It is the experience of a man I knew intimately that I will now—without expressing an opinion—relate, as far as I can recollect, in his own words:
“Looking for a house with plenty of elbow room and of reasonable rent, my attention was attracted by a dilapidated building—with garden in front and noseless statues liberally besprinkling it—situated in the Marylebone Road. Proceeding to the agent’s, I was considerably surprised by his terms. ‘The house,’ he began, ‘has a bad name; no caretaker will live on the premises. In a word, sir, here’s the key, and if you are willing to occupy it you shall have it rent free for six months.’ I at once closed with his offer, and seeking out a chum—lately ordained—we spent the next night in the haunted house. It was in the dining-room we proposed to make a first night of it, and barely had we settled down for a chat when footsteps were distinctly heard in the hall. ‘Our lantern!’ I whispered as we excitedly opened the door. Nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. ‘Hush!’ whispered my friend, ‘I hear something behind me.’ I heard the sound also. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated; but still the silence of the Catacombs. Then the sound of footsteps ascending the uncarpeted stairs was unmistakable till they gradually died away in the attics. A moment of indescribable stillness followed; a cold blast chilled the very marrow of our bones, and our lantern went out like the crack of a pistol.
“We returned to our armchairs after carefully locking the door, but we heard no more. And so we sat till welcome daylight made its appearance, and as the kettle simmered on the hob and the sound of awakening life made itself manifest in the Marylebone Road, it seemed impossible to realise the weird manifestations we had witnessed.
“‘—,’ said my friend, ‘we have learnt a terrible experience; Satan has been unloosed amongst us. Let us pray.’”
The house has long since been pulled down; majestic flats now occupy the site, and instead of the sepulchral moans of disembodied souls the untrained, throaty voice of lovely woman may be heard shrieking to the accompaniment of a hired piano, and producing a discord as damnable, if more up-to-date, than ever was heard in a haunted house.
In Surrey Street there was a house that rumour asserted had been hermetically sealed, and was not to be re-opened till a hundred years had passed, where, in the eighteenth century, a terrible tragedy had occurred during the progress of a bridal feast, and the distracted bridegroom, rushing out, had commanded that God’s sun should not again settle on the accursed board till the generation yet unborn was in being. And I have a vague recollection of having read, years later, a description of what was seen as the portals were thrown back after their century of peace, and light and air had percolated through the room. One can picture the table decked with its moth-eaten cloth, the piles of dust that represented the viands, the chairs pushed back in weird array, and the odour of the tomb that pervaded everything!
To all which, my enlightened twentieth-century reader, there is probably another side. The whole thing may be an absolute fable.
In the days before Trade had made those gigantic strides which have since dumped its votaries amid the once sacred pages of Debrett, when knights were not as common as blackberries, and the Victorian Order had not become a terror in the land, when buttermen sold butter, and furniture-men sold furniture, and before huge emporiums for the sale of everything had come into existence, it was “bazaars” that supplied the maximum of selection with the minimum of locomotion, such as to-day is to be found in the huge caravanserai yclept “Stores” and in Tottenham Court Road and Westbourne Grove in particular.
In Soho Square, on the western side, where to-day—and all day—men with pronounced features, forbidding countenances, and of usurious tendencies may be seen in a first floor window exchanging views on the iniquitous restrictions associated with stamped paper, a bazaar existed in the long-ago sixties where dogs that squeaked and elephants that wagged their tails might have been bought by children of tender years who, for aught we know, may have since been plucked of their last feather by the vultures that now hover over those happy hunting grounds.
Turning into Oxford Street there was the Queen’s Bazaar, afterward converted into the Princess’s Theatre, still with us, with its dismal, dingy frontage and limited shelter for ladies with guttural voices; whilst almost opposite was the Pantheon, with perhaps the most chequered career of all, having been, in turn, the National Opera House, the accepted Masquerade house, a theatre, and a bazaar till 1867, when it attained its present proud position as the main tap for the supply of Gilbey’s multifarious vintages.
Still further west was the St. James’s Bazaar, built by Crockford, and soon converted into a hell, where more monies changed hands and more properties were sold than in all the other bazaars in the universe.
But perhaps the most tenacious of life was the Baker Street Bazaar. In its spacious area was situated an unpretentious shop (since spread half up the street) with two or three windows in Baker Street, while on the hinterland was the bazaar, and over it Tussaud’s Waxworks. Entering from King Street was the area occupied annually by the Cattle Show, whilst still further space was available—as we were lately informed by the police reports—for empty coffins, false beards, volatile dukes, lead and bricks in bulk, sleeping and reception rooms, scores of flunkeys, and addenda too multifarious to mention. Never having seen the subterranean Duke nor the bewhiskered Druce, one may be permitted to marvel where all this ghastly conglomeration found shelter, and whether the confusion that must have occurred amongst the Dutch dukes, the English shopmen, the cattle, and the Waxworks can in any way be held responsible for the startling contradictions with which we have lately been regaled.