatives” and “correspondents,” in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits, when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, present themselves, by “correspondence,” in the shape of the beast (fera) which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those bestial forms.
Chapter IV. Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage
I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it, and something caused me to raise my eyes.
Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I saw reflected the tall shape of my friend, Mr. Jennings, leaning over my shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.
I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a little, saying:
“I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very impertinently, I’m afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg, no doubt, long ago?”
“Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good as to remember.”
Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed.
“I’m scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I’ve only had them a fortnight,” he answered, “and I think they are rather likely to make a solitary man nervous — that is, judging from the very little I have read —-I don’t say that they have made me so,” he laughed; “and I’m so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?”
I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers.
“I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours,” he continued. “I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded. Do you know Dr. Harley?” he asked, rather abruptly.
In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practiced in England.
I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.
“I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,” said Mr. Jennings.
This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.
“Really! and in what way?” I asked.
“In his profession,” he answered.
I smiled.
“I mean this,” he said: “he seems to me, one half, blind — I mean one half of all he looks at is dark — preternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful. I can’t get him — I mean he won’t — I’ve had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead. I’ll tell you — I know I shall some time — all about it,” he said, with a little agitation. “You stay some months longer in England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?”
“I should be only too happy,” I assured him.
“Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley.”
“A little leaning to the materialistic school,” I said.
“A mere materialist,” he corrected me; “you can’t think how that sort of thing worries one who knows better. You won’t tell anyone — any of my friends you know — that I am hippish; now, for instance, no one knows — not even Lady Mary — that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other doctor.
So pray don’t mention it; and, if I should have any threatening of an attack, you’ll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have a little talk with you.”
I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said: “I see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the rest of your life, you will never hit on it.”
He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men do in pain.
“Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you that your confidence is sacred.”
He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful way and after a little time, I took my leave.
Chapter V. Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond
We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit — the human face — which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor’s nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me. It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a change of ideas.
I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had been for some little time so much better — quite well, in fact — that he was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up. There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude for his restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.
A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, “I begin to think that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did not come back for a year.”
Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:
DEAR SIR — I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present, I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray don’t mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. By-and-by, please God, you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily than I can now write.
About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jenning’s niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of suffering is sometimes hidden!
Nearly five weeks had passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote:
“I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of scene, change of faces, change of everything — and in everything — but myself. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but, pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea. You shall have no trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank Street, who takes this note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. I have tried everything. Come and see.”
I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening, which accordingly I did.
He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found, belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of selection, by coming here.
The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light. I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place. The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, into the room.
We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still light enough to enable us to see each other’s faces, he sat down beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface began his narrative.
Chapter VI. How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion
The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on the stony face of the sufferer for the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changed rested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The silence, too, was utter: not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within, the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor’s house.
I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars, of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken’s, before its background of darkness.
“It began,” he said, “on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two days — I keep very accurate count, for every day is torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.
“About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients.”
“I know,” said I, “the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field.”
“Yes, but not good for the mind — the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me!
“I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care.”
He sighed heavily.
“I believe, that everyone who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something — tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion-at first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my tea — green tea — every now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven o’clock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty much as usual and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence had never been, I think, so pleasant before.
“I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in mediæval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them. This obliging person’s books were in the City, a very out-of-the-way part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and, on coming out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the ‘bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.
“The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses, two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light. They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From what center did that faint but deep red light come, and from what — glass beads, buttons, toy decorations — was it reflected? We were lumbering along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the puzzle, and it became in another minute more odd, for these two luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer and nearer the floor, keeping still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting and I saw them no more.
“My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them.
“So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red.
“There was very little light in the ‘bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned forward to aid my endeavor to discover what these little circles really were. They shifted position a little as I did so. I began now to perceive an outline of something black, and I soon saw, with tolerable distinctness, the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly saw its teeth grinning at me.
“I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. I fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained immovable — up to it — through it. For through it, and back and forward it passed, without the slightest resistance.
“I can’t, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt. When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the lights and tress we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of reality.
“I stopped the ‘bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as I paid him. I dare say there was something unusual in my looks and manner, for I had never felt so strangely before.”
Chapter VII. The Journey: First Stage
“When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my indescribable relief I saw it nowhere. I can’t describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it.
“I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the wall is a hedge of yew, or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you came.
