The Ballet of Dr Caligari

by Reggie Oliver

  From the diary of Dean Bennett

  Sunday March 5th 1882

  A most curious thing happened at evensong today. I had just given out the Psalm—‘Lord, who shall dwell in thy Tabernacle?’—and was looking down at my prayer book which was opened at the psalm when I saw what looked to me at first like a file of black ants crawling across the page. I was disgusted and appalled. I brushed them hastily off the page, but somehow they could not be moved. Or were they just specks of dust that had become ingrained on the page? No, they were most definitely moving. I did not have my spectacles on, so I could not be sure, but they looked to be less like ants than tiny figures in procession, carrying a longish object, almost like a funeral cortège. Nonsense of course. I blinked several times in case the specks were in my eyes rather than on the page, then I looked across the choir to the stalls opposite me. I noticed that Canon Simms from his stall was staring at me intently, as if he were trying to communicate some thought to me. I frowned back and looked down again at my prayer book. The ants or specks, or whatever they were, were gone. Lizzie told me afterwards that I read the lesson very badly this evening. The strange thing is that I couldn’t remember anything about it. I had to look it up in the order of service. It was from Matthew 18, ‘But whoso shall offend one of these little ones . . .’ etc. We should not pay too much attention to these occurrences. God in his Infinite Mercy knows what they mean, but we may not.

  From a letter of Canon Simms to Miss Agnes Taitt, Tuesday 7th March 1882

  I cannot begin, my love, to express to you the pain I feel in having caused you pain. If, in my last letter, I have been, as you say, ‘over-familiar’ and presumed too much on our future union, then I most abjectly beg your forgiveness. If I was ‘improper’ then it was only through an excess of the very proper feeling of love. It was regrettable that you should have been so careless as to allow my letter to fall into your father’s hands. I cannot think how this could have happened. Do you not keep my letters as safe and close as I do yours? But I do not blame you, my love. I will only say this: that it pains and surprises me that your father, whom I revere, should have chosen to read what was quite obviously a private communication. Nevertheless, I have caused distress and that I humbly regret.

  You say that he has forbidden all correspondence between us. That cannot be! I have therefore written to your sister enclosing this letter, hoping that she and her good husband will have pity on me and pass it on to you. I have always understood that they live not far from you and that you visit them frequently.

  If this action seems presumptuous, I cannot help it. I have no life without you. No life at all. You may say, but what of your life of prayer, what of God? Well, if I cannot have you, I will not have God. You are all the God I want, the only God I need and He is no substitute. There, I have said it, and it may be blasphemy, but God will forgive me because I have told you the truth, and God loves the truth.

  I admit freely that there have been too many gloomy things in my letters of late, so let me try to be cheerful and amusing instead. It is perhaps not my natural bent, as you know well, but I will try, just as you must try to accept me as I am.

  I visited old Archdeacon Bourne yesterday to play music with him. What a funny old fellow he is, with his patriarch’s white beard, his quips and quotations and his great house full of servants who are all looking after him alone. They say he is as rich as Croesus and goes every year with his manservant James to the Royal Academy where he buys an oil painting and James is allowed to select a water-colour or a small bronze. He is the very devil for punctuality and if I am even so much as a minute late by his watch I have to stand for a full quarter of an hour before he will speak to me, and then not before I have said ‘mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’ seven times! On this occasion I was most punctual and he was in high good humour. After we had played our music, he on the violin, I on the piano—he will have a dash at the Beethoven sonatas for which he is quite ‘o’er-parted’!—we had some general conversation. He was remembering his time as fellow and tutor at Oriel which was quite thirty years ago.

  He told me that during his time there Bishop Hartley had been up at Oriel as an undergraduate. ‘He was in those days what was called “a heavy swell”,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘The younger son of a Baronet, you know, which is sometimes an invidious position to be in, so my friends tell me. The Hartleys were a military family, I believe and he was by no means destined for the Church. He had money, went around with the fast set, joined the Grid, kept a couple of hunters at Abingdon. He was known as “Beau Hartley”, you know. You’ve seen that portrait by Maclise above the fireplace at Morton Episcopi. That’s Bishop Hartley as I first knew him.’

  I had of course observed the picture of an exquisitely beautiful young man with the high stock and the tight-fitting embroidered waistcoat of an 1850s dandy, but I had never associated it with the Bishop. Bishop Hartley is a commanding figure as you know, but somewhat stout, with a red, raddled face and receding hair. But what has most changed is the facial expression. The man in the portrait looks out boldly, impudently, you might say: the Bishop, for all his air of authority and command, has always to me had something furtive about him. He rarely looks you in the eye, and if he does it is always sidelong, half over a shoulder. I said to the Archdeacon that it was a wonder that he had never remarked to me or to anyone in my presence that the picture was of him.

  ‘You and I, my dear Canon, have never been beautiful,’ said the Archdeacon, ‘and so we have had longer to become used to our imperfections. Those who come to ugliness later in life feel both pride and shame about their former condition. I don’t know when Hartley decided on the church. It is a mystery to me. I did not see signs of a vocation when I knew him at Oriel. Not that he was exactly a miscreant; he did not miss his prescribed attendances at College Chapel, but—’ For a moment the Archdeacon was lost in thought, as if contemplating an unfathomable and somewhat painful mystery. Finally he rallied with that characteristic low, breathy chuckle of his, like an old badger snouting for worms in a wood. ‘No-one could accuse Hartley of having been the model for Mr Verdant Green,’ said the Archdeacon. He laughed at his witticism which he thought so good that he repeated it several times. You remember, my love, Mr Verdant Green was that most amusing book I told you of, about the innocent Oxford undergraduate who is led into some awful scrapes. Some fellows used to call me ‘Verdant’ when I was at Corpus Christi.

  And now to somewhat gloomier topics, I am afraid. I cannot forbear to mention that I have had that dream again last night, but events have moved on! I am standing in the Close where I was in my last dream, or perhaps a little further to the North, because I can see that the transept’s North Door is open and the funeral cortège is moving into the Cathedral. I am frantic because I know I should be inside. I can hear the choir singing, only the boys though; the tenors and basses are absent. The chant they are singing is unfamiliar to me and quite beautiful, I think. I was able to write down the notation roughly when I awoke; but it was some of the words that struck me most forcibly. Most of them were indistinct because the whole choir was singing, but then there was a solo by one of the trebles, Damer or Wilkins I think, and I could distinctly hear what was sung. Just these words: ‘Where is my Enemy Now? Who is my Enemy Now? Where is my Enemy Now?’ They seemed to me to be the most vital and terrible questions. I cannot quite understand why. I suppose the meaning is that if the Devil were dead, who would be the Enemy? But this is mere foolishness. You will tell me to dismiss it all from my mind, and so I shall.

  If you can, will you convey my sincere regrets and best regards to the Professor, your father? How goes his great work on the Refutation of Darwinism? I am sure we all wish him a speedy completion to his labours.

  From the diary of Dean Bennett

  Tuesday 14th March 1882

  Last night something very strange occurred. I was reading late in my study, as is my wont these days, when there came a banging at the door. It was about a quarter after eleve
n and, as I had dismissed all the servants for the night, I answered the door myself. It was the massive, dignified form of Skulpitt, the Head Verger and he was in a great taking. He said there were lights coming from the Cathedral ‘where there didn’t ought to be’. He had happened to look out of his rooms in the close and seen them. Why he could not have investigated on his own, or with a Sub-Verger, I do not know. Perhaps something about it frightened him. He certainly appeared to be much relieved when I agreed to join him in his investigations.

  As we approached the Cathedral I thought I could detect a faint flicker once or twice from behind the seven lancet windows (called for some unknown reason ‘The Seven Sleepers’) at the end of the South transept. The first thing to determine was how the intruder had got in, so we carefully tried the doors, beginning with the South Entrance until we came to the North Door which was ajar. If Skulpitt had not had his lantern we would have seen nothing within, for there was no other light source. The lamp as he moved it threw fantastic dancing shadows onto the great ribbed vault of the nave. I commanded Skulpitt to stand still. If there was nothing to see, at least we might hear something. Presently we did hear a noise, a faint whispering and scraping sound. ‘It’s coming from the crypt, Dean!’ said Skulpitt. Sure enough it was. When we came to the top of the steps to the crypt we saw a light faintly dappling the wall at their foot. At Skulpitt’s earnest request I took the lantern from him and led the way down the stairs. I do not know what I expected to find, but what I saw when we entered the crypt astonished me a good deal.

  A lighted candle in a pewter stick had been placed on the crypt’s floor which is largely composed of massive funereal slabs commemorating long dead ecclesiastical worthies. Upon one of these a man in a cassock was crouched on all fours. He appeared to be minutely inspecting the cracks in the stone and was whispering the whole time: ‘Where is he? Where is he? Where is he?’ It was young Canon Simms. I called to him several times but he took no notice. Eventually I went over and shook him quite roughly. This broke whatever trance he was in and he came to his senses. Such a look of shame and horror passed over his face when he became fully aware of his situation that I fully forgot all the words of reproof I had been preparing to deliver. ‘I must have been sleepwalking,’ was his only explanation. I had no reason to doubt this, but it is a strange kind of sleepwalking indeed that can take a man from his lodgings fully dressed, find a key, light a candle and deliver him into the bowels of a sacred edifice! Skulpitt and I escorted him back to his rooms and I told him to come and see me the following morning.

  When he came today he seemed to remember last night’s events very imperfectly. Perhaps it is just as well, so I did not seek to remind him. He talked of his dreams which he appears to think foretell some great calamity coming to the Cathedral. I told him to dismiss these fears and to pray earnestly for a deliverance from his dreams because they were assuredly the work of the Evil One. At this he looked at me sharply and said: ‘But who is the Evil One?’ ‘My dear man,’ I said severely, ‘you know quite as well as I do who the Evil One is.’

  I do believe, however, that I have discovered the root cause of Simms’ spiritual trouble. He is engaged to the daughter of Professor Taitt, a thoroughly suitable match in every way. Unfortunately, the Professor, with perhaps a greater sense of propriety than of sympathy, has forbidden the union for over a year. Canon Simms is a good young man but he needs the steadying and chastening influence that marriage with a sensible, virtuous woman can offer. He is evidently very much in love.

  I consulted Lizzie who, ever practical, suggested that Canon Simms, like many men in his situation, was not eating properly. She wrote out for him a strict regimen of nourishment and insisted that he should dine with us at least once a week. I thoroughly approved this course which settles at least some of his bodily needs.

  From a letter of Canon Simms to Miss Agnes Taitt, Thursday 16th March 1882

  I cannot express the joy I felt at receiving your dear letter and still more the relief I had at the news that your father has relented. We are allowed to write to one another once more! I am fully sensible that the possibility of a Union between us cannot be contemplated until your twenty first birthday, and I will contain myself in patience. A year and twenty-six days! You must excuse me if I count the days, even the hours!

  To receive your letters is a blessing, to be able to write to you is almost as great a consolation to my spirit. I feel better today though my sleep is still disturbed. Monday night was the worst and though the memory of my dreams is more confused than before, some parts of them stand out with awful vividness. The only relief I have is in writing them down and communicating them to a reader who will neither judge nor scold.

  I told you before that my last dream of the Devil’s funeral was a progression from the first ones that I had had; well, in this one again time had moved on. I was now hurrying to follow the cortège through the North Door and this I did. Imagine my confusion when, on entering the Cathedral, not only could I see no sign of the funeral procession, I could barely see anything else. The Cathedral was plunged in darkness as if the daylight from outside had suddenly been blotted out. Somehow a lighted candle came to my hand and with its aid I began my search for the mourners and the coffin.

  I could see nothing, but occasionally I heard sounds, little scraps of that choral chant that I had heard in my previous dream. ‘Where is my Enemy Now? Who is my Enemy Now? Where is my Enemy Now?’ Presently I was able to locate the source of the singing. It was coming from the crypt. So I walked down into it bearing my candle.

  The crypt was deserted but the coffin was there. It lay on the floor across the memorial stone to Archdeacon Haynes. I approached and stood above it. The coffin was open.

  I believe I told you that the coffin was an unnaturally long one. It was indeed horribly long, far longer than I had reckoned from a distant sight of it. Within was a body, of a sort. The top half of it was covered in a black cloth, but the legs and feet from the thighs downwards were not. Besides being hideously long and thin they were not like human legs at all. With their knotted joints and calloused, scaly skin they were more like the legs of some monstrous bird, except that the feet and toes had a vaguely anthropoid aspect. The nails, though, were black and curled like talons, while the colour of the skin was a rough leprous white, like the skin of a plucked chicken. Ask me why I was drawn to stoop down and pull aside the black cloth and I cannot answer you. This was a dream. But I did. I will not describe to you the body: that must be my private torment until the day I die, but the face, I will, if briefly. I must. It was the face of Bishop Hartley, red and raddled as in life, but dead, the eyes squeezed shut. Yet, though dead, the face did move, for a million agents of decay undulated and crawled beneath the skin, rolling his lips into a snarl and baring his blackened teeth. Some dark and rotten worm began industriously to lift the lid of his right eye, but before it could fully open I had somehow torn myself into the sweating, waking darkness of my bedroom in the Close. The Cathedral clock was tolling midnight. Yet this was not the end, for I found that I was not in bed, but standing at my window and fully clothed in my cassock! I had a vague impression that I had been somehow conveyed by an unknown agency from the Cathedral to my room.