The Strange Story Book

Mrs. Watson, who was at home, declared herself unable to understand why Mrs. Bargrave should imagine that Mrs. Veal should be in their house. She had never been in town, Mrs. Watson was persuaded, as if she had, she would certainly have called on them. It was to no purpose that Mrs. Bargrave assured the good lady that Mrs. Veal had spent two hours with her on the previous Saturday; Mrs. Watson simply refused to believe it.

In the midst of the discussion Captain Watson came in and announced that on the previous Friday – September 7, 1705 – at noon, Mrs. Veal had died of exhaustion, after one of her fits; and that even at that moment the big painted board with the family coat of arms – called by Captain Watson an 'escutcheon' and by us a 'hatchment' – was being painted in Canterbury. When finished, it would be taken to Dover and hung up in front of the Veals' house. Mrs. Bargrave found the Captain's story impossible to believe, and she went off immediately to the undertaker's shop, where the 'escutcheon' was shown her. Not knowing what to think, she next hastened back to the Watsons, and told the whole tale of Mrs. Veal's visit, describing every particular of her appearance and silk habit, which Mrs. Veal had specially mentioned was scoured. On hearing this, Mrs. Watson cried out excitedly, 'Then you must indeed have seen her, as I helped her myself to make it up, and nobody but she and I knew that it was scoured.'

In this way the Watsons' doubts of the appearance of Mrs. Veal were set at rest, and the story was soon 'blazed' all about the town by the lady, while the Captain took two of his friends to Mrs. Bargrave in order that they might listen to her own account of the strange circumstance, which she gave in exactly the same words as before. Very soon her house was besieged by all sorts of people interested in the story, who saw that Mrs. Bargrave was a straightforward, cheerful person, not at all likely to have invented such a surprising tale.

Amongst those who visited Mrs. Bargrave was the lady whose account was published by Defoe in 1706. Their houses were near together, and they had known each other well for many years. It is she who tells us of various little facts which go far to prove the truth of Mrs. Veal's apparition: how it was discovered that the sister and brother-in-law to whom Mrs. Veal referred really had travelled from London to Dover in order to pay their family a visit but only arrived just as Mrs. Veal was dying; how the servant next door, hanging out clothes in the garden, had heard Mrs. Bargrave talking to someone for above an hour at the very time Mrs. Veal was said to be with her; and how immediately after Mrs. Veal had departed, Mrs. Bargrave had hurried in to the lady next door, and told her that an old friend she feared she had lost sight of had been to see her, and related their conversation.

But Mrs. Veal's brother in Dover was very angry when he heard what was being said in Canterbury, and declared he should go and call on Mrs. Bargrave, who seemed to be making a great deal out of nothing. As to the little legacies which Mrs. Bargrave had mentioned in her letter that Mrs. Veal wished him to give to her friends, why, he had asked his sister on her death-bed – for she was conscious for the last four hours of her life – whether there was anything she desired to dispose of, and she had answered no. But, in spite of Mr. Veal's wrath, everyone believed in Mrs. Bargrave's tale, for they believed in Mrs. Bargrave herself. She had nothing to gain by inventing such a story, and was ready to answer all questions put to her in a plain, straightforward way.

'I asked her,' said the lady from whom Defoe obtained his account, 'if she was sure she felt the gown; she answered, "If my senses are to be relied on, I am sure of it."'

'I asked her if she had heard a sound when Mrs. Veal clapped her hand upon her knee; she said she did not remember that she did, but added: "She appeared to be as much a substance as I did, who talked with her; and I may be as soon persuaded that your apparition is talking to me now as that I did not really see her, for I was under no manner of fear; I received her as a friend and parted with her as such. I would not," she concluded "give one farthing to make anyone believe it, for I have no interest in it."'

From Defoe's day to this many people have read the tale, and several have held it to be a pure invention of the novelist. But some have taken the trouble to search out the history of the persons mentioned in it, and have found that they at any rate were real, and living in Dover and in Canterbury at the very dates required by the story. In the reign of Charles I. a Bargrave had been Dean of Canterbury, and a Richard Bargrave married a widow in the church of St. Alphege in 1700. There had been also Veals connected with Canterbury, which is curious, and we find that a son of William Veal was baptised in St. Mary's, Dover, in August 1707. Now, as Mrs. Veal kept her brother's house when they moved into Dover, he must have married after his sister's death on September 7, 1705. And if we turn over the Parish Register of that very year, we shall see the burial of a 'Mrs. Veal' on September 10.

The Watsons are also to be found in Canterbury, and an 'old Mr. Breton' in Dover, who was known to have given Mrs. Veal £10 a year.

Of course it does not follow from this that, because the characters of the tale published by Defoe only ten months after Mrs. Veal's death were actually alive in the very places where he said we should find them, Mrs. Veal's ghost did really appear to Mrs. Bargrave. But if not, why drag in all these people to no purpose? They could all have contradicted him, but the only person who did so was Mr. Veal himself, and he alone had a motive in disbelieving the appearance of his sister, as he may not have wished to hand over the rings which she had bequeathed to her friends, or to diminish the contents of the purse of gold he was driven to admit that she possessed.

Once more, it is perfectly certain that Mrs. Bargrave told and stood by her story, for in May 1714 a gentleman went to see her and cross-examine her. Mrs. Bargrave said that she did not know the editor of her story, but that it was quite correct except in three or four small points; for instance, that she and Mrs. Veal had talked about the persecution of Dissenters in the time of Charles II. was omitted in the printed version. The gentleman then made the corrections by his copy of the book, and added a long note in Latin about his visit to Mrs. Bargrave on May 21, 1714.

This copy of the book Mr. Aitken found in the British Museum; so, whether we believe Mrs. Bargrave's story or not, she undoubtedly told it, and it was not invented by Defoe.

The facts were discovered by Mr. G. A. Aitken, who published them in his edition of Defoe's tales. He does not seem to have known that in an old book, Dr. Welby's 'Signs before Death,' there is another version, with curious information about Mistress Veal's broken engagement with Major-General Sibourg, killed in the battle of Mons; and about the kinship of the mother of Mrs. Veal with the family of the Earl of Clarendon, which induced Queen Anne, moved by Archbishop Tillotson, to give Mr. Veal his place in the Customs. We also learn that Mrs. Bargrave's cold on the Sunday was caused by the conduct of her husband, who came home intoxicated, found her excited by her interview with Mrs. Veal, and saying, 'Molly, you are hot, you want to be cooled,' led her into the garden, where she passed the night.

THE CHIEF'S DAUGHTER

Raven's wife had died, and as he felt very lonely he soon determined to marry a second, but it was not very easy to find a girl to suit him, for she was obliged to be of noble birth as the other had been. And to add to the difficulties, a mischief-maker called Tsagwan was also seeking a wife of the same kind, and wherever Raven went Tsagwan flew after him, and told untrue stories about Raven, so that fathers refused to give him their daughters. At last Raven discovered this and went straight to the chief of the town.

'I know what has happened,' said he. 'And you will suffer for it. If I had married your daughter, you would have had a great name in the world, but now your daughter will marry someone whom no one ever heard of, and if they speak of you among men it will be as The-Chief-with-no-name.' When he heard this the chief trembled, for he knew it would be shameful.

So Raven left him and continued his journey till he reached the house of an old man who lived alone.

'Do you know the young daughter of the chief who lives not far from here?' he asked.

'Yes, I know her.'

'Well, why don't you marry her?'

'Oh, it is quite impossible that I should marry her, so I don't see the good of trying.'

'Don't be so faint-hearted,' said Raven, 'I will give you a medicine which will cause her to fall in love with you.'

'But I have no slaves, and she will expect slaves,' said the old man.

'Oh no, she won't,' answered Raven, 'she will take a liking to you and no one will be able to help it. She will marry you, and her father will lose half his property.'

And Raven kept his word and his medicine made the old man look young again, and Raven bestowed feathers on him to put in his hair, and a robe of marten skin to throw over his shoulders. When he was dressed the man looked very handsome and was greatly pleased with himself. But his face fell when Raven said to him:

'Remember you are not going to be like this always; it is only for a day or two.'

Then the man got into his skin canoe and paddled over to where the girl lived, and he did not go to ask her father's consent but sought her out when she was alone, and she fell in love with him although she had refused to listen to many other men besides Raven, and this was Raven's revenge.

'Yes, I will marry you,' she said, 'and I will go with you, even if my father kills me for it.'

So she married him, and after that her father and mother were told of it. But the chief, instead of being unkind to his daughter, gave her rich fur robes; 'for,' said he, 'if she is already married there is no use in my being angry; and besides, her husband is a handsome fellow and is plainly of high birth.' And he and the husband talked together of his daughter's suitors and especially of the man who had been cruel to his first wife, but the husband did not know that the chief meant Raven.

The new husband was anxious to get back to his own home, as he was afraid that his fine clothes might drop off him on the way. Therefore he lost no time in saying, 'My father told me I was to return at once in my canoe; let us hasten, but do not you, my wife, take any furs with you except those you want to keep you warm on the journey, for I have more than enough in my house.' The wife obeyed him, and only took with her a marten skin and a fox robe.

Now the girl lay in the canoe with her eyes shut, and she lay there for a long while till she thought that they must be near home. Then she sat up and looked out, and caught sight of her husband's face, which looked quite different from when she had seen it before. For now it was full of wrinkles, and the hair was thin and grey. And at the sight her heart beat so fast it seemed as if it would jump out of her body, and she cried very bitterly, because she was frightened and angry.

As soon as the canoe ran upon the beach she sat upon the rocks weeping while the old man went from house to house throughout the village, begging them to take her in, as she was a high-born girl and he had no place that was fit for her. But they would not, and at last his sister, who was still older than he, came down to the beach and took the girl back to her house, which was dirty and shabby. The girl went, but she was very miserable, and every day the people stopped as they were passing, and mocked at her and her husband.

Curious to say, the chief and his sons had been quite deceived by the fine clothes of the daughter's husband, and resolved to make him presents suited to his rank. Therefore one day the people of the village beheld a procession of canoes paddling over the sea, one filled with furs, another containing the father and brothers of the girl, and a third, in which sat the slaves with green feathers in their hair, taken from the heads of drakes. The old man saw them likewise, and called to some boys to come and help him clean up the house. But they only answered, 'Clean up yourself, for you are dirty enough.'

'Well, at least carry up the strangers' goods; they are now landing,' said he, but the boys replied as they had done before, 'Carry them yourself.' In the end, it was the strangers who carried them and put them down where they could; and they noticed that the old man's sister was crying, and the strangers felt sorry for her.

The old man soon found that he would get no help from anybody, for they were all angry with him for having married a chief's daughter. If he asked them to lend him a basket for his guests to eat off, they told him to use his own; if he begged them to fetch water, they bade him get it himself, and even when he took a very dirty old basket to fill at the stream, as he stooped down the water moved a little further away and then a little further still, as if it also had a spite at him. Indeed, it did this so often that at last he found himself in the mountains, where it vanished into a house. Once more he followed it and beheld a very old woman sitting inside.

'What is the matter?' said she. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'

'You can do a great deal for me if you only will,' answered he. 'I am very poor and have married a noble wife, whose father and brothers have come to visit me. I have nothing to give them, and my neighbours will not help.'

'Is that all?' she said.

'Yes, all! Is it not enough?' But the old woman only smoothed his hair with her hand, and in a moment it was thick and black as it had been in his youth, and his rags became handsome garments. Even the very basket changed into a beautiful new one.

'Go and dip the basket into the spring that is in the corner,' said she, and when he drew it up it was full of water and of shells.

The man made all the haste he could down the mountain, but nobody recognised him except his wife, and those who had seen him when he went to marry her. He refreshed them all with water and gave them handfuls of the shells, which they prized greatly, in return for the slaves and furs his father-in-law had presented to him, for it is the custom of that tribe that, if a man receives a gift from a father-in-law, he shall pay it back with something of much greater value. And he soon grew so rich that the people made him chief of the town.

Now that happened which was bound to happen. The people who had mocked him when he was poor were ready to bow down to him when he was rich, while he and his wife grew harder and prouder every day. They built themselves a large house where they gave magnificent feasts, but they passed most of their time on the roof of the house, watching all that went on below.

One fine spring evening they were sitting there as usual, when a flock of swans flew across the sky from the south-east. 'What beautiful birds! I should like to marry one of them!' exclaimed the wife, as the swans gradually disappeared in the distance. Of course she did not mean anything, any more than when she repeated the same words on seeing the sand-cranes overhead, or the brants which presently came past. But the brants did not know this, and as soon as they heard her they flew down and carried her off on their wings. Her husband ran after them but he never reached them, only now and then she let fall some of the loose clothes that covered her. By and bye – for they found she was heavier than they expected – the brants let the woman fall too. Luckily they were then over the sandy beach so she was not hurt, but she was quite naked and even her hair had been rubbed off. She got up and walked quickly, crying as she went, to some trees which had large leaves, and these she twisted together till she had made a kind of apron. Then she wandered along the beach not knowing where she was going, and thinking sadly of her home and her husband, till she came to a house with an old woman sitting in it. The sight gladdened her heart, and she entered and held out the head of a red snapper which she had picked up on the shore, saying, 'Let us cook this red snapper head for dinner.'

'Yes, let us cook it,' answered the old woman, and after they had eaten it she bade the chief's wife go back to the beach and try to find something else. This time the girl brought in a fish called a sculpin, and it was cooked also; but while they were eating it the chief's wife heard the noise of boys shouting, though she could see no one.

'Take the tray with the food out to that hole,' said the old woman, and as the chief's wife did so she beheld many hands sticking up out of the ground. She placed the tray in the hands, and waited as it disappeared. In a moment it rose to the surface again, with two fine fox skins on it, which she carried back to the old woman.

'Make yourself some robes out of them,' said she, and the girl did so.

When she was dressed, the old woman spoke to her again, and said:

'Your father and mother live in a salmon creek, a little way along the beach. It might be well for you to go and pay them a visit.' So the girl went, and after a time she saw her father out in a canoe spearing salmon, and her mother was with him. The girl ran quickly down to the water's edge in order to meet them, but when her father saw her he cried out:

'Here comes a fox; where are my bow and arrows?' And his daughter heard him and ran as fast as she could to the woods.

After a while she stopped running, for she knew she was safe, and then she made her way to the old woman.

'Why are you crying? Did you not see your father?'

'Yes, and he took me for a fox.'

'Why, what else do you think you are?' asked the old woman in surprise. 'But return at once to your father who will want to kill you; and be sure you let him do it.'

'Very well, I will do your bidding,' answered the girl, though the order seemed strange to her.

The next day the girl went down to the beach and saw her father fishing still closer to the shore.

'Why, here is that big fox again,' cried he, and she did not move, but waited while he fitted an arrow to his bow and shot her in the heart. Then his wife got out of the canoe and began to skin the fox, and as she did so she found something on its foreleg which made her start.

'Surely that is my daughter's bracelet,' said she. 'Yet that is not possible!' And she continued her work. By and by she came to the throat, and there lay a necklace. 'Surely that is my daughter's necklace,' she repeated, and then she called to her husband, saying:

'I found our daughter's necklace and bracelet in this skin. Something that we know not of must have turned her into a fox.' And they both cried, for they remembered how the fox had run to meet them instead of going away.

But Indians are learned in things of which other people are ignorant, and they quickly set to work and laid the fox's body on a mat, and covered it with bags of eagle's down which every tribe has ready to use, and over all they placed a mat, weeping as they did so. After that they fasted and cleaned up their houses, and the girl's relations fasted likewise and cleaned up their houses. For many days they did this, and at length, at midnight, the father and mother felt their house shaking beneath them, and heard a noise coming from the room where the body lay. Taking a burning stick, the mother hastened to the room, and found her daughter in her own shape, having become a doctor or shaman. Happy indeed were they to behold her thus; but, curious to say, the girl's husband at that moment lost all his wealth and was as poor as ever.

[Tlingit Myths.]

THE BOYHOOD OF A PAINTER

If we are to believe the proverb, a 'Jack of all Trades is master of none,' and it is mostly true. But here and there even in our own day, we meet with some gifted person who seems to be able to do anything he desires, and during the periods of history when men – and boys – were left more to themselves and allowed to follow their own bent, these geniuses were much less rare than at present.

Now during the last half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth there lived in Italy a group of men who were in the highest possible degree Jacks of all Trades, or could have been so if they had chosen. They are known to us principally as painters, but the people amongst whom they lived very soon became aware that more than one of them could arrange you a water supply which would turn your mill wheel if there was no stream handy, or build you a palace if you were a rich citizen and wanted one, or help you to fortify your walls if you were the Lord of Milan or Florence or Ferrara; or fashion you a gold brooch as a present for your wife, if that was what you were seeking. As for making you a statue of yourself on horseback, to adorn the great square of the city over which you ruled – why, it was as easy to do that as to paint your portrait!

Chief among these 'Universal Geniuses,' as we should call them, was one Leonardo, son of the Florentine notary or lawyer, Piero da Vinci. He was born in the year 1452 not far from Florence and near the river Arno, and was declared by everyone to be one of the most beautiful children that ever was seen. As soon as he could crawl, he would scramble away (if his mother was busy and not thinking about him) to a place in the garden where there was always a heap of mud after a shower of rain, and sit happily on the ground pinching the mud into some sort of shape, which as he grew older, took more and more the form of something he knew. When his mother missed him and came in search of him, he would utter screams of disgust. Then the only way to quiet him was to play to him on the lute; for throughout his life Leonardo loved music, and at one time even had serious thoughts of being a professional musician.

Ser Piero was very proud of his astonishing little son, and the boy was still very young when his father decided that he must be taught by the best masters that could be found for him. Leonardo was quite willing. Lessons were no trouble to him and he speedily took away the breath of all his teachers by the amazing quickness with which he grasped everything. It did not matter if the subject was arithmetic, or the principles of music, or the study of geometry; it was enough for the boy to hear a thing once for him to understand and remember, and he constantly asked his master such difficult questions and expressed doubts so hard to explain, that the poor man was thankful indeed when school hours were ended.

But whatever lessons he might be doing, Leonardo spent most of his spare time in drawing and in modelling figures in clay, as he had done from his babyhood. His father watched him for a time in silence, wondering within himself which of the boy's many talents ought to be made the occupation of his life, and at length he decided to take Leonardo to his friend Andrea del Verrocchio, and consult him on the matter. Verrocchio, like his pupil, was a painter, a geometrician, a sculptor, a goldsmith and a musician, but had at last settled down as a sculptor, and only now and then amused himself with other arts. When father and son entered his studio or workshop, Piero gave Leonardo some clay, and bade him model anything he fancied. The boy sat down on the floor, and soon finished a tiny statuette which might have been the work of Verrocchio himself, so true to life was the figure. The sculptor was delighted, and declared that Leonardo must come to him, and that he was very sure the pupil would shortly know as much as the master.

But though he had the gift of genius, Leonardo took as much trouble with his work as if he had just been an ordinary child, with his whole future life depending on his industry. And as some of you are perhaps fond of drawing, you may like to hear how one of the greatest artists in the world set about his pictures. First he took a handful of clay and poked it and pinched it until he had got his figure exactly as he wanted it to be. Then he dipped pieces of soft material in plaster, and arranged them in folds over the naked figure. Often the stuff was too stiff and would not go in the proper lines, but long ago Leonardo had learned that no man could be an artist of any kind unless he was possessed of endless patience, and he would sit for hours over his figure, taking the drapery off and trying it afresh, till at length it assumed exactly the right shape. As soon as he had a model precisely to his mind, he would stretch a bit of very fine cambric or linen, that was old and soft, upon a board, and on this – or sometimes on paper – he would copy his figure in pencil. As he grew older, Verrocchio would teach him how you could raise heavy weights by the help of levers or cranes, how to draw up water from immense depths, or how to tunnel through mountains – for the Italians have always been famous for their skill as engineers. But it was the boy Leonardo, and not the man Verrocchio, who invented the plan of so altering the course of the river Arno that a canal might be cut between the cities of Florence and Pisa. Leonardo did not live to see this done, but two hundred years after his death a pupil of the astronomer Galileo executed it after his scheme, for the Medici ruler of Florence. He was very anxious also to raise the Church of San Giovanni and to rest it on stone 'steps,' as he called them, and showed the Signory or governing citizens of Florence how it could be done. And, says his chronicler, so persuasive was his tongue and so good seemed his reasons that while he was speaking he moved them to belief in his words, although out of his presence they all well knew it was impossible.