The Other Nineteenth Century Read online

  “Well, you’re not going to make too much out of this story, are you?” Jim asked. “Obviously this condition was hereditary in that district, and your pal, H. Taylor, just happened to meet up with a woman who had it, as well as the name Diana.”

  “It is certainly a curious coincidence, if nothing more,” said Fred.

  Don wanted to know what finally became of Henry Taylor. “He convert any of the natives?”

  “No. They converted him. He became a priest.”

  “You mean, he gave up women?”

  “Oh, no: Celibacy is not incumbent upon priests of the Eastern Church. He married.”

  “But not one of those babes from the Greater Ephesus area, I’ll bet,” Don said.

  Jim observed, musingly, “It’s too bad old Alexander Graham Bell didn’t know about this. He needn’t have bothered with sheep. Of course, it takes longer with people—”

  Fred pointed out that Dr. Bell had been an old man at the time.

  “He could have set up a foundation. I would have been glad to carry on the great work. It wouldn’t frighten me, like it did Taylor … . Say, you wouldn’t know, approximately, how many this Diana had—?”

  “It must sure have taken a lot out of Taylor, all right,” Don said. “I bet he was never much good at anything afterwards.”

  Fred took one last swallow of his last drink. The jug and bottle, he observed, were empty. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “In the last letter he wrote to his brother before the latter’s death, he says: ‘My dear Wife has observed my sixty-fifth Birthday by presenting me with my Fifth Son and ninth Child … I preach Sunday next on the Verse, “His Leaf Also Shall not Wither” (Psalms).’”

  AFTERWORD TO “GREAT IS DIANA”

  This story is part of Davidson’s long sequence of writings exploring the notion of the survival of mythical beings. Further examples include “The Case of the Mother-in-Law of Pearl,” “Something Rich and Strange,” and the essays on mermaids, unicorns, and werewolves in Adventures in Unhistory. There are also echoes of the club story as practiced by Buchan in The Runagates Club or Dunsany in the Jorkens stories. Its quasi-epistolary form—letters from an expatriate Englishman to his brother—evokes that most literary of outcasts, the remittance man, whose activities past and present bar him from his native soil. The story’s resolution stems from Davidson’s abiding interest in the many obscure sects of Eastern Christianity, so that there are strands linking “Great Is Diana” to the magisterial essay “Postscript on Prester John,” also in Adventures in Unhistory.

  —Henry Wessells

  ONE MORNING WITH SAMUEL, DOROTHY, AND WILLIAM

  Samuel came down with red eyes, seeking coffee and a biscuit. William was not there. Dorothy was, looking pale, and twining her hands together. “Dorothy,” he said, “coffee, please, and a biscuit.” She looked very pale, uttered a stifled exclamation, and twisted her hands together. After a moment he said again, “If you please, Dorothy, I desire you will direct the servant to bring me coffee and a biscuit.”

  “Oh God! Samuel!” she cried. “How can you sit there talking of coffee and a biscuit—” “Because it is far too early in the day to talk of butcher’s meat,” he said. She uttered a stifled shriek and tugged at the opposite ends of her cambric handkerchief. “—and butcher’s meat, when—” “No no, far too early for that,” he muttered; “coffee and a biscuit.”

  “—when it must be evident to you by my appearance that I am laboring under the greatest conceivable strain to which a passionate and virtuous woman can possibly be subject, particularly when her sentiments are of a loyal and patriotical nature?”

  “Java, preferably,” he said. “But mocha will do tolerably enough. I’ve no great objection to mocha. Dorothy, for pity’s sake take pity on me and ring for the servant to bring me a cup of—”

  Dorothy uttered a stifled scream. “Oh God, Samuel, do you wish to drive me mad?” she exclaimed. She gave the bell-pull a tug, and staggered.

  “Less of that French brandy, Miss W., is my advice to you,” he said.

  “It is not the minute quantity of French brandy, which I take purely upon the advice of my medical man, who pronounces it a sovereign alexipharmacal against the vapours, it is that Mr. Fitzgeorge has again offered to place me in an establishment which—”

  In came Jenny the servantgirl, dropping a courtesy. Samuel leered at her behind a copy of the Unitarian Intelligencer.

  “Jenniver, a cup of coffee—Java if we have it—and a biscuit, for Mr. Samuel.”

  “Yesmum,” said the girl. “Almond, caraway seed, currant, sugar, or plain?”

  “Provoking girl!” exclaimed Dorothy; “leave the room at once and bring a cup of coffee, do you hear, and a biscuit of any description. Go! They all want to kill me,” she said, in a low, strained voice. William came in, looking pale and spiritual.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Doll,” said Samuel. “You’ve got the vapours again. Tell me all about your fat friend, do.”

  Dorothy pressed her hand to her bosom. “I have often desired you not to refer to Mr. Fitzgeorge by that oleaginous descriptive,” she said. “You know that he assures me he holds a very high though confidential position in His Majesty’s Government. William! Why are your knees green again?”

  William sighed, staggered suddenly, sat down suddenly, looked dreamily at his knees.

  “’Tis grass! Of all substances exceedingly difficult to a degree to remove from the knees of linen unmentionables, William, grass is the—”

  “It was the loveliest daffodil, dearest Dorothy,” William said.

  Samuel sniggered. “Was that her name?” he enquired. “No wonder you look so weak.”

  William gazed at him, ethereally. “I do. I do? Ah, you see, you observe it also, Samuel. There is something about flowers which—Ah, Jenniver, bless you, gel, I needed that coffee and that biscuit.” His fingers touched her, lightly. She jumped and gave a small scream, “La Mr. Wulliam sir!”

  Samuel watched with open mouth and working throat as William, his eyes raised politely, drank the coffee. Samuel turned to Jenniver, but she, with a flounce and a simper, had already left the room, after pausing at the door to smile at William, who gave a gentle and benevolent ogle.

  Dorothy said, “I have informed Mr. Fitzgeorge that although I have not been unmindful of his regard, whilst his dear Papa is unable to give consent to his son’s offering marriage, all other considerations, such as a carriage, a cottage, a curricle—

  “Samuel! Samuel, where are you going, Samuel, with that horrid look upon your face? Samuel, Samuel, not that dreadful substance in the vile vial again?”

  But Samuel was already halfway up the stairs. Behind him he heard William say, “Dearest Dorothy, it is merely med’cine, Samuel’s nerves are not strong … Eh? What is that? My knees? Ah,’twas the loveliest flower, so soft, so swee—” And then the bed-sitting-room door closed.

  Samuel half-groaned, half-sighed his relief, opened the huge Bible on his table to the Apocrypha, and, bending his head, from in between The Book of Tobit and The Song of the Three Children, took out a small bottle containing a ruby tincture of which he promptly filled a wineglassful, and tossed it down with a glottal sound of gratification. Then he seated himself and reached very slowly for some sheets of blank papers and the bottle of ink. He stayed thus for quite some time whilst an expression of serenity and of knowing slowly spread across his face, totally replacing the look of confusion and vexation which had been there before. And, so, at last, with an air of dreamy beatitude, he trimmed a fresh point to the quill and dipped it and wrote and wrote and he wrote and—

  “I see that it is quite useless for me to endeavor to act the part of a true friend, Samuel,” the voice of Dorothy rang in his ears. He wrote on. He wrote on. “Nay, Samuel, have the modicum of common gentility which would oblige you to give ear even to the address of a servant, and set aside your pen for one mere moment, Samuel: There is a person to see you.”

  Present
ly he became aware that she had left and that a strange face was looking at him. Slowly his hand faltered. He tried to go on with his writing, but the face grew larger and redder and sterner and then began speaking to him and although he urged it to go away, go away it would not. “The Doge of Venice?” he asked, hissingly. “The Great Cham? The Old Man of the Mountains?” Ssssss. “The Negusss of—”

  “None of them coves,” the red face said. “Samivel ‘Uggins, h’of’Is Majesty’s Hexcise Sarvice, sir. Sarvint, sir. Hin regards now, to that ‘ere little flagon or as yer might call it h’a flask sir, h’of hopium, sir, now, no doubt you ‘as the receept to show h’as ‘ow the proper hexcise tax as been paid h’on it?”

  Numbly, dumbly, Samuel shook his head.

  The gager nodded. “Just has I thort. One a them gents has thinks yer habove the Lore, does yer? Well, we knows ‘ow to’andle the likes of you, come along now and no strugglin’, see, hor it’s the mace—” Then his expression changed as he saw Samuel’s eyes rolling about like those of some cornered beast; instead of brutal, became sly. “Hunless, h’of course, now, you’appens to want to settle hout of court; say, two guineas, to cover hexcise tax, fines, costs, h’and—”

  A furious voice shouted, “What’s this? What’s this?” It was Dorothy’s fat friend again. Mr. Huggins’ red face went white and he fell to his knees. “Ho Gord, hit’s the Prince!” he cried.

  Mr. Fitzgeorge’s fat fist, covered in greasy hand-lotion and bright with jeweled rings, came down upon the head of the terrified gager with a thump. “Get out of this, never come back, don’t breathe a word, or it’s Botany Bay!” Thump, thump, thump, he thumped the revenuer out the door; turned and gave Samuel a look and a wink and placed his index finger alongside his nose, and was gone.

  In came William. In came Dorothy. “Was it about the French brandy?” asked Dorothy.

  William said, “Ah, you’ve been writing again, Samuel. Oh, good. Excellent. Let me see.” Samuel’s eyes were very red. His throat and mouth dreadfully dry. He opened his lips and he croaked his want. “Not bad,” said William indulgently.

  Dorothy said, “What, Samuel? Coffee? Again? No wonder your eyes are red!”

  William said, “Not bad. For he hath fed on honeydew, and drunk the milk of paradise. Rather a nice image, and not at all bad for a closing line.”

  Samuel’s head jerked up. “Closing line? Nonsense? What do you mean? There are at least thirty more verses!” Sheet after sheet of paper he scattered and scanned; but all were blank. “I had them all in my head,” he muttered, stunned. “In my mind …” But his head ached, and his mind was as blank as the paper.

  Dorothy said, “You must endeavor to lead a more regular life, Samuel, and avoid low associates. What did that vulgar person from the Porlock Excise Station want with you?”

  Samuel uttered a wail. He had to regain his lost images. He snatched for the vial of laudanum. But there was only a bottle-shaped dent in the pages of the Apocrypha to show where it had been. “My poem!” he screamed. “My beautiful poem! Gone! Everything gone! I’ll never get it back, never! That bloody nark! He’s busted my stash!”

  Dorothy shrieked, pressed her hands to her ears. But William, tolerant, indulgent, merely looked at him benignly. “Sometimes you use very curious expressions, Samuel,” he said.

  AFTERWORD TO “ONE MORNING WITH SAMUEL, DOROTHY, AND WILLIAM”

  The composition of Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” reduced to a fragment through the inopportune arrival of “a person on business from Porlock,” is one of the central episodes of the Romantic period in English literature. Davidson here offers a compact, briskly orchestrated explanation that accords with Coleridge’s opium use. Davidson wrote this story late in his career and adopted narrative structures quite different from those he used fifteen or twenty years earlier. The black humor of “Traveller from an Antique Land” yields to a lighter tone in this piece full of incidents and asides; there are memorable sketches of the differing characters of William Words-worth and his sister Dorothy. “Kubla Khan” was written in late 1797 or early 1798, but not published until 1816, “at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity,” namely, Lord Byron.

  —Henry Wessells

  TRAVELLER FROM AN ANTIQUE LAND

  “I met a traveller from an antique land

  Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

  —Shelley, Ozymandias.

  It was in April 1822, on the third day after his friend had sailed off into a lead-grey, oil-smooth sea only a few hours before the storm broke, that Tregareth, fearing the worst, made his way to Lord Gryphon’s villa, to consult with him. Was not Gryphon the nominal head of the English literati hereabouts?

  The time was past noon, Gryphon had already had his cup of strong, green tea, and was lunching on the invariable biscuit and soda-water as he lay abed. He looked up when the tall figure entered, long black hair in disarray, striking his fist into palm.

  “Surely there is some news, Tregareth,” Gryphon said. “Are they safe? Have they been . . . found?”

  Tregareth shook his head. “I have no news, my lord,” he said, trying to mask his agitation with formality. “Every vessel putting into Leghorn has been questioned, but there has been no sign of the Sea Sprite, of Shadwell or Wilson or the ship’s boy. I thought that you might have had a letter, or at least a note, from their wives at the Villa Grandi, saying that they had arrived.”

  “I have had nothing!” Gryphon cried.

  “Fulke Grant has heard no word, either. He blames himself, poor fellow—‘It was to welcome me and get me settled that they sailed to Leghorn,’ he says.”

  “Oh, God, Tregareth!” Gryphon moaned, covering his fat, pale face with a trembling hand. “They have been drowned! They have surely been drowned!”

  Tregareth, looking away from him, turning his gaze out of the window to the hot sandy plain, said sturdily, “It does not follow, my lord. Not at all. I conceive of at least two other possibilities—no, three. First, they may have been carried away off course—to Elba, perhaps, or even to Corsica or Sardinia. Second, assuming the vessel did come to harm, which Heaven forbid—though she was cranky and frisky—there were so many other craft at sea that evening—” Tregareth spoke more and more rapidly, his broad chest rising and falling as his agitation increased. “Surely it is not unreasonable that they have been taken aboard one of them and are even now disembarking in some port. And, third, I fear we must also consider the possibility that a piratical felluca may have ridden them down—pretending accident, don’t you know, my lord—and that presently we shall receive some elegantly worded message which in our blunter English speech spells ‘ransom’”

  Gryphon had begun slowly to nod; now his face had cleared somewhat. He reached for his silver flask, poured brandy into the tiny silver cup. “What must we do?” he asked. “You have been a sailor—in fact, if we are to believe your own account of it—wilder than any tale I dared to write!—you have been a pirate, too. Command me, Tregareth! Eh?” He drained the cup, looking at the Cornishman with raised brows.

  Ignoring, in his concern, the implication, the other man said, “I thank you, my lord. I propose, then—in your name, with your consent—to obtain the governor’s permission to have the coast guards scan the beaches. Perhaps some flotsam or w
reckage will give hint of—” He did not finish the sentence. Gryphon shuddered. “And also, I will have couriers sent out on the road to Nice, enquiring of news, if any, of their having reached another port. In the event of their having been captured by brigands, we must await that intelligence.”

  Gryphon muttered something about—in that event—the British Minister—

  Tregareth’s grey eyes grew fierce and angry. “Let Shadwell’s wife, my lord, let poor Amelia appeal to the minister and to diplomacy. Let me, but hear of where they are constrained—give me a file of dragoons—or if not, just a brace of pistols and a stiletto—I have stormed the corsair’s lair before!”

  “Yes, yes!” Gryphon cried. He rose from bed, thrust feet into slippers, and, with his queer, lame, gliding, walk, came across the room. “And I shall go with you! This is no coward’s heart which beats here—” He laid his hand on his left breast.

  “I know it, my lord,” the other said, touched.

  And, telling him that he must make haste, Gryphon thrust a silken purse into Tregareth’s hands, bade him godspeed, and gloomily prepared to dress.

  The two ladies met the Cornishman with flushed cheeks—cheeks from which the color soon fled as he confessed that he brought them no news. Jane Wilson essayed a brave smile on her trembling lips, but Amelia Shadwell shrieked, pressed her palms to her head, and repeated Gryphon’s very words.

  “Oh, God, Tregareth! They have been drowned!”

  But Mrs. Wilson would not have it so. She knelt by the side of her hostess’s cot in the “hall” of the Villa Grandi—a whitewashed room on the upper story, not much larger than the four small whitewashed rooms which served for bedchambers—and taking the distressed woman by the hand, began to comfort her. Wilson was an excellent sailor, she said. No harm could come to Shadwell while Wilson was aboard. The storm had lasted less than half an hour—surely not enough to injure such a stoutly built vessel as the Sea Sprite. Tregareth added his assurances to Jane’s, with an air of confidence he did not feel.