The Life of the Mind

The Coen Brothers: Barton Fink (1991)

All Balled Up at Head Office

Certainly the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, do not present a particularly attractive picture of the writing life in their satirical masterpiece Barton Fink. "You never listen!" John Goodman (aka Karl "Mad Dog" Mundt) thunders at the hapless Barton as he charges down the burning corridor.

I published a post called "Two Views of the Writer" some years ago, but now I'd like to update the examples I gave there with my own favourite description of what Barton Fink refers to as "the life of the mind". It comes from H. G. Wells' 1896 short story "The Lost Inheritance":

The Daily Mirror: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

“My uncle — my maternal uncle ... had — what shall I call it — ? A weakness for writing edifying literature. Weakness is hardly the word — downright mania is nearer the mark. He’d been librarian in a Polytechnic, and as soon as the money came to him he began to indulge his ambition. It’s a simply extraordinary and incomprehensible thing to me. Here was a man of thirty-seven suddenly dropped into a perfect pile of gold, and he didn’t go — not a day’s bust on it. One would think a chap would go and get himself dressed a bit decent — say a couple of dozen pair of trousers at a West End tailor’s; but he never did. You’d hardly believe it, but when he died he hadn’t even a gold watch. It seems wrong for people like that to have money. All he did was just to take a house, and order in pretty nearly five tons of books and ink and paper, and set to writing edifying literature as hard as ever he could write. ...

“He was a curious little chap, was my uncle, as I remember him. ... Hair just like these Japanese dolls they sell, black and straight and stiff all round the brim and none in the middle, and below, a whitish kind of face and rather large dark grey eyes moving about behind his spectacles. ... He looked a rummy little beggar, I can tell you. Indoors it was, as a rule, a dirty red flannel dressing-gown and a black skull-cap he had. That black skull-cap made him look like the portraits of all kinds of celebrated people. He was always moving about from house to house, was my uncle, with his chair which had belonged to Savage Landor, and his two writing-tables, one of Carlyle’s and the other of Shelley’s, so the dealer told him, and the completest portable reference library in England, he said he had — and he lugged the whole caravan, now to a house at Down, near Darwin’s old place, then to Reigate, near Meredith, then off to Haslemere, then back to Chelsea for a bit, and then up to Hampstead. He knew there was something wrong with his stuff, but he never knew there was anything wrong with his brains. It was always the air, or the water, or the altitude, or some tommy-rot like that. ‘So much depends on environment,’ he used to say, and stare at you hard, as if he half suspected you were hiding a grin at him somewhere under your face. ‘So much depends on environment to a sensitive mind like mine.’”

“What was his name? You wouldn’t know it if I told you. He wrote nothing that anyone has ever read — nothing. No one could read it. He wanted to be a great teacher, he said, and he didn’t know what he wanted to teach any more than a child. So he just blethered at large about Truth and Righteousness, and the Spirit of History, and all that. Book after book he wrote and published at his own expense. He wasn’t quite right in his head, you know really; and to hear him go on at the critics — not because they slated him, mind you — he liked that — but because they didn’t take any notice of him at all. ‘What do the nations want?’ he would ask, holding out his brown old claw. ‘Why, teaching — guidance! They are scattered upon the hills like sheep without a shepherd. There is War and Rumours of War, the unlaid Spirit of Discord abroad in the land, Nihilism, Vivisection, Vaccination, Drunkenness, Penury, Want, Socialistic Error, Selfish Capital! Do you see the clouds, Ted —?’ My name, you know — ‘Do you see the clouds lowering over the land? and behind it all — the Mongol waits!’ He was always very great on Mongols, and the Spectre of Socialism, and suchlike things.”

“Then out would come his finger at me, and with his eyes all afire and his skull-cap askew, he would whisper: ‘And here am I. What did I want? Nations to teach. Nations! I say it with all modesty, Ted, I could. I would guide them; nay! But I will guide them to a safe haven, to the land of Righteousness, flowing with milk and honey.’”

“That’s how he used to go on. Ramble, rave about the nations, and righteousness, and that kind of thing. Kind of mincemeat of Bible and blethers. From fourteen up to three-and-twenty, when I might have been improving my mind, my mother used to wash me and brush my hair (at least in the earlier years of it), with a nice parting down the middle, and take me, once or twice a week, to hear this old lunatic jabber about things he had read of in the morning papers, trying to do it as much like Carlyle as he could, and I used to sit according to instructions, and look intelligent and nice, and pretend to be taking it all in. ...

“’A moment!’ he would say. ‘A moment!’ over his shoulder. ‘The mot juste, you know, Ted, le mot juste. Righteous thought righteously expressed — Aah —! Concatenation. And now, Ted,’ he’d say, spinning round in his study chair, ‘how’s Young England?’ That was his silly name for me.”

“Well, that was my uncle, and that was how he talked — to me, at any rate. With others about he seemed a bit shy. And he not only talked to me, but he gave me his books, books of six hundred pages or so, with cock-eyed headings, ‘The Shrieking Sisterhood,’ ‘The Behemoth of Bigotry,’ ‘Crucibles and Cullenders,’ and so on. All very strong, and none of them original. The very last time, but one, that I saw him, he gave me a book. He was feeling ill even then, and his hand shook and he was despondent. I noticed it because I was naturally on the look-out for those little symptoms. ‘My last book, Ted,’ he said. ‘My last book, my boy; my last word to the deaf and hardened nations;’ and I’m hanged if a tear didn’t go rolling down his yellow old cheek. He was regular crying because it was so nearly over, and he hadn’t only written about fifty-three books of rubbish. ‘I’ve sometimes thought, Ted —’ he said, and stopped.”

“’Perhaps I’ve been a bit hasty and angry with this stiff-necked generation. A little more sweetness, perhaps, and a little less blinding light. I’ve sometimes thought — I might have swayed them. But I’ve done my best, Ted.’”

“And then, with a burst, for the first and last time in his life he owned himself a failure. It showed he was really ill. He seemed to think for a minute, and then he spoke quietly and low, as sane and sober as I am now. ‘I’ve been a fool, Ted,’ he said. ‘I’ve been flapping nonsense all my life. Only He who readeth the heart knows whether this is anything more than vanity. Ted, I don’t. But He knows, He knows, and if I have done foolishly and vainly, in my heart — in my heart —’”

“Just like that he spoke, repeating himself, and he stopped quite short and handed the book to me, trembling. Then the old shine came back into his eye. I remember it all fairly well, because I repeated it and acted it to my old mother when I got home, to cheer her up a bit. ‘Take this book and read it,’ he said. ‘It’s my last word, my very last word. I’ve left all my property to you, Ted, and may you use it better than I have done.’ And then he fell a-coughing.”

“I remember that quite well even now, and how I went home cock-a-hoop, and how he was in bed the next time I called. ... He was sinking fast. But even then his vanity clung to him.

“’Have you read it?’ he whispered.”

“’Sat up all night reading it,’ I said in his ear to cheer him. ‘It’s the last,’ said I, and then, with a memory of some poetry or other in my head, ‘but it’s the bravest and best.’”

“He smiled a little and tried to squeeze my hand as a woman might do, and left off squeezing in the middle, and lay still. ‘The bravest and the best,’ said I again, seeing it pleased him. But he didn’t answer. ... I looked at his face, and his eyes were closed, and it was just as if somebody had punched in his nose on either side. But he was still smiling. It’s queer to think of — he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, with the smile of success on his face.

Helen Allingham: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The will, alas, is nowhere to be found, so the whole estate goes to another, far less attentive nephew instead. The narrator falls "on hard times, because as you see, the only trade I knew was legacy-cadging."

"I was hunting round my room to find something to raise a bit on for immediate necessities, and the sight of all those presentation volumes — no one will buy them, not to wrap butter in, even — well, they annoyed me. I promised him not to part with them, and I never kept a promise easier. I let out at them with my boot, and sent them shooting across the room. One lifted at the kick, and spun through the air. And out of it flapped — You guess?

“It was the will. He’d given it to me himself in that very last volume of all.”

... “It just shows you the vanity of authors,” he said, looking up at me. “It wasn’t no trick of his. He’d meant perfectly fair. He’d really thought I was really going home to read that blessed book of his through. But it shows you, don’t it —?” his eye went down to the tankard again —, “It shows you too, how we poor human beings fail to understand one another.”

H. G. Wells: The Plattner Story and Others (1897)

It's a cruel story, in many ways. The absurdity of the uncle's ambitions, all his attempts to sound like Carlyle or some other great sage, are skewered with immaculate precision by the ruthless young Wells, whose books, in 1896, were already starting to sell - in increasingly large numbers.

But the last laugh is, of course, on the nephew, whose cadging flattery inspires the old man to slip him what he wants most, the will, in this furtive way. And yet, one can hear a certain reluctant affection breaking through all the cynical chatter - despite himself, it's hard to believe that he didn't feel something for his uncle. After all, he didn't have to go quite to those lengths to placate him: "It’s the last, but it’s the bravest and best."

I've wondered sometime if this early story came into Wells's mind at all as he was composing his own last book - not so much of Bible, but of Science and blethers - Mind at the End of Its Tether, in 1945. He'd long since lost his audience, and was largely talking to himself by this stage. But there's a horrible woolly vagueness about his work at the end which is sadly reminiscent of the author of The Shrieking Sisterhood, The Behemoth of Bigotry, or Crucibles and Cullenders ... Beware of what you mock, because that may turn out to be you in the end.

H. G. Wells: The Last Books of H.G. Wells: The Happy Turning & Mind at the End of its Tether (1945 / 2006)

I was reminded irresistibly of this story when I came across an article on "The dream job most New Zealanders long for, and how to get it", by Annemarie Quill, on the Stuff website in January this year:

One career tops the list in Aotearoa as the most desirable job in the country, according to new Google search data, yet it is not always the easiest or best paying.

The dream job that most New Zealanders long to do for a living has been revealed by global analysis of 12-months of Google search data around job types, including the question “How to be a...”

The answer for Kiwis was, apparently ... a writer.

But what kind of a writer?

NZ Herald: Keri Hulme & Eleanor Catton (28/1/15)

Kiwis aspiring to win the Booker prize like Eleanor Catton or Keri Hulme, or think they can soar to the top of bestseller lists by knocking out the next Harry Potter or Fifty Shades, could find that the reality of being a writer might not live up to the dream.

“There are big rewards if you reach the very top and yet, it also promises to be a gruelling career for many filled with rejection, self-doubt and financial concerns,” said a spokesperson for Remitly, the financial services group which collated the data.

Bay of Plenty book editor Chad Dick agrees that "It’s a career that people should follow for love, not money ... If the thought of having your book in your hand is enough, then you are half way there.”

New Zealand sports journalist turned novelist Peter White said he wasn’t too surprised that so many New Zealanders dreamed of writing.

“I would have thought it would be All Black, but it makes sense. Everyone has a story inside them, and writing is the perfect way to express it.”

It's not that there isn't a lot of very sensible advice in this article: there is. Those of us in the trade of teaching Creative Writing certainly have to get used to introducing - as diplomatically as possible - a touch of realism into the unrealistically lofty hopes and dreams of aspiring novelists and poets.

But the question still needs a good deal of unpacking. Is it the idea of being a writer that attracts people, or the actual brute work of writing? The rewards, when they come, are seldom commensurate to the superhuman effort of creating something genuinely worth reading - and the prodigies who seemingly effortlessly spin stories out of thin air are rarer than one might think.

In the end "the thought of having his book in his hand" was apparently not enough for Wells's uncle - even that tottering stack of 53-odd self-published tomes - as he despaired on his deathbed. What he craved was some whisper of recognition. Did he believe those last lying words of his nephew? Perhaps - perhaps not.

But he was still smiling. It’s queer to think of — he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, with the smile of success on his face.

Jack Ross: Biblioblitz (2006)

Perhaps that's the final irony of Wells's story. It's presumably meant to be a satire on the vanity of authors, but no writer can read it without feeling a reluctant affinity with that poor absurd old man with his vanload of paper and Walter Savage Landor's chair.

"Fake it till you make it." I remember hearing Martha Stewart angrily denouncing this doctrine on her own abortive version of The Apprentice Reality TV show: "I never faked anything. I went to jail, for God's sake!"

I'm not quite sure how being convicted of insider trading [Sorry: I've been prompted to make a correction here - "the charges of securities fraud were thrown out, Ms. Stewart was found guilty of four counts of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators"] equates with not being a fake, but then "that's just facts", as another popular adage has it. All writers are fakes. Even the ones who win huge prizes and the adulation of millions have, somewhere inside them, some last remaining vestiges of impostor syndrome.

Which is not to say that there's no difference between H. G. Wells, or Thomas Carlyle, and the poor deluded uncle in the story - but it's more one of degree and scale than of species. If I had to pick a patron saint of writers, it would definitely be the uncle.

H. G. Wells: The Short Stories (1927)

Two Views of the Writer

[William Beckford]

I guess I've always seen a vital distinction between taking writing seriously and taking writers seriously. All that drunken misbehaviour and silly attitudinizing which we were brought up to consider the prerequisite of the "artist" just don't impress me much (to quote Shania Twain ...)

It always seemed a bit silly to me, to tell you the truth, whether the genius in question was F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas or even our own J. K. B. "There's nothing intellectual about wandering around Italy in a nightshirt trying to get laid," as Blackadder once observed à propos of the crowd of Romantic poets trying to scrounge a free lunch in Mrs. Miggin's pie-shop ...

Writing, on the other hand, with its almost infinite set of possibilities, deserves all the respect we can give it. I'm forced to concede, though, that it is extremely hard at times to distinguish it as a pursuit from the idiosyncratic personalities of its practitioners. Anyhow, the purpose of this post is to reprint my two favourite views of "the writer", both satisfactorily out of copyright and therefore fair game for promulgation on the internet.

They should perhaps be entitled (respectively): Portrait of the Artist as a Consummate Slacker and Portrait of the Artist as a Merry Wag:

[Varney the Vampire]

Charles Manby Smith, A Working Man’s Way in the World (1853):

One of the main attractions of the paper which we had to produce weekly, consisted, or was supposed to consist, of a romance of the burglary, cut-throat and gallows class of literature, a chapter of which was advertised to appear in every number, This production, which was doubtless a source of gratification to a certain class of readers, was one of infinite annoyance to the compositors and all parties subordinately employed upon the paper. The author was a gay and fashionably-dressed gallant, something over thirty, and apparently one of that class of geniuses who can never do anything till they are goaded to exertion at the last moment. Instead of sending his manuscript to the printer in decent time, he never sent any manuscript at all; but came himself some few hours before the newspaper went to press, and mounting a seat in a closet next the composing-room, set about the perpetration of his weekly quantum in the very jaws of the press gaping to be fed. A sort of easy, sloping-backed stool was prepared for his accommodation, in which, with the full consciousness of genius upon him, he lounged languidly, and threw off the coinage of his brain. His method of composition must, I imagine, have been perfectly unique, and was certainly as troublesome a process for all persons concerned as can well be conceived. I shall describe it for the benefit of aspiring geniuses, and for the sake of showing the public the workings of the inspiration of romance under the spur of necessity – and so many guineas a column.

On the first arrival of the "popular author," whom, by raising myself by stepping on the bed of my frame, I could, and sometimes did, overlook, he would seat himself in front of a broad white quire of vellum, would seize a pen, and, dashing it into the ink, would suffer his right hand to droop at his side, and, distilling the black drops on the floor, employ himself for twenty or thirty minutes in stroking his whiskers, which had naturally a propensity to hang down in the bandit fashion, upwards toward the middle of his face, occasionally wetting his finger and thumb and twisting them into a curl. Suddenly, the right hand would he cautiously raised, and a few words dropped stealthily upon the paper. Then came another long and deliberate sweep at the whiskers, varied with a pull at the chin and a convulsive grasp at the scowling forehead; then a few more unwilling syllables, and then a bout at the whiskers, and so on, and on, till an hour or more had elapsed, when he would ring the hell violently. The ever-watchful "devil" would dart into the closet, and re-appear in an instant with the first edition of the "copy." Here it is; and this, be it remembered, is all the progress that the action of the romance is destined to make for the present week: –

Bluster knocked at the door, and asked if Slackjaw had come.

The woman said no; and the captain brushing past her, entered the room on the left. Slowgo and Bluebag were there before him.

"Where's that hell-hound, Slackjaw?" cried Bluster.

"Vy," said Slowgo, "that ere's a rum kvestion. How the –– can ve tell?"

Suddenly the sound of footsteps was heard without, and Slackjaw immediately after entered the room.

Bluster suppressed his wrath; and the party sat down together to confer and arrange their plans.

“Whereabouts is the crib?" asked Bluster.

“About a mile the tother side o' Bow," responded Bluebag.

"Is the barkers all right?"

"Righter nor a trivet."

“And Jad meets us at the Whitechapel gate?"

“That's the fake."

“At one o'clock if I'm fly?"

"One's the number. 'Tis now 'leven. I wotes for a drop o' heavy afore we starts."

"D–," roared Bluster, "if I'll have any gettin' drunk afore business."

"Just pots round," insinuated Slowgo; "that won't hurt us; and the night’s infernal wet and windy."

The captain conceded "pots round;" which being duly discussed within an hour the party arose and repaired to the appointed spot. They found Jad in the shadow of the turnpike, and, guided by him, pursued their route. It was near two in the morning when they came in sight of the house which it was their "business" to plunder.

No sooner did this precious morsel of "copy" appear than it was cut up into eight or ten small pieces, and in a very few minutes a proof of the whole was in the hands of the author, whose occupation for the remainder of the night it was, by a process well understood and exceedingly profitable to the geniuses of romance of the present day, to spin it out to the required length of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred lines of minion type. Directly a proof was obtained, the types were distributed, as we knew from experience they would not be worth correcting, and we lay upon our oars awaiting the second edition. This generally employed the author for another hour, and by dint of numerous insertions and interlineations, with some few substitutions, was made to assume an appearance somewhat like the following: –

It wanted a little more than an hour of midnight when Bluster knocked stealthily three times with his knuckles at the door of the house indicated in the last chapter.

The door was opened by a foul-faced and filthy figure in the garb of a woman, who carried a farthing candle, which she shaded with her left hand, and threw the light full in the face of the captain.

Bluster asked in a hoarse whisper if Slackjaw had yet arrived.

The had doggedly replied that he had not, and flavouring the injunction with a curse, the captain, brushing past her, entered the dingy little parlor on the left, where Slowgo and Bluebag, who had arrived before him, enveloped in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, puffed their short-pipes by the light of a glimmering fire in a rusty grate.

"Kiddies all," said the captain, as he stepped into the reeking chamber.

"Nothing but," growled Slowgo in response.

"Where's that –– hell-hound, Slackjaw?" asked Bluster, evidently irritated.

"Vell now," says Slowgo, "that ere's vat I calls a rum sort of a kveer kvestion; how the –– should ve know vere he is?"

"Less of your jaw," retorted the captain, who wanted but little to render him furious. "I want none of that."

Suddenly the sound of hasty but cautious footsteps was heard without; they stopped at the door, and the three gentle taps announced the arrival of a confederate. The grim hostess was heard leisurely ascending the stairs, and a minute after the door was noiselessly opened, and the dilatory Slackjaw entered the room.

The arrival of the cracksman seemed to appease in some degree the irritable captain; he suppressed his rising wrath; and after a Jew guttural salutations had been exchanged, the party sat down together to confer and arrange their plans.

"Whereabouts is the crib we're a goin' to crack?" asked Bluster.

"About a mile the tother side o' Bow," responded Bluebag. “I knows the track fast enough."

"How about the barkers, Slackjaw?"

"Right as a trivet," said that worthy, showing the butts of a brace of pistols stuck into the breast-pocket of his coat.

"And Jadder meets us at the Whitechapel gate?"

"That's the fake."

"At one o'clock, or else it's no go."

"One's the chime. 'Tis now past 'leven. I wotes for a drop o' heavy afore we starts."

"No, that be d–d. B–t me if I'll have any getting drunk afore business. Crack the crib, and bag the swag, and then get drunk as h–. That's my maxim."

"Just pots round, captain," insinuated Slowgo. "That won't hurt us. The night's infernal wet and windy. Hang it, let's have a little drop inside as well as out."

The captain conceded "pots round." A gallon of beer was brought in by the angry amazon, who coolly helped herself to a long draught before she left the room. Bluster drank a double share, by way of keeping his men sober; and having discussed the contents of the can within the hour, the party arose and repaired to the appointed spot.

They had a good hour's walk before them. Doggedly and silently they proceeded on their way, and came within sight of the turnpike-gate just as the heavy bell of St. Paul's rung out ONE! They found the ever-punctual Jadder lurking in the shadow of the toll-house, and, guided by him, pursued their route. When they had passed through the straggling village of Bow, Bluster inquired of Jadder whether the cart was already in waiting on the spot.

“All right," said the other. "Solomons is there with his blind blood-mare, and Levy's trap. Ten mile an hour, and room for all of us."

It was near two in the morning when our reckless adventurers came in sight of the house which, standing invitingly alone, and at least a furlong from any other dwelling, had aroused the cupidity and daring of the burglar's jackall, Jadder.

This second edition of "copy" was cut up and divided like the former, and a quarter of an hour supplied the author with his second proofs. The types were again distributed, and again we waited for a third edition of copy. This came forth in due time, presenting an appearance as different from the second as the first had been from that. Descriptions of Slowgo and Slackjaw were interpolated; oaths and slang ejaculations were knowingly sprinkled about among the conversations, as so much spice in the savoury mess. A speech is introduced from the hostess, who is bullied into silence by Bluebag. Slackjaw supplies a paragraph on the merit of his "pops," and establishes his claim to the gallows by the gratuitous confession of half a score murders. Bluster blusters after the model of Ancient Pistol struck silly; and some spicy descriptions of the exploits of Solomon's blood-mare are added in a style that would edify the votaries of the turf. These voluminous additions swell the chapter to more than half of its required length; and the author is now asked whether he will have the matter of the third proof distributed. If he consents that it should remain, it is a sign that no more merely verbal interpolations are coming, or at least very few, but that the additions to be made will be of separate paragraphs only, Another hour passes away, and the fourth edition of "copy" comes into our hands – the author sometimes handing it to us himself – the overworked devil being found proof against "kicking up," fast asleep on the floor. We now begin to see the end of our labours, The author has left his characters, and called upon the elements to contribute their quota of matter to his hungry columns. The rain now begins to rush down in torrents; the wind can do no less than howl a perfect hurricane; the thunder roars, and the mad lightnings leap from their hiding-places. All of a sudden the raging tempest abates; the stars twinkle brightly beyond the scudding clouds; the moon rises over the distant range of hills; she is horned like the crescent, and suggests an allusion to the turbaned Moslem; or she is a week old; or she shines in full splendour; or she is in her last quarter, and glares ominously on the scene – or perhaps she don't rise at all, but hidden in her "secret interlunar cave," refuses her placid countenance to a deed of violence – perhaps of blood! But wind, rain, hail, snow and tempest, and moon or no moon, all contribute their several portions to the two feet two inches of type which are indispensable to enable the popular author to turn over his long column decently, and pocket his five or ten guineas, as it may be, creditably to himself. The fourth edition, however, seldom finishes the chapter. A fifth and often a sixth is required before the necessary quantum, is made up. Single lines of a parenthetical character were frequently the last resource of our exhausted genius; and I have know a hiatus of more than a dozen lines filled up in extremity by “Ha!” “Ugh!” “Indeed!” “You don’t say so!” “The devil?” &c. &c., ejaculations which were kept standing on a galley in a separate lines, to be had recourse to in a case of last emergency, When at length the deed was done, and the imprimatur had issued from his lips, our son of genius would light a refreshing cigar and with both hands occupied in the propulsion of his obstinate whiskers upwards and forwards, would stalk grandly down-stairs, deposit his gentility in a cab, and rattle home to bed.

E. F. Bleiler, who quotes this passage in his introduction to the Dover reprint of that immortal penny-dreadful Varney the Vampyre, or The Feast of Blood (1847), remarks that it's not possible to identify the Newgate novelist Smith describes, "since the incident is dated 1835, too early for [Edward] Lloyd, [Thomas Peckett] Prest or [James Malcolm] Rymer. G.W.M. Reynolds could fit the date and the physical description, but he was probably in Paris at this time."

The method of padding described here sounds only too depressingly familiar from other forms of pulp literature (student essays, for instance) then and now, however.

[J M W Turner: Beckford's Fonthill]

W. P. Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1887) vol. 2, pp. 132-37:

A distant connection of mine, who, I must presume, was a person of an inquiring mind, found himself involved in a curious adventure. … There was one house, and that the most interesting of all, that shut its door against my inquisitive friend and everybody else. Fonthill Abbey, or Fonthill Splendour as it was sometimes called, situated a few miles from Bath, was a treasure-house of beauty. Every picture was said to be a gem, and the gardens were unequalled by any in England, the whole being guarded by a dragon in the form of Mr. Beckford [author (among other works) of the Gothic romance Vathek]. 'Not only,’ says an authority, ‘had the art-treasures of that princely place been sealed against the public, but the park itself – known by rumour as a beautiful spot – had for several years been inclosed by a most formidable wall, about seven miles in circuit, twelve feet high, and crowned by a chevaux-de-frise.’ These formidable obstacles my distant cousin undertook to surmount, and he laid a wager of a considerable sum that he would walk in the gardens, and even penetrate into the house itself.

Having nothing better to do, he spent many an anxious hour in watching the great gate in the wall, in the hope that by some inadvertence it might be left open and unguarded; and one day the happy moment arrived. The porter was ill, and his wife opened the gate to a tradesman, who, after depositing his goods at the lodge (no butcher or baker was permitted to go to the Abbey itself), retired, leaving the gate open, relying probably upon the woman's shutting it. Quick as thought my relative passed the awful portals, and made his way across the park. Guided by the high tower – called 'Beckford’s Folly' – my inquisitive friend made his way to the gardens, and not being able immediately to find the entrance, was leaning on a low wall that shut the gardens from the park, and taking his fill of delight at that gorgeous display – the garden being in full beauty – when a man with a spud in his hand – perhaps the head-gardener – approached, and asked the intruder how he came there, and what he wanted.

'The fact is, I found the gate in the wall open, and having heard a great deal about this beautiful place, I thought I should like to see it.'

'Ah,' said the gardener, 'you would, would you? Well, you can't see much where you are. Do you think you could manage to jump over the wall? lf you can, I will show you the gardens.’

My cousin looked over the wall, and found such a palpable obstacle – in the shape of a deep ditch – that he wondered at the proposal.

'Oh, I forgot the ditch! Well, go to the door; you will find it about a couple of hundred yards to your right, and I will admit you.'

In a very short time, to his great delight, my cousin found himself listening to the learned names of rare plants, and inhaling the perfume of lovely flowers. Then the fruit-gardens and hot-houses – 'acres of them’, as he afterwards declared – were submitted to his inspection. After the beauties of the gardens and grounds had been thoroughly explored, and the wager half won, the inquisitive one's pleasure may be imagined when his guide said:

‘Now, would you like to see the house and its contents? There are some rare things in it – fine pictures and so on. Do you know anything about pictures?'

‘I think I do, and should, above all things, like to see those of which I have heard so much; but are you sure that you will not get yourself into a scrape with Mr. Beckford? I've heard he is so very particular.'

‘Oh no!’ said the gardener, 'I don't think Mr. Beckford will mind what I do. You see, I have known him all my life, and he lets me do pretty well what I like here.’

'Then I shall be only too much obliged.'

‘Follow me, then,' said the guide.

My distant cousin was really a man of considerable taste and culture, a great lover of art, with some knowledge of the old masters and the different schools; and he often surprised his guide, who, catalogue in hand, named the different pictures and their authors, by his acute and often correct criticism .... When the pictures had been thoroughly examined, there remained bric-a-brac of all kinds, costly suits of armour, jewelry of all ages, bridal coffers beautifully painted by Italian artists, numbers of ancient and modem musical instruments, with other treasures, all to be carefully and delightfully examined, till, the day nearing fast towards evening, the visitor prepared to depart, and was commencing a speech of thanks in his best manner, when the gardener said, looking at his watch:

‘Why, bless me, it's five o'clock! ain't you hungry? You must stop and have some dinner.'

‘No, really, I couldn't think of taking such a liberty. I am sure Mr. Beckford would be offended.'

‘No, he wouldn't. You must stop and dine with me; I am Mr. Beckford.'

My far-off cousin's state of mind may be imagined. He had won his wager, and he was asked, actually asked, to dine with the man whose name was a terror to the tourist, whose walks abroad were so rare that his personal appearance was unknown to his neighbours. What a story to relate to his circle at Bath! How Mr. Beckford had been belied, to be sure! The dinner was magnificent, served on massive plate – the wines of the rarest vintage. Rarer still was Mr. Beckford's conversation. He entertained his guest with stories of Italian travel, with anecdotes of the great in whose society he had mixed, till he found the shallowness of it; in short, with the outpouring of a mind of great power and thorough cultivation. My cousin was well read enough to be able to appreciate the conversation and contribute to it, and thus the evening passed delightfully away. Candles were lighted, and host and guest talked till a fine Louis Quatorze clock struck eleven. Mr. Beckford rose and left the room. The guest drew his chair to the fire, and waited the return of his host. He thought he must have dozed, for he started to find the room in semi-darkness, and one of the solemn powdered footmen putting out the lights.

'Where is Mr. Beckford?' said my cousin.

'Mr. Beckford is gone to bed,' said the man, as he extinguished the last candle.

The dining-room door was open, and there was a dim light in the hall.

'Mr. Beckford ordered me to present his compliments to you, sir, and I am to say that as you found your way into Fonthill Abbey without assistance, you may find your way out again as best you can; and he hopes you will take care to avoid the bloodhounds that are let loose in the gardens every night. I wish you good-evening. No, thank you, sir: Mr. Beckford never allows vails [tips].'

My cousin climbed into the branches of the first tree that promised a safe shelter from the dogs, and there waited for daylight; and it was not till the sun showed itself that he made his way, terror attending each step, through the gardens into the park, and so to Bath. ‘The wager was won,’ said my relative; 'but not for fifty million times the amount would I again pass such a night as I did at Fonthill Abbey.’

Har-de-har-har!

Those of you who are devotees of the English ghost-story writer M. R. James will observe that certain aspects of this anecdote have been transplanted into his stories "Casting the Runes" and "Mr Humphrey's Inheritance" ...

[Sir Francis Varney]