Told After Supper
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Told After Supper
This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1891 Leadenhall Press edition.
TOLD AFTER SUPPER
by Jerome K. Jerome
Contents:
Introductory
How the Stories came to be told
Teddy Biffles' Story--Johnson and Emily; or, the Faithful Ghost
Interlude--The Doctor's Story
Mr. Coombe's Story--The Haunted Mill; or, the Ruined Home
Interlude
My Uncle's Story--The Ghost of the Blue Chamber
A Personal Explanation
My Own Story
INTRODUCTORY
It was Christmas Eve.
I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable
way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox,
respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox,
respectable thing; and the habit clings to me.
Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary
to mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it was
Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve,
in a ghost story,
Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Eve
they hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in
Ghostland who IS anybody--or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should
say, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody--comes out to show
himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and
display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to
criticise one another's style, and sneer at one another's
complexion.
"Christmas Eve parade," as I expect they themselves term it, is a
function, doubtless, eagerly prepared for and looked forward to
throughout Ghostland, especially the swagger set, such as the
murdered Barons, the crime-stained Countesses, and the Earls who
came over with the Conqueror, and assassinated their relatives, and
died raving mad.
Hollow moans and fiendish grins are, one may be sure, energetically
practised up. Blood-curdling shrieks and marrow-freezing gestures
are probably rehearsed for weeks beforehand. Rusty chains and gory
daggers are over-hauled, and put into good working order; and
sheets and shrouds, laid carefully by from the previous year's
show, are taken down and shaken out, and mended, and aired.
Oh, it is a stirring night in Ghostland, the night of December the
twenty-fourth!
Ghosts never come out on Christmas night itself, you may have
noticed. Christmas Eve, we suspect, has been too much for them;
they are not used to excitement. For about a week after Christmas
Eve, the gentlemen ghosts, no doubt, feel as if they were all head,
and go about making solemn resolutions to themselves that they will
stop in next Christmas Eve; while lady spectres are contradictory
and snappish, and liable to burst into tears and leave the room
hurriedly on being spoken to, for no perceptible cause whatever.
Ghosts with no position to maintain--mere middle-class ghosts--
occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: on
All-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up for a
mere local event--to celebrate, for instance, the anniversary of
the hanging of somebody's grandfather, or to prophesy a misfortune.
He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British
ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he
is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the
whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a
bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible
disaster, about which nobody in their senses want to know sooner
they could possibly help, and the prior knowledge of which can
serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is
combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if
anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a
couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn, or
balancing himself on somebody's bed-rail.
Then there are, besides, the very young, or very conscientious
ghosts with a lost will or an undiscovered number weighing heavy on
their minds, who will haunt steadily all the year round; and also
the fussy ghost, who is indignant at having been buried in the
dust-bin or in the village pond, and who never gives the parish a
single night's quiet until somebody has paid for a first-class
funeral for him.
But these are the exceptions. As I have said, the average orthodox
ghost does his one turn a year, on Christmas Eve, and is satisfied.
Why on Christmas Eve, of all nights in the year, I never could
myself understand. It is invariably one of the most dismal of
nights to be out in--cold, muddy, and wet. And besides, at
Christmas time, everybody has quite enough to put up with in the
way of a houseful of living relations, without wanting the ghosts
of any dead ones mooning about the place, I am sure.
There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas--something
about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like
the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.
And not only do the ghosts themselves always walk on Christmas Eve,
but live people always sit and talk about them on Christmas Eve.
Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on
Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.
Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell
authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive
season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and
murders, and blood.
There is a good deal of similarity about our ghostly experiences;
but this of course is not our fault but the fault ghosts, who never
will try any new performances, but always will keep steadily to
old, safe business. The consequence is that, when you have been at
one Christmas Eve party, and heard six people relate their
adventures with spirits, you do not require to hear any more ghost
stories. To listen to any further ghost stories after that would
be like sitting out two farcical comedies, or taking in two comic
journals; the repetition would become wearisome.
There is always the young man who was, one year, spending the
Christmas at a country house, and, on Christmas Eve, they put him
to sleep in the west wing. Then in the middle of the night, the
room door quietly opens and somebody--generally a lady in her
night-dress--walks slowly in, and comes and sits on the bed. The
young man thinks it must be one of the visitors, or some relative
of the family, though he does not remember having previously seen
her, who, unable to go to sleep, and feeling lonesome, all by
herself, has come into his room for a chat. He has no idea it is a
ghost: he is so unsuspicious. She does not speak, however; and,
when he looks again, she is gone!
The young man relates the circumstance at the breakfast-table next
morning, and asks each of the ladies present if it were she who was
his visitor. But they all assure him that it was not, and the
host, who has grown deadly pale, begs him to say no more about the
matter, which strikes the young man as a singularly strange
request.
After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and
explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had
been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else
there--it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by
murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever
you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but,
on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the
murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.
Then there is the sceptical guest--it is always 'the guest' who
gets let in for this sort of thing, by-the-bye. A ghost never
thinks much of his own family: it is 'the guest' he likes to haunt
who after listening to the host's ghost story, on Christmas Eve,
laughs at it, and says that he does not believe there are such
things as ghosts at all; and that he will sleep in the haunted
chamber that very night, if they will let him.
Everybody urges him not to be reckless, but he persists in his
foolhardiness, and goes up to the Yellow Chamber (or whatever
colour the haunted room may be) with a light heart and a candle,
and wishes them all good-night, and shuts the door.
Next morning he has got snow-white hair.
He does not tell anybody what he has seen: it is too awful.
There is also the plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a
ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears
through the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be
coming back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by
stopping awake, he goes to sleep.
He does not mention having seen the ghost to anybody, for fear of
frightening them--some people are so nervous about ghosts,--but
determines to wait for the next night, and see if the apparition
appears again.
It does appear again, and, this time, he gets out of bed, dresses
himself and does his hair, and follows it; and then discovers a
secret passage leading from the bedroom down into the beer-cellar,-
-a passage which, no doubt, was not unfrequently made use of in the
bad old days of yore.
After him comes the young man who woke up with a strange sensation
in the middle of the night, and found his rich bachelor uncle
standing by his bedside. The rich uncle smiled a weird sort of
smile and vanished. The young man immediately got up and looked at
his watch. It had stopped at half-past four, he having forgotten
to wind it.
He made inquiries the next day, and found that, strangely enough,
his rich uncle, whose only nephew he was, had married a widow with
eleven children at exactly a quarter to twelve, only two days ago,
The young man does not attempt to explain the circumstance. All he
does is to vouch for the truth of his narrative.
And, to mention another case, there is the gentleman who is
returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who,
noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks
through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing
the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and
frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the
next morning, lying in a heap against the door, still speechless,
and with his faithful latch-key clasped tightly in his hand.
All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on
Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening
than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be
impossible in English society as at present regulated. Therefore,
in introducing the sad but authentic ghost stories that follow
hereafter, I feel that it is unnecessary to inform the student of
Anglo-Saxon literature that the date on which they were told and on
which the incidents took place was--Christmas Eve.
Nevertheless, I do so.
NOW THE STORIES CAME TO BE TOLD
It was Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve at my Uncle John's; Christmas
Eve (There is too much 'Christmas Eve' about this book. I can see
that myself. It is beginning to get monotonous even to me. But I
don't see how to avoid it now.) at No. 47 Laburnham Grove, Tooting!
Christmas Eve in the dimly-lighted (there was a gas-strike on)
front parlour, where the flickering fire-light threw strange
shadows on the highly coloured wall-paper, while without, in the
wild street, the storm raged pitilessly, and the wind, like some
unquiet spirit, flew, moaning, across the square, and passed,
wailing with a troubled cry, round by the milk-shop.
We had had supper, and were sitting round, talking and smoking.
We had had a very good supper--a very good supper, indeed.
Unpleasantness has occurred since, in our family, in connection
with this party. Rumours have been put about in our family,
concerning the matter generally, but more particularly concerning
my own share in it, and remarks have been passed which have not so
much surprised me, because I know what our family are, but which
have pained me very much. As for my Aunt Maria, I do not know when
I shall care to see her again. I should have thought Aunt Maria
might have known me better.
But although injustice--gross injustice, as I shall explain later
on--has been done to myself, that shall not deter me from doing
justice to others; even to those who have made unfeeling
insinuations. I will do justice to Aunt Maria's hot veal pasties,
and toasted lobsters, followed by her own special make of
cheesecakes, warm (there is no sense, to my thinking, in cold
cheesecakes; you lose half the flavour), and washed down by Uncle
John's own particular old ale, and acknowledge that they were most
tasty. I did justice to them then; Aunt Maria herself could not
but admit that.
After supper, Uncle brewed some whisky-punch. I did justice to
that also; Uncle John himself said so. He said he was glad to
notice that I liked it.
Aunt went to bed soon after supper, leaving the local curate, old
Dr. Scrubbles, Mr. Samuel Coombes, our member of the County
Council, Teddy Biffles, and myself to keep Uncle company. We
agreed that it was too early to give in for some time yet, so Uncle
brewed another bowl of punch; and I think we all did justice to
that--at least I know I did. It is a passion with me, is the
desire to do justice.
We sat up for a long while, and the Doctor brewed some gin-punch
later on, for a change, though I could not taste much difference
myself. But it was all good, and we were very happy--everybody was
so kind.
Uncle John told us a very funny story in the course of the evening.
Oh, it WAS a funny story! I forget what it was about now, but I
know it amused me very much at the time; I do not think I ever
laughed so much in all my life. It is strange that I cannot
recollect that story too, because he told it us four times. And it
was entirely our own fault that he did not tell it us a fifth.
After that, the Doctor sang a very clever song, in the course of
which he imitated all the different animals in a farmyard. He did
mix them a bit. He brayed for the bantam cock, and crowed for the
pig; but we knew what he meant all right.
I started relating a most interesting anecdote, but was somewhat
surprised to observe, as I went on, that nobody was paying the
slightest attention to me whatever. I thought this rather rude of
them at first, until it dawned upon me that I was talking to myself
all the time, instead of out aloud, so that, of course, they did
not know that I was telling them a tale at all, and were probably
puzzled to understand the meaning of my animated expression and
eloquent gestures. It was a most curious mistake for any one to
make. I never knew such a thing happen to me before.
Later on, our curate did tricks with cards. He asked us if we had
ever seen a game called the "Three Card Trick." He said it was an
artifice by means of which low, unscrupulous men, frequenters of
race-meetings and such like haunts, swindled foolish young fellows
out of their money. He said it was a very simple trick to do: it
all depended on the quickness of the hand. It was the quickness of
the hand deceived the eye.
He said he would show us the imposture so that we might be warned
against it, and not be taken in by it; and he fetched Uncle's pack
of cards from the tea-caddy, and, selecting three cards from the
pack, two plain cards and one picture card, sat down on the
hearthrug, and explained to us what he was going to do.
He said: "Now I shall take these three cards in my hand--so--and
let you all see them. And then I shall quietly lay them down on
the rug, with the backs uppermost, and ask you to pick out the
picture card. And you'll think you know which one it is." And he
did it.
Old Mr. Coombes, who is also one of our churchwardens, said it was
the middle card.
"You fancy you saw it," said our curate, smiling.
"I don't 'fancy' anything at all about it," replied Mr. Coombes, "I
tell you it's the middle card. I'll bet you half a dollar it's the
middle card."
"There you are, that's just what I was explaining to you," said our
curate, turning to the rest of us; "that's the way these foolish
young fellows that I was speaking of are lured on to lose their
money. They make sure they know the card, they fancy they saw it.
They don't grasp the idea that it is the quickness of the hand that
has deceived their eye."
He said he had known young men go off to a boat race, or a cricket
match, with pounds in their pocket, and come home, early in the
afternoon, stone broke; having lost all their money at this
demoralising game.
He said he should take Mr. Coombes's half-crown, because it would
teach Mr. Coombes a very useful lesson, and probably be the means
of saving Mr. Coombes's money in the future; and he should give the
two-and-sixpence to the blanket fund.
"Don't you worry about that," retorted old Mr. Coombes. "Don't you
take the half-crown OUT of the blanket fund: that's all."
And he put his money on the middle card, and turned it up.
Sure enough, it really was the queen!
We were all very much surprised, especially the curate.
He said that it did sometimes happen that way, though--that a man
did sometimes lay on the right card, by accident.
Our curate said it was, however, the most unfortunate thing a man
could do for himself, if he only knew it, because, when a man tried
and won, it gave him a taste for the so-called sport, and it lured
him on into risking again and again; until he had to retire from
the contest, a broken and ruined man.
Then he did the trick again. Mr. Coombes said it was the card next
the coal-scuttle this time, and wanted to put five shillings on it.
We laughed at him, and tried to persuade him against it. He would
listen to no advice, however, but insisted on plunging.
Our curate said very well then: he had warned him, and that was
all that he could do. If he (Mr. Coombes) was determined to make a
fool of himself, he (Mr. Coombes) must do so.
Our curate said he should take the five shillings and that would
put things right again with the blanket fund.
So Mr. Coombes put two half-crowns on the card next the coal-
scuttle and turned it up.
Sure enough, it was the queen again!
After that, Uncle John had a florin on, and HE won.
And then we all played at it; and we all won. All except the
curate, that is. He had a very bad quarter of an hour. I never
knew a man have such hard luck at cards. He lost every time.
We had some more punch after that; and Uncle made such a funny
mistake in brewing it: he left out the whisky. Oh, we did laugh
at him, and we made him put in double quantity afterwards, as a
forfeit.
Oh, we did have such fun that evening!
And then, somehow or other, we must have got on to ghosts; because
the next recollection I have is that we were telling ghost stories
to each other.
TEDDY BIFFLES' STORY
Teddy Biffles told the first story, I will let him repeat it here
in his own words.
(Do not ask me how it is that I recollect his own exact words--
whether I took them down in shorthand at the time, or whether he
had the story written out, and handed me the MS. afterwards for
publication in this book, because I should not tell you if you did.
It is a trade secret.)
Biffles called his story -
JOHNSON AND EMILY
OR
THE FAITHFUL GHOST
(Teddy Biffles' Story)
I was little more than a lad when I first met with Johnson. I was
home for the Christmas holidays, and, it being Christmas Eve, I had
been allowed to sit up very late. On opening the door of my little
bedroom, to go in, I found myself face to face with Johnson, who
was coming out. It passed through me, and uttering a long low wail
of misery, disappeared out of the staircase window.
I was startled for the moment--I was only a schoolboy at the time,
and had never seen a ghost before,--and felt a little nervous about
going to bed. But, on reflection, I remembered that it was only
sinful people that spirits could do any harm to, and so tucked
myself up, and went to sleep.
In the morning I told the Pater what I had seen.
"Oh yes, that was old Johnson," he answered. "Don't you be
frightened of that; he lives here." And then he told me the poor
thing's history.
It seemed that Johnson, when it was alive, had loved, in early
life, the daughter of a former lessee of our house, a very
beautiful girl, whose Christian name had been Emily. Father did
not know her other name.
Johnson was too poor to marry the girl, so he kissed her good-bye,
told her he would soon be back, and went off to Australia to make
his fortune.
But Australia was not then what it became later on. Travellers
through the bush were few and far between in those early days; and,
even when one was caught, the portable property found upon the body
was often of hardly sufficiently negotiable value to pay the simple
funeral expenses rendered necessary. So that it took Johnson
nearly twenty years to make his fortune.
The self-imposed task was accomplished at last, however, and then,
having successfully eluded the police, and got clear out of the
Colony, he returned to England, full of hope and joy, to claim his
bride.
He reached the house to find it silent and deserted. All that the
neighbours could tell him was that, soon after his own departure,
the family had, on one foggy night, unostentatiously disappeared,
and that nobody had ever seen or heard anything of them since,
although the landlord and most of the local tradesmen had made
searching inquiries.
Poor Johnson, frenzied with grief, sought his lost love all over
the world. But he never found her, and, after years of fruitless
effort, he returned to end his lonely life in the very house where,
in the happy bygone days, he and his beloved Emily had passed so
many blissful hours.
He had lived there quite alone, wandering about the empty rooms,
weeping and calling to his Emily to come back to him; and when the
poor old fellow died, his ghost still kept the business on.
It was there, the Pater said, when he took the house, and the agent
had knocked ten pounds a year off the rent in consequence.
After that, I was continually meeting Johnson about the place at
all times of the night, and so, indeed, were we all. We used to
walk round it and stand aside to let it pass, at first; but, when
we grew at home with it, and there seemed no necessity for so much
ceremony, we used to walk straight through it. You could not say
it was ever much in the way.
It was a gentle, harmless, old ghost, too, and we all felt very
sorry for it, and pitied it. The women folk, indeed, made quite a
pet of it, for a while. Its faithfulness touched them so.
But as time went on, it grew to be a bit a bore. You see it was
full of sadness. There was nothing cheerful or genial about it.
You felt sorry for it, but it irritated you. It would sit on the
stairs and cry for hours at a stretch; and, whenever we woke up in
the night, one was sure to hear it pottering about the passages and
in and out of the different rooms, moaning and sighing, so that we
could not get to sleep again very easily. And when we had a party
on, it would come and sit outside the drawing-room door, and sob
all the time. It did not do anybody any harm exactly, but it cast
a gloom over the whole affair.
"Oh, I'm getting sick of this old fool," said the Pater, one
evening (the Dad can be very blunt, when he is put out, as you
know), after Johnson had been more of a nuisance than usual, and
had spoiled a good game of whist, by sitting up the chimney and
groaning, till nobody knew what were trumps or what suit had been
led, even. "We shall have to get rid of him, somehow or other. I
wish I knew how to do it."
"Well," said the Mater, "depend upon it, you'll never see the last
of him until he's found Emily's grave. That's what he is after.
You find Emily's grave, and put him on to that, and he'll stop
there. That's the only thing to do. You mark my words."
The idea seemed reasonable, but the difficulty in the way was that
we none of us knew where Emily's grave was any more than the ghost
of Johnson himself did. The Governor suggested palming off some
other Emily's grave upon the poor thing, but, as luck would have
it, there did not seem to have been an Emily of any sort buried
anywhere for miles round. I never came across a neighbourhood so
utterly destitute of dead Emilies.
I thought for a bit, and then I hazarded a suggestion myself.
"Couldn't we fake up something for the old chap?" I queried. "He
seems a simple-minded old sort. He might take it in. Anyhow, we
could but try."
"By Jove, so we will," exclaimed my father; and the very next
morning we had the workmen in, and fixed up a little mound at the
bottom of the orchard with a tombstone over it, bearing the
following inscription:-
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
EMILY
HER LAST WORDS WERE -
"TELL JOHNSON I LOVE HIM"
"That ought to fetch him," mused the Dad as he surveyed the work
when finished. "I am sure I hope it does."
It did!
We lured him down there that very night; and--well, there, it was
one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen, the way Johnson
sprang upon that tombstone and wept. Dad and old Squibbins, the
gardener, cried like children when they saw it.