The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 07

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

"The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book published without diminishing the little fortune I keep for you some day. Uncle Jack starts a society so to publish it. Health and long life to Uncle Jack's society! One can't look a gift horse in the mouth."

Here my mother entered, rosy from a shopping expedition with Mrs. Primmins; and in her joy at hearing that I could stay to dinner, all else was forgotten. By a wonder, which I did not regret, Uncle Jack really was engaged to dine out. He had other irons in the fire besides the "Literary Times" and the "Confederate Authors' Society;" he was deep in a scheme for making house-tops of felt (which, under other hands, has, I believe, since succeeded); and he had found a rich man (I suppose a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the project, and had actually asked him to dine and expound his views.

CHAPTER III.

Here we three are seated round the open window—after dinner—familiar as in the old happy time—and my mother is talking low, that she may not disturb my father, who seems in thought—

Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it—I have it. Where! What! Where! Knock it down; brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to it! Crrrr-crrrrr— there—here—in my hair—in my sleeve—in my ear—cr-cr.

I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing—a dark thing—a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went— where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty points in the whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the creature was. It might have been an earwig,—a very large, motherly earwig; an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe that they do get into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless to argue with me upon philosophical grounds. I have a vivid recollection of a story told me by Mrs. Primmins,—how a lady for many years suffered under the most excruciating headaches; how, as the tombstones say, "physicians were in vain;" how she died; and how her head was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs, ma'am, such a nest! Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring! They sit on their eggs like hens, and the young, as soon as they are born, creep under them for protection,—quite touchingly! Imagine such an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum!

But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It might have been one of that genus in the family of Forficulidce called Labidoura,— monsters whose antennae have thirty joints! There is a species of this creature in England—but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the great honor of Providence, very rarely found—infinitely larger than the common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana. Could it have been an early hornet? It had certainly a black head and great feelers. I have a greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high. However, the creature was gone. Yes, but where? Where had I so rashly thrown it? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown or into my slippers, or, in short, anywhere, in the various recesses for earwigs and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford. I satisfy myself at last as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone in the room, that it is not upon me. I look upon the carpet, the rug, the chair under the fender. It is non inventus. I barbarously hope it is frizzing behind that great black coal in the grate. I pluck up courage; I prudently remove to the other end of the room. I take up my pen, I begin my chapter,—very nicely, too, I think upon the whole. I am just getting into my subject, when—cr-cr-er-cr-er—crawl—crawl—crawl—creep— creep—creep. Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before! Oh, by the Powers! I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having scrutinized its genus before, whether Forfaculida or Labidoura. I made a desperate lunge with both hands,—something between thrust and cut, ma'am. The beast is gone. Yes, but, again, where? I say that where is a very horrible question. Having come twice, in spite of all my precautions—and exactly on the same spot, too—it shows a confirmed disposition to habituate itself to its quarters, to effect a parochial settlement upon me; there is something awful and preternatural in it. I assure you that there is not a part of me that has not gone cr-cr-cr!— that has not crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since; and I put it to you what sort of a chapter I can make after such a—My good little girl, will you just take the candle and look carefully under the table? that's a dear! Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and inclined to be corpulent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an acquaintance with the Phcenician language are aware that Beelzebub, examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less. Wherefore, as—Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, by the souls of the Ptolemies I would,—and I will too! Icing the bell, my little dear! John, my—my cigar-box! There is not a cr in the world that can abide the fumes of the havana! Pshaw! sir, I am not the only man who lets his first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter, in—Pff—pff— pff!

CHAPTER IV.

Everything in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over the nape of one's neck! Grim unknown, I shall make of thee—a simile!

I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and lady-like horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring), and also of early hornets,—and indeed of all unknown things of the insect tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers, or forceps, just by your ear,—I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find it difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and innocent stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your nerves and cr'd-cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And the worst is, that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel obliged to look pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor always be shaking your flounces and looking into a dark corner of your apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects. One has a secret care, an abstraction, a something between the memory and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr which one has never dared to analyze. So I sat by my another, trying to smile and talk as in the old time, but longing to move about, and look around, and escape to my own solitude, and take the clothes off my mind, and see what it was that had so troubled and terrified me; for trouble and terror were upon me. And my mother, who was always (Heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all that concerned her darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that evening. She made me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how I had spent my time; and Fanny Trevanion (whom she had seen, by the way, three or four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the world), oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!