to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic
worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through
the open window. “ What God doth the wizard pray to?”
quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old
Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning die comer by the meetinghouse, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of
him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her
husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown
looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without
a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only
dreamed a wild dream of a witch meeting?
Be it so if you will; but alas! it was a dream of evil omen
for young Goodman Brown. A stem, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the iiight of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day,
when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could
not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his
ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister
spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and,
with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our
religion, and of saintlike lives and triumphant deaths, and of
future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown
turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon
the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at
prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly
Young Goodman Brown
213
at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long,
and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith,
an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no
hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was
gloom.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Mr. J ustice Harbottle
#
Le Fanu and Poe are, according to Jack Sullivan, “the
first short story writers in English to work out carefully
planned aesthetic strategies of horror. They were also
among the first to write modern short stories. Their habitual strict attention to unity of mood and economy of means is a quality we take for granted in short fiction
today, but it was virtually unknown to their more didactically inclined contemporaries." (Horror Literature, pp.
2 2 1 -2 2 ) Sullivan goes on to maintain that “ Le Fanu was
more revolutionary than Poe, for he began the process
of dismantling the Gothic props and placing the supernatural tale in everyday settings.” M. R. James and his progeny derive from Le Fanu, and James considered him
the very greatest of ghost story writers. But he was not
a notable popular success in his day; his books are
among the very rarest in all nineteenth-century literature.
His masterpieces include “ Carmilla,” “Green Tea,” “The
Room in the Dragon Volant,” and a number of others,
including "M r. Justice Harbottle” offered here. Both Poe
and Le Fanu offered examinations of the human psyche
in abnormal circumstances characteristically in their stories, but in Le Fanu there is unquestionably supernatural evil at work, against an evil man, Judge Harbottle.
214
Mr. Justice Harbottle
215
PROLOGUE
On this case Doctor Hesselius has inscribed nothing more
than the words, “ Hannan’s Report,” and a simple reference to his own extraordinary Essay on “ The Interior Sense, and the Conditions of the Opening thereof.”
The reference is to Vol. I., Section 317, Note Za. The note
to which reference is thus made, simply says: “ There are two
accounts of the remarkable case of the Honourable Mr. Justice
Harbottle, one furnished to me by Mrs. Trimmer, of Tunbridge Wells (June, 1805); the other at a much later date, by Anthony Harman, Esq. I much prefer the former; in the first
place, because it is minute and detailed, and written, it seems
to me, with more caution and knowledge; and in the next,
because the letters from Dr. Hedstone, which are embodied
in it, furnish matter of the highest value to a right apprehension of the nature of the case. It was one of the best declared cases of an opening of the interior sense, which I have met
with. It was affected too, by the phenomenon, which occurs
so frequently as to indicate a law of these eccentric conditions; that is to say, it exhibited what I may term, the contagious character of this sort of intrusion of the spirit-world upon the proper domain of matter. So soon as the spirit-action has established itself in the case of one patient, its
developed energy begins to radiate, more or less effectually,
upon others. The interior vision of the child was opened; as
was, also, that of its mother, Mrs. Pyneweck; and both the
interior vision and hearing of the scullery-maid, were opened
on the same occasion. After-appearances are the result of the
law explained in Vol. II., Section 17 to 49. The common
centre of association, simultaneously recalled, unites, or reunites, as the case may be, for a period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The maximum will extend to days, the minimum is little more than a second. We see the operation of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of lunacy,
of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and
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J. Sheridan Le Fanu
painful character, though unattended by incapacity of business.”
The memorandum of the case of Judge Harbottle, which
was written by Mrs. Trimmer, of Hinbridge Wells, which
Doctor Hesselius thought the better of the two, I have been
unable to discover among his papers. I found in his escritoire
a note to the effect that he had lent the Report of Judge Har-
bottle’s case, written by Mrs. Trimmer, to Dr. F. Heyne. To
that learned and able gentleman accordingly I wrote, and
received from him, in his reply, which was full of alarms and
regrets, on account of the uncertain safety of that ‘‘valuable
M S.,” a line written long since by Dr. Hesselius, which
completely exonerated him, inasmuch as it acknowledged the
safe return of the papers. The narrative of Mr. Harman, is
therefore, the only one available for this collection. The late
Dr. Hesselius, in another passage of the note that I have cited,
says, ‘‘As to the facts (non-medical) of the case, the narrative
of Mr. Harman exactly tallies with that furnished by Mrs.
Trimmer.” The strictly scientific view of the case would
scarcely interest the popular reader; and, possibly, for the
purposes of this selection, I should, even had I both papers
to choose between, have preferred that of Mr. Hannan, which
is given, in full, in the following pages.
I The Judge's House
Thirty years ago, an elderly man, to whom I paid quarterly
a small annuity charged on some property of mine, came on
th
e quarter-day to receive it. He was a dry, sad, quiet man,
who had known better days, and had always maintained an
unexceptionable character. No better authority could be
imagined for a ghost story.
He told me one, though with a manifest reluctance; he was
drawn into the narration by his choosing to explain what I
should not have remarked, that he had called two days earlier
than that week after the strict day of payment, which he had
Mr. Justice Harbottle
217
usually allowed to elapse. His reason was a sudden determination to change his lodgings, and the consequent necessity of paying his rent a little before it was due.
He lodged in a dark street in Westminster, in a spacious
old house, very warm, being wainscoted from top to bottom,
and furnished with no undue abundance of windows, and
those fitted with thick sashes and small panes.
This house was, as the bills upon the windows testified,
offered to be sold or let. But no one seemed to care to look
at it.
A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large,
steady, alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to
read what you might have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed, was in charge of it, with a solitary “ maid-of-all-work” under her command. My
poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of
their extraordinary cheapness. He had occupied them for
nearly a year without the slightest disturbance, and was the
only tenant, under rent, in the house. He had two rooms; a
sitting-room and a bed-room with a closet opening from it,
in which he kept his books and papers locked up. He had
gone to his bed, having also locked the outer door. Unable
to sleep, he had lighted a candle, and after having read for a
time, had laid the book beside him. He heard the old clock
at the stair-head strike one; and very shortly after, to his
alarm, he saw the closet door, which he thought he had
locked, open stealthily, and a slight dark man, particularly
sinister, and somewhere about fifty, dressed in mourning of
a very antique fashion, such a suit as we see in Hogarth,
entered the room on tip-toe. He was followed by an elder
man, stout, and blotched with scurvy, and whose features,
fixed as a corpse’s, were stamped with dreadful force with a
character of sensuality and villainy.
This old man wore a flowered silk dressing-gown and ruffles, and he remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet, such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress.
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J. Sheridan Le Fanu
This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand
a coil of rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the foot of his bed, from the closet door at the farther end of the room, at the left, near the window, to
the door opening upon the lobby, close to the bed’s head, at
his right. .
He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again, no consideration the world could
offer would induce him so much as to enter it again alone,
even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of the closet,
and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning
fast locked as he had left them before going to bed.
In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared the least conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but walked as living men do, but without any sound,
and he felt a vibration on the floor as they crossed it. He so
obviously suffered from speaking about the apparitions, that
I asked him no more questions.
There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much my senior, then living in a remote
part of England, for the information which I knew he could
give me. He had himself more than once pointed out that old
house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the
strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater
detail.
His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey
its substance.
Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars
about the closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle,
one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. You refer,
of course, to the extraordinary occurrences that made that
period of his life long after a theme for “ winter tales’’ and
metaphysical speculation. I happen to know perhaps more
than any other man living of those mysterious particulars.
The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more
Mr. Justice Harbottle
219
than thirty years ago, I examined for the last time. During
the years that have passed since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions, has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it stood. If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I
should have no difficulty about naming the street in which it
stood. As what I have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting value, and as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being silent on that particular point.
How old the house was, I can’t tell. People said it was
built by Roger Harbottle, a llirkey merchant, in the reign of
King James I. I am not a good opinion upon such questions;
but having been in it, though in its forlorn and deserted state,
I can tell you in a general way what it was like. It was built
of dark-red brick, and the door and windows were faced with
stone that had turned yellow by time. It receded some feet
from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a
florid and fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent to the hall-door, in which were fixed, under a file of lamps among scrolls and twisted leaves, two immense “ extinguishers,” like the conical caps of fairies, into which, in old times, the footmen used to thrust their flambeaux when their chairs or coaches had set down their great people, in the hall or at the steps, as the case might be. That
hall is panelled up to the ceiling, and has a large fire-place.
Two or three stately old rooms open from it at each side. The
windows of these are tall, with many small panes. Passing
through the arch at the back of the hall, you come upon the
wide and heavy well-staircase. There is a back staircase also.
The mansion is large, and has not as much light, by any
means, in proportion to its extent, as modem houses enjoy.
When I saw it, it had long been untenanted, and had the
gloomy reputation beside of a haunted house. Cobwebs
floated from the ceilings or spanned the comers of the cornices, and dust lay thick over everything. The windows were stained with the dust and rain of fifty years, and darkness had
thus grown darker.
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J. Sheridan Le Fanu
When I made it my first visit, it was in company with my
father, when I was still a boy, in the year 1808. I was about
twelve years old, and my imagination impressible, as it always is at that age. I looked about me with great awe. I was here in the very centre and scene of th
ose occurrences which
I had heard recounted at the fireside at home, with so delightful a horror.
My father was an old bachelor of nearly sixty when he
married. He had, when a child, seen Judge Harbottle on the
bench in his robes and wig a dozen times at least before his
death, which took place in 1748, and his appearance made a
powerful and unpleasant impression, not only on his imagination, but upon his nerves.
The Judge was at that time a man of some sixty-seven
years. He had a great mulberry-coloured face, a big, carbun-
cled nose, fierce eyes, and a grim and brutal mouth. My
father, who was young at the time, thought it the most formidable face he had ever seen; for there were evidences of intellectual power in the formation and lines of the forehead.
His voice was loud and harsh, and gave effect to the sarcasm
which was his habitual weapon on the bench.
This old gentleman had the reputation of being about the
wickedest man in England. Even on the bench he now and
then showed his scorn of opinion. He had carried cases his
own way, it was said, in spite of counsel, authorities, and
even of juries, by a sort of cajolery, violence, and bamboozling, that somehow confused and overpowered resistance.
He had never actually committed himself; he was too cunning
to do that. He had the character of being, however, a dangerous and unscrupulous judge; but his character did not trouble him. The associates he chose for his hours of relaxation cared as little as he did about it.
Mr. Justice Harbottle
221
II Mr. P eters
One night during the session of 1746 this old Judge went
down in his chair to wait in one of the rooms of the House
of Lords for the result of a division in which he and his order
were interested.
This over, he was about to return to his house close by, in
his chair; but the night had become so soft and fine that he
changed his mind, sent it home empty, and with two footmen, each with a flambeau, set out on foot in preference.
Gout had made him rather a slow pedestrian. It took him
some time to get through the two or three streets he had to
The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 27
