High Spirits

by Robertson Davies

  “You thought you’d get hold of Miss Duncan and ask her,” I interrupted. The leisureliness of the beautiful anthologist’s explanation nettled me.

  “Well, Crowley didn’t seem to think there was much to it,” she said.

  “I think that before monkeying with Crowley you might have had the courtesy to speak to me,” said I.

  “Oh don’t be so, pompous,” said she.

  Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous they will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come. “Well,” I said, “if you and Crowley are such a great pair, suppose you explain what has happened.”

  “That’s just the difficulty,” she said, with terrible Scottish patience; “I don’t understand what has happened. I did all the right things, and called the name of Sara Jeanette Duncan, and these articles began to appear. Look at them, would you! Did you ever see such a sight in your life? What do you suppose they are?”

  This was my moment of triumph. You see, I knew what they were.

  It has been a lifelong habit of mine to read myself to sleep. Some people read light books—mystery stories and the like—in bed, but my custom has always been to read works of greater substance before sleeping. And not just to read them once, carelessly, but to read and re-read a group of selected classics over and over again, year in and year out, for in this way they become a part of oneself. For many years a bedtime favourite of mine has been that very famous commentary on the Pentateuch, the Midrash of Rabbi Tanhuma bar Abba, most learned of the fourth-century Talmudic mystics and sages. My copy of the Midrash is rather a nice one—a fine tenth-century scroll, beautifully illuminated though not particularly suited to reading in bed, because it is fourteen feet long, and as it must be read from right to left this means a lot of winding and rewinding. It is encased at both ends in copper and gold; the rubies on the casing scratch my hands now and then, but I don’t greatly mind. It is a small price to pay for keeping my Hebrew alive. As luck would have it, I had been reading the scroll of Rabbi Tanhuma when the Ghost Chill came upon me.

  Of course you have guessed what the explanation was. Not all of you will have read the great Midrash, but certainly you have read Louis Ginzberg’s seven-volume compilation of Jewish legends, and will have formed your own conclusions. But Hebrew studies are neglected in the Hebrides and so, for the sake of completeness, I must continue exactly as if you were as much in the dark as was my companion.

  She had asked me what I supposed these apparitions were. “Why,” I said, “this is hell, and these are spirits of the dead.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she replied, “it isn’t a bit like hell, except perhaps for the noise.”

  “What do you suppose hell to be?” said I. “The word merely means a dark and enclosed place, inhabited by spirits. A perfect description of the stacks in Massey College Library. Rabbi Tanhuma says it is indistinguishable from Paradise; both damned and saved pass a few millennia there. I suppose you called up a single spirit, and have received a wholesale delivery; Crowley is a most untrustworthy guide.”

  “But who are they?” said she.

  “It is only too clear that they are the ghosts of the Canadian authors whose books are here,” said I.

  “Then why are they so noisy?” she asked. Every time I think of it, I realize what a wealth of national feeling was compressed into that one enquiry.

  “They are clamouring to be reborn,” I explained, for my long acquaintance with Rabbi Tanhuma was at last showing its practical applicability. “Look, you see those who are floating in that strange, curled-up posture; they have placed themselves in the foetal position, so that, when a child is conceived, they are ready at once to take possession of it in the womb, and come to earth again.”

  “Whatever for?” said she.

  “Perhaps they hope that this time they might be born American authors,” said I.

  Our conversation had not been unnoticed by the spirits, who now began to float uncomfortably near us. Ernest Thompson Seton, though foetal in posture, was still clearly recognizable by the obstreperous outdoorsiness of his appearance; one spirit, naked like the rest, was walking on her hands, and it was only by the invincible dignity of her person, back and front, that I recognized Mrs. Susanna Moodie. Robert Barr looked particularly smug, and I knew why; a Junior Fellow of Massey College is making a fullscale study of him, and he was flattered. A floating foetus bumped me—though spectrally—and I turned just in time to see that it was Nellie McClung, avid for rebirth. It was an eerie experience, I can tell you. I had just time to reflect that Canadian authors appeared, on the whole, to have been neglectful of their physiques.

  “You don’t suppose they mean us any harm, do you?” said my companion, with the first show of nervousness that I had observed in her.

  I do not think that I am a cruel man, but I confess that there is a streak of austerity in my character, and it showed itself now. “They certainly do not mean me any harm,” I replied; “I have not disturbed their rest; I have not frivolously routed them out of Paradise. What their intentions may be toward you I have no way of telling.”

  “What are you going to do to get us out of here?” she asked, as if I had not spoken. It is thus that women rule the world.

  “There is a practical difficulty,” I said. “These ghosts can be put to rest only by the command of a king—a Hebrew king. They are uncommon nowadays, even in Massey College. We have one or two men of aristocratic birth, but they are unfortunately Aryan. We have a man whom I strongly suspect of being a chieftain in his homeland, but I am quite sure that an African chief would not fill the bill. Even a royal ghost might help us, but you know Canadian literature—no use looking there.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said she. From the triumph in her voice I knew that she had an idea. The circle in which we stood was not too far from the stacks for her to reach over into what the Librarian calls the Matthews Collection, and this is what she did now, handing me two weighty volumes bound in half-calf. I looked at the title. It was Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in The Highlands; the date, 1868.

  “But this is by Queen Victoria,” said I.

  “Of course,” said she; “and a queen worth a dozen ordinary kings, and I’m pretty certain that she even qualifies as a Hebrew ruler. Disraeli used to tell her that she was descended from King David, and I doubt if a rabble of middle-class Canadian ghosts can say she wasn’t. What’s more, she also qualifies as a Canadian author. Wasn’t she Queen of Canada?”

  Women are very, very remarkable people.

  “Come on,” she said; “get to work. See what you can do.”

  I was glad of my long acquaintance with the works of the great Rabbi Tanhuma; it meant that I knew how to raise a spirit without resorting to the slipshod conjurations of Aleister Crowley. I did what was necessary with, I think I may say, a certain style, and gently and slowly there appeared, between me and the beautiful anthologist that small, immensely dignified figure, familiar from a hundred portraits and statues. She wore the well-known tiny crown, from the back of which depended a beautiful veil; across her bosom was a sash of a splendid blue, and on her left shoulder was pinned the Order of the Garter.

  I am a democrat. All of my family have been persons of peasant origin, who have wrung a meagre sufficiency from a harsh world by the labour of their hands. I acknowledge no one my superior merely on grounds of a more fortunate destiny, a favoured birth. I did what any such man would do when confronted with Queen Victoria; I fell immediately to my knees.

  “Rise at once,” said the silvery voice with the beautiful, actress-like clarity of articulation, which has been so often described that it sounded almost familiar in my ears. “We have work to do that cannot wait. We presume that you wish to set at rest this disorderly group of my colonial subjects.”

  “If you would be so good, Your Majesty,” said I. “These are Canadian writers, and here in Massey College our library is, it appears, a Paradise
for the repose of all such as are represented on our shelves. The blessed in Paradise invariably appear to mortals either walking on their hands, or in a posture convenient for re-birth—”

  “Master,” said Queen Victoria; “do not presume to teach the great-great-grandmother of your Sovereign how to suck eggs—or to lay ghosts either. We shall have these spirits right-side up and safely at rest in the squeezing of a lemon—to use an expression dear to our faithful ghillie, John Brown. But look what has happened. We wish an explanation.”

  I had been so occupied with Queen Victoria (who, even though I could see right through her, was, I assure you, much the most imposing and awesome person I have ever seen through in this world or any other) that I had not noticed what was going on among the ghosts. I saw that there had been a great reversal; those who had formerly been standing on their hands were now on their feet; those who had formerly been foetal in posture were now normally postnatal: but the others—those who had been trying to stand on their hands before—were now standing on their heads, and bitter tears were pouring from their eyes.

  “Who can they be?” I murmured to myself.

  “Those, Master,” said Queen Victoria, “are impostors in Paradise—persons loosely attached to literature who are not themselves authors but who fatten upon authors. What place have they in Paradise? Surely you recognize them? Those, when they lived, were literary critics!”

  I looked more closely, and indeed it was so. I saw—never mind who, and with him was—but the less said, the better. They were critics, all right.

  “Away with them,” cried the Queen, and the effect of her words was horrible. There was a roaring, as of a mighty rushing wind, and a tumult filled the room. I was thrown to the ground, but even as I fell I saw a figure, black and glistening, as of a naked man of extraordinary but frightening beauty, carrying a cruel scourge, who swooped upon the unfortunate critics. I thought I heard Queen Victoria say “Good evening, Rhadamanthus,” in a tone of genial politeness, as one monarch to another, but I cannot be sure, for the howls of the critics mounted to a scream. “No!” they shrieked, “it’s unfair. We really were authors. We too were creative! Living critics say so!” But it was unavailing. In an instant the critics were gone, and stillness filled the room. But, in our shelves, there were smoking, blackened gaps where their books had stood.

  Then the great Queen made a splendid gesture of dismissal, and all the Canadian authors made their farewell. It took a long time, for they did so one by one, basking in the royal presence. The ladies curtsied—some like Sara Jeanette Duncan and Frances Brooke with quite a fashionable air, and others—as though they were improvising. Nakedness is unfriendly to a clumsy curtsy. The men bowed—all sorts of bows, from Kerby’s splendid gesture with hand on heart and his right foot advanced, to Ralph Connor’s strange giving at the knees. But at last all of them had gone back into the shelves, and there we stood—Queen Victoria, the beautiful anthologist and myself, in a room cleansed and calmed.

  “You may leave us,” said the Queen.

  I bowed. “I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude—” I began, but as I spoke a smile of extraordinary sweetness broke over the royal features, which had already begun to fade, and before she vanished altogether there came to my ears, unmistakably—“The Queen was very much amused.”

  The Night of the Three Kings

  A fortnight ago I prepared a Ghost Story to read to you on this occasion. It was a lame affair, because I had to manufacture the whole thing. For three years at this time I have told you of things that really happened—of supernatural visitations to the College which I deeply regretted (because being haunted is considered unseemly in an institution dedicated to truth and scholarship) but which nevertheless provided me with a story to tell. This year I waited, half hopeful that another ghost would turn up, half fearful that our corporate image might receive yet another brutal blow from the unseen world. As nothing happened, I wrote a story, as I said, to pass a few minutes this evening; perhaps I had better be quite frank and admit that I stole a story out of an old volume of Chums, and adapted it clumsily to a College setting. I was sorry for the plagiarism, but there seemed no other way out. And then—

  But it would not do to raise your expectation too high. It is not of a haunting that I shall tell you tonight. Rather, I must inform you of a haunting that is yet to come. I was there when it was planned. Indeed I—but let me not anticipate.

  It happened last night, which as those of you who live in the College know, was one of our High Table nights. There had been guests at dinner, and a great deal of general conversation, and finally an adjournment to the rooms of one of our Senior Fellows for one of those convivial gatherings which are such an enlarging aspect of College life. When the guests had gone, I walked about the College, as I often do on such occasions, expecting to finish with a stroll in the quadrangle. A little fresh air helps one to organize one’s recollection of the brilliant and pithy observations on life with which High Table conversation invariably teems. I began with a tour of the lower floor—the sous sol as Professor Finch so elegantly calls it; we deplore the word “basement.” And as I was walking through the corridor on the north side of the building, I smelled, unmistakably, the aroma of a cigar.

  Nothing in that, you will say. That is what I said. Indeed, I had been smoking a cigar myself not long before, and traces of it may yet have hung about me. So I went on, humming the Antiphon for the Day, which as you will recall, is the one that begins O Sapientia. But as I was peeping into the Chapel, an uneasiness began to assert itself. A cigar—but not any cigar that I had smoked. A cigar, rather, that raised a question in the mind’s nose. What was that scent? I sat down in the Chapel and mused. Then it came to me; it was the fragrance of a Hoyo de Monterey, and it was quite fresh. Well!

  I see that you share my astonishment. Still, in case there are a few of the ladies present who have led very sheltered lives, or who perhaps have never known any really first-rate men, I shall explain. The Hoyo de Monterey was certainly one of the finest cigars ever manufactured, but it was exported only to England and none has been made since 1939!

  I retraced my steps. I paced up and down the north corridor sniffing like a great hound. Who had a Hoyo de Monterey? Who, having such a treasure, was smoking it after midnight in our sous sol? I sniffed … and sniffed … and my sniffs brought me to a locked door.

  You know the door; it is to what will be called the Muniment Room when it is completed. It is the room which will contain the personal papers of our Visitor. Great quantities of those papers are in there now, in roped and sealed filing cabinets, waiting to be catalogued. Who was smoking a Hoyo de Monterey in there, among those inflammable papers? The Visitor himself? Doesn’t smoke cigars. The Librarian? Smokes a pipe, of what had better be called a characteristic odour. It was my duty to unravel this mystery. I have a master-key. I unlocked the door.

  There he was, the scoundrel, crouched behind a row of filing cabinets. These cabinets are sealed, but he appeared to have broken a seal and was rooting in a drawer. The Hoyo de Monterey, in all its tawny magnificence, was nestling between the silkiest moustache and the most elegantly spiked Navy beard you ever saw; he was wearing the full dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, and on top of the filing cabinet rested a gold-laced admiral’s fore-and-aft hat. He spotted me. I insist upon the term; he did not see, or observe, or take notice; he spotted me.

  “You, there,” he called, much more loudly than was necessary in a small room; “do you work here?”

  Of course I do work here. I work like a dog—nay, like a Trojan. But one of the necessary fictions of Massey College—what Ibsen would have called the Life-Giving Lie—is that I am a person of limitless scholarly leisure. I replied sternly.

  “I am the Master of this College,” said I. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “I don’t think anything about it, my good man,” said he. “I’m looking for a valuable stamp.”

  I do not like being called �
�my good man”; in the particular minority of which I am a member, it is a discriminatory and offensive term.

  “Who are you?” said I. But I knew. Already I knew.

  My question made him hesitate for a moment. “Oh—I’m Baron Killarney,” he replied, trying to make it sound like John Smith.

  “So you are,” said I, courteously, I hope, “and you are also the late George the Fifth, King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the seas, and Emperor of India. Now sir, what are you doing snooping in Mr. Massey’s papers?”

  He looked at me closely for the first time. Never have I looked into eyes of so bright a blue.

  “You’re not as big a fool as you look,” said he. I acknowledged the compliment with a half-bow; I didn’t think it called for a whole bow. “Well, I wrote a letter to Vincent Massey in 1934 and my ass of a secretary put a very valuable stamp on it. I was keeping the stamp, which had a unique reversed border—only one of its kind—and I suppose the fella hooked it to save himself trouble. I couldn’t sack him—he was a Balliol man—but I made his life a perfect hell till he quit. And I swore I’d get that stamp back in this world or the next. Well, as you see, I didn’t get it in this world. And only now have I found out where the letter is. Give me my stamp.”

  “I haven’t got your beastly stamp,” said I, “and I think you are an impostor. Royalty never stamps letters. Everybody knows that.”

  “Do they, b’God!” said he. “I always stamped mine. I liked stamps. Why, I even designed a few stamps. Now, where’s my stamp?”

  “I suppose it has been thrown away,” said I; “nobody files letters in envelopes.”

  “That shows how much you know,” said the King, with what I thought quite unnecessary rudeness. But then I remembered that he had been a Navy man all his life, and forgave him. He went on: “You must have heard about filing: what you do is this—you cut open your letter with an ivory paperknife and when you have read it you replace it in its envelope, and make a concise précis of what the letter says on the envelope. Then you chuck it into your locker. That way you preserve the stamp. That’s what I always did. That’s what every sane man does. So my stamp must be in here.”