The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by Various (edited by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick).
Title: The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre.
Author: John Polidori, Horace Smith, William Carleton, Edward Bulwer, Allan Cunningham, James Hogg, N.P. Willis, Catherine Gore, Charles Lever, Letitia E. Landon, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Anonymous (edited by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick).
Genre: Fiction, short stories, horror, vampire fiction, dreams, ghost stories, politics, crime, secret societies,
Country: Britain, Ireland, Scotland, U.S..
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1819, 1823, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835, 1836, and 1838 (this collection 1997).
Summary: A collection of 14 short stories of horror, mystery, and macabre. The Vampyre (1819) by John Polidori is about a young man that encounters and is fascinated with a cold and mysterious young Count, but his life is quickly plunged into misery and horror when he realizes the Count is not what he seems. In Sir Guy's Eveling's Dream (1823) by Horace Smith, a man of loose morals dreams of a woman that he falls in love with, but when he encounters her in real life, he soon finds she hides a horrific secret. Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman (1830) by William Carleton tells of the real occurrence where a group of Ribbonmen (a movement of poor Catholics in Ireland) takes violent revenge upon a family that had accused them of theft and assault. In Monos and Daimonos (1830) by Edward Bulwer, a man who has spent most of his life wandering through the wild places of the world and revelling in solitude, gets stranded on an island with a man he loathes who, after an act of violence, inexplicably becomes the permanent companion of his life. In The Master of Logan (1831) by Allan Cunningham, a man who makes light of the spirits of the dead is visited by a beautiful neighbor late at night, who turns out to be not who or what she seems. The Victim (1831) by Anonymous, based on real circumstances, is a story about the dangers and horrors of the practice of buying medical cadavers from shady sources. Some Terrible Letters From Scotland (1932) by James Hogg is written as a series of letters from around Scotland, talking of the spread of Cholera. In The Curse (1832) by Anonymous, a man who comes back to his ancestral home after years of absence learns of a curse that haunts his family, and then enacts it in a moment of mad passion. In Life in Death (1833) by Anonymous, a man who steals a vial of substance that can resurrect the dead from his father's death-bed makes arrangements for his own children to resurrect him in a moment of death. In My Hobby,-Rather (aka The Disturbed Vigil) (1834) by N.P. Willis, a man watching over a dead body has a terrifying experience. The Red Man (1835) by Catherine Gore is a tale of a man who, traumatized by the infidelity of his wife, tries too hard to protect his daughter from the "life of sin," with terrible consequences. Post-Mortem Recollections of a Medical Lecturer (aka The Dream of Death) (1836) by Charles Lever is a tale about a doctor who remains conscious after his body has died. In The Bride of Lindorf (1836) by Letitia E. Landon, a young Count discovers an imprisoned beautiful girl in his uncle's house, and seeks to liberate her, but the truth behind her circumstances is not what it seems. In Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess (1838) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, an orphaned countess come to live at her uncle's house finds herself in the middle of a diabolical plot for her fortune and her life.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection..
♥ About the same time, there came to London a young gentleman of the name of Aubrey: he was an orphan left with an only sister in the possession of great wealth, by parents who died while he was yet in childhood. Left also to himself by guardians, who thought it their duty merely to take care of his fortune, while they relinquished the more important charge of his mind to the care of mercenary subalterns, he cultivated more his imagination than his judgement. He had, hence, that high romantic feeling of honour and candour, which daily ruins so many milliners' apprentices. He believed all to sympathise with virtue, and thought that vice was thrown in by Providence merely for the picturesque effect of the scene, as we see in romances; he thought that the misery of a cottage merely consisted in vesting of clothes, which were as warm, but which were better adapted to the painter's eye by their irregular folds and various coloured patches. He thought, in fine, that the dreams of poets were the realities of life.
♥ He gradually learnt that Lord Ruthven's affairs were embarrassed, and soon found, from the notes of preparation in--Street, that he was about to travel. Desirous of gaining some information respecting this singular character, who, till now, had only whetted his curiosity, he hinted to his guardians, that it was time for him to perform the tour, which for many generations has been thought necessary to enable the young to take some rapid steps in the career of vice, towards putting themselves upon an equality with the aged, and not allowing them to appear as if fallen from the skies, whenever scandalous intrigues are mentioned as the subjects of pleasantry or of praise, according to the degree of skill shewn in carrying them on.
~~The Vampyre by John Polidori.
♥ ..and for a wife, never have I yet seen the eyes that could bribe me to put the neck of my liberty into the collar of a wedding ring.
♥ Whom not to waken, he did full gently ope the door, and by the glooming light through the shutters oozing, saw her fair round arm, which Venus might envy, distended upon the counterpoint of the bed. So, taking it hushingly up with fond intent to kiss it-lo! it was key-cold!-he felt the pulse, and it did not beat;-he let go the arm, and it limped deadly down! Amort with fearful misgivings, he threw back the shutters, when the new-risen sun shone bright upon the bed, and drawing aside the curtains-O, God of mercy! he beheld a soul-sickening corpse!-Those late glorious eyes were now bloodshot and well night brast from their sockets, and albeit that the sun glared full upon them, they were stony and unlustrous; clenched were the teeth, wherefrom the bloodless lips started back; the visage was ghastly wan; the hair wildly spread about the pillow; and all bore semblance of one who with a violent and sudden death had painfully struggled!
Rushing, with a loud cry, from that chamber of death, he encountered his host, who, much astonished at his agony, and yet more when he kenned the cause thereof, betook him with right good speed to the Temple, searching a chirurgeon and the officers of justice, who coming with their posse to the house, made prisoner of Sir Guy, and with him straightway entered into the fatal room. But no sooner did they set eye upon the body, than backward, shuddering with much horror and consternation, while they crossed their foreheads, and called upon God and the saints to shield them, several voices did at once cry out-"That is the Italian lady which was hanged on Thursday last!-(Seemeth it that this misfortuned woman was the leman of the Italian ambassador, whom having in a passion of jealousy stabbed, she was judged therefore, and suffered the death at Tybourn). So unbuckling the broad velvet necklace, behold! her livid throat was all over sore, discoloured, and bruised, and wrinkled, and deep cut into by the cruel and despiteous rope.
Sir Guy, who had awhiles stood aghast in a voiceless dismay, now heaved forth a deep and dread groan,-for well might he remember, when his sister would fain dissuade him from wedding any semblance of the vision, that he profanely did say:-"Soothly, Alice, were a she devil to tempt me in such winning wise, I would certes wed her"; and he sorely trembled to think that some demon, peradventure Sathan himself, had incorporated himself in that now loathed form, to receive his plight and so delude and win his sinful soul. Thenceforward his gaysome heart and right merry cheer did altogether fail him; he 'gan to wail and dump, shunning converse of man, and in lonesome corners would paddle his neck with his hand, saying he could lay his finger in the wound, as if himself had been hanged; and in this wise get worse and worse, until at last he went stark distraught and was mewed up in the Spittal for the crazed, where, some three or four weeks thereafter, he gave up the ghost in great wildness and agony of soul.
~~Sir Guy Eveling's Dream by Horace Smith.
♥ ..but, from the standing group, who were evidently the projectors of the enterprise, I received a convulsive grasp of the hand, accompanied by a fierce and desperate look, that seemed to search my eye and countenance, to try if I was a person not likely to shrink from whatever they had resolved to execute. It is surprising to think of the powerful expression which a moment of intense interest or great danger is capable of giving to the eye, the features, and slightest actions, especially in those whose station in society does not require them to constrain nature, by the force of social courtesies, into habits of concealment of their natural emotions. None of the standing group spoke, but as each of them wrung my hand in silence, his eye was fixed on mine, with an expression of drunken confidence and secrecy, and an insolent determination not to be gainsayed without peril. If looks could be translated with certainty, they seemed to say, 'we are bound upon a project of vengeance, and if you do not join us, remember that we can revenge.' Along with this grasp, they did not forget to remind me of the common bond by which we were united, for each man gave me the secret grip of Ribbonism in a manner that made the joints of my gingers ache for some minutes after.
♥ The captain's lip quivered slightly, and his brow once more knit with the same hellish expression, which I have remarked gave him so much the appearance of an embodied fiend; but this speedily passed away, and was succeeded by a malignant sneer, in which lurked, if there ever did in a sneer, 'a laughing devil,' calmly, determinedly, atrocious.
~~Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman by William Carleton.
♥ My father was addicted to the sciences-the physical sciences-and possessed but a moderate share of learning in any thing else; he taught me all he knew; and the rest of my education, Nature, in a savage and stern guise, instilled in my heart by silent but deep lessons. She taught my feet to bound, and my arm to smite; she breathed life into my passions, and shed darkness over my temper; she taught me to cling to her, even in her most rugged and unalluring form, and to shrink from all else-from the companionship of man, and the soft smiles of woman, and the shrill voice of childhood; and the ties, and hopes, and socialities, and objects of human existence, as from a torture and a curse. Even in that sullen rock, and beneath that ungenial sky, I had luxuries unknown to the palled tasted of cities, or to those who woo delight in an air of odours and in a land of roses! What were those luxuries? They had a myriad varieties and shades of enjoyment-they had but a common name. What were those luxuries? Solitude!
♥ I commenced my pilgrimage-I pierced the burning sands-I traversed the vast deserts-I came into the enormous woods of Africa, where human step never trod, nor human voice ever started the thrilling and intense solemnity that broods over the great solitudes, as it brooded over chaos before the world was! There the primeval nature springs and perishes; undisturbed and unvaried by the convulsions of the surrounding world; the leaf becomes the tree, lives through its uncounted ages, falls and moulders, and rots and vanishes, unwitnessed in its mighty and mute changes, save by the wandering lion, or the wild ostrich, or that huge serpent-a hundred times more vast than the puny boa that the cold limners in Europe have painted, and whose bones the vain student has preserved, as a miracle and marvel. There, too, as beneath the heavy and dense shade I couched in the scorching noon, I heard the trampling as of an army, and the crush and fall of the strong trees, and beheld through the matted boughs the behemoth pass on its terrible way, with its eyes burning as a sun, and its white teeth arched and glistening in the rabid jaw, as pillars of spar glitter in a cavern; the monster, to whom only those wastes are a home, and who never, since the waters rolled from the Dædal earth, has been given to human gaze and wonder but my own! Seasons glided on, but I counted them not; they were not doled to me by the tokens of man, nor made sick to me by the changes of his base life, and the evidence of his sordid labour. Seasons glided on, and my youth ripened into manhood, and manhood grew grey with the first frost of age; and then a vague and restless spirit fell upon me, and I said in my foolish heart, "I will look upon the countenances of my race once more!"
♥ One night I was roused from my sleep by the screams and oaths of men, and I hastened on deck: we had struck upon a rock. It was a ghastly, but, oh Christ! how glorious a sight! Moonlight still and calm-the sea sleeping in sapphires; and in the midst of the silent and soft repose of all things, three hundred and fifty souls were to perish from the world! I sat apart, and looked on, and aided not. A voice crept like an adder's hiss upon my ear; I turned, and saw my tormentor; the moonlight fell on his face, and it grinned with the maudlin grin of intoxication, and his pale blue eye glistened, and he said, "We will not part even here!" My blood ran coldly through my veins, and I would have thrown him into the sea, which now came fast and fast upon us; but the moonlight was on him, and I did not dare to kill him. But I would not stay to perish with the herd, and I threw myself alone from the vessel and swam towards a rock. I saw a shark dart after me, but I shunned him, and the moment after he had plenty to sate his maw. I heard a crash, and a mingled and wild burst of anguish, the anguish of three hundred and fifty hearts that a minute afterwards were stilled, and I said in my own heart, with a deep joy, "His voice is with the rest, and we have parted!" I gained the shore, and lay down to sleep.
..I summoned one celebrated in purging from the mind's eye its films and deceits-I bound him by an oath to secrecy-and I told him my tale. He was a bold man and a learned, and he promised me relief and release.
"Where is the figure now?" said he, smiling; "I see it not."
And I answered, "It is six feet from us!"
"I see it not," said he again; "and if it were real, my senses would not receive the image less palpably than yours." And he spoke to me as schoolmen speak. I did not argue nor reply, but I ordered the servants to prepare a room, and to cover the floor with a thick layer of sand. When it was done, I bad the Leech follow me into the room, and I barred the door. "Where is the figure now"? repeated he; and I said, "Six feet from us as before!" And the Leech smiled. "Look on the floor," said I, and I pointed to the spot; "what see you?" And the Leech shuddered, and clung to me that he might not fall. "The sand," said he, "was smooth when we entered, and now I see on that spot the print of human feet!"
And I laughed, and dragged my living companion on; "See, said I," where we move what follows us!"
The Leech gasped for breath; "The print," said he, "of those human feet!"
"Can you not minister to me then?" cried I, in a sudden and fierce agony, "and must I never be alone again?"
And I saw the feet of the dead thing trace one word upon the sand; and the word was-NEVER.
~~Monos and Daimonos by Edward Bulwer.
♥ Some one had that day been buried, and less care than is usual had been taken in closing up the grave, for, as I went forward, my foot struck the fragment of a bone. I lifted it hastily, and was about to throw it away, when the old man said, "Stay, thoughtless boy, that which you touch so carelessly was once part of a living creature, born in pain and nursed tenderly, was beloved, and had a body to rot in the grave, and a soul to ascend into heaven-touch not, therefore, the dust of thy brother so rudely." So he took the bone, and, lifting a portion of the green sod, which covered the grave, replaced it in the earth.
♥ "I love to converse," he said, "with children such as yourself. The young men of this generation mock the words of age; it would be well if they mocked nothing else; but what can we expect of those who doubt all and believe nothing?
♥ ..-the sight of his mother's writing, and the entry of his own birth and baptism, in her small and elegant hand, made his eyes moist, though no tears fell:-as he sat with it open on his knee, he thought there was more light in the chamber than the candles shed, and lifting his head, he imagined that a female form, shadowy and pure, dissolved away into air as he looked. "That was, at least, a real phantom of the imagination," he said mentally-"the remembrance of my mother created her shape-and it is thus that our affections fool us."
♥ "He's got into one of his fits of communings with the invisible world," thought Sorbie, "and it's wisdom to let him alone, lest he should cause me to see something whilk I have no wish to see."
♥ The Master seemed to have dismissed from his mind all the fears which lately distressed him; the intoxication of woman's beauty o'ermastered all other emotions.
♥ "My son," said he, "the evils which beset thee arise from the living, and not from the dead, and you are more in jeopardy from one ripe and rosy madam in warm flesh and blood, than from all the bones of all the dames that ever graced the courts of the Stuarts. The words which you uttered were indeed unguarded, and must be repented of; but they were uttered in a dull ear-death and the grave listen to no voice, save that of the archangel. No, no, my son, imagine not that rash words can call dust into life; can summon the spirit from the realms of bliss or of woe, or that thou art so supremely blessed, or so splendidly wicked, as to have spirits of good, or of evil, for thy boon companions."
♥ "Look on me, my child," said the old man, when he had concluded his wild story; "I could have told this tale in a soberer fashion-yea, I could even have told it to thee in a merrier shape-nathless the end and upshot would have been the same. I tell it to thee now, lest its memory should perish on the earth and its moral warning cease. Tell it to thy children, and to thy children's children, as I have told it, and do not lend an ear to the glozing versions which the witty and profane relate. Hearken to them, and you will believe that this fair and evil spirit was a piece of lascivious flesh and blood, and that the power which the Preacher and the Master of Logan laboured to subdue was a batch of old wine, which proved the conqueror, and laid them in joy side by side, while the head domestic, a clever and a sagacious man, invented this wondrous tale to cover their infirmities. Nay, an thou smilest, even relate it as thou wilt. Laughter is happiness, and sorrow is admonition-and why should not a story have its merry side and its sad, as well as human life?
~~The Master of Logan by Allan Cunningham.
♥ An eccentric man did the world account him. "Very odd," remarked the heads of houses for wholesale brides, "that the old man should insist upon his son studying medicine and surgery, when every one known he will inherit at least ten thousand a-year."-"Nothing to do with it," was the argument of the father; "who can tell what is to happen to funded, or even landed property, in England? The empire of disease takes in the world; and in all its quarters, medical knowledge may be made the key to competency and wealth."
♥ "Courage, my dear fellow," said I, "there is no space too great to allow of the sun's rays enlivening it-neither is that heart in existence which hope may not inhabit."
~~The Victim by Anonymous.
♥ I grew worse and worse, and wished heartily that I were dead.
But now the rest of the adjoining cotters rose in a body, and insisted on turning me out. Is it not strange, Sir, that this most horrible of all pestilences [cholera] would deprive others, not only of natural feeling, but of reason?
♥ ..but the chillness of death had settled on my limbs and arms, and all the blood in my body had retreated to its conquered citadel; and a little before daylight I died.
♥ But between those who are bound together by the sacred ties of love, there is, I believe, a sort of electrical sympathy, even in a state of insensibility.
♥ It is amazing that the people of London should mock at the fears of their brethren for this terrible and anomalous plague; for though it begins with the hues and horrors of death, it is far more frightful than death itself; and it is impossible for any family or community to be too much on their guard against its baleful influence.
♥ It does a great deal of ill to the constitution to be too frightened for this scourge of God; but temerity is madness, and caution prudence: for this may be depended on, that it is as infectious as fire. But then, when fire is set to the mountain, it is only such parts of its surface as are covered with decayed garbage that is combustible, while over the green and healthy parts of the mountain the flame has no power; and any other reasoning than this is worse than insanity.
For my part, I have been very hardly used, there having been few harder cases than my own. In Lothian every one shunned me; and the constables stopped me on the road, and would not even suffer me to leave the county,-the terror of infection is so great. So dreadful are the impressions of fear on some minds, that it has caused a number of people both in Scotland and England to hang themselves, or otherwise deprive themselves of life, as the only sure way of escaping its agonies.
♥ Oakum continues in perfect health; but was obliged to undergo fumigation and a bath, by way of quarantine, which he took highly amiss.
~~Some Terrible Letters from Scotland by James Hogg.
♥ For home, with all its ecstatic associations, rushed full and strong on my mind; I had a father whom I revered-a brother whom I loved as brother never was loved before; I was going to see them, to live with them, never more to part. But there was one in whom was concentrated the love of father and of brother, and more than both-one who for years, ay "even from my boyish days," had ever formed a part of my musings by day, my dreams by night; the thoughts of whose love and constancy had been my guiding polar star in all difficulties, the zest of my property, the solace of my darker hours;-deprived of whom life seemed but a "salt-sown desert," though invested with all that was glorious or great, and with whom a crust of brown bread and a squalid hovel seemed richer than the banquet of a Roman emperor, or the palace of an eastern magician whose slaves were mighty genii, and to whom the elements themselves were ministering spirits.
Helen Vere-my hand shakes like palsied age as I trace her name-Helen Vere was my first, my only love; I loved her before I knew what the passion was, and it grew with my years, and strengthened with my strength. I see her at this moment before me, plain and distinct, as if she "were still in the flesh." Her slender, exquisitely formed person, her glorious bust, faultlessly white as uncontaminated snow, delicately intersected with veins vying with the dreamy azure of an Italian sky; her large dark swimming eyes, where passionate love and maiden bashfulness dwelt, twin sisters; her hand-her-but I injure by this attempt at description-her peerless beauty might be dreamt of, but never, never could be painted by poet or limner.
We were young when we parted-she was but a girl, and I but few steps beyond boyhood-and we loved almost as children love, without a dream of change or alteration. We pledged no vows, made no sworn promises;
"For never having dream'd of falsehood, we
Had not one word to say of constancy.
I never dreamt of change; I would as soon have thought that the sun could cease to shine, or the planets keep their nightly watch among the countless armies of heaven.
♥ A sabbath-like calm pervaded the scene; nothing was heard save the slight breeze rustling the clumps of withered hemlock, or, at intervals, the sweet wild murmur of the humble-bee, gathering its treasure from the buttercups and blue-bells. No one can resist the sympathies of nature altogether, and my mind soon grew calm and tranquil at the scene around me.
♥ It was a fine, calm, clear, winter morning, the ground was covered with snow hardened by a keen frost, and the sun shone brightly and cheerily, as if on a scene of joy and festivity. His wife hearing the noise ran out to welcome her John, and beheld him a fettered prisoner, and in the hands of those whose tender mercies she well knew were horrid cruelties!
But the God whom she served did not forsake her in this her moment of bitterness and despair; she felt nerved with a strength which no human power could ever invest her with; and she went up to her husband firmly and tearlessly, as if she knew not that he was soon to be a bleeding corpse, and she a friendless, houseless widow. She whispered a word of courage and consolation in his ear, she chafed his stiff, half-frozen hands, she parted his long brown hair over his brow-for his arms were tied-and with the corner of her apron she wiped the sweat from his cheek, and the foam of pain and agony from those lips from which she had often drained deep draughts of love and delight.
The murderous ruffian now tendered the rest, as the only means of escape from death-instant death; and what a test! a compromise of conscience, a trampling on the tenderest feelings of devotion and principle. The agonized husband cast an eye of bitter meaning on his wife, and she at once understood the appeal, and nobly she answered it. "John Craig," she said, with a voice slightly broken, for the woman and the wife were holding a fearful strife in her breast,-"John Craig, care not for me; I am friendless, I am poor, I have none on earth to care for me but you, but God will care for me, John; He is the father of the fatherless, and the husband of the widow; He who has cared for me up till this time will give me strength to witness this last trial-to drain to the dregs this cup of unmixed bitterness and grief. We have often prayed together, dear John, when we were safe in our own sweet cottage, when we feared no danger and suffered no evil; and shall we not pray now when the shades of death compass us around, and hem us in on every side? come, John, let us pray to Him who is the hearer of prayer, and who hath not told any of the seed of Jacob to seek His face in vain." And he looked on her and was comforted, and shook away the first and only tear he had shed; and there they knelt on the frozen ground, the husband and the wife, and prayed a prayer which made even the rude and thoughtless troopers turn aside and weep.
But Sir John's heart was hardened; he rudely broke in on their devotions, cursed their canting whine, and commanded the helpless and manacled man to kneel down on a little stone, and the troopers to prepare their carbines. He obeyed without a murmur; but when he rose to take his place as commanded, all men wondered at the change which that short season of prayer had wrought on his countenance. His eye was no longer clouded and downcast, but gleamed with an exultation and light which seemed to reflect something beyond the grave-brighter and more glorious than the sun in his unclouded pride; he kissed the pale and bloodless cheek of his Isobel, and walked with a stately and unflinching step to the appointed place; but, before he kneeled down, he looked steadily at Erskine castle, the windows of which were glittering in the morning sun, and many thought that a shade of sorrow passed over his manly brow. He stood as if entranced for a moment or two, and then spake in tones more sorrowful than angry. "We are commanded to pray for our enemies, and from my soul I beseech that my blood may not be laid to the charge of this man, but I may not conceal what God commands me to speak: I shall indeed fall by your hands, but I will not fall unavenged; you will not see it-none here present will see it-but as surely as I speak, it will come to pass. Yet three generations, and the proud house of Rath will cease to be, and fearful will the curse fall: would I could avert it! but God has decreed it, and what mortal shall stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou? Farewell, time-farewell, all created comforts; welcome, eternity-welcome, heaven-welcome, eternal life. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Amen! and amen!"
Here he bent his head and ceased to speak. The troopers unslung their muskets and took aim, and the miserable wife kneeled down also, covering her eyes firmly with both hands. She saw nothing-she heard nothing; and when she came to her recollection, the band had retired, and her young goodman was lying at her feet, with his brains sprinkled over his fair and manly face. She stretched the body out on the snow, for she had now no home-the wretches had burned the cottage to the ground-and after closing those eyes which had never spoken to her but in the language of peace and love and joy, she prayed to their common God, and found comfort such as the world can neither give nor take away.
♥ But when I look at the desolation which pervades my paternal mansion and lawns, when I look at my worn-out frame, and my hair prematurely gray with sorrow and watching, and think that with me one of the oldest families in the land will cease to exist, a feeling of unspeakable loneliness will ever and anon steal upon me; and I think with chastened wonder upon the ways of that God which are past finding out, and which baffle and put to fault the wisest imaginings of our poor, erring, short-sighted race.
~~The Curse by Anonymous.
♥ Francis passed the three following days in the alternate stupor and excitement of one to whom crime is new, and who is nevertheless resolved on its commission.
♥ Walter and his sister were still sitting up in the small oratory which had been their mother's and both hastened to the chamber of death. Ignorance has its blessing; what a world of corruption and distrust would have entered those youthful hearts, could they have known the worthlessness of the parent they mourned with such innocent and endearing sorrow.
~~Life in Death by Anonymous.
♥ Such a night! It was like a festival of Dian,-a burst of a summer shower at sunset, with a clap or two of thunder, had purified the air to an intoxicating rareness, and the free breathing of the flowers, and the delicious perfume from the earth and grass, and the fresh foliage of the new spring, showed the delight and sympathy of inanimate Nature in the night's beauty. There was no atmosphere-nothing between the eye and the pearly moon,-and she rode through the heavens without a veil, like a queen as she is, giving a glimpse of her nearer beauty for a festal favour to the worshipping stars.
♥ It was, as I was saying, a night of wonderful beauty. I was watching a corpse. In that part of the United States the dead are never left alone till the earth is thrown upon them, and, as a friend of the family, I had been called upon for this melancholy service on the night preceding the interment.
~~My Hobby,-Rather by N.P. Willis.
♥ A certain popular French tradition would lead us to believe that the palace of the Tuileries has been for centuries past the resort of a demon, familiarly known by the name of "L'Homme Rouge," or the Red Man; who is seen wandering in all parts of the Château whenever some great misfortune menaces its regal inhabitant; but who retreats at other periods to a small niche in the Tour de l'Horloge, the central tower built by Catherine de Medicis, and especially devoted to the use of her royal astrologers.
♥ For ourselves, who had been witnessing for the first time the operation of the knife [execution], we must pleads guilty to a certain perturbation of the senses leaving every sensation indistinct; a whizzing in the ears,-a mistiness of vision,-a parchedness of tongue,-a throbbing of heart, rendering the very way before us hard to follow. We had a mind to visit Nôtre Dame for early mass. Our spirit hungered after the pealing of the organ and the music of those pure young voices which speak the promises of peace in heavenliest diapason. We had been present at the passing of a human soul, (guilty or guiltless, God alone could determine,) from time to eternity. We longed for the murmurs of a requiem; the tranquillity of a holy place; for the security of the sanctuary; for the groined roof, the echoing aisle, the word of God, the promises of salvation.
♥ ..we ventured to cast an upward glance of inquiry towards the old iron-dealer's face.
What a study for Rembrandt! The otter-skin cap of Balthazar, foxy as his own iron-dyed hair and whiskers, was pulled close upon one eye, while the other peered out, bleared and fiery from the excitement of its habitual atmosphere, with the leathern cheek around puckered into a peculiar expression of cunning and exultation. His thin lips were compressed, as if waiting the irrepressible interrogations of our curiosity; and while he stood leaning against a fascis of jarring rods, he rolled unconsciously within his red hands a corner of his rusty leathern apron, from which the ferruginous particles fell off in volleys.
♥ "..Not, surely, in France;-not in gallant, refined, chivalrous Paris? This curious specimen may have been imported from the East,-from Tunis, or Tripoli, or Fez?"
"No such thing!" interrupted Balthazar. "The ironwork does honour to a trusty workman, who must have served his time to a master-mechanic of the cité; the hand is that of a woman French-born,-Parisian-bred. The victim was, in short, one who lived and died almost within sight and sound of the very spot where we are standing."
"Centuries ago, of course. The times of the Frédégondes and Brunéhauts have probably legends of domestic horror to match with the crimes of their historical archives."
"Bah, bah!" cried the old man petulantly. "Human nature is the same in all ages and countries. Every day-every city-produces some monstrous wickedness, secret or discovered, arising from the triumphs of ungoverned passion;-from hatred,-lust,-revenge,-or mere blood-thirstiness. The crime in which this piece of ruthless machinery had its rise, was done in my own lifetimes, in a place which I weekly and calmly traverse. The perpetrator went down to the grave, I will not say unpunished, but undiscovered. No one pitied the victim,-no one cursed the assassin. The whole story is, and is better, buried in oblivion."
♥ "What avails it to rake up memoirs of the frailties of our fellow-creatures?" said the Red Man, dropping the corner of his leathern apron, replacing his cap horizontally over his brows, and turning towards a tray of screws sand hinges, as if provokingly bent on devoting his attention to indifferent objects. "Let the dead bury their dead! To-morrow it were cruelty to speak of the last throes of the unhappy wretch whom this morning you saw precipitated into eternity. Yet his life was given for a life, according to the decree of the Almighty, according to the laws of the land."
~~The Red Man by Catherine Gore.
♥ No one but he who has himself experienced it, knows anything of the deep and heartfelt interest a medical man takes in many of the cases which professionally come before him; I speak here of an interest perfectly apart from all personal regard for the patient or his friends. Indeed, the feeling I allude to, has nothing in common with this, and will often be experienced as thoroughly for a perfect stranger as for one known and respected for years.
To the extreme of this feeling I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and unexpectedly imposed-the struggle for success, when success was all but hopeless-the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its dangers, or invest it with new ones-the despondence when that period has come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect of recovery-and, last of all, that most trying, of all the trying duties of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives, that my art had failed, my resources were exhausted, in a word, that there was no loner a hope.
♥ I made to trace the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the individual in childhood, when overcome by passion or overbalanced by excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses, which, in after years, develope eccentricities of character, and in some weaker temperaments, aberrations of intellect.
♥ Was this then death? Could it be, that though coldness wrapt the suffering clay, passion and sense should still survive-and that while every external trace of life had fled, consciousness should still cling to the cold corpse destined for the earth. Oh! how horrible, how more than horrible! the terror of that thought.
♥ Yes! thought I, in a transport, the will to live, is the power to live; and only when this faculty has yielded with bodily strength, need death be the conqueror over us.
~~Post-Mortem Recollections of a Medical Lecturer by Charles Lever.
♥ Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city-and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted-strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon-quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills-these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town-the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent-her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult-man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder-a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones-music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together-the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves. Vain hopes, vainer fears, feverish pleasure, passionate sorrow, crime, despair, and death-these make up the eternal records of Time's dark chronicle. But this hurried life has its pauses-once in the twenty-four come a few hours of rest and silence.
♥ The Countess von Hermanstadt was unrivalled in her fêtes. She knew how to give them-a knowledge very few possess. The generality labour under the delusion, that when they have lighted and filled their rooms, they have done their all. They never were more in error. Lighting is much-crowding is much also-but there lacks "something more exquisite still." This something the countess possessed in its perfection. Any can assemble a crowd, but few can make it mingle. But Madame von Hermanstadt had a skill which a diplomatist might have studied. She saw-she heard everything; she knew who would and who would not understand each other; she caught at a glance the best position for one lady's velvets, and for the diamonds of another; she never interrupted those who were engaged-she never neglected those who were not; she took care that great people should be amused, and little people astonished. Moreover, she had an object in whatever she did-hence the incentive of interest wads added to the pride of art.
♥ ..her niece, who had just left the convent of St Therese;-her education, as it is called, completed-that education which is but begun. How many cares-how much sorrow will it take to give the stern and bitter education of actual life!
♥ At the first glance, that slight and graceful girl-with the rose on her cheek a little flushed by exercise, her glittering curls falling round her, golden as those of Hope-might have seemed the very ideal of youth and pleasure;-so much for the first glance, and how few go beyond!
♥ ..but there was something in the expression of the eyes, when raised, that caught even the most careless passer-by. They were large-unusually large-and of that violet blue which so rarely outlasts the age of childhood, while they wore that wild and melancholy look whose shadows have a character of fate;-they are omens of the heart.
♥ "Action-action in the sunshine-passion-but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine-we sadden and we subdue-we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world-we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine-so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny; it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just began. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins-a brilliant light dances around it-it is bright-it is beautiful-and it is consumed! What remains?-A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blackened ash! What more will remain of the heart?"
♥ He was made of all nature's most dangerous ingredients: he thought deeply-he felt acutely; and for such this world has neither resting-place nor contentment.
♥ At length the ball ended, as all balls do-having given some delight, more discontent, and also several colds..
♥ Love only rightly interprets love.
♥ But she-she loved him with all that poetry which is only to be found in a woman's first affection; it is the early colour that the rose-bud opens to the south wind,-the warmth that morning breathes upon a cloud whose blush reddens, but returns not. Pure, shy, sensitive, tender, and unreal; it is the most ethereal, yet most lasting feeling life can know. The influence of a woman's first love is felt in her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love-youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it for ever.-If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth-that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?
♥ ..he would spend days in the old forest adjoining, till the midnight stars shone through the darkling branches like the eyes of a spirit, awakening all that was most ethereal in his nature. Hours too were past on the winding and lovely river-lost in those vague but impassioned reveries which fade, and for ever, amid the sterner realities of life. The dreaming boyhood prepares for adventurous man; we first fancy, then feel, and, at last, act and think.
♥ ..it was a bright open grass plot-a very rendezvous for every stray sunbeam..
♥ "Will you come to my home?"
And the maiden smiled and said, "I shall be so happy."
But the words of lovers are a language apart; their melody is a fairy song departing with the one haunted hour; to repeat it is to make it commonplace-cold, yet wen can all remember it.
♥ ..and the elements had already commenced their strife. The creaking of the huge pine branches, mixed with the hurried sweeping of the leaves, of which a dry shower every now and then whirled from the earth-from the gathered heaps of autumn, or came down in hundreds from overhead. The birds, disturbed from their usual rest, flew around, beating the air with their troubled wings, and uttering shrill cries; the thunder rolled along in the distance, and a few large drops of rain fell heavily upon the ground; there was an unnatural heat in the air, and gleams of phosphoric light streamed along the burthened sky.
♥ Ernest supported the almost insensible form of his bride; he murmured a few caressing words-but even love, in all its strength, felt powerless before the war of the immortal elements.
~~The Bride of Lindorf by Letitia E. Landon.
♥ I was now almost reduced to despair-my last cast had failed-I had no course left, but that of eloping secretly from the castle, and placing myself under the protection of the nearest magistrate. I felt if this were not done, and speedily, that I should be murdered. No one, from mere description, can have an idea of the unmitigated horror of my situation-a helpless, weak, inexperienced girl, placed under the power, and wholly at the mercy of evil men, and feeling that she had it not in her power to escape for a moment from the malignant influences under which she was probably fated to fall-and with a consciousness that if violence, if murder were designed, her dying shriek would be lost in void space-no human being would be near to aid her-no human interposition could deliver her.
♥ The task was finished. The catastrophe of the tragedy must soon be accomplished. I determined now to defend my life to the last..
♥ Deep and fervent as must always be my gratitude to Heaven for my deliverance, effected by a chain of providential occurrences, the failing of a single link of which must have ensured my destruction, I was long before I could look back upon it with other feelings than those of bitterness, almost of agony. The only being that had ever really loved me, my nearest and dearest friend, ever ready to sympathise, to counsel, and to assist-the gayest, the gentlest, the warmest heart-the only creature on earth that cared for me-her life had been the price of my deliverance; and I then uttered the wish, which no event of my long and sorrowful life has taught me to recall, that she had been spared, and that, in her stead, I were mouldering in the grave, forgotten and at rest.
~~Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.