Our Family Affairs, 1867-1896. E. F. Benson
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The silver trumpets call,
and with that and the chorister as yeast, there used to bubble out, when I had gone to bed, this curious waking vision. I would not be asleep at all, but with open eyes I distinctly saw against the blackness of the night nursery a line of golden rails, very ornamental, before which I knelt. There was the sound of silver trumpets in my ears, there was the sound of the chorister, anthems in the Cathedral, and the presence of God. But all these things were secret and apart, never told of to this day, and they did not in the least interfere with wrestlings in the tower, and violent games of rounders and the pleasing terrors of hide-and-seek. The shrine usually stood shut, but when it opened it disclosed blinding splendours.
The Cathedral had, apart from the chorister and the services, certain pains and pleasures of its own. Occasionally assizes were held in Lincoln, and then on Sunday the judges would attend in robes of majesty with full wigs falling on to their shoulders. They walked in procession up the choir, and, reaching their seats, turned round awful pink clean-shaven faces of eternal calm, awful mouths that pronounced death-sentences. Once to my knowledge there was a murder-trial at Lincoln and a man condemned to death and the judge on that occasion became more terrible than death itself, and I slunk out after the Litany with apprehension that I should be called back, and hear some appalling sentence pronounced on me. Again, one day, a canon of the Cathedral stepped backwards through a skylight and was killed and Great Tom, the big bell in the central tower, tolled for the funeral. But the whole circumstances of that were so interesting that, though terror was mingled with them, they were more exciting than terrible. Wholly delightful on the other hand was a scientific demonstration that took place in the nave. A long cord was hung from one of the arches, to the end of which depended a heavy lead weight. On the pavement beneath it there was marked out a circle in white chalk, and this pendulum was then set swinging. As the hours passed, it swung in a different direction from that in which it was started, and instead of oscillating up and down the nave it moved along the transepts, thus demonstrating the motion of the earth. Why that delightful piece of science was shown in the Cathedral I have no idea; certain it is, however, that my mother took me to see the pendulum after breakfast one morning and again before tea when it was swinging in quite another direction. I never had any doubts about the rotary movement of the earth after that, nor, as far as I can remember, before.
CHAPTER III
LINCOLN AND DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
THOSE three and a half years at Lincoln appear to have lasted for decades, so eventful was the unfolding of the world, and all the years which have passed since then, with their travels to many foreign lands, and climbings of perilous peaks, seem to have contained no exploration so thrilling as the revelation of Riseholme, where lived Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln, who wrote the “Holy Year,” and his wife, and his family and Janet the housekeeper. (The latter, like Mrs. Wordsworth, had ringlets down the sides of her face, and dispensed Marie biscuits and cowslip wine in unstinted profusion.) The family, too, were interesting, for one daughter when she laughed said, “Sss-sss,” and another, “Kick-kick-kick,” and the Bishop himself had a face like a lion, and a hollow ecclesiastical voice. My sisters considered him very formidable, but I was not afraid of him, chiefly because at an early stage of our acquaintance he gave me an ink-bottle of pottery, with a gilded lion (like himself) on top of it, and a receptacle to hold sand for the blotting of your letter, if you had managed to write it. This argued an amiable disposition, and when I came in contact with him, I was conscious of no embarrassment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
but Xanadu was nothing to Riseholme for domes and stateliness. There were two lakes peopled with dace and water-lilies and pike and swans, and an island where the swans nested, and a sluice, around which the water was of fabulous depth, where we fished for dace. There was a boat-house, on the roof of which in the autumn a great chestnut tree used to shed its fruit, bursting the husks, and disclosing the shiny brown kernels; and at Riseholme, as far as I remember, we were allowed to do precisely as we pleased. We used to go out alone in the boat, with paste for bait, and splash the water at each other, and come home with a couple of dace, dirty and wet and hopelessly happy. Swans used to scold and hiss at us, the boat did everything but capsize, and æons of bliss were our portion. There were water-snails to be collected, if the fish would not bite (they seldom did), and wreaths of stinking water-weed, and broken fragments of swan eggs lined inside with a tough kind of parchment, which we called “swan-paper.” Then dace (when there were any) were cooked for tea, and provided a bony mouthful for one; the swan-paper was taken home for the Museum, together, on one glorious occasion, with the addled swan’s egg; and the wreaths of stinking water-weed were laid out on sheets of cartridge-paper and pressed. This pressing resulted in an awful fricassee of weed and paper, and then something else occupied us. On the banks of the lake, at intervals, appeared a sympathetic Bishop with daughters, to whom we shouted the results of our explorations, and one of the daughters said, “Kick-kick-kick,” and another, “Sss-sss-sss.” For larger people, such as Arthur, there was more grown-up fishing, and once with a spoon-bait he caught a pike that weighed three pounds. But not even the sympathetic and combined appetites of the juniors could finish that toothsome dish.
Then there were expeditions into the vast forest that lay below the sluice, where marsh-marigolds grew, and the willow shoots flew back and slapped the faces of those who followed the leader in these excursions. Maggie and I formed a small club or society (I suppose Nellie was too old then, being about eleven) to get lost in this pathless place, but we never quite succeeded in doing so. Just as we thought there was no hope of our ever being discovered, in which case we proposed to live on leaves and drink the water that came from the sluice in a small stream, Beth’s voice would sound quite near at hand, or, by mistake, we came back into the meadow beyond the lake, or into the path that bordered it. So instead, we collected chestnuts, if there was not a marine or lacustrine expedition, and ground up the kernels into a nutritive powder, or mixed it with lake-water to form a paste. About this time Maggie and I formed a special alliance, which continued till the end of her life, and the light of it was never quite obscured by those dusky years of darkened mind through which her way led, for she was always willing to talk of the days at Lincoln, and the collections and the amazing stories which we invented to beguile our walks. They were compounded of strange adventures, with the finding of gold and immense diamonds, of desert islands and bandits, and the central figures were she and I and the collie, Watch. All was coloured with the vividness of dreams, and the seriousness of childhood.
Riseholme was about two and a half miles from Lincoln, and the most exciting experience I ever had in its connection was that of being sent over there by my father with a note for the Bishop. I took Watch with me, and “Kick-kick-kick” and “Sss-sss-sss” were so entertaining and the Bishop so long in writing his answer that it was nearly dark before, with sinkings of the heart, I started on my return. “Sss-sss-sss” I think offered to accompany me till I got out of the loneliness of the road and in touch with the lights of Lincoln, but I was too cowardly to say I was afraid of the darkness and the emptiness, and started off alone. Wanting to get it over as quickly as possible, I ran, and was frightened at the noise of my running. Then, one after the other, my stockings came down, and I thought that the strip of whiteness would encourage highwaymen to attack me, and so had to stop every third step to pull them up. Then I talked to Watch in order to hearten myself, saying, in so many words, “Watch, aren’t we benighted?” (new word) and then was frightened at the sound of my voice in the frosty stillness. But there was pleasure in this sense of adventure, and I was given an egg for tea.
There were expeditions to Nocton, where in a wood of vast extent the whole ground was white with lilies of the valley growing wild, and the still languid air beneath the trees swooned with the scent of them, which, I am told (though never since that day have I been able to believe it), is extremely pleasant. For the last of these expeditions to Nocton had a tragic sequel so far as I was concerned. We had lunch there after picking lilies all the morning, and I suppose I ate too much, and it began to rain as we drove homewards so that the carriage,