The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  “ ‘Graut Liebchen auch? Der mond scheint hell!

  Hurrah! die Todten reiten schnell!

  Graut Liebchen auch vor Todten?’

  ‘Ach nein! Doch las die Todten.’ ”—Bürger’s Lenore.

  If the following narrative were nothing more than a mere invention, it would have very little in it to recommend it to the notice of the reader; but detailing, as closely as possible may be, some circumstances which actually occurred, and which were never accounted for,—no case of spectres found to be finger-posts or pollards in the morning, nor dim flickering lights seen in churchyards at midnight, afterwards proved to have been carried by resurrection-­men or worm-catchers,—it may form a fitting addition to the repertoire of unaccountable romances, which, taken from the pages of Glanville and Aubrey, are narrated at this fire-side period always in time to induce a dread of going to rest, and a yearning for double-bedded rooms and modern apartments.

  For our own part, we believe in ghosts. We do not mean the vulgar ghosts of every-day life, nor those of the Richardson drama, who rise amidst the fumes of Bengal light burned in a fire-shovel, nor the spring-heeled apparitions who every now and then amuse themselves by terrifying the natives of suburban localities out of their wits. To be satisfactory, a ghost must be the semblance of some departed human form, but indistinct and vague, like the image of a magic lanthorn before you have got the right focus. It must emit a phosphorescent light,—a gleaming atmosphere like that surrounding fish whose earthly sojourn has been unpleasantly prolonged; and it should be as transparent and slippery, throwing out as much cold about it, too, as a block of sherry-cobler ice. We would go a great way upon the chance of meeting a ghost like this, and should hold such a one in great reverence, especially if it came in the dreary grey of morning twilight, instead of the darkness which its class is conventionally said to admire. We would, indeed, allow it to come in the moonlight, for this would make its advent more impressive. The effect of a long cold ray streaming into a bedroom is always terrible, even when no ghosts are present to ride upon it. Call to mind, for instance, the ghastly shadow of the solitary poplar falling across the brow of Mariana in the ‘moated grange,’ as Alfred Tennyson has so graphically described it.

  Once we slept—or rather went to bed, for we lay awake and quivering all night long—in an old house on the confines of Windsor Forest. Our bedroom faced the churchyard, the yew-trees of which swept the uncurtained casement with their boughs, and danced in shadows upon the mouldering tapestry opposite, which mingled with those of the fabric until the whole party of the “long unwashed” thereon worked, appeared in motion. The bed itself was a dreadful thing. It was large and tall, and smelt like a volume of the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1746, which had reposed in a damp closet ever since. There were feathers, too, on the tops of the tall posts, black with ancestral dirt and flue of the middle ages; and heavy curtains, with equally black fringe, which you could not draw. The whole thing had the air of the skeleton of a hearse that had got into the catacombs and been starved to death. The moonlight crept along the wainscoat, panel after panel, and we could see it gradually approaching our face. We felt, when it did so, that it would be no use making the ghosts, whom we knew were swarming about the chamber, believe that we were asleep any more. So we silently brought all the clothes over our head, and thus trembled till morning, preferring death from suffocation to that from terror; and thinking, with ostrich-like self-delusion, that as long as our head was covered we were safe. Beyond doubt many visitors flitted about and over us that night. We were told, in fact, afterwards, that we had been charitably put in the “haunted room”—the only spare one—in which all kinds of ancestors had been done for. Probably this was the reason why none of them let us into their confidence; there were so many that no secret could possibly be kept. Had we been aware of this interesting fact, we should unquestionably have added ourselves to the number of its traditional occupants long before morning, from pure fright. As it was, we left the house the next day,—albeit we were upon a week’s visit,—with a firm determination never to sleep anywhere for the future but in some hotel about Covent Garden, where we should be sure of ceaseless noise, and evidences of human proximity all night long; or close to the steampress office of a daily paper. But this by the way; now to our story.

  On the left bank of the Thames, stretching almost from the little village of Shepperton to Chertsey Bridge, there is a large, flat, blowy tract of land, known as Shepperton Range. In summer it is a pleasant spot enough, although the wind is usually pretty strong there, even when scarcely a breath is stirring anywhere else: it is the St. Paul’s Churchyard, in fact, of the neighbourhood. But then the large expanse of short springy turf is powdered with daisies; and such few bushes of hawthorn and attempts at hedges as are to be found upon its broad sweep, are mere standards for indolent ephemeral dog-roses, dissipated reckless hops, and other wild and badly brought-up classes of the vegetable kingdom. There are uplands rising from the river, and crowned with fine trees, half surrounding the landscape from Egham Hill to Oatlands; one or two humble towers of village churches; rippling corn-fields, and small farms, whose homesteads are so neat and well-arranged, that they remind one of scenes in domestic melodramas, and you expect every minute to hear the libertine squire rebuked by the farmer’s daughter, who though poor is virtuous, and prefers the crust of rectitude to all the entremets of splendid impropriety. The river here is deep and blue,—in its full country purity before it falls into bad company in the metropolis, flowing gently on, and knowing neither extraordinary high tides of plenitude, nor the low water of poverty. It is much loved of anglers—quiet, harmless folks who punt down from the “Cricketers,” at Chertsey Bridge, the landlord of which hostelry formerly bore the name of Try—a persuasive cognominution for a fishing-inn, especially with regard to the mighty barbel drawn on the walls of the passage, which had been caught by customers. Never did a piscator leave the house in the morning without expecting to go and do likewise.

  But in winter, Shepperton Range is very bleak and dreary. The wind rushes down from the hills, howling and driving hard enough to cut you in two; and the greater part of the plain, for a long period, is under water. The coach passengers used to wrap themselves up more closely as they approached its boundary. This was in what haters of innovation called the good old coaching times, when “four spanking tits” whirled you along the road, and you had the “pleasant talk” of the coachman, and excitement of the “changing,” the welcome of “mine host” of the posting-inn, and other things which appear to have thrown these anti-alterationists into frantic states of delight. Rubbish! Give us the railway, with its speed, and, after all, its punctuality; its abolition of gratuities to drivers, guards, ostlers, and every idle fellow who chose to seize upon your carpetbag and thrust it into the bottom of the boot, whence it could only be extracted by somebody diving down until his inferior extremities alone were visible, like a bee in a bell-flower. When Cowper sent to invite his friend Bishop Spratt to Chertsey, he told him he could come from London conveniently in two days “by sleeping at Hampton;” now you may knock off eighteen out of the twenty miles, from Nine Elms to Weybridge, in fifty minutes.

  In winter (to return to the Range) the pedestrian seeks in vain for the shelter of any hedge or bank. If the wind is in his teeth, it is no very easy matter for him to get on at all. Once let it take his hat, too, and he must give it up as utterly lost—all chance of recovery is gone: and if the snow is on the ground and the moon is shining, he may see it skimming away to leeward for a wonderful distance, until it finally leaps into the river. And this reminds us that it was winter when the events of our story took place; and that the moon was up, and the ground white and sparkling.

  It had been a sad Christmas with the inmates of a large family-house near the village end of the Range. For Christmas is not always that festive time which conventionality and advertisements insist upon its being; and the merriment of the season cannot always be ensured by the celebra
ted “sample hampers,” or the indigestion arising from overfeeding. In many houses it is a sad tear-bringing anniversary; and such it promised to be, in future, at the time of our story, now upwards of fifty years ago, for the domestic circle of the Woodwards,—by which name we wish to designate the family in question. It is not, however, the right one. The eldest daughter, Florence, a beautiful girl of twenty, was in the last stage of confirmed consumption. Her family had been justly proud of her: a miniature by Cosway, which is still in existence, evidences her rare loveliness when in health, and as the reckless disease gained upon her, all its fatal attributes served only to increase her beauty. The brilliant sparkling eye with the fringe of long silky lashes; the exquisitely delicate flush and white teint of her skin; the bright arterial lips and pearly teeth: all combined to endow her with fascinations scarcely mortal.

  “The beauty,” beyond all comparison, of every circle of society into which she entered, Florence Woodward had not remained unconscious of her charms. Her disposition in early girlhood was naturally reserved, and to those casually introduced to her, cold and haughty; and this reserve increased with her years, fanned by the breath of constant flattery. She had rejected several most eligible matches, meeting the offers of one or two elder sons of the best families in the neighbourhood with the coldest disdain, even after having led each of her suitors to believe, from the witchery of her manner, fascinating through all her pride, that he was the favoured one; and although at last they felt sure that their offers would be rejected, if not with a sneer, at least with a stare of surprise at such presumption, yet the number of her admirers did not diminish; in many instances it became a point of vanity as well as love. The hope of being, at last, the favoured one urged them on, but always with the same result. She looked upon their hearts as toys,—things to be amused with, then to be broken, and cared for no more.

  A year or two before the period of story she met Frank Sherborne one evening at the Richmond ball. The Sherbornes had formerly lived at Halliford, within a mile of the Woodwards, and the two families were exceedingly intimate at that time. They had now left the neighbourhood some years, and Florence was astonished to find that the mere boy, who used to call her by her Christian name, had grown to be a fine young man in the interim. Whether it was to pique some other admirer in the room, or whether she really was taken, for the few hours of the ball, with the lively intelligence and unaffected conversation of her old companion, we know not, but Sherborne was made supremely happy that evening by finding himself dancing each time with the belle of the room; and when he was not dancing sitting by her side, lost in conversation. He was fascinated that night with the spells she wove around him, and he returned home with his brain almost turned, and his pulses throbbing, whilst the thoughts which recalled the beautiful face and low soft voice of Florence Woodward excluded all other subjects. His feelings were not those attendant upon a mere flirtation with an attractive woman, in which gratified self-conceit has perhaps so large a share. He was madly, deeply in love.

  To be brief, his intimacy with the Woodwards was renewed, and Florence led him on, making him believe that he was the chosen above all others, until he ventured to propose. In an instant her manner changed, and he was coldly rejected, with as much hauteur as if he had only been the acquaintance of a single dance. Stunned at first by her heartlessness, he left the house and returned home without uttering a word of what had occurred to his family. Then came a reaction, and brain-fever supervened; and when he recovered he threw up all his prospects, which were of no ordinary brilliancy, and left home, as it subsequently proved, for ever: taking advantage of his mother’s being a relation of Sir John Jervis to enter the navy on board the admiral’s ship, and do anything in any capacity that might distract him from his one overwhelming misery.

  No sooner was he gone than Florence found, despite her endeavours to persuade herself to the contrary, that she also was in love. Self-reproach and remorse of the most bitter kind seized upon her. Her spirits drooped, and she gave up going into society, and albeit her pride still prevented her from disclosing her secret to a soul, its effect was the more terrible from her struggles to conceal it. Day by day she sank, as her frame became more attenuated from constant yet concealed fretting. Winter came, and one cold followed another, until consumption proclaimed its terrible hold upon the beautiful victim. Everything that the deepest family affection and unlimited means could accomplish was done to stop the ravages of the disease; but although her friends were buoyed up with hope to the last, the medical men knew that her fate was sealed, from the very symptoms, so cruelly delusive, that comforted the others. She was attended by a physician, who came daily from London, and an apothecary from a neighbouring town. From the latter we received this story some time back. He was a young man, and had not long commenced practice when it took place.

  He had been up several nights in succession, and was retiring to rest about half-past eleven, when a violent peal of the surgery bell caused him to throw up the window and inquire what was wanted. He directly recognized the coachman of the Woodwards upon horseback, who told him that Miss Florence was much worse, and begged he would come over to Shepperton immediately. Sending the man at once away, with the assurance that he would be close upon his heels, he re-dressed hurriedly, and going to the stable, put his horse to the gig himself,—for the boy who looked after it did not sleep in the house,—and then hastily putting up a few things from the surgery which he thought might be wanted on emergency, he started off.

  It was bright moonlight, and the snow lay lightly upon the ground. The streets of the town were deserted; nor indeed was there any appearance of life, except that in some of the upper windows of the houses lights were gleaming, and it was cold—bitter cold. The apothecary gathered his heavy night-coat well about him, and then drove on, and crossed Chertsey Bridge, under which the cold river was flowing with a swollen heavy tide, chafing through the arches, as the blocks of ice floating on it at times impeded its free course. The wind blew keenly on the summit of the bridge; but as Mr. —— descended, it appeared more still; and when he got to the “gully-hole,” with its melancholy ring of pollards—(wherein a coach and four, with all the passengers, is reported by the natives once to have gone down, and never been seen again)—it had almost ceased.

  We have said the moon was very bright—more so than common, and when Mr. —— got to the commencement of Shepperton Range, he could see quite across the flat, even to the square white tower of the church; and then, just as the bell at Littleton tolled twelve he perceived something coming into the other end of the range, and moving at a quick pace. It was unusual to meet anything thereabouts so late at night, except the London market-carts and the carriers’ waggons, and he could form no idea of what it could be. It came on with increased speed, but without the slightest noise; and this was remarkable, inasmuch as the snow was not deep enough to muffle the sound of the wheels and horse’s feet, but had blown and drifted from the road upon the plain at the side. Nearer and nearer it came; and now the apothecary perceived that it was something like a hearse, but still vague and indistinct in shape, and it was progressing on the wrong side of the road. His horse appeared alarmed, and was snorting hurriedly as his breath steamed out in the moonlight, and Mr. —— felt himself singularly and instantaneously chilled. The mysterious vehicle was now distant from him only a few yards, and he called out to whoever was conducting it to keep the right side, but no attention was paid, and as he endeavoured to pull his own horse over, the object came upon him. The animal reared on his hind legs and then plunged forwards, overturning the gig against one of the flood-posts; but even as the accident occurred he saw that the strange carriage was a dark-covered vehicle, with black feathers at its corners; and that within were two figures, upon whom a strange and ghastly light appeared to be thrown. One of these resembled Florence Woodward; and the other, whose face was close to hers, bore the features of young Sherborne. The next instant he was thrown upon the ground.

 
; He was not hurt, but scrambled up again upon his legs immediately; when to his intense surprise nothing of the appalling equipage was to be seen. The Range was entirely deserted; and there was not a hedge or thicket of any kind behind which the strange apparition could have been concealed. But there was the gig upset, sure enough, and the cushions and wrappers lying on the snow. Unable to raise the gig, Mr. ——, almost bewildered, took out the horse, and rode hurriedly on over the remaining part of the flat, towards the Woodwards’ house. He was directly admitted, being expected; and, without exchanging a word with the servant, flew upstairs to the bed-room of the invalid. He entered, and found all the family assembled. One or two of them were kneeling round the bed, and weeping bitterly; and upon it lay the corpse of Florence Woodward. In a fit of coughing she had ruptured a large vessel in the lungs, and died almost instantaneously.

  Mr. —— ascertained in an instant that he had arrived too late. Unwilling to disturb the members of the family, who in their misery had scarcely noticed his arrival, he drew the nurse from the room, and asked how long she had been dead.

  “It is not a quarter of an hour, sir,” replied the old woman looking on an old-fashioned clock, that was going solemnly with a dead muffled beat upon the landing, and now pointed out the time—about ten minutes after twelve: “she went off close upon midnight, and started up just before she died, holding out her arms as though she saw something; and then she fell back upon the pillow, and it was all over.”

  The apothecary stayed in the house that night,—for his assistance was often needed by the mother of the dead girl,—and left in the morning. The adventure of the night before haunted him to a painful degree for a long period. Nor was his perfect inability to account for it at all relieved when he heard, some weeks afterwards, that young Sherborne had died of a wound received in the battle off Cape St. Vincent, on the very day, and at the very hour, when the apparition had appeared to him on Shepperton Range!