Speaker 1: Everybody dies, isn't that sort? You've tried to get into
Speaker 1: the long drow today?
Speaker 2: Didn't you?
Speaker 1: How do that they'd come back? What a secret?
Speaker 2: The death Mask by H. D. Everett. Yes, that is
Speaker 2: a portrait of my wife. It is considered to be
Speaker 2: a good likeness, but of course she was older looking
Speaker 2: towards the last. Enderby and I were on our way
Speaker 2: to the smoking room after dinner, and the picture hung
Speaker 2: on the staircase. We had been chums at school a
Speaker 2: quarter of a century ago, and later on at college,
Speaker 2: but I had spent the last decade out of England.
Speaker 2: I returned to find my friend a widower of four
Speaker 2: year standing, and a good job too, I thought to
Speaker 2: myself when I heard of it, For I had no
Speaker 2: great liking for the late Gloriana, but probably the sentiment
Speaker 2: or want of sentiment, had been mutual. She did not
Speaker 2: smile on me, but I doubt if she smiled on
Speaker 2: any of poor Tom Enderby's bachelor cronies. The picture was
Speaker 2: certainly like her. She was a fine woman who with
Speaker 2: aquiline features and a cold eye. The artist had done
Speaker 2: the features justice, and the eye, which seemed to keep
Speaker 2: a steely watch on all the comings and goings of
Speaker 2: the house out of which she had died. We had
Speaker 2: made only a brief pause before the portrait, and then
Speaker 2: went on. The smoking room was an apartment built out
Speaker 2: at the back of the house by a former owner
Speaker 2: and shut off by double doors to serve as a nursery.
Speaker 2: Missus Enderby had no family, and she disliked the smell
Speaker 2: of tobacco, so the big room was made over to
Speaker 2: Tom's pipes and cigars. And if Tom's friends wanted to smoke,
Speaker 2: there must smoke there, or not at all. I remembered
Speaker 2: the room and the rule, but I was not prepared
Speaker 2: to find it still exist. I had expected to light
Speaker 2: my after dinner cigar over the dessert dishes. Now there
Speaker 2: was no presiding lady to consider. We were soon installed
Speaker 2: in a couple of deep cushioned chairs before a good fire.
Speaker 2: I thought. Enderby breathed more freely when he closed the
Speaker 2: double doors behind us, shutting off the dull formal house
Speaker 2: at the staircase and the picture. But he was not
Speaker 2: looking well. There hung about him an unmistakable air of depression.
Speaker 2: Could he be fretting after Gloriana? Perhaps during their married
Speaker 2: years he had fallen into the way of depending on
Speaker 2: a woman to care for him. It is pleasant enough
Speaker 2: when the woman is the right sort. But I shouldn't
Speaker 2: myself have fancied being cared for by the late missus Enderby.
Speaker 2: And if the fretting was a fact, it would be
Speaker 2: easy to find a remedy. Evelyn has a couple of
Speaker 2: pretty sisters, and we would have him over to stair
Speaker 2: at our place. You must run down and see us,
Speaker 2: I said, presently, pursuing this idea. I want to introduce
Speaker 2: you to my wife. Can you come next week? His
Speaker 2: face lit up with real pleasure. I should like it,
Speaker 2: of all things, he said heartily. But a qualification came
Speaker 2: after the cloud settled back over him, and he sighed,
Speaker 2: that is, if I can get away, why what is
Speaker 2: there to hinder you. It may not seem much to
Speaker 2: stay for, but I've got into the way of stopping
Speaker 2: here to keep things together. He didn't look at me,
Speaker 2: but leaned over to the fender to knock the ash
Speaker 2: off his cigar. Tell you what, Tom, you are getting
Speaker 2: hipped living by yourself. Why don't you sell the house
Speaker 2: or let it off just as it is and try
Speaker 2: a complete change. I can't sell it I'm only the
Speaker 2: tenant for life. It was my wife's. Well, I suppose
Speaker 2: there's nothing to prevent you letting it, or if you
Speaker 2: can't let it, you might shut it up. There's nothing
Speaker 2: legal to prevent me. The emphasis was too fine to
Speaker 2: track notice, but I remembered it after. Then, my dear fellow,
Speaker 2: why not knock about a bit and see the world.
Speaker 2: But to my thinking, the best thing you could do
Speaker 2: would be to marry again. He shook his head drearily.
Speaker 2: Of course, it is a delicate matter to urge upon
Speaker 2: a widower. But you have paid the utmost ceremonial respect.
Speaker 2: But four years, you know, the greatest stickler for propriety
Speaker 2: would deem it ample. It isn't that, Dick. I've a
Speaker 2: great mind to tell you a rather queer story. He
Speaker 2: puffed hard at his smoke and stared into the red
Speaker 2: coals in the pauses. But I don't know what you
Speaker 2: think of it, or think of me. Try me, I said,
Speaker 2: I'll give you my opinion after, and you know I'm
Speaker 2: safe to confide in. I sometimes think I should feel
Speaker 2: better if I told it. It's it's queer enough to
Speaker 2: be laughable, But it hasn't been any laughing matter to me.
Speaker 2: He threw the stump of his cigar into the fire
Speaker 2: and turned to me, and then I saw how pale
Speaker 2: he was, and that adieu of perspiration was breaking out
Speaker 2: on his white face. I was very much of your opinion, Dick.
Speaker 2: I thought I should be happier if I married again,
Speaker 2: and I went so far as to get engaged. But
Speaker 2: the engagement was broken off. And I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you why. My wife was sometime ailing before she died,
Speaker 2: and the doctors were in consultation, but I didn't know
Speaker 2: how serious a complaint was till the last. Then they
Speaker 2: told me there was no hope, as coma had set in,
Speaker 2: but it was possible, even probable, that there would be
Speaker 2: revival of consciousness before death. And for this I was
Speaker 2: to hold myself ready. I dare say, you'll write me
Speaker 2: down a coward, but I dreaded the revival. I was
Speaker 2: ready to pray that she might pass away in her sleep.
Speaker 2: I knew she held exalted views about the marriage tie,
Speaker 2: and I felt sure if there were any last words,
Speaker 2: she would exact a pledge. I could not at such
Speaker 2: a moment refuse to promise, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be tied Hi. You will recollect that she was my senior.
Speaker 2: I was about to be left a widower in middle life,
Speaker 2: and in the natural course of things, I had a
Speaker 2: good many years before me. You see, my dear fellow,
Speaker 2: I don't think a promise so exhorted or to bind you.
Speaker 2: It isn't fair. Wait and hear me. I was sitting
Speaker 2: here miserable enough, as you may suppose, when the doctor
Speaker 2: came to fetch me to her room. Missus Enderby was
Speaker 2: conscious and had asked for me, but he particularly begged
Speaker 2: me not to agitate her in any way lest pain
Speaker 2: should return. She was lying stretched out in the bed,
Speaker 2: looking already like a corpse. Tom He said, they tell
Speaker 2: me I'm dying and there is something I want you
Speaker 2: to promise. I groaned in spirit. It was all up
Speaker 2: with my eye, thought, But she went on. But when
Speaker 2: I am dead and in my coffin, I want you
Speaker 2: to cover my face with your own hands. Promise me this.
Speaker 2: It was not in the very least what I expected,
Speaker 2: of course, I promised. I want you to cover my
Speaker 2: face with a particular handkerchief on which I set a value.
Speaker 2: When the time comes, open the cabinet to the right
Speaker 2: of the window, and you will find it in the
Speaker 2: third drawer from the top. You cannot mistake it, for
Speaker 2: it is the only thing in the drawer. That was
Speaker 2: every word she said, if you believe me, Dick. She
Speaker 2: just sighed and shut her eyes as if she were
Speaker 2: going to sleep, and she never spoke again. Three or
Speaker 2: four days later they came again to ask me if
Speaker 2: I wished to take a last look, as the Undertaker's
Speaker 2: men were about to close the coffin. I felt a
Speaker 2: great reluctance, but it was necessary I should go. She
Speaker 2: looked as if made of wax, and was colder than
Speaker 2: ice to the touch. I opened the cabinet, and there,
Speaker 2: just as she had said, was a large handkerchief for
Speaker 2: very fine cambric, lying by itself. It was embroidered with
Speaker 2: a monogram device in all four corners, and was not
Speaker 2: of a sort I had ever seen her used. I
Speaker 2: spread it out and laid it over the dead face,
Speaker 2: and then what happened was rather curious. It seemed to
Speaker 2: draw down over the features and cling to them, to
Speaker 2: nose and mouths and forehead and the shut eyes, till
Speaker 2: it became a perfect mask. My nerves were shaken. I
Speaker 2: suppose I was seized with horror and flung back the
Speaker 2: covering sheet hastily quitting the room, and the coffin was
Speaker 2: closed that night. Well, she was buried, and I put
Speaker 2: up a monument which the neighborhood considered handsome. As you
Speaker 2: see he I was bound by no pledge to abstain
Speaker 2: from marriage, and though I knew what would have been
Speaker 2: a wish, I saw no reason why I should regard it.
Speaker 2: And some months after a family of the name of
Speaker 2: Ashcroft came to live at the Lisso's, and they had
Speaker 2: a pretty daughter. I took a fancy to Lucy Ashcroft
Speaker 2: the first time I saw her, and it was soon
Speaker 2: apparent that she was well inclined to me. She was
Speaker 2: a gentle, yielding little thing, not the superior style of woman,
Speaker 2: not at all like. I made no comment, but I
Speaker 2: could well understand that in his new matrimonial venture, Tom
Speaker 2: would prefer a contrast. But I thought I had a
Speaker 2: very good chance of happiness with her, and I grew
Speaker 2: fond of her, very fond of her. Indeed, her people
Speaker 2: were of the hospitable sort, and they encouraged me to
Speaker 2: go to the Liso's dropping in when I felt inclined.
Speaker 2: He did not seem as if they would be likely
Speaker 2: to put obstacles in our way. Matters progressed, and I
Speaker 2: made up my mind one evening to walk over there
Speaker 2: and declare myself. I had been up to town the
Speaker 2: day before and came back with a ring in my pocket,
Speaker 2: rather a fanciful design of double hearts. But I thought
Speaker 2: Lucy would think it pretty and would let me put
Speaker 2: it on her finger. I went up to change into
Speaker 2: dinner things, and making myself as spruce as possible, and
Speaker 2: coming to the conclusion before the glass that I was
Speaker 2: not such a bad figure of a man after all,
Speaker 2: and that there was not much gray in my hair. Ay, Dick,
Speaker 2: you may smile. It is a good bit grayer. Now
Speaker 2: I had taken out a clean handkerchief and thrown the
Speaker 2: one carried through the day crumpled on the floor. I
Speaker 2: don't know what made me turn to look there, but
Speaker 2: once it caught my eye, I stood staring at it
Speaker 2: as if spell bound. The handkerchief was moving, Dick, I
Speaker 2: swear it rapidly, altering in shape, puffing up here and there,
Speaker 2: as if blown by wind, spreading and molding itself into
Speaker 2: the features of a face, And what face should it
Speaker 2: be but the death mask of Gloriana, which I had
Speaker 2: covered in the coffin eleven months before. To say I
Speaker 2: was horror stricken conveys little of the feeling that possessed me.
Speaker 2: I snatched up the rag of cambric and flung it
Speaker 2: on the fire, and it was nothing but a rag
Speaker 2: in my hand, and in another moment, no more than
Speaker 2: a black and tinder on the bar of the grate.
Speaker 2: There was no face below, of course, not I said.
Speaker 2: It was a mere hallucination. You were cheated by an
Speaker 2: excited fancy, you may be sure. I told myself all
Speaker 2: that and more, and I went downstairs and tried to
Speaker 2: pull myself together with a dram But I was curiously upset,
Speaker 2: and for that night at least I found it impossible
Speaker 2: to play the wooer. The recollection of the death mask
Speaker 2: was too vivid. It would have come between me and
Speaker 2: Lucy's lips. The effect wore off, however, that in a
Speaker 2: day or two I was bold again, and as much
Speaker 2: disposed to smile at my folly as you are at
Speaker 2: this moment. I proposed, and Lucy accepted me, and I
Speaker 2: put on the ring Ashcroft pair was graciously pleased to
Speaker 2: approve of the settlements I offered an Ashcroft mayor promised
Speaker 2: to regard me as a sun and during the first
Speaker 2: forty eight hours of our engagement there was not a
Speaker 2: cloud to mar the blue. I proposed on a Monday,
Speaker 2: and on Wednesday I went again to dine and spend
Speaker 2: the evening with just their family party. Lucy and I
Speaker 2: found our way afterwards into the back drawing room, which
Speaker 2: seemed to be made over to us by tacit. Understanding anyway,
Speaker 2: we had it to ourselves, and as Lucy sat on
Speaker 2: the settee busy with her work, I was privileged to
Speaker 2: sit beside her, close enough to watch the careful stitches
Speaker 2: she was setting under which the pattern grew. She was
Speaker 2: embroidering a square of fine linen to serve as a teacloth,
Speaker 2: and it was intended for a present for a friend.
Speaker 2: She was anxious. She told me to finish it in
Speaker 2: the next few days, ready for dispatch. But I was
Speaker 2: somewhat impatient of her engrossment in the work. I wanted
Speaker 2: to look at me while we talk, and to be
Speaker 2: permitted to hold her hand. Plans for a tour we
Speaker 2: would take together after easter, arguing that eight weeks spent
Speaker 2: in preparation was enough for any reasonable bride. Lucy was
Speaker 2: easily entreated. She laid aside the linen square on the
Speaker 2: table at her elbow. I held her fingers captive, but
Speaker 2: her eyes wandered from my face, as she was still
Speaker 2: deliciously shy. All at once she exclaimed her work was moving,
Speaker 2: that there was going to be a face in it?
Speaker 2: Did I not see? I saw? Indeed, it was the
Speaker 2: Gloriana death mask, forming there as it had formed in
Speaker 2: my handkerchief at home. The marked nose and chin, the
Speaker 2: severe mouth, the mold of forehead almost complete. I snatched
Speaker 2: it up and dropped it over the back of the couch.
Speaker 2: It did look like a face, I allowed, But never
Speaker 2: mind it, darling. I want you to attend to me
Speaker 2: something of this sort, I said, I hardly know what
Speaker 2: for My blood was running cold. Lucy pouted she wanted
Speaker 2: to dwell on the marvel, and my impatient action had
Speaker 2: displeased her. I went on talking wildly, being afraid of pauses,
Speaker 2: but the psychological moment had gone by. I felt I
Speaker 2: did not carry her with me, as before she hesitated
Speaker 2: over my persuasions, the forecast of a Sicilian honeymoon had
Speaker 2: ceased to charm. By and by she suggested that missus
Speaker 2: Ashcroft would expect us to rejoin the circle in the
Speaker 2: other room, and perhaps I would pick up her work
Speaker 2: for her. Still, with a slight error of offence, I
Speaker 2: walked round the settee to recover the luckless piece of linen.
Speaker 2: But she turned, also looking over the back. So the
Speaker 2: same instant we both saw there again was the face,
Speaker 2: rigid and severe, And now the corners of the cloth
Speaker 2: were tucked under, completing the form of the head. And
Speaker 2: that was not all. Some white drapery had been improvised
Speaker 2: and extended beyond it on the floor, presenting the complete figure,
Speaker 2: laid out straight and stiff, ready for the grave. Lucy's
Speaker 2: alarm was excusable. She shrieked aloud, shriek upon shriek, and
Speaker 2: immediately an indignant family of Ashcroft rushed in through the
Speaker 2: half drawn potier which divided the two rooms, demanding the
Speaker 2: cause of her distress. Meanwhile, I had fallen upon the
Speaker 2: puffed out form and destroyed it. Lucy's embroidery composed the
Speaker 2: head that the figure was ingeniously contrived out of a
Speaker 2: large Turkish bath sheet brought in from one of the bedrooms.
Speaker 2: No one knew how or when I held up the things,
Speaker 2: protesting their innocence, while the family were stabbing me through
Speaker 2: and through with looks of indignation, and Lucy was sobbing
Speaker 2: in her mother's arms. She might have been foolish. She
Speaker 2: allowed it did seem ridiculous now she saw what it was,
Speaker 2: but at the moment it was too dreadful. It looked
Speaker 2: so like, so like, And here her fresh sob choked
Speaker 2: her into silence. Peace was restored at last, but plainly.
Speaker 2: The ashcroftstubted me, the genial father stiffened, and Missus Ashcroft
Speaker 2: administered indirect reproofs. She hated practical joking, so she informed
Speaker 2: me She might be wrong, and no doubt she was
Speaker 2: old fashioned, but she had been brought up to consider
Speaker 2: it the highest degree ill bred, and perhaps I had
Speaker 2: not considered how sensitive Lucy was thow easily alarmed. She
Speaker 2: hoped I would take warning for the future, and that
Speaker 2: nothing of this kind would occur again. Practical joking, oh ye, gods,
Speaker 2: as if it was likely that I, alone with the
Speaker 2: girl of my heart, would waste the precious hour in
Speaker 2: building up effigies of sham corpses on the floor. And
Speaker 2: Lucy ought to have known that the accusation was absurd,
Speaker 2: as I had never for a moment left her side.
Speaker 2: She did take my part when more composed, but the
Speaker 2: mystery remained beyond explanation of hers or mine. As for
Speaker 2: the future, I could not think of that without a
Speaker 2: failing heart. If the power arrayed against us were in
Speaker 2: truth what superstition feared, I might as well give up
Speaker 2: hope at once, for I knew there would be no
Speaker 2: relenting I could see the whole absurdity of the thing
Speaker 2: as well as you do now. But if you put
Speaker 2: yourself in my playtick, you will be forced to confess.
Speaker 2: But it was tragic too. I did not see Lucy
Speaker 2: the next day, and I was bound to go again
Speaker 2: to town. But we had planned to meet and ride
Speaker 2: together on the Friday morning. I was to be at
Speaker 2: the Liso's at a certain hour, and you may be
Speaker 2: sure I was punctual. The horse had already been brought round,
Speaker 2: and the groom was leading it up and down. I
Speaker 2: had hardly dismounted when she came down the steps of
Speaker 2: the porch and I noticed at once a new look
Speaker 2: on her face, a harder set about the red mouth
Speaker 2: of hers which was so soft and kissable. But she
Speaker 2: let me put her up on the saddle and settle
Speaker 2: her foot in the stirrup, and she was the bearer
Speaker 2: of a gracious message from her mother. I was expected
Speaker 2: to return to lunch, and missus Ashcroft begged us to
Speaker 2: be punctual, as a friend who had stayed the night
Speaker 2: with them would be leaving immediately after. You'll be pleased
Speaker 2: to meet her, I think, said Lucy, leaning forward to
Speaker 2: pat her horse. I find she knows you very well.
Speaker 2: It is miss Kingsworthy.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Miss Kingsworthy was a school friend of Gloriana's who used
Speaker 2: now and then to visit us here. I was not
Speaker 2: aware that she and the Ashcroft were acquainted, but as
Speaker 2: I have said, they had only recently come into the
Speaker 2: neighborhood as tenants of the Liso's. I had no opportunity
Speaker 2: to express pleasure or the reverse, for Lucy was riding
Speaker 2: on and putting her horse to a brisk pace. It
Speaker 2: was some time before she drew rein and again admitted conversation.
Speaker 2: We were descending a steep hill and the groom was
Speaker 2: following at a discreet distance behind, far enough to be
Speaker 2: out of earshot. Lucie looked very pretty on horseback. But
Speaker 2: this is by the way. The manish hat suited her,
Speaker 2: and so did the habit, fitting closely to her shape. Tom,
Speaker 2: she said, and again I noticed that new hardness in
Speaker 2: her face. Tom. Miss Kingsworthy tells me your wife did
Speaker 2: not wish you to marry again, and she made you
Speaker 2: promise her that you would not. Miss Kingsworthy was quite
Speaker 2: astonished to hear that you and I were engaged. Is
Speaker 2: this true? I was able to tell her that it
Speaker 2: was not. That my wife had never asked and I
Speaker 2: had never given her any such pledge. I allowed, as
Speaker 2: she disliked second marriages in certain cases, and perhaps she
Speaker 2: had made some remark to that effect. To Miss Kingsworthy,
Speaker 2: it was not unlikely. And then I appealed to her.
Speaker 2: Surely she would not let a mischief maker's tittle tattle
Speaker 2: come between her and me. I thought her profile looked less,
Speaker 2: but she would not let her eyes meet mine, as
Speaker 2: she answered, of course not if that was all, and
Speaker 2: I doubt if I would have heeded it, only that
Speaker 2: it seemed to fit in with something else, Tom, it
Speaker 2: was very horrible what we saw on Wednesday evening. And
Speaker 2: don't be angry. But I asked miss Kingsworthy what your
Speaker 2: wife was like. I didn't tell her why. I wanted
Speaker 2: to know. What has that to do with it? I demanded,
Speaker 2: stoutly enough, But alas I was too well aware. She
Speaker 2: told me missus Enderby was handsome, but she had very
Speaker 2: marked features and was severe looking when she did not
Speaker 2: smile at high forehead of roman nose and a decided chin. Tom,
Speaker 2: the face in the cloth was just like that. Did
Speaker 2: you not see? Of course? I protested, like, my darling,
Speaker 2: what nonsense? I saw? It looked a little like a face.
Speaker 2: But I pulled it to pieces at once because you
Speaker 2: were frightened. But why, Lucy, I shall have you turning
Speaker 2: into a spiritualist if you take up these fancies. No,
Speaker 2: she said, I do not want to be anything foolish.
Speaker 2: I've thought it over, and if it happens only once,
Speaker 2: I've made up my mind to believe it a mistake
Speaker 2: and forget it. But if it comes again, if it
Speaker 2: goes on coming here, she shuddered and turned white. Oh, Tom,
Speaker 2: I could not, I could not. That was the ultimatum.
Speaker 2: She liked me as much as ever, she even owned
Speaker 2: a warmer feeling, but she was not going to marry
Speaker 2: a haunted man. Well, I suppose I can't blame her.
Speaker 2: I might have given the same advice in another fellow's case,
Speaker 2: though in my own I've felt it hard. I'm close
Speaker 2: to the end now, so I shall need tax your
Speaker 2: patience very little longer. A single chance remained Gloriana's power,
Speaker 2: whatever its nature, and however derived, might have been so
Speaker 2: spent in the previous efforts that she could defect no more.
Speaker 2: I clung to this shred of hope and did my
Speaker 2: best to play the part of the lighthearted lover, the
Speaker 2: sort of companion Lucy expected who would shape himself to
Speaker 2: her mood. But I was conscious that I played it ill.
Speaker 2: The ride was a lengthy business. Lucy's horse cast a shoe,
Speaker 2: and it was impossible to change the saddle onto the
Speaker 2: groom's hack or my own mare, as neither of them
Speaker 2: had been trained to the habit. We were bound to
Speaker 2: return at footpace, and didn't reach the Lisos until two o'clock.
Speaker 2: Lunch was over. Missus Ashcroft had set out for the station,
Speaker 2: driving Miss kingsworthy, but some cutlets were keeping hot for us,
Speaker 2: so we were informed and could be served immediately. We
Speaker 2: went off at once into the dining room, as Lucy
Speaker 2: was hungry, and she took off her hat and laid
Speaker 2: it on a side table. You said the close fit
Speaker 2: of it made her headache. The cutlets had been misrepresented.
Speaker 2: They were lukewarm, but Lucy made a good meal of them,
Speaker 2: and the fruit tart which followed very much at a leisure.
Speaker 2: Heaven knows, I would not have grudged her so much
Speaker 2: as a mouthful, But that luncheon was an ordeal I
Speaker 2: cannot readily forget. The servant absented himself, having seen us serve,
Speaker 2: and then my troubles began. The tablecloth seemed alive at
Speaker 2: the corner which was between us. He rose in waves,
Speaker 2: as if puffed up by wind, though the window was
Speaker 2: fast shut against any wandering airs. I tried to see
Speaker 2: him unconscious, try to talk as if no horror of
Speaker 2: apprehension was filling all my mind. While I was flattening
Speaker 2: out the bewitch the mask with a grasp by hardly
Speaker 2: dared relax. Lucy rose at last, saying she must change
Speaker 2: her dress. Occupied with the cloth. It had not occurred
Speaker 2: to me to look round or keep watch on what
Speaker 2: might be going on in another part of the room.
Speaker 2: The hat on the side table had been tilted over sideways,
Speaker 2: and in that position that was made to crown another
Speaker 2: presentation of the face. But it was made of this time,
Speaker 2: I can't say, probably serviettes several lay about that The
Speaker 2: linen material of whatever sort was again molded into the
Speaker 2: perfect form. This time the mouth showed humor and appeared
Speaker 2: to relax in a grim smile. Lucy shrieked and dropped
Speaker 2: into my arms in a swoon, a real genuine fainting fit,
Speaker 2: out of which she was brought round with difficulty. After
Speaker 2: I had summoned the help of doctors. I hung about
Speaker 2: miserably till her safety was assured, and then went as
Speaker 2: miserably home. Next morning I received a cutting little note
Speaker 2: from my mother in law elect in which she returned
Speaker 2: the ring and informed me the engagement must be considered
Speaker 2: at an end. Well, Dick, you now know why I
Speaker 2: do not marry, and what have you to say? You know,
Speaker 2: if you go to my patreon www dot patreon dot
Speaker 2: com forward slash bar kid br cud, there are five
Speaker 2: hundred and many stories for you to listen to, and
Speaker 2: a link to my Google drive where you can download
Speaker 2: a whole lot completely add free. Good deal. I think, well,
Speaker 2: that was the death Mask by HD Everett. Now, when
Speaker 2: I began to read that, because it's written from a
Speaker 2: male point of view, I thought she was a bloke.
Speaker 2: But she ain't the bloke. She's a lady. She's Henrietta
Speaker 2: Dorothy Everett, and I'm going to tell you something about her.
Speaker 2: I've just come back off my walk for thirteen days
Speaker 2: walking the Office Dyke, which is the dark age barrier
Speaker 2: built by King Offer of Mercier to keep the well shout,
Speaker 2: so it's still the boundary between England and Well. So
Speaker 2: walked about one hundred and twenty six Now. I've been
Speaker 2: keeping my patreons entertained with pictures and stories of from
Speaker 2: my walk. But although if you're just listening to me
Speaker 2: on YouTube or on the podcast, you won't know any
Speaker 2: of that. I've been away and it's weird coming back
Speaker 2: because I'm a little bit disslocated. So now this is
Speaker 2: me getting back into the saddle. I had some videos
Speaker 2: and some podcast episodes queued up to go out while
Speaker 2: I was away and Imagen did a compilation on YouTube
Speaker 2: of my own stories, so people didn't know I was away,
Speaker 2: and people think I did the compilation, but I didn't,
Speaker 2: young Imagen did. Thank you very much, image and anyway,
Speaker 2: back back to work. Now, enough of that enjoying yourself
Speaker 2: with the rain and the sheep and the horses and
Speaker 2: the red kites and everything. Let me tell you about
Speaker 2: Henrietta Dorothea Everett born eighteen fifty one, died in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three twenty three. Speak enunciate clearly tonally. I've just
Speaker 2: been talking to myself as I've been walking over these hills,
Speaker 2: so I haven't had practice enunciating anyway. She was born
Speaker 2: Henrietta Dorothea Huskisson, it's a funny name, in Gillingham and
Speaker 2: Kent in early eighteen fifty one, and baptized there on
Speaker 2: the fourth of March that year, so she's probably born
Speaker 2: into February. Her father, John Huskison, was the first lieutenant
Speaker 2: in the Royal Marines. Now lieutenant Americans say lieutenant. The
Speaker 2: Royal Navy say something like lieutenant lieutenant. I don't know
Speaker 2: what they say, but they don't say it. But of
Speaker 2: course it's placeholder in French. Lieutenant. It's French, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I wondered if the Royal Marines, being part of the
Speaker 2: Royal Navy, would go with the Army of the Navy.
Speaker 2: So I looked it up, and they go with the Army,
Speaker 2: as it turns out. So I'm told by my research
Speaker 2: if anybody's been in the Royal Marines to be able
Speaker 2: to tell me different. So there you go. So you've
Speaker 2: got middle class solidity and military discipline, and she becomes
Speaker 2: a late Victorian respectable person. Her mother, Julia the Lovett,
Speaker 2: disappears into the record after the bare naming in parish
Speaker 2: and genealogical sources. So basically, mothers name there, that's the
Speaker 2: last we hearing. Mother of her early life and her
Speaker 2: days in Gillingham got not much in that gap. Critics
Speaker 2: sometimes try to install a theory. The more honest conclusion
Speaker 2: is that she steps into view fully formed and adult
Speaker 2: woman of her time, for whom writing would become late
Speaker 2: both the profession and a way of thinking through the
Speaker 2: uncanny edges of that time. So basically what we've got is,
Speaker 2: and this happens a lot, you know, I find this.
Speaker 2: I'm doing a lot of research on Dark Age of Britain,
Speaker 2: hence sort of offering offer and there'll be a basic
Speaker 2: sentence in the history of Brittonum or the Anglo Saxon
Speaker 2: chronicles or you know, Simin of Durham, and people will
Speaker 2: construct elaborate theories on the basis of you know, well
Speaker 2: this must mean and then you have a whole different theory.
Speaker 2: So where we lack information, we just make stuff up generally,
Speaker 2: and this is what happened to the people who attempted
Speaker 2: the biography of Henrietta Dorothea Everett. She was married when
Speaker 2: she was eighteen, in eighteen sixty nine, to a man
Speaker 2: from Derby who was a solistic called which is kind
Speaker 2: of lawyer, Isaac Edward Everett. He died in nineteen oh four,
Speaker 2: and she had at least three children. The stuff we've
Speaker 2: got is vague. She had a son, Arthur Huskison Everett,
Speaker 2: and that was really common in those days if you
Speaker 2: ever done any family history, for the children to bear
Speaker 2: the mother's maiden name as a second or third name. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Arthur Huskinson, her son, became her executor and principal heir.
Speaker 2: She has two daughters who we know very little about,
Speaker 2: but they appear in the census if you want to
Speaker 2: do the family research as part of the small, solid
Speaker 2: domestic unit. For several decades after her marriage, Everett appears
Speaker 2: to have lived a life expected a professional man's wife
Speaker 2: in the late nineteenth century. Domestic responsibilities first intellectual life,
Speaker 2: if any, folded into private reading and the social duties
Speaker 2: of a provincial bourgeois family. Interesting because of this story
Speaker 2: touches on that after Isaac Everett's death in nineteen oh four,
Speaker 2: she becomes a widow and the novelist. Now, the interesting
Speaker 2: thing about Victorian women was when they if they were
Speaker 2: single or if they were widows, they could operate as
Speaker 2: I want to say people they had rights they you know,
Speaker 2: but if they were just the wife, they had no
Speaker 2: rights really, And so being a widow actually was potentially
Speaker 2: better for women. They could invest, they could act as
Speaker 2: a man. Look, don't shoot me down, I'm not a Victorian.
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen eleventh census she's marked as a
Speaker 2: widow and then novelist and a woman of private means,
Speaker 2: living independently herself. She died nineteen years later the old
Speaker 2: vicarage Western on Trent in Derbyshire, and she left in
Speaker 2: the state of around eight hundred and fifty pounds, which
Speaker 2: is not insignificant in those days to Isaac Arthur's son.
Speaker 2: So she is a successful professional writer working not in
Speaker 2: London but out in the sticks as it were, in Derbyshire,
Speaker 2: very nice county, the literally life that lay behind between those.
Speaker 2: So we've got, as I was saying before, we have
Speaker 2: some bare information and a lot of the stuff is
Speaker 2: extrapolated from that rather than known. We do know some things.
Speaker 2: So she didn't publish fiction as far as we know,
Speaker 2: until eighteen ninety six, when she was forty four or
Speaker 2: forty five at that time. She started writing under a
Speaker 2: male pseudonym, not uncommon. Again in line with the theories
Speaker 2: we've been talking about THEO Douglas and we know this
Speaker 2: from you know, George Elliott and the Brontes. I think
Speaker 2: originally wrote under male names. Somebody's gonna shoot me down
Speaker 2: if I got that wrong. But I've been shot down before.
Speaker 2: I've survived, So.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: And you know, you can talk about the great and
Speaker 2: we could talk about the great injustice of this, I'm
Speaker 2: just noting it. She produced about twenty two books, with
Speaker 2: no fewer than seventeen different publishers moving from William Blackwood
Speaker 2: and Sons to Smith Elderherston Blackert. So she's a fairly
Speaker 2: driven woman, you know, Mathew and Martin Secker, Heath Cranton
Speaker 2: and Nowsley and others. The publishing pattern short runs with
Speaker 2: multiple houses is diagnostic of a solidly popular author of
Speaker 2: the period, reliable sales across different lists, but no single
Speaker 2: firm that sort of lock her in as a flagship property.
Speaker 2: So she isn't sort of the Jka rolling of her time.
Speaker 2: She's more like a jobbing writer who's doing all right.
Speaker 2: She's doing all right, she's doing better than most and
Speaker 2: it's her living. And there are a lot of women
Speaker 2: like this at this time writing, and we've covered a
Speaker 2: lot of their work on the podcast. Of course, Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Gaskell is a big name, but thinking of you know,
Speaker 2: Charlotte Reddelle and people like that who produce lots of stuff,
Speaker 2: and Margaret Oliphanta, there's loads of them. So there we go.
Speaker 2: So her first book eras a Mystery eighteen ninety six
Speaker 2: under the name of Theo Douglas, issued by Blackwood. It's
Speaker 2: an Egyptological fantasy in which a revived mummy, a cult
Speaker 2: ritual and hint of scientific method overlap. You could understand
Speaker 2: that this time there was a big fascination with ancient
Speaker 2: Egypt and archaeology, mummification and the poorest boundary between science
Speaker 2: and the occult, and we've talked about that at length
Speaker 2: and other podcasts. She would return to this borderland repeatedly.
Speaker 2: In nineteen hundred, she turns on hypnotism, spirit and an
Speaker 2: automaton animated by the displaced soul of a conjurer's daughter.
Speaker 2: Sounds good, doesn't it. One I haven't read it one
Speaker 2: or two. Nineteen oh seven explorers spiritualism, and the splitting
Speaker 2: of identity under occult pressure. So I'm saying she's maybe
Speaker 2: interested in these themes, but these are kind of so
Speaker 2: is she writing to market? One thing that writers are
Speaker 2: encouraged to do to make money these days is to
Speaker 2: write to market. So if it's billionaire, were wolf, alpha romanticy,
Speaker 2: that's a polite word for it, mommy pawn they call
Speaker 2: it as well, then that's what you should write or lit.
Speaker 2: RPG was a genre I did a bit of. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed writing, which is basically writing a book as if
Speaker 2: it's within a video game. I think it's probably still
Speaker 2: popular that I did all right from that At one
Speaker 2: point I've got a I used a pseudonym as well,
Speaker 2: galen Wolf, if you want to look him up, And
Speaker 2: I did the two or three series there anyway, writing
Speaker 2: to market. So the big issue with her, it's not
Speaker 2: a big issue, but just an observation is is she
Speaker 2: writing the market or is this actually what she's interested in?
Speaker 2: Or do the two helpfully coincide? So in Malevela nineteen
Speaker 2: fourteen she has a mass there was also a psychic
Speaker 2: vampire draining her client's vitality under the guise of therapeutic touch.
Speaker 2: These are not occult romances in the melodramatic modern sense
Speaker 2: so much as found the Siecho thought experiments, in which
Speaker 2: the science room, the consulting room, and laboratory blur sounds great.
Speaker 2: The stuff she also wrote under Theodouglas strict historical fictions,
Speaker 2: which you know historical. You could argue that, I mean,
Speaker 2: people do argue and probably right that Walter Scott invented
Speaker 2: the historical novel, although he was very much he's certainly
Speaker 2: the German the Schiller Ritter. German romances influenced me like them,
Speaker 2: although he backed away from them because he thought they
Speaker 2: were a bit vulgar by the end, because they were
Speaker 2: like they were like the Billionaire Alpha, but without the smut,
Speaker 2: and just a little bit of a suggestion of it.
Speaker 3: So she wrote.
Speaker 2: She wrote one called Golden Trust nineteen oh five, set
Speaker 2: during the French Revolution, Northumberland and Paris in seventeen ninety two,
Speaker 2: The Storming of the two diaries Robesparre and Due playhousehold
Speaker 2: in the background and works through questions of loyalty, trust
Speaker 2: and cross channel entanglement. Think of the Scarlet Pimpernel cousin
Speaker 2: Hugh nineteen ten. Most of the South Coast during the
Speaker 2: Napoleonic Wars following smuggling operations and escape prisoners of war.
Speaker 2: This is popular fiction, you know, White Webs or Romance
Speaker 2: of Sussex. They're long a set against the Jacobite rebellion.
Speaker 2: So she did loads of stories. So they've all gone
Speaker 2: and where she has remained is her weird stories, her
Speaker 2: ghost stories. So in nineteen eighteen, The Pipe is a
Speaker 2: Mallory as Theodouglas was reprinted in Uncanny Stones. Nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: Philip Allen published The death Mask and Other Ghosts under
Speaker 2: the name of H. D. Everett a final valedictory collection
Speaker 2: of stories, drawing together work written across the war and
Speaker 2: post war years. The first ward that is the Death
Speaker 2: Mask with its widow or Haunted by It steadwise features
Speaker 2: appearing in Nearby Cloth is a small study in obsessive haunting.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that. And the next story
Speaker 2: in the collection is Passing Clench. You can get these
Speaker 2: if you go on. I think I've got this on
Speaker 2: Guttenbergie the Guttenberg or the archive dot org library. No
Speaker 2: I didn't, that's not true. I've got a copy of it.
Speaker 2: I've got the words with copy. Hell what was I saying?
Speaker 2: Then there's a whole bunch of them and they disappeared.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: She's mentioned in The Guide to Supernatural Fiction nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three and slagged off, as we say in the Shadow
Speaker 2: of the Attic two thousand by Neil Wilson. I think
Speaker 2: as the Woman's Weird is coming out the Handheld Press
Speaker 2: who do lovely book. She They did a volume which
Speaker 2: I've got, we'd Women's Weird, Strange Stories by Women eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty. She appears in that, and then the Wordsworth
Speaker 2: you know Wordsworth editions. They're very good, cheap books of
Speaker 2: collections of unknown authors. I've got a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: which I picked up as a job lot in a
Speaker 2: second hand bookshop in Aberystworth. So that was two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, The Crimson Blind and Other Stories. So I
Speaker 2: have got that's the book that I've got. I've got
Speaker 2: a bunch. And how I came to read this one
Speaker 2: was I've come back and I was thinking, oh, something's
Speaker 2: not too long, and there we are. Anyway, let's move
Speaker 2: to the story itself, The death Mask, first published in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty. In that book we talked of the death
Speaker 2: Mask and Other Ghosts, a collection of ten supernatural tales,
Speaker 2: actually issued under her own name, not THEO Douglas. So
Speaker 2: let's think about it. On the surface, it's a carefully
Speaker 2: constru detail of supernatural ambiguity in the tradition of Henry
Speaker 2: James and Oliver Onions. A first person frame narrator reports
Speaker 2: the testimony of his friend Tom Enderby, whose courtship of
Speaker 2: a young woman named Lucy is systematically destroyed by the
Speaker 2: appearance of his dead wife's face in every piece of
Speaker 2: white linen that surrounds a new relationship. The story maintains
Speaker 2: with considerable technical skill and unresolved tension between supernatural fact
Speaker 2: and psychological projection. This is why I mentioned Henry James
Speaker 2: Turn of the Screw and Oliver Onions The Beckoning fair One,
Speaker 2: whereby in both those stories you don't really know if
Speaker 2: the protagonist A is going mad or not. Turn of
Speaker 2: the Screw is formally a frame story, so it begins
Speaker 2: with a frame and ends with a frame. It's Christmas
Speaker 2: even somebody's telling the story of a woman he knew,
Speaker 2: who he wasn't in love with, but he knew. But
Speaker 2: the bulk of Turn of the Screw is portrayed first
Speaker 2: person by the governess. As you know. I think the
Speaker 2: Fair Ones I recall is not a frame story, but
Speaker 2: the frame in this one is we don't know whether
Speaker 2: this is a hysteria or there is no proof of
Speaker 2: the ghost of the hauntings, and they could be it
Speaker 2: could equally be. So there is this late Victorian psychological
Speaker 2: ghost stories. What was happening? We moved from the you know,
Speaker 2: the High Gothic ghosts and chains and revenance, and we
Speaker 2: haven't reached the twentieth century reality of ghosts again, where
Speaker 2: ghosts and monsters are real, and we go through a period,
Speaker 2: not in all stories from this period, but psychology. You know,
Speaker 2: Freud was starting to write and this idea that you know,
Speaker 2: that the world as we see it is filtered through
Speaker 2: our psychology rather than being objectively real, Yeah, is coming up.
Speaker 2: And so I think I mentioned that because I think
Speaker 2: that's what's going on. So Dick, it's Tom and Dick, Tom, Dick,
Speaker 2: no Harry, and Dick is a returned friend who's been
Speaker 2: out of England for ten years. Often they are in it,
Speaker 2: so they haven't seen him for ten years. This is
Speaker 2: why he hasn't seen him. And he knew the wife
Speaker 2: and he didn't really like her. And she Gloriana, great name,
Speaker 2: the Queen of course, Queen Elizabeth first Gloriana, that's what
Speaker 2: she was known as. She is not painted in particularly
Speaker 2: warm light really as she's not a very nice person,
Speaker 2: we don't think. And he doesn't seem to have missed
Speaker 2: the much. He didn't seem to have liked his wife.
Speaker 2: I think that's really important for the story. But you know,
Speaker 2: Tommy is like, oh, it's just a hallucination, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's sorry, Dick. That is to say, Dick. That's
Speaker 2: Dick's job. So this is this, as I was saying,
Speaker 2: this idea of psychology, is there a ghost or is
Speaker 2: it insanity? Or you know, moper Son's story that hauler
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty seven is a similar story in that we're
Speaker 2: not sure whether as it goes through somebody going mad,
Speaker 2: although I think probably in the all of the hall
Speaker 2: it is somebody going mad. But you see, there is
Speaker 2: a sort of a genre, increasingly of its time, with
Speaker 2: an interest in psychology, our ghost real or the figments
Speaker 2: of our hysterical mind, the ambiguous ghost story. So it's
Speaker 2: a thing, you know, of course, if we go into psychology.
Speaker 2: Psychology and I often talk about this and I don't
Speaker 2: want to labor it too much, is this idea of
Speaker 2: the return of the repressed. So Freud's theory is that
Speaker 2: we things that are too painful that we don't acknowledge,
Speaker 2: we don't want to live in our conscious mind. We
Speaker 2: put him in the cupboard of our unconscious and we
Speaker 2: hide it away. But his idea was that you can't
Speaker 2: you know, the pressure builds up, this hydraulic metaphor, the
Speaker 2: pressure builds up and we have to let it out again.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was doing psychology, we would often
Speaker 2: talk about how we see the human mind according to
Speaker 2: the technology of the time. So in Freud's time, it
Speaker 2: was basically, there is a pressure building up. You can't
Speaker 2: do anything about it. You've got to let the pressure out.
Speaker 2: You let the pressure out through talking about it. You
Speaker 2: have a catharsis and everything's fine. That isn't true, as
Speaker 2: it turns out. And then when I was studying psychology
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, the metaphor then was the
Speaker 2: brain as a computer, and we had cognitive psychology, and
Speaker 2: it was basically looking at the brain as an information
Speaker 2: processing device. And I don't think we do that anymore.
Speaker 2: I think probably we're looking at it as AI or
Speaker 2: something now, which AI, of course llm's are just basically
Speaker 2: very clever, huge predictive text machines. And so basically I
Speaker 2: think the metaphor now for the brain will be some
Speaker 2: kind of predictive text machine. So it's an interesting thought,
Speaker 2: isn't it. But so behind that slight digression is the
Speaker 2: mind is none of them those things, those are metaphors.
Speaker 2: And I think again old in McGilchrist stepping in here,
Speaker 2: the left brain likes to systemize you know, left hemisphere
Speaker 2: likes to systemize, and it mistakes it's its representation for
Speaker 2: the truth. So the danger is, of course, we Freud
Speaker 2: thought he was so convinced that the brain operated like
Speaker 2: a steam engine that he was trapped by that. And
Speaker 2: so you know, in the two thousands, when they thought
Speaker 2: the brain was some kind of computer of its time,
Speaker 2: they really believed it was. And so the danger is
Speaker 2: if we come to believe that the brain is simply
Speaker 2: a very clever, predictive text or predictive bit machine, we
Speaker 2: will be trapped with that idea and we will come
Speaker 2: to take it as reality, when of course it's simply
Speaker 2: a model, and an imperfect model anyway.
Speaker 3: So so if this haunting is a return of the repressed,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a dretched to say this, to
Speaker 3: be honest, what is repressed?
Speaker 2: What is Tom hiding from? I think we could make
Speaker 2: a tentative argument that he's hiding from his inauthenticity. Now,
Speaker 2: I've got to be careful because I'm really interested in
Speaker 2: being honest and being authentic to yourself, and so that
Speaker 2: is my model, and I've got to be aware that
Speaker 2: I might be as trapped in my model as Freud
Speaker 2: is in his you know. But so I'm thinking, and
Speaker 2: you take it with the pinch of salt. Sorry, just
Speaker 2: knock the microphone. Take it with a pinch of salt,
Speaker 2: you know, because it could be that this is just
Speaker 2: me and I'm hung up on my own theories, you know.
Speaker 2: But I think I see the story as a man
Speaker 2: who's not being honest with himself. Okay, that's what's repressed.
Speaker 2: I stand. I'm absolutely prepared to be corrected on because
Speaker 2: I'm not one hundred percent convinced I'm right. But anyway,
Speaker 2: let's go on with the linen. I think the linen's
Speaker 2: really interesting. So the most original and powerful element, remember
Speaker 2: she is a woman of Everett's story, is her choice
Speaker 2: of haunting medium. Gloriana's face does not appear in mirrors
Speaker 2: or windows, or the generic atmospherics of the ghostly. It
Speaker 2: appears exclusively in white linen, Tom's handkerchief, Lucy's embroidery. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think the handkerchief is hers. Actually I don't think
Speaker 2: it's Tom's. It was in a draw as he used it,
Speaker 2: I forget now, but it was hers. She's put it away.
Speaker 2: The dining room tablecloth. The ghost appears in the Turkish
Speaker 2: bath sheet. It's not an aesthetic convenience. It's a precise
Speaker 2: material and social argument, and it is one that a
Speaker 2: woman writer of Everett's class and generation was equipped to
Speaker 2: make in a way that a male writer deploying the
Speaker 2: same imagery for atmospheric effect would not have been so.
Speaker 2: Linen in the Victorian and Wardian middle class household was
Speaker 2: woman's work from the beginning to the end. The marking, making,
Speaker 2: even laundering, mending, and storing of household linen was a
Speaker 2: specifically female responsibility, part of what a wife brought to
Speaker 2: a marriage. In both literal and symbolic terms. The trousseau
Speaker 2: assembled over years the household stock. The embroidered initials marked
Speaker 2: ownership and transformed it. A man encountered linen as a
Speaker 2: finished product. It was a clean shirt, laid out, nicely ironed,
Speaker 2: the table set, the beds made. A woman encountered it
Speaker 2: as a continuous management responsibility that began before marriage and
Speaker 2: ended only at her death, when the same category of
Speaker 2: cloth was used to wrap her body. The linen chest
Speaker 2: was one of the few domains of genuine female authority
Speaker 2: in a household where legal and financial authority resided entirely
Speaker 2: with the husband exercised through She exercises her contact with
Speaker 2: linen through unceasing invisible labor. Of course, in a middle
Speaker 2: class houseld like this, much of the labor is carried
Speaker 2: by the servants, which is a class distinction, but they
Speaker 2: will be female servants. The shroud dimension compounds is the
Speaker 2: same material that makes the wedding dress, makes the winding sheet.
Speaker 2: Gloriana's deathbed request cover my face with the handkerchief is
Speaker 2: the gesture that initiates a whole mechanism and fuses a
Speaker 2: domestic and the mortuary in a single action. She's not
Speaker 2: asking Tom to do something extraordinary. She's asking him to
Speaker 2: perform a ritual that falls entirely with the normal management
Speaker 2: of death, which was also in this period. Woman's work.
Speaker 2: Who lays you out? It's woman comes from the parish.
Speaker 2: Who lays you out often midwives and the laying out
Speaker 2: women with the same woman. Whatever it understands and encodes
Speaker 2: in the story's material texture is that the linen chests
Speaker 2: and the coffin are not opposites. They are points on
Speaker 2: the same continuum of women's domestic labor and the ghost
Speaker 2: to haunts through cloth is haunting through the very substance
Speaker 2: of her own working life. I think that's an interesting point.
Speaker 2: I don't think it doesn't ring one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: It's not the whole story with the story. There's another
Speaker 2: kind of issue about the whole genre of the dead
Speaker 2: first wife stories. It's almost a subgenre that runs from
Speaker 2: the mid nineteenth century through to the late nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. It's bounded in time like that. The story
Speaker 2: of the dead wife whose claim on her surviving husband
Speaker 2: prevents him from finding happiness with a second woman its
Speaker 2: founding instant. Is instance is Charlotte Bronte is Jane eighteen
Speaker 2: forty seven, where Bertha Mason is not dead but institutionally
Speaker 2: prior locked in the attic legally indischargeable. So she's sort
Speaker 2: of effectively like the ghost of a woman, but haunting,
Speaker 2: you know, she haunts the relationship. The claim that cannot
Speaker 2: be canceled by ordinary means. Bertha establishes the pattern that
Speaker 2: was eighteen forty seven the first wife as the obstacle
Speaker 2: whose removal cannot be achieved through normal social negotiation, but
Speaker 2: only through extraordinary and violent means. It develops in a
Speaker 2: later tradition where the living inconvenient wife is actually replaced
Speaker 2: with a dead one, intensifying the problem can siderably, a
Speaker 2: dead wife cannot be reasoned with, confronted, divorced, or outlasted. Also,
Speaker 2: she can't be killed in the supernatural variance. She is
Speaker 2: a quite precisely through death, a power she never possessed
Speaker 2: in life. This is where I think Gloriana seems to
Speaker 2: be in a very powerful woman. But we will go
Speaker 2: with this argument. So we have Hugh Walpole's Snow, which
Speaker 2: I've read. Of course you can find it on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ten is the earliest of these supernatural cases, and
Speaker 2: in some respects are most revealing. The dead wife returns
Speaker 2: not through any domestic object, but there's weather and encroaching
Speaker 2: elemental cold that draws the husband, Jacob Finch, away from
Speaker 2: his living second wife and out into the fatal exterior
Speaker 2: with the first wife, where she won't give him up.
Speaker 2: Walpole's dead wife does not colonize the domestic interior as
Speaker 2: Gloriana does. She abolishes it, expanding her claim to the
Speaker 2: atmosphere itself. Jacob cannot flee snow, but Walpole's most disturbing
Speaker 2: insight is that Jacob does not particularly want to flee,
Speaker 2: So there are variance of theme here. He walks out
Speaker 2: into the cold. There's something that looks from outside like relief.
Speaker 2: The first marriage is inauthenticity included. Is it implied a
Speaker 2: kind of cold emotional safety. I'm going to say that
Speaker 2: again because clearly the relationship with the first wife is
Speaker 2: not gone, and these men in these stories have different
Speaker 2: relationships to the first wife. With Jacob Finch, we don't know,
Speaker 2: and WAPAT doesn't say much about the previous relationships, so
Speaker 2: we surmise and very limited evidence, But it does appear
Speaker 2: that there's something comforting about the snow. It's almost like
Speaker 2: he's it's easier to to to relax into death with her.
Speaker 2: There's something comforting about that. It's an app's so we
Speaker 2: may say it's a cold emotional safety. The absence of
Speaker 2: the demand for genuine feeling that the living second wife
Speaker 2: now makes on him. So she needs him as a man,
Speaker 2: as a person, and for some reason he can't give that,
Speaker 2: and he, you know, he needs to escape that demand
Speaker 2: to be a real person in life. Okay, so that
Speaker 2: may be what's inauthentic here. So I want to talk
Speaker 2: then about Edith Wharton's pomegranate seed, which divides people. I
Speaker 2: love it. I see the comments. Some people really don't
Speaker 2: get it at all nineteen thirty one. So in this case,
Speaker 2: Charlotte Ashby, the dead first wife, communicates with her surviving husband,
Speaker 2: Kenneth through letters that arrive in handwriting his second wife Laura,
Speaker 2: and can see but never read. Kenneth reads and answers them,
Speaker 2: and is progressively drawn away from the living woman until
Speaker 2: he disappears entirely. Wharton's title supplies the mythological key, the
Speaker 2: pomegranate seed, the persephone eight in the underworld, boundy to return,
Speaker 2: you know, the myth so Posephonie descends into the underworld.
Speaker 2: A mother Demeter is looking for her, but she's married
Speaker 2: to Hades, and in the endicome with this deal because
Speaker 2: because she's eaten the fruit of the underworld, she must return.
Speaker 2: So it's something about the world of the dead, the
Speaker 2: world of those who have passed already that hooks these
Speaker 2: people something they can't These men cannot get away from this,
Speaker 2: you know. So Kenneth has consumed something of his first
Speaker 2: marriage that now operates inside himself as a compulsion indistinguishable
Speaker 2: from Will. We're even talking a little bit Arthur shopping
Speaker 2: out here. Won't go into that, but his shopping that
Speaker 2: is great. Actually, he's hard to read, so read him
Speaker 2: through somebody else. I read him through BERNARDA. Castro. He's
Speaker 2: got a great book on chopping. Now helped me really
Speaker 2: understand it anyway. So in Wharton's story, going back the
Speaker 2: dead wives claiming Wharton requires the husband's participation. Again, Charlotte's
Speaker 2: letters must be opened, read and answered, and that participation
Speaker 2: is what makes the horror specifically psychological as well as supernatural.
Speaker 2: Loauring the second wive watches with complete clarity and complete
Speaker 2: helplessness because she cannot do Kenneth's more men, how would
Speaker 2: he say that morning? And he will not do it
Speaker 2: from himself, So he he's unable to process of both
Speaker 2: of these men. So far are we're talking about, and
Speaker 2: I suppose to Jane Eyre as well, But Hugh wo
Speaker 2: Pole's character, Edith Wharton's character, they have not processed. They're
Speaker 2: not done with that first marriage, that first relationship. This
Speaker 2: probably says something very much alive. This is a story,
Speaker 2: after all. So I imagine that the experience of many second
Speaker 2: not just women, but second husbands as well, is that
Speaker 2: their first partner is also somehow in the relationship. If
Speaker 2: he has not been able to let's say he, but
Speaker 2: it could be she as well has not been able
Speaker 2: to process this, then that relationship is not effectively dead,
Speaker 2: and we move on to definitely the Marie is Rebecca
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight. The fullest treatment of this the id
Speaker 2: identical effect, without recourse to the supernatural at all. Although
Speaker 2: it almost feels like a go it should be a
Speaker 2: ghost story. Rebecca to Winter is dead before the novel
Speaker 2: begins and never appears. She is pure inscription, her monogram
Speaker 2: on the household linen, her personality in Missus Danver's devotion,
Speaker 2: her reputation in the neighborhood's memory. The second Missus de Wint,
Speaker 2: who has no name of her own, which is the
Speaker 2: novel's central semiotic statement, finds every surface of her new
Speaker 2: life already covered with a prior text she cannot overwrite.
Speaker 2: The dead wife's power is the total power of total
Speaker 2: prior occupation. She's filled the role so completely that the
Speaker 2: woman attempting to succeed her, the second wife, finds no
Speaker 2: space in which to exist independently. So in this case
Speaker 2: with the death mask. Of course, what we've got is
Speaker 2: that Lucy Young Lucy is a promise of happiness, but
Speaker 2: can never be fulfilled because Tom has not processed, has
Speaker 2: not been not honestly disposed of the first relationship. The
Speaker 2: dead wife prevents her husband from happy with the second woman,
Speaker 2: not because the dead are inherently more powerful than a
Speaker 2: living but because happiness in a second marriage requires an
Speaker 2: honest reckoning with the first one, and these men have
Speaker 2: not performed that reckoning. The dead wife's power is not
Speaker 2: at root supernatural or psychological, it is ethical. Tom Enderby's
Speaker 2: situation makes this unusually legible because Everett in this story
Speaker 2: gives us key details without such telling, with such telling casualness.
Speaker 2: Gloriana was his senior, the house was hers. The marriage
Speaker 2: had the shape of an arrangement made for the reasons
Speaker 2: for reasons other than love, property's, social settlement convenience. Tom
Speaker 2: endured it, and when Gloriana died, his first private thought
Speaker 2: was a good job too. That's what he says. That
Speaker 2: relief is never examined, never mourned, never atoned for. It
Speaker 2: is pocketed and set aside in favor of the pursuit
Speaker 2: of lucy. He has never admitted to himself or to
Speaker 2: anyone else, that he spent years in a marriage he
Speaker 2: did not want, with a woman he did not love,
Speaker 2: and that Gloriana, whatever her faults as a companion, invested
Speaker 2: her entirely legal and social identity. She's just known as
Speaker 2: missus Enderby in lots of things in that same marriage,
Speaker 2: with no equivalent exit available to her. Under the coverture
Speaker 2: system that shared her married life, she had no independent
Speaker 2: property rights, no career, no public existence outside her role
Speaker 2: as missus Enderby. The savage irony encoded in the story's
Speaker 2: property detail is that her own house survives her in
Speaker 2: a form that benefits him. He holds it as a
Speaker 2: tenant for life, administering her assets for his own comfort,
Speaker 2: exactly as a law administered them during her lifetime. She cannot,
Speaker 2: even from beyond the grave, reclaim what was legally hers.
Speaker 2: Against that backdrop, the haunting is not supernatural excess. It
Speaker 2: is a logical necessity, the only channel left to a
Speaker 2: woman for whom every other instrument has been closed. The
Speaker 2: death mask returns because the admission of all this has
Speaker 2: never been made, The account has never been settled. And
Speaker 2: the ghost is not in the final analysis Gloriana enderby
Speaker 2: at all. The ghost is the unlived authentic life that
Speaker 2: the first marriage foreclosed, returning at the moment when the
Speaker 2: possibility of living genuinely presents itself, demanding that the debt
Speaker 2: be acknowledged before the new beginning can be permitted. Gloriana's
Speaker 2: face in the linen is not revenge. It is an invoice.
Speaker 2: But what we've got is the linen symbolizes that domestic
Speaker 2: arrangement in a sense almost it's about So the ethics
Speaker 2: are that he lived a lie for his own convenience
Speaker 2: with a woman he didn't really like, just so he
Speaker 2: could enjoy her money and property. And so it's ethical,
Speaker 2: isn't it that? And of course we've got to remember
Speaker 2: I went to see just before I went down to Wales.
Speaker 2: I was in Newcastle or the Royal Shakespeare Company's version
Speaker 2: of Hamlet. And of course it's all about ethics, isn't
Speaker 2: The ghosts are all about ethics. And one of the
Speaker 2: oldest roles of a ghost in the story is to
Speaker 2: do right wrongs, to point out where there have been
Speaker 2: transgressions in how things should be and where people have
Speaker 2: actually been naughty. I can't think of the poshuath for
Speaker 2: that moment. So in every case of this, so okay,
Speaker 2: So let's go back to the pomegrancy briefly. It's more opaque,
Speaker 2: but the structure implies the same dynamic. His silence with
Speaker 2: Lauring is not discretion. It is a continuation of inauthenticity
Speaker 2: that began in the first marriage and has transferred itself
Speaker 2: into the second. I would slays, I would kind of
Speaker 2: revise that slightly, you know, and say the inauthenticity now
Speaker 2: is with the second wife. You know. I suppose what
Speaker 2: we're saying about these is you have to if you're
Speaker 2: in a relationship with somebody, you can't use them. It's
Speaker 2: not ethical to use them. And so old Tom Enderby
Speaker 2: uses Gloriana in the set second issue, the second one
Speaker 2: that polygrams seed. He's using lawing his second wife for
Speaker 2: emotional benefit, but he isn't honest whe her, He's not
Speaker 2: true to her. Yeah, I mean, if we look at
Speaker 2: Rebecca maximum de Winter, his inauthenticity having reached the point
Speaker 2: of actual vans that was a loveless marriage. It was
Speaker 2: so inauthentic the world thought it was going on. Finally,
Speaker 2: and he in some sense benefited from that. He wanted
Speaker 2: to project this image of the county couple very successful,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't very nice. But do you see what
Speaker 2: I'm saying? Inauthentic And eventually he kills her and he
Speaker 2: gets away with it, ethics running right through this, but
Speaker 2: the other woman suffers. Okay, So the sorry asks what
Speaker 2: we owe to the dead and what it costs to
Speaker 2: carry an unexamined life forward into a future that demands Honestly,
Speaker 2: I think that is the central message here. The mascot
Speaker 2: forms in tom Enderby's handkerchief, in Lucy's embroidery, in the
Speaker 2: tablecloth at luncheon. He's made of the same cloth as
Speaker 2: Gloriana's shroud and her trousseau and the household stock she
Speaker 2: managed without acknowledgment through servants for the duration of a
Speaker 2: marriage that was never what it pretended to be. Tom
Speaker 2: Enderby's tragedy is not that he's haunted. It is that
Speaker 2: he never learns what the haunting means. He never learns,
Speaker 2: does he. At the end of it, He's no further forward.
Speaker 2: He's like, Oh, I can't marry. I can't get married
Speaker 2: because Gloriana he's the victim still of he's owing in authenticity.
Speaker 2: He doesn't seem to have any knowledge of why he
Speaker 2: should be published, published, publish, why he should be polished.
Speaker 2: What am I saying why he should be punished? Okay?
Speaker 2: He does never acknowledge that there's no honest reckoning with himself.
Speaker 2: He doesn't carry any guilt for what he did to Lucy,
Speaker 2: for what he did to Gloriana. For he's slimy backboneless corruption.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's there's a decent sort of chap, but
Speaker 2: he's not at all. Okay. These husbands in all these
Speaker 2: stories are not simply men who contracted inauthentic first marriages
Speaker 2: and are now paying the price or in authentic second
Speaker 2: They are men who at some level preferred the inauthenticity.
Speaker 2: They don't there's maximum the Winter, you know, he gets
Speaker 2: away with a crime. And in the other two cases,
Speaker 2: the Snow and the Pomegrant, see the husband's disappear with
Speaker 2: the wife. So they never they never make that moral reckoning.
Speaker 2: And you could argue that they suffer. But the second
Speaker 2: wife suffers or Lucy, you know, her hopes are dashed.
Speaker 2: She's been the subject of a broken engagement, which will
Speaker 2: will cast shade, as they say, on her. Anyway, there
Speaker 2: we go. So it's amazing what you can get out
Speaker 2: of a short a short piece, you know, an apparently
Speaker 2: simple ghost story. And this is why I think they
Speaker 2: rewards study, because they're not just simple stuf worries. In
Speaker 2: many cases, they have actually something to say about the
Speaker 2: human condition, and in this case, I think it's an
Speaker 2: ethical story. So I think that's what it's about, more
Speaker 2: than Freud or anything like that. Anyway, Okay, I hope
Speaker 2: you enjoyed it. Take care by.
Speaker 1: Everybody dies. Isn't that certain? You've tried to get into
Speaker 1: the long drouble today?
Speaker 2: Didn't you?
Speaker 1: How do that they'd come back? What's the secret