CHAPTER XIII
Henry Wimbush brought down with
him to dinner a budget of printed sheets loosely bound together in a cardboard
portfolio.
'Today,' he
said, exhibiting it with a certain solemnity, 'today I have finished the
printing of my History of Crome. I helped to set up the type of the last page
this evening.'
'The famous
History?' cried Anne. The writing and
the printing of this Magnum Opus had been going on as long as she could
remember. All her
childhood long Uncle Henry's History had been a vague and fabulous thing, often
heard of and never seen.
'It has
taken me nearly thirty years,' said Mr Wimbush. 'Twenty-five years of
writing and nearly four of printing.
And now it's finished - the whole chronicle, from Sir Ferdinando Lapith's birth to the
death of my father William Wimbush - more than three
centuries and a half: a history of Crome, written at Crome, and printed at Crome by my
own press.'
'Shall we
be allowed to read it now it's finished?' asked Denis.
Mr Wimbush nodded.
'Certainly,' he said. 'And I hope
you will not find it uninteresting,' he added modestly. 'Our muniment room
is particularly rich in ancient records, and I have some genuinely new light to
throw on the introduction of the three-pronged fork.'
'And the
people?' asked Gombauld. 'Sir Ferdinando and
the rest of them - were they amusing?
Were there any crimes or tragedies in the family?'
'Let me
see.' Henry Wimbush
rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'I can
only think of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps five broken
hearts, and half a dozen little blots on the scutcheon
in the way of misalliances, seductions, natural children, and the like. No, on the whole, it's a placid and
uneventful record.'
'The Wimbushes and the Lapiths were always an unadventurous, respectable crew,' said
Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice.
'If I were to write my family history now! Why, it would be one long continuous blot
from beginning to end.' She laughed
jovially, and helped herself to another glass of wine.
'If I were
to write mine,' Mr Scogan remarked, 'it wouldn't
exist. After the second generation we Scogans are lost in the mists of antiquity.'
'After
dinner,' said Henry Wimbush, a little piqued by his
wife's disparaging comment on the masters of Crome,
'I'll read you an episode from my History that will make you admit that even
the Lapiths, in their own respectable way, had their
tragedies and strange adventures.'
'I'm glad
to hear it,' said Priscilla.
'Glad to
hear what?' asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her private interior world like
a cuckoo from a clock. She received an
explanation, smiled, nodded, cuckooed a last 'I see,' and popped back, clapping
shut the door behind her.
Dinner was
eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room.
'Now,' said
Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He put on his round pince-nez, rimmed with
tortoiseshell, and began cautiously to turn over the pages of his loose and
still fragmentary book. He found his
place at last. 'Shall I begin?' he
asked, looking up.
'Do,' said
Priscilla, yawning.
In the midst
of an attentive silence Mr Wimbush gave a little
preliminary cough and started to read.
'The infant
who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the name of Lapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small baby, weighing not more
than three pounds at birth, but from the first he was sturdy and healthy. In honour of his maternal grandfather, Sir
Hercules Occam of Bishop's Occam,
he was christened Hercules. His mother,
like many other mothers, kept a notebook, in which his progress from month to
month was recorded. He walked at ten
months, and before his second year was out he weighed but twenty-four pounds,
and at six, though he could read and write perfectly and showed a remarkable
aptitude for music, he was no larger and heavier than a well-grown child of
two. Meanwhile, his mother had borne two
other children, a boy and a girl, one of whom died of croup during infancy,
while the other was carried off by smallpox before it reached the age of five. Hercules remained the only surviving child.
'On his
twelfth birthday Hercules was still only three feet and two inches in
height. His head, which was very
handsome and nobly shaped, was too big for his body, but otherwise he was
exquisitely proportioned and, for his size, of great strength and agility. His parents, in the hope of making him grow,
consulted all the most eminent physicians of the time. Their various prescriptions were followed to
the letter, but in vain. One ordered a
very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; a third constructed a little rack,
modelled on those employed by the Holy Inquisition, on which young Hercules was
stretched, with excruciating torments, for half an hour every morning and
evening. In the course of the next three
years Hercules gained perhaps two inches.
After that his growth stopped completely, and he remained for the rest
of his life a pigmy of three feet and four inches. His father, who had built
the most extravagant hopes upon his son, planning for him in his imagination a
military career equal to that of
'Hercules
thus found himself at the age of twenty-one alone in the world, and master of a
considerable fortune, including the estate and mansion of Crome. The beauty and intelligence of his childhood
had survived into his manly age, and, but for his dwarfish stature, he would
have taken his place among the handsomest and most accomplished young men of
his time. He was well read in Greek and
Latin authors, as well as in all the moderns of any merit who had written in
English, French, or Italian. He had a
good ear for music, and was no indifferent performer on the violin, which he
used to play like a bass viol, seated on a chair with the instrument between
his legs. To the music of the
harpsichord and clavichord he was extremely partial, but the smallness of his
hands made it impossible for him ever to perform upon these instruments. He had a small ivory flute made for him, on
which, whenever he was melancholy, he used to play a simple country air or jig,
affirming that this rustic music had more power to clear and raise the spirits
than the most artificial productions of the masters. From an early age he practised the
composition of poetry, but, though conscious of his great powers in this art,
he would never publish any specimen of his writing. "My stature," he would say,
"is reflected in my verses; if the public were to read them it would not
be because I am a poet, but because I am a dwarf." Several MS books of Sir Hercules's poems
survive. A single specimen will suffice
to illustrate his qualities as a poet.
"In ancient days, while yet the world was young,
Ere Abram fed his flocks or Homer sang;
When blacksmith Tubal tamed creative fire,
And Jabal dwelt in tents and Jubal struck his lyre;
Flesh grown corrupt brought forth a monstrous birth
And obscene giants trod the shrinking earth,
Till God, impatient of their sinful brood,
Gave rein to wrath and drown'd them in the Flood.
Teeming again, repeopled Tellus bore
The lubber Hero and the Man of War;
Huge towers of Brawn, topp'd with an empty Skull,
Witlessly bold, heroically dull.
Long ages pass'd and Man grown more refin'd,
Slighter in muscle but of vaster Mind,
Smiled at his grandsire's broadsword, bow and bill,
And learn'd to wield the Pencil and the Quill.
The glowing canvas and the written page
Immortaliz'd his name from age to age,
His
name embalzon'd on Fame's temple wall;
For Art grew great as Humankind grew small.
Thus man's long progress step by step we trace;
The Giant dies, the hero takes his place;
The Giant vile, the dull heroic Block:
At one we shudder and at one we mock.
Man last appears. In him the Soul's pure flame
Burns brightlier in a not inord'nate frame.
Of old when Heroes fought and Giants swarmed,
Men were huge mounds of matter scarce inform'd;
Wearied by leavening so vast a mass,
The spirit slept and all the mind was crass.
The smaller carcase of these later days
Is soon inform'd' the Soul unwearied plays
And like a Pharos darts abroad her mental rays.
But can we think that Providence will stay
Man's footsteps here upon the upward way?
Mankind in understanding and in grace
Advanc'd so far beyond the Giant's race?
Hence impious thought! Still led by GOD'S own Hand,
Mankind proceeds towards the Promised Land.
A time will come (prophetic, I descry
Remoter dawns along the gloomy sky),
When happy mortals of a Golden Age
Will backward turn the dark historic page,
And in our vaunted race of Men behold
A form as gross, a Mind as dead and cold,
As we in Giants see, in warriors of old.
A time will come, wherein the soul shall be
From all superfluous matter wholly free:
When the light body, agile as a fawn's,
Shall sport with grace along the velvet lawns.
Nature's most delicate and final birth,
Mankind perfected shall possess the earth.
But ah, not yet! For still the Giants' race,
Huge, though diminish'd, tramps the Earth's fair face;
Gross and repulsive, yet perversely proud,
Men of their imperfections boast aloud.
Vain of their bulk, of all they still retain
Of giant ugliness absurdly vain;
At all that's small they point their stupid scorn
And, monsters, think themselves divinely born.
Sad is the Fate of those, ah, sad indeed,
The rare precursors of the nobler breed!
Who come man's golden glory to foretell,
But pointing Heav'nwards live themselves in Hell.
'As soon as
he came into the estate, Sir Hercules set about remodelling his household. For though by no means ashamed of his
deformity - indeed, if we may judge from the poem quoted above, he regarded
himself as being in many ways superior to the ordinary race of man - he found
the presence of full-grown men and women embarrassing. Realizing, too, that he must abandon all
ambitions in the great world, he determined to retire absolutely from it and to
create, as it were, at Crome a private world of his
own, in which all should be proportionable to himself. Accordingly,
he discharged all the old servants of the house and replaced them gradually, as
he was able to find suitable successors, by others of dwarfish stature. In the course of a few years he had assembled
about himself a numerous household, no member of which was above four feet high
and the smallest among them scarcely two feet six inches. His father's dogs, such as setters, mastiffs,
greyhounds, and a pack of beagles, he sold or gave away as too large and too
boisterous for his house, replacing them by pugs and King Charles spaniels and
whatever other breeds of dog were the smallest.
His father's stable was also sold.
For his own use, whether riding or driving, he had six black Shetland
ponies, with four very choice piebald animals of New Forest breed.
'Having
thus settled his household entirely to his own satisfaction, it only remained
for him to find some suitable companion with whom to share this paradise. Sir Hercules had a susceptible heart, and had
more than once, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, felt what it was to
love. But here his deformity had been a
source of the most bitter humiliation, for, having
once dared to declare himself to a young lady of his choice, he had been
received with laughter. On his
persisting, she had picked him up and shaken him like an importunate child,
telling him to run away and plague her no more.
The story soon got about - indeed, the young lady herself used to tell
it as a particularly pleasant anecdote - and the taunts and mockery it
occasioned were a source of the most acute distress to Hercules. From the poems written at this period we
gather that he meditated taking his own life.
In course of time, however, he lived down this humiliation; but never
again, though he often fell in love, and that very passionately, did he dare to
make any advances to those in whom he was interested. After coming to the estate and finding that
he was in a position to create his own world as he desired it, he saw that, if
he was to have a wife - which he very much desired, being of an affectionate
and, indeed, amorous temper - he must choose her as he had chosen his servants
- from among the race of dwarfs. But to
find a suitable wife was, he found, a matter of some
difficulty; for he would marry none who was not distinguished by beauty and
gentle birth. The dwarfish daughter of
Lord Bemboro he refused on the ground that besides
being a pigmy she was hunchbacked; while another young lady, an orphan
belonging to a very good family in Hampshire, was rejected by him because her
face, like that of so many dwarfs, was wizened and repulsive. Finally, when he was almost despairing of
success, he heard from a reliable source that Count Titimalo,
a Venetian nobleman, possessed a daughter of exquisite beauty and great
accomplishments, who was but three feet in height. Setting out at once for
'Crome and its household of dwarfs delighted Filomena, who felt herself now for the first time to be a
free woman living among her equals in a friendly world. She had many tastes in common with her
husband, especially that of music. She
had a beautiful voice, of a power surprising in one so small, and could touch A in alto without effort.
Accompanied by her husband on his fine Cremona
fiddle, which he played, as we have noted before, as one plays a bass viol, she
would sing all the liveliest and tenderest airs from
the operas and cantatas of her native country.
Seated together at the harpsichord, they found that they could with
their four hands play all the music written for two hands of ordinary size, a
circumstance which gave Sir Hercules unfailing pleasure.
'When they
were not making music or reading together, which they often did, both in
English and Italian, they spent their time in healthful outdoor exercises,
sometimes rowing in a little boat on the lake, but more often riding or
driving, occupations in which, because they were entirely new to her, Filomena especially delighted. When she had become a perfectly proficient
rider, Filomena and her husband used often to go
hunting in the park, at that time very much more extensive than it is now. They hunted not foxes nor hares, but rabbits,
using a pack of about thirty black and fawn-coloured pugs, a kind of dog which,
when not overfed, can course a rabbit as well as any of the smaller
breeds. Four dwarf grooms, dressed in
scarlet liveries and mounted on white Exmoor ponies, hunted the pack, while
their master and mistress, in green habits, followed either on the black
Shetlands or on the piebald New Forest ponies.
A picture of the whole hunt - dogs, horses, grooms, and masters - was
painted by William Stubbs, whose work Sir Hercules admired so much that he
invited him, though a man of ordinary stature, to come and stay at the mansion
for the purpose of executing this picture.
Stubbs likewise painted a portrait of Sir Hercules and his lady driving
in their green enamelled calash drawn by four black Shetlands. Sir Hercules wears a plum-coloured velvet
coat and white breeches; Filomena is dressed in
flowered muslin and a very large hat with pink feathers. The two figures in their gay carriage stand
out sharply against a dark background of trees; but to the left of the picture
the trees fall away and disappear, so that the four black ponies are seen
against a pale and strangely lurid sky that has the golden-brown colour of
thunder-clouds lighted up by the sun.
'In this
way four years passed happily by. At the
end of that time Filomena found herself
great with child. Sir Hercules was
overjoyed. "If God is good,"
he wrote in his daybook, "the name of Lapith
will be preserved and our rarer and more delicate race transmitted through the
generations until in the fullness of time the world shall recognize the
superiority of those beings whom now it uses to make mock of." One his wife's being brought to bed of a son
he wrote a poem to the same effect. The
child was christened Ferdinando in memory of the
builder of the house.
'With the
passage of the months a certain sense of disquiet began to invade the minds of
Sir Hercules and his lady. For the child
was growing with an extraordinary rapidity.
At a year he weighed as much as Hercules had weighed when he was
three. "Ferdinando
goes crescendo," wrote Filomena in her
diary. "It seems not
natural." At eighteen months the
baby was almost as tall as their smallest jockey, who was a man of
thirty-six. Could it be that Ferdinando was destined to become a man of the normal,
gigantic dimensions? It was a thought to
which neither of his parents dared yet give open utterance, but in the secrecy
of their respective diaries they brooded over it in terror and dismay.
'On his
third birthday Ferdinando was taller than his mother
and not more than a couple of inches short of his father's height. "Today for the first time," wrote
Sir Hercules, "we discussed the situation.
The hideous truth can be concealed no longer: Ferdinando
is not one of us. On this, his third
birthday, a day when we should have been rejoicing at the health, the strength,
and beauty of our child, we wept together over the ruin of our happiness. God give us strength to bear this
cross."
'At the age
of eight Ferdinando was so large and so exuberantly
healthy that his parents decided, though reluctantly, to send him to
school. He was packed off to Eton at the
beginning of the next half. A profound
peace settled upon the house. Ferdinando returned for the summer holidays larger and
stronger than ever. One day he knocked
down the butler and broke his arm.
"He is rough, inconsiderate, unamenable
to persuasion," wrote his father. "The only thing that will teach her
manners is corporal chastisement." Ferdinando, who at this age was already seventeen inches
taller than his father, received no corporal chastisement.
'One summer holidays about three years later Ferdinando
returned to Crome accompanied by a very large mastiff
dog. He had bought it from an old
man at Windsor who found the beast too expensive to feed. It was a savage, unreliable animal; hardly
had it entered the house when it attacked one of Sir Hercules's favourite pugs,
seizing the creature in its jaws and shaking it till it was nearly dead. Extremely put out by this occurrence, Sir
Hercules ordered that the beast should be chained-up in the stable-yard. Ferdinando sullenly
answered that the dog was his, and he would keep it where he pleased. His father, growing angry, bade him take the
animal out of the house at once, on pain of his utmost displeasure. Ferdinando refused
to move. His mother at this moment
coming into the room, the dog flew at her, knocked her down, and in a twinkling
had very severely mauled her arm and shoulder; in another instant it must have
infallibly have had her by the throat, had not Sir Hercules drawn his sword and
stabbed the animal to the heart. Turning
on his son, he ordered him to leave the room immediately, as being unfit to
remain in the same place with the mother whom he had nearly murdered. So awe-inspiring was the spectacle of Sir
Hercules standing with one foot on the carcase of the gigantic dog, his sword
drawn and still bloody, so commanding were his voice, his gestures, and the
expression of his face, that Ferdinando slunk out of
the room in terror and behaved himself for all the rest of the vacation in an
entirely exemplary fashion. His mother
soon recovered from the bites of the mastiff, but the effect on her mind of
this adventure was ineradicable; from that time forth
she lived always among imaginary terrors.
'The two
years which Ferdinando spent on the Continent, making
the Grand Tour, were a period of happy repose for his parents. But even now the thought of the future haunted them; nor were they able to solace themselves with
all the diversions of their younger days.
The Lady Filomena had lost her voice and Sir
Hercules was grown too rheumatical to play the violin. He, it is true, still rode after his pugs,
but his wife felt herself too old and, since the episode of the mastiff, too
nervous for such sports. At most, to
please her husband, she would follow the hunt at a distance in a little gig
drawn by the safest and oldest of the Shetlands.
'The day
fixed for Ferdinando's return came round. Filomena, sick with vague dreads and presentiments, retired to her chamber
and her bed. Sir Hercules
received his son alone. A giant in a
brown travelling-suit entered the room.
"Welcome home, my son," said Sir Hercules in a voice that
trembled a little.
'"I
hope I see you well, sir." Ferdinando bent down to shake hands, then
straightened himself up again. The top
of his father's head reached to the level of his hip.
'Ferdinando had not come alone. Two friends of his own age accompanied him,
and each of the young men had brought a servant. Not for thirty years had Crome
been desecrated by the presence of so many members of the common race of
men. Sir Hercules was appalled and
indignant, but the laws of hospitality had to be obeyed. He received the young gentlemen with grave
politeness and sent the servants to the kitchen, with orders that they should
be well cared for.
'The old
family dining-table was dragged out into the light and dusted (Sir Hercules and
his lady were accustomed to dine at a small table twenty inches high). Simon, the aged butler, who could only just
look over the edge of the big table, was helped at supper by the three servants
brought by Ferdinando and his guests.
'Sir
Hercules presided, and with his usual grace supported a conversation on the
pleasures of foreign travel, the beauties of art and nature to be met with
abroad, the opera at Venice, the singing of the orphans in the churches of the
same city, and on other topics of a similar nature. The young men were not particularly attentive
to his discourses; they were occupied in watching the efforts of the butler to
change the plates and replenish the glasses.
They covered their laughter by violent and repeated fits of coughing or
choking. Sir Hercules affected not to
notice, but changed the subject of the conversation to sport. Upon this one of the young men asked whether
it was true, as he had heard, that he used to hunt the
rabbit with a pack of pug dogs. Sir
Hercules replied that it was, and proceeded to describe the chase in some
detail. The young men roared with
laughter.
'When
supper was over, Sir Hercules climbed down from his chair and, giving as his
excuse that he must see how his lady did, bade them goodnight. The sound of laughter followed him up the
stairs. Filomena
was not asleep; she had been lying on her bed listening to the sound of
enormous laughter and the tread of strangely heavy feet on the stairs and along
the corridors. Sir Hercules drew a chair
to her bedside and sat there for a long time in silence, holding his wife's
hand and sometimes gently squeezing it.
At about ten o'clock they were startled by a violent noise. There was a breaking of glass, a stamping of feet,
with an outburst of shouts and laughter.
The uproar continuing for several minutes, Sir Hercules rose to his feet
and, in spite of his wife's entreaties, prepared to go and see what was
happening. There was no light on the
staircase, and Sir Hercules groped his way down cautiously, lowering himself
from stair to stair and standing for a moment on each tread before adventuring
on a new step. The noise was louder
here; the shouting articulated itself into recognizable words and phrases. A line of light was visible under the
dining-room door. Sir Hercules tiptoed
across the hall towards it. Just as he approached the door there was another
terrific crash of breaking glass and jangled metal. What could they be doing? Standing on tiptoe he managed to look through
the keyhole. In the middle of the
ravaged table old Simon, the butler, so primed with drink that he could
scarcely keep his balance, was dancing a jig.
His feet crunched and tinkled among the broken glass, and his shoes were
wet with spilt wine. The three young men
sat round, thumping the table with their hands or with the empty wine bottles,
shouting and laughing encouragement. The
three servants leaning against the wall laughed too. Ferdinando suddenly
threw a handful of walnuts at the dancer's head, which so dazed and surprised
the little man that he staggered and fell down on his back, upsetting a
decanter and several glasses. They
raised him up, gave him some brandy to drink, thumped
him on the back. The old man smiled and
hiccoughed. "Tomorrow," said Ferdinando, "we'll have a concerted ballet of the
whole household." "With father
Hercules wearing his club and lion-skin," added one of his companions, and
all three roared with laughter.
'Sir
Hercules would look and listen no further.
He crossed the hall once more and began to climb the stairs, lifting his
knees painfully high at each degree.
This was the end; there was no place for him now in the world, no place
for him and Ferdinando together.
'His wife
was still awake; to her questioning glance he answered, "They are making
mock of old Simon. Tomorrow it will be
our turn." They were silent for a
time.
'At last Filomena said, "I do not want to see tomorrow."
'"It
is better not," said Sir Hercules.
Going into his closet he wrote in his day-book a full and particular
account of all the events of the evening.
While he was engaged in this task he rang for a servant and ordered hot
water and a bath to be made ready for him at eleven o'clock. When he had finished writing he went into his
wife's room, and preparing a dose of opium twenty times as strong as that which
she was accustomed to take when she could not sleep, he brought it to her,
saying, "Here is your sleeping-draught."
'Filomena took the glass and lay for a little time, but did
not drink immediately. The tears came
into her eyes. "Do you remember the
songs we used to sing, sitting out there sulla
terrazza in summertime?" She began signing softly in her ghost of a
cracked voice a few bars from Stradella's "Amor,
amor, non dormir piu." "And
you playing on the violin. It seems such a short time ago, and yet so
long, long, long. Addio, amore. A rivederti." She drank off the draught and, lying back on
the pillow, closed her eyes. Sir
Hercules kissed her hand and tiptoed away, as though he were afraid of waking
her. He returned to his closet, and
having recorded his wife's last words to him, he poured into his bath the water
that had been brought up in accordance with his orders. The water being too hot for him to get into
the bath at once, he took down from the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca had died. He opened the book at random. "But dwarfs," he read, "he
held in abhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen." He winced as though he had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had
exhibited in the amphitheatre a young man called Lucius,
of good family, who was not quite two feet in height and weighed seventeen
pounds, but had a stentorian voice. He
turned over the pages. Tiberius,
Caligula, Claudius, Nero: it was a tale of growing
horror. "Seneca his preceptor, he
forced to kill himself." And there
was Petronius, who had called his friends about him
at the last, bidding them talk to him, not of the consolations of philosophy,
but of love and gallantry, while the life was ebbing away through his opened
veins. Dipping his pen once more in the
ink he wrote on the last page of his diary: "He died a Roman death." Then, putting the toes of one foot into the
water and finding that it was not too hot, he threw off his dressing-gown and,
taking a razor in his hand, sat down in the bath. With one deep cut he severed the artery in
his left wrist, then lay back and composed his mind to meditation. The blood oozed out, floating through the
water in dissolving wreaths and spirals.
In a little while the whole bath was tinged with pink. The colour deepened; Sir Hercules felt
himself mastered by an invincible drowsiness; he was sinking from vague dream
to dream. Soon he was sound asleep. There was not much blood in his small body.'