WHEN I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so
distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My
speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian
name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year),
Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial letter belonged to his family
name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.
Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether he was a
lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he
could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who
brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant
Mother Bunch?
With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also
carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the
deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn’t
have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling,
had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a
Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs,
like a Bounding Billiard Ball?
So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.
It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream
of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the instant I awoke
from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and
roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would
fit it and keep it quiet.
For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began
to perceive that things were going wrong.
The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when
it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my
glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement,
that I was shaving—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy. Apparently Master
B.!
I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked again in
the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who
was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely
troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the
looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in
which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while
recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me,
the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this
new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself.
Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who
has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did
see in my life.
Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present
general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I
retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience
of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking
from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my
feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master
B.!
I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive
voice saying, “Where am I? What is become of me?” and, looking hard in
that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.
The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not
so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth,
made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons
went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and
appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right
hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach;
connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and
his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a
boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.
“Where am I?” said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. “And why was
I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that Calomel given
me?”
I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn’t tell
him.
“Where is my little sister,” said the ghost, “and where my angelic little
wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?”
I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take
heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I
represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human
experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself had,
in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and
none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that that
boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a
delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I
found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an
inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent
boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having
been together at “Old Doylance’s,” he had asked himself to breakfast with
me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak
embers of belief in Doylance’s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had
proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of
Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished,
instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions
of ten-and-sixpenny notes.
The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare. “Barber!” it
apostrophised me when I had finished.
“Barber?” I repeated—for I am not of that profession.
“Condemned,” said the ghost, “to shave a constant change of
customers—now, me—now, a young man—now, thyself as thou art—now, thy
father—now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton
every night, and to rise with it every morning—”
(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)
“Barber! Pursue me!”
I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell
to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in Master B.’s room
no longer.
Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced
upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact
truth—particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions,
and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that, during my
occupation of Master B.’s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it,
on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was
presented to no shabby old man with a goat’s horns and tail (something
between Pan and an old clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as
stupid as those of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other
things which appeared to me to have more meaning.
Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without
hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a
broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very smell of the
animal’s paint—especially when I brought it out, by making him warm—I am
ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney coach;
an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation
is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination
of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal
to previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom,
on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in
the state of his stomach that his head was always down there,
investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on
roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab—another forgotten
institution where the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with
the driver.
Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit
of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than
those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from
which you may judge of many.
I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was
conscious of something within me, which has been the same all through my
life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases and
varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed
in Master B.’s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of
legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the
smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was
confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature.
This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.
The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respectability,
neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it was the way of the good
Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once,
it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable,
and most worthy of imitation. “O, yes! Let us,” said the other creature
with a jump, “have a Seraglio.”
It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious
character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we
perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we
knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of
appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably
shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.
We were ten in Miss Griffin’s establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight
ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Bule, whom I judge to have attained the
ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I opened the
subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed that she should
become the Favourite.
Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and
charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the
idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson?
Miss Bule—who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady, a
friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service
and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock—Miss Bule said she
could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that
Pipson was not one of the common.
Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea of
anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly replied
that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair Circassian.
“And what then?” Miss Bule pensively asked.
I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me veiled,
and purchased as a slave.
[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the
State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted this
disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.]
“Shall I not be jealous?” Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.
“Zobeide, no,” I replied; “you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the
first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.”
Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her
seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of the
same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul
called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more
figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or
less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule’s hand after supper, a little
note to that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner
deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour,
the celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.
There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as
there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a
low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to
have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph;
wouldn’t call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and
inconsistently as a mere “chap;” said he, the other creature, “wouldn’t
play”—Play!—and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of
disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an
united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the
fairest of the daughters of men.
The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another
way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among
the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in
the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But every day after
dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the
rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure of
the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State—which were generally,
as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander
of the Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.
On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the
Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for that
officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never acquitted
himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first
place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when
Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson’s
pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be
quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place, his breaking
out into grinning exclamations of “Lork you pretties!” was neither
Eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when specially instructed to
say “Bismillah!” he always said “Hallelujah!” This officer, unlike his
class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too
wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once—it
was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five
hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too—embraced the Slave, the
Favourite, and the Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically let me say God
bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender
bosom, softening many a hard day since!)
Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what
the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known,
when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that she was
walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and Mahomedanism. I
believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the contemplation
of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense
prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of
what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book)
didn’t know, were the main-spring of the preservation of our secret. It
was wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The
danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a
conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our
head—as we were every Sunday—advertising the establishment in an
unsecular sort of way—when the description of Solomon in his domestic
glory happened to be read. The moment that monarch was thus referred to,
conscience whispered me, “Thou, too, Haroun!” The officiating minister
had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the
appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush, attended by a
fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand Vizier became more
dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of
Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this portentous time the
awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own
impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with
Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white
sheets, and exhibited in the centre aisle. But, so Westerly—if I may be
allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations—was Miss
Griffin’s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we
were saved.
I have called the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely, whether
the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of kissing in that
sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided. Zobeide
asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair
Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally
designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent
beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had been
brought, by traders, in the half-yearly caravan that crossed the
intermediate desert after the holidays), held more liberal opinions, but
stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a
dog, the Grand Vizier—who had no rights, and was not in question. At
length, the difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very
youthful slave as Deputy. She, raised upon a stool, officially received
upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other
Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies of
the Hareem.
And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I
became heavily troubled. I began to think of my mother, and what she
would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most beautiful of
the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of the number of
beds we made up at our house, of my father’s income, and of the baker,
and my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and malicious Vizier,
divining the cause of their Lord’s unhappiness, did their utmost to
augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity, and declared that they
would live and die with him. Reduced to the utmost wretchedness by these
protestations of attachment, I lay awake, for hours at a time, ruminating
on my frightful lot. In my despair, I think I might have taken an early
opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my
resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according to the
outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not
opened before me.
One day, we were out walking, two and two—on which occasion the Vizier
had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turnpike, and
if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the beauties of the
Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the night—and it happened
that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the
part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer,
on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that
vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both
baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited
thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper:
with a special stipulation that they were “not to be fetched till
twelve.” This wandering of the antelope’s fancy, led to the surprising
arrival at Miss Griffin’s door, in divers equipages and under various
escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top
step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At
the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the
antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every
new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that
at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on
the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the
linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length,
in which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, “I believe you all
of you knew of it;” Secondly, “Every one of you is as wicked as another;”
Thirdly, “A pack of little wretches.”
Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I
especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in a
very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and,
after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her,
looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour
was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for
Egypt.
The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as my
legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning on the
left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest way to the
Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after
me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep,
and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back;
Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very
curious! Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?
If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no
answer; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss Griffin and the
strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a
sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn’t help feeling, with
astonishment) in culprit state.
When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin
called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky guards of the
Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears. “Bless
you, my precious!” said that officer, turning to me; “your Pa’s took
bitter bad!”