The species of publication--which has come to be generally known by the
title of _Annual_, being a miscellany of prose and verse, equipped with
numerous engravings, and put forth every year about Christmas, had
flourished for a long while in Germany, before it was imitated in this
country by an enterprising bookseller, a German by birth, Mr.
Ackermann. The rapid success of his work, as is the custom of the time,
gave birth to a host of rivals, and, among others, to an Annual styled
The Keepsake, the first volume of which appeared in 1828, and attracted
much notice, chiefly in consequence of the very uncommon splendour of
its illustrative accompaniments. The expenditure which the spirited
proprietors lavished on this magnificent volume, is understood to have
been not less than from ten to twelve thousand pounds sterling!
Various gentlemen, of such literary reputation that any one might think
it an honour to be associated with them, had been announced as
contributors to this Annual, before application was made to me to
assist in it; and I accordingly placed with much pleasure at the
Editor's disposal a few fragments, originally designed to have been
worked into the Chronicles of the Canongate, besides a MS. Drama, the
long-neglected performance of my youthful days,--the House of Aspen.
The Keepsake for 1828 included, however, only three of these little
prose tales--of which the first in order was that entitled "My Aunt
Margaret's Mirror." By way of _introduction_ to this, when now included
in a general collection of my lucubrations, I have only to say that it
is a mere transcript, or at least with very little embellishment, of a
story that I remembered being struck with in my childhood, when told at
the fireside by a lady of eminent virtues, and no inconsiderable share
of talent, one of the ancient and honourable house of Swinton. She was
a kind relation of my own, and met her death in a manner so shocking,
being killed in a fit of insanity by a female attendant who had been
attached to her person for half a lifetime, that I cannot now recall
her memory, child as I was when the catastrophe occurred, without a
painful reawakening of perhaps the first images of horror that the
scenes of real life stamped on my mind.
This good spinster had in her composition a strong vein of the
superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in
her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had formed out
of a human skull. One night, this strange piece of furniture acquired
suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd
circles on her chimneypiece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued
to roll about the apartment. Mrs. Swinton calmly proceeded to the
adjoining room for another light, and had the satisfaction to penetrate
the mystery on the spot. Rats abounded in the ancient building she
inhabited, and one of these had managed to ensconce itself within her
favourite _memento mori_. Though thus endowed with a more than feminine
share of nerve, she entertained largely that belief in supernaturals,
which in those times was not considered as sitting ungracefully on the
grave and aged of her condition; and the story of the Magic Mirror was
one for which she vouched with particular confidence, alleging indeed
that one of her own family had been an eye-witness of the incidents
recorded in it.
"I tell the tale as it was told to me."
Stories enow of much the same cast will present themselves to the
recollection of such of my readers as have ever dabbled in a species of
lore to which I certainly gave more hours, at one period of my life,
than I should gain any credit by confessing.
_August_, 1831.