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The Floating Press - Sheridan Le Fanu

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62 pages

English

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Irish master of gothic horror Sherdian Le Fanu does it again with the two stories collected in this volume. Though both are distinct tales that will leave your spine tingling, they share a common theme: an ordinary person is doggedly pursued by a strange being. Are the hauntings supernatural, or merely the byproduct of a diseased psyche?

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776581252
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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GREEN TEA AND MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE
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SHERIDAN LE FANU

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Green Tea and Mr. Justice Harbottle First published in 1872 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-125-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-126-9 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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GREEN TEA Prologue - Martin Hesselius, the German Physician Chapter I - Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings Chapter II - The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers Chapter III - Dr. Hesselius Picks up Something in Latin Books Chapter IV - Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage Chapter V - Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond Chapter VI - How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion Chapter VII - The Journey: First Stage Chapter VIII - The Second Stage Chapter IX - The Third Stage Chapter X - Home Conclusion - A Word for Those Who Suffer MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE Prologue Chapter I - The Judge's House Chapter II - Mr. Peters Chapter III - Lewis Pyneweck Chapter IV - Interruption in Court Chapter V - Caleb Searcher Chapter VI - Arrested Chapter VII - Chief-Justice Twofold Chapter VIII - Somebody Has Got into the House Chapter IX - The Judge Leaves His House
GREEN TEA
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Prologue - Martin Hesselius, the German Physician
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Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have neverpractised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interestme profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from thehonourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a verytrifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost methe loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful lossof my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldombeen twelve months together in the same place.
In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, awanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast inhis profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, atleast in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He wasan old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire ayoung enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stoodthe test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it waswell-founded.
For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immensecollection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed andbound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in twodistinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as anintelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he hadseen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day,or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returnsupon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the forceand originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosisand illustration.
Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a layreader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which itmay possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly oflanguage, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. Thenarrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notesof cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four yearsago.
It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo ofLeyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man whoread history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, writtena play.
The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medicalrecord, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest anunlearned reader.
These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returnedon the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They arewritten, some in English, some in French, but the greater part inGerman. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a gracefultranslator, and although here and there I omit some passages, andshorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
Chapter I - Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings
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The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresseswith a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally alittle stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without beinghandsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but alsoshy.
I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty andbenevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing.
We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in theconversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more thancontributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose andwell said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems,consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessedperson on earth. Little knows she about him.
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousandpounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to beactively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though alwaystolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage inWarwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, hishealth soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in,generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act ofofficiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart,it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, oroftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on asudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable toresume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and hiseyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strangeshame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room,leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. Thisoccurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, healways takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and tosupply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenlyincapacitated.
When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from thevicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly,he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is alwaysperfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees ofcourse. We shall see.
Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remarksomething odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thingwhich certainly contributes to it, people I think don't remember; or,perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jenningshas a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followedthe movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. Itoccurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as Ihave said, to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the floorthere is something both shy and anxious.
A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaboratingtheories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watchedand scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitelymore minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, fallsinsensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere,and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon everysubject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewardinginquiry.
There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, butreserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeablelittle evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here setdown; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictlyscientific paper.
I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as Ihope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much morecomprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant.I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression ofthat spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. Ibelieve that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is anorganised substance, but as different in point of material from what weordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that thematerial body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and deathconsequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simplyhis extrication from the natural body—a process which commences at themoment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest afew days later, is the resurrection "in power."
The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probablysee their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, byno means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing theconsequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts.
In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, withall my caution—I think he perceived it—and I saw plainly that he wasas cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happe