Within the confines of that hidden state rather humorously called “the
other world”--as if the worlds numbered no more than two--we enjoy a
measure of knowledge which you mundane folks are but now attaining
through processes both painful and slow. Thanks to our perfection in a
system, towards which your “wireless telegraphy” has already made some
distant approach, it is possible for me to tell an interesting tale and
cast some light upon a recent literary mystery.
Now when that great and good man Professor Peter Parkinson passed out
of life, his notable earthly labours very properly entitled him to a
resting-place amongst our great ones, and I was among those privileged
men of light and leading invited to bear his pall.
I remember that I walked next to Thomas Gridd, the little busybody who
in life for some obscure reason won Peter Parkinson’s regard, and who
was left by the Professor as his literary executor. Even during the
solemn moment of sepulchral rites, Gridd found time to speak to me.
“The only official and recognised biography will be mine,” he
whispered. “Remember that. Tell everybody. It is going to be a great
book; and it will surprise some of us not a little.”
How those words came back to my mind after the event! Perhaps the most
sensational biography of the last century was that by Thomas Gridd of
Peter Parkinson. In public life Parkinson had passed for a remarkable
man, an original thinker, a live force in ethics, a dynamic power
exercised for good, and one who, to speak generally, most surely left
his corner of earth better, wiser and cleaner than he found it. His
privacy had of course been probed also; and it was pretty generally
conceded that no better husband or father than the Professor could well
be found. His amusements were pathetically innocent and high-minded;
the Athenæum was his only club; when he left England upon a vacation
during later life, it was in order that his family might visit the
Alps, the French Exhibition of 1900 and other improving and unique
phenomena of Nature and the times.
Upon a general appreciation of the dead man’s worth and virtue
there burst the biography of Thomas Gridd, than which anything more
sensational, outrageous and unexpected could not well be imagined.
After a great parade of the necessity for Truth, of his own high
motives in this matter, and of the abundant grief that his task had
brought upon him, the unutterable Gridd set out upon his ruffianly way
and exhibited before the amazed and incredulous vision of England the
spectacle of a great reputation torn to ribbons.
Indignation raged amongst the friends of the late Professor; violent
controversies burst forth in the public prints. The worst passages were
denied on the one hand; while Gridd undertook to prove them to the hilt
if anybody dared to have the law of him. In fact that famous romance of
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” appeared to have been repeated in real life,
and arising out of the Parkinson of public enterprise and honourable
renown--the scientist, the philanthropist, the great sociologist--there
dawned hideously within the pages of Thomas Gridd a nocturnal,
subterranean and blackguard Parkinson--a man of deplorable habits and
disreputable ideas--a vicious ghoul.
Of course this remarkable book sold prodigiously. Thousands of copies
were purchased by the libraries alone, and a work so full of pepper and
salt for the time being quite eclipsed the sale of popular fiction, of
history, travel, verse, and of more amiable and conventional biography.
For myself I just lived long enough to see the scoundrel Gridd get a
large fortune by his abominable book and then, in the midst of a rather
promising literary career, it pleased Providence to remove me from the
sub-lunar puppet-show. Overwork and a chill--but all that does not
matter, as it has nothing to do with this narrative. All I need say is
that I have frankly forgiven the man who finished my last novel for the
press and shall meet him without prejudice if ever he comes here.
Almost the first person I met in the Elysian Fields of our order (for
I am thankful to say that my modest merits entitled me to a place
therein) was my old friend Professor Parkinson. He greeted me with good
taste and that particular shade of sympathy proper from a happy spectre
to the event of my passing in mid-career. Then, after discussing
everything and everybody but himself, he said in his humble way:
“I know you will pardon my egotism, but I _should_ like to know how the
autobiography went.”
“Whose?” I asked.
“I blush to answer,” he made reply; “but I was thinking of my own.”
“No such thing ever appeared,” I told him. “The man Gridd, in whom you
trusted--rather foolishly I am afraid--published a biography of you,
written by himself; and it has been an enormous and infamous success. I
should not have mentioned this, be sure, had not you invited me to do
so.”
“I left my autobiography complete in his hands,” said the Professor,
much concerned.
“It was probably a very different work to the one he has published,”
I replied. “In fact, not to mince matters, if all or even one half of
what the man Gridd has written of you was true, Professor, you wouldn’t
be here. He makes you a flagrant scoundrel and worse, for in his pages
you appear as the most nauseous, calculating, double-dealing humbug and
hypocrite that ever played a public part on earth and deceived mankind.”
“This is very disturbing,” said the Professor. “I never thought such
baseness was possible. Why, I rescued Thomas Gridd from the gutter when
he was a boy!”
“The usual reward of the great--well doing, ill report. Gridd was not
the sort of man to forgive such a Samaritan,” I said. “They’ve torn me
to pieces since I left them--not a doubt of it. But you don’t care, do
you?”
“I care very much,” he answered. “I care for my Institute; I care for
my dear wife; I care for my family. And, what is more, I won’t suffer
it if I can bring our sub-committee to see the outrage with my eyes. In
the interests of reputation there are certain great ones daily gathered
together amongst us for the express purpose of adjudicating between
the quick and dead in these affairs; and many a startling, literary
Nemesis and unexplained, quick-handed and providential act of justice
is the direct result of our personal interest and personal power in
such matters. Where our reputations are concerned, we are in fact
permitted some supernatural indulgences. This is a case in point, and
if ever a literary ghost had a grievance, I take it that I who speak
to you am that spirit. Come with me immediately; the sub-committee is
sitting at this moment. It consists of Mr. Ben Jonson in the chair,
Doctor Johnson and Mr. Carlyle. The last clamoured to be put on it
so unceasingly after the little matter of Mr. Froude that we had to
meet his wishes, and Virgil resigned in his favour. You see Virgil’s
contemporaries have come by their own now, and it was right that the
recent generations should have a modern representative.”
In another moment we stood before the three great shades.
“Welcome, Master Parkinson; what would you?” asked immortal Ben.
“Be brief, sir, for we are busy to-day,” added Doctor Johnson. “I beg
therefore that you will unfold your purpose with as little flux of
words as may be necessary to its elucidation.”
Carlyle did not speak, but thrust out his chin, as he does in the
picture by Watts, and listened.
The Professor thereupon introduced me and related my black news.
Jonson shook his head and seemed to find a humorous side to
the tragedy; Carlyle thundered his indignation and went from a
generalisation upon all biography into personal matters not necessary
to set down here; while Doctor Johnson defended biography with some
slashing blows.
“You are to remember, sir,” he said to Mr. Carlyle, “that it is most
unphilosophic to frame general theories upon the trumpery foundation
of a personal experience. You, sir, have permitted us to gather that
you are incensed against the literary record of your own career--a very
good book in the judgment of many persons. To found general principles
upon this solitary example is at once short-sighted, narrow-minded and
absurd. No, sir; the thing can be very well done and has been very well
done.”
“Nevertheless we cannot all come by a Boswell, Doctor,” said Mr. Jonson.
“We do not all deserve a Boswell, Ben,” answered the great
lexicographer. “Many amongst us lack that congeries of flexible
characteristics--the mental amalgam of humour and common-sense, weight,
scholarship and piety that may be said to afford just material for a
biographer. For my part, indeed, I cannot think that in life such a man
as Boswell would have been edified or inspired to any great work by a
close and personal intercourse with yourself, for instance. I may err,
but that is my deliberate opinion, framed upon those endless personal
reminiscences of which you deny us no vinous detail. Nor would the
table-talk of such an one as Milton have afforded over-much delight.
We should rather----”
“When you can make an end, the Professor will speak,” interrupted
Carlyle.
Whereupon my distinguished friend put in his plea boldly.
“Nobody, honoured sirs, has power to arrest this outrage but myself,”
said Professor Parkinson. “The application I make is unusual but not
unprecedented. Briefly, I beg permission to visit the earth and rectify
in person this grave wrong. Permit my spectre one week with this
ungenerous and unjust steward of my reputation. I ask no more.”
“Only a mind conscious of right would contemplate such a painful
design,” declared Doctor Johnson; “and yet it is a question whether the
awful demonstration of a professorial apparition to one still in life
be not too terrible a punishment for his crime.”
“Not so,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle. “Parkinson is in the right. This
vile Gridd has earned the worst that can overtake him. Fury and chaos!
let justice be done and an example made. Must dead lions suffer for
ever from these live asses? Let Parkinson be despatched upon his errand
without more ado. He is a Scotch spectre, and may therefore be trusted
to use discretion and employ his powers with decency.”
“I will not allow my antipathy to the Scotch, just and well-grounded
though that sentiment may be----” answered the Sage; but here Ben
Jonson held up his hand.
“Suffer me to put one question to our learned friend,” he said, then
turned to Professor Parkinson.
“Dost think all this pother about a trashy scribbler is worthy of thee?
He and his lies will all go down to the pit together presently. And
Truth prevails.”
“But it won’t prevail in my wife’s lifetime, Mr. Jonson,” answered the
Professor. “Consider her and my family. Picture to yourself how this
scandalous libel must be breaking the hearts of those that loved me.
And remember my Institute.”
“There struts no vainer figure in literature or rhetoric than that
‘breaking of hearts,’” said Doctor Johnson. “As one not dead to
humanity’s tenderer emotions, I may be allowed to declare that hearts
do not break. Moreover, worthy Parkinson, we have but the testimony of
this new-come shade that things are in so parlous a plight with your
reputation. Does he speak what he knows or what he merely believes?”
The massive spectre puffed his cheeks and looked at me.
“It is idle, most honoured Doctor Johnson, to discuss the subject of
circulating libraries with you,” I answered firmly but respectfully.
“Nor would a circulation of fifty thousand copies convey any particular
idea perhaps to your experience. But you will recollect the old trick
of putting everything into the newspapers. That trick, worthy sir, has
now become a confirmed habit--a part of our national system. There is
to-day such machinery for scattering of news as you would marvel at.
This wicked book has been read throughout the English-speaking world.
If uncontradicted its end must be that Professor Parkinson’s life
labours are seriously threatened.”
“If the edifice of his toil be fundamentally assured, this book cannot
assail the issue,” declared Doctor Johnson. “Nevertheless,” he added,
“it may be that evil has been done and cries for chastisement. I doubt
nothing but that we can trust the Professor wisely to conduct his
enterprise and order his apparitional manifestations alike with sound
judgment and just taste.”
“It will only be necessary for me to appear to the man Thomas Gridd,
and that in strict privacy,” declared Peter Parkinson.
“’Tis well,” said Ben Jonson. “There are a sort of spectres who abuse
their privileges and play the fool--a thing very vile and improper
and against right feeling. Indeed the best spectres shall be found in
fiction rather than fact. Take Will’s ghost in _Hamlet_. Never stalked
real spirit truer. Will yet stands first exemplar for ghost and man. So
be it. Depart in peace, Master Parkinson. We can trust you to remember
that the spectral condition has its obligations. Good luck attend ye.
Ah! there’s Tennyson!”
Ben Jonson rose and followed a tall black figure that floated past down
a cypress walk.
“By Jove!” I said, surprised into an indiscretion; “does he know how
Tennyson always declared that he found reading Jonson was like wading
through a sea of glue?”