Of course they were--the good old times, or, as Macaulay has it, "the
brave days of old." Things are not now as they used to be; and mind, O
reader, these are not my words, but those of a patriarch. Things are
not as they used to be; the theatres even have not the casts now that
they had fifty years since; those were the fine old coaching times, when
team after team started from the old Post-office in style. There were
beaux and bucks, and men of spirit then--men who could dress, and spent
their money as it should be spent. Gambling, duelling, and such
spirited affairs were common, and really, there can be no doubt of it,
times are altered.
I am foolish enough to think for the better--but then I am only a
unit,--and I think so in spite of the incessant mess the railway, gas,
water, telegraph, pneumatic, and all the other companies are making of
our streets. One cannot help admiring our monster hotels, gigantic
railway schemes, palatial warehouses, etcetera, etcetera, but then we
miss many of our delightful old institutions. Where are the dustmen's
bells of our childhood? Surely those polished articles in our railway
stations, always reposing upon a wooden block when one is at a distance,
but which our approach seems to be the signal for the "stout porters" to
seize and jangle harshly in our ears--surely those are not the "bells,
bells, bells" so familiar of old. Where are the organs with the
waltzing figures turning round and round to the ground-up music of
Strauss or Weber, then in their popularity? Where the people who so
horrified our diaper pinafore-encased bosom by walking upon stilts to
the accompaniment of drum and Pan pipes? Where the ancient glories of
Jack in the Green and Guido Fawkes? Where are numbers of our old street
friends who seem gone, while Punch alone seems immortal, and comes out
yearly with fresh paint covering his battered old phiz? Certainly we
had in the street "twopence more and up goes the donkey," though no man
had the good fortune to be present when the twopence more was arrived
at, and the miserable asinine quadruped was elevated upon the ladder and
balanced upon its owner's chin--certainly we had that; but after all
said and done, how our acrobats have improved, how much brighter are the
spangles, how much better greased the hair and developed the muscles.
Look at that tub feat, or the man balanced upon the pole, of course an
improved donkey trick. Look at--look at the length of thy article, oh!
writer.
It seems only yesterday, but some years have passed now since we used to
lie in bed of a cold, dark winter's morning, and listen to the prolonged
rattle of the sweep's brush upon some chimney-pot far on high, and then
hear the miserable little fellow's doleful "halloo, halloo, halloo," by
way of announcement that he had achieved his task, and had head and
shoulders right out of the pot. And it seems only yesterday, too, that,
by special favour, our household Betty allowed me to descend and see the
sweeps do the kitchen chimney, when I stood trembling in presence of our
blackened visitors and the smoke-jack, and then saw the great black pall
fastened before the fireplace with three forks, when the sooty boy
covered his head and face with a cap, grinning diabolically at me before
he eclipsed his features, and then by the light of the blackened tallow
candle I saw him disappear behind the cloth.
That was quite enough, and I could stand no more, but turned and fled
upstairs, feeling convinced that he would never come down again.
And it really was but yesterday, comparatively speaking, when, in the
depth of winter, a few days before Christmas, Mrs Scribe and self were
staying at a friend's house in Lower Bleak Street, Grimgreen Square,
close by Glower Street, North. I had a cold whose effect was to make me
insufferably hot and feverish, and as I lay in bed, somewhere about what
seemed the middle of the night, by which I mean the middle of one's
sleeping night, not twelve o'clock, when one has just plunged into bed--
about the middle of the night, while I was dreaming of being where there
were rows upon rows of lights, through which I was being somehow
propelled at the risk of being dashed against an indescribable object,
while my hands were apparently swelling out to a large size, and I was
in a wild, semi-delirious dream, from which it was a charity to wake me,
I felt my arm roughly grasped, and a well-known voice whispered in my
ear--
"Are you awake?"
As soon as I could collect myself and make sure that I really was in the
required state, I said, "Yes." But that was not until some few seconds
had passed.
"Only listen, dear," there's some one in the room, the voice whispered
again in an agitated manner.
"Pooh, nonsense," I said perversely, "I know that. There's been some
one all night." And then I stopped short, for though I knew that I had
fastened the door when we came to bed, I could hear a gentle rustling
noise, as of some one in a silk dress slowly gliding about the room very
slowly, and then coming to a stop, and apparently agitating the robe,
when again the rustling began, and it appeared just opposite the foot of
our bed.
"What shall we do?" gasped Mrs Scribe in a smothered voice, from
beneath the clothes.
I didn't know, so of course I could not tell her. I knew what I ought
to do, which was to have leaped boldly out of bed, and grappled the
intruder, but then the rustling was like that of a silk dress, and if a
ghost, of course it was of the feminine gender, and one could not help
studying decorum.
"Hadn't you better get up and see what it is?" said Mrs S, accompanying
the remark with a touch from her elbow.
"I'm in such a perspiration, I daren't stir," I whispered. "Remember
what a cold I have." And how I blessed that cold just then, for to a
man not too brave in his constitution, it did seem such a neat
creephole, for if one is no hero to his valet, one likes to be somebody
in the eyes of a wife. But still I must confess to a horrible dread of
ghosts, owing no doubt to the fact, that in our old house in Pimlico,
where I dwelt till the age of five, there was a huge black bogie who had
his habitat in the cellar, and though I never saw him, I was assured of
his existence upon the competent authority of both maids, and
consequently always had a wholesome dread of the coal-scuttle and the
coals, over which he must have walked.
"But what shall we do?" whispered Mrs Scribe again. "You really must
get out, dear."
Which was likely, wasn't it, to jump out of bed in the dark on purpose
to attack an unseen form in a rustling silk dress, creeping and gliding
about apparently by the wall? Why, to have attacked a ghost one could
have seen would have been bad enough, but in the dark when it could take
one at such disadvantage, it was not to be thought of, so I said by way
of compromise--
"Stop a minute," and there I lay listening to the horrible, creeping,
gliding, rustling noise. Ah! I could see it all plainly enough in my
imagination. We were in one of the old houses of the past century, and
here no doubt there had been a lady murdered after betrayal, and
concealed behind the wainscot. And now I remembered a peculiar smell
there was in the place when we entered it, a smell that I could not name
then, but which I know now, from having experienced it in the British
Museum--it was a mummy. There it was, all as plain as could be, a tall
slight figure in a brocaded silk dress extended with hoops, short
sleeves, and long lace trimmings hanging over the soft well rounded
arms; and there she was with her hair built right up, and secured by a
great comb, slowly gliding along by the wall, not on the floor, but some
feet up, and slowly rising higher and higher towards the ceiling.
All at once I fancied she turned her face to me, and, horror of horrors,
it was fleshless--nothing but the gaping sockets of the eyeballs, and
the grinning white teeth of a skull, and then I could bear no more, but
tried to cover my eyes with my hands, but found they did not need the
cover as the clothes were already to a certain extent over them. I
solemnly protest, however, that this must have been the act of Mrs
Scribe, for I could not have done such a thing.
This convinced me that I could not have seen the figure, so I raised
myself upon my elbow, urged thereto by the words of Mrs S, who
exclaimed--
"Do pray get up, dear, or I shall faint."
"I wish you would," I muttered to myself, but then, thinking of the
cruelty of the remark, I added, "or go to sleep," and then I tried to
pierce the thick darkness, but found that I was unable even to
distinguish the parts of the bedstead, and there, all the while, was the
noise, "rustle, rustle, rustle"--then a stoppage, and a sound as if a
hand beat against the wall, and at last the rustling quite ceased, and
was succeeded by a peculiar scraping sound, at times quite loud, and
then dying away, or stopping, and seeming as if it was not in the room
at all.
"Is it gone?" whispered Mrs S, and then, as I did not answer, and she
could not hear any noise, sitting up in bed by my side, "Oh! how
dreadful it is--isn't it, dear?" she whispered. "Pray do get up and see
what it can be."
The catarrh had made me so weak, and preyed so upon my nerves, that I
was obliged to take refuge again under my cold, and plead perspiration
and sudden check, and then, with the exception of the grating noise, all
seemed quiet; and I was about thinking of lying down again, when
"rustle, rustle," came the sound again, and Mrs S collapsed, that is to
say, sank beneath the clothes, while I--well I _didn't_ leap out of bed,
and try to grapple with our nocturnal visitant. I knew there were
matches upon the table, and I remembered exactly where the candle stood,
but I put it to the reader, who could get out of bed and try to light a
candle when there was a ghost in the room in a brocaded silk dress,
rustling about from place to place, and seeming as if the floor was no
necessity at all, for sometimes the noise came from far up, and
sometimes from low down; and at last, as I sat there in a regular
Turkish Bath, minus the shampooing, it seemed that the tall figure I
imagined to be there gliding about by the wall grew shorter and shorter
until but a foot high, then a few inches, and at last it was upon a
level with the floor, and then the noise grew fainter and fainter, and
at last was gone entirely, leaving a deep silence as intense as the
darkness which closed us in upon all sides.