THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (2 page)

Towards the end of 1873, Amelia fled to Egypt in order to escape the constant rain and freezing winter weather in Europe. She knew very little about the country, but fell instantly in love with it on her arrival in Cairo. Armed with a measuring tape and sketchbooks,
she sailed by native
dahabiyah
down the Nile as far as the second cataract, keeping a detailed diary and record of all the monuments, graves, and temples which she visited on the way, and even discovering one hitherto unknown buried chapel.

She spent nearly two months at Abu Simbel, exploring and excavating the Temple of Rameses II, and was so outraged by the plaster ‘repairs’ on the sculptures at the pharaoh’s tomb that she ordered all the sailors on her
dahabiyah
to brew vast quantities of strong coffee to stain the plasterwork the same colour as the original stone. As she travelled, she gathered a considerable collection of antiquities, learning how to decipher the many hieroglyphics to be found on them. At the end of her mammoth journey, Amelia crossed into Palestine and travelled through Lebanon and Syria to Constantinople, visiting Damascus and Baalbec on the way.

It took her two years to write up her account of this remarkable trip.
A Thousand Miles Up The Nile
was published late in 1876 (dated ‘1877’) in a massive 732-page quarto volume, selling at two guineas, bound in richly decorated cloth, and containing folding maps, seventeen wood-engraved plates, and sixty-two vignettes, as well as a number of plans and facsimile inscriptions. This superbly written and scholarly book was immediately recognised as the definitive study of Egypt and its ancient civilisation, and the author’s masterpiece. It was greatly admired by all the leading archaeologists of the day, and remained a key text for all those involved in the field up until the Second World War, from Flinders Petrie to Howard Carter.

By this time Amelia Edwards was generally regarded and esteemed as the greatest woman antiquary and archaeologist of her generation. Constantly horrified by the wanton desecration and destruction of priceless antiquities, she soon came to the conclusion that the only way to preserve these works of art was proper scientific excavation. After endless appeals and letters to the press, she succeeded (in 1882) in setting up the Egypt Exploration Fund; and from 1883 onwards the society sent at least one archaeological expedition to Egypt every year. ‘As it was her contagious enthusiasm that originally brought the members together,’ wrote one friend, ‘so it was her genius for organisation that smoothed over difficulties and ensured success. With her own hand she wrote innumerable letters, acknowledged the receipt of subscriptions, and labelled the objects presented to museums.’

This and other high-profile activities, along with her strenuous support for women’s causes (she was vice-president of the Society for Promoting Women’s Suffrage), made her a role model for all independent-minded females. In a recent dramatised television documentary about her career, she was played to perfection by Margaret Tyzack.

Amazingly, she found time to write a long final novel,
Lord Brackenbury
,
published in three volumes in 1880, following serialisation in
The
Graphic
with illustrations by Luke Fildes. This stirring narrative (concerning Lord B’s son and heir who detests politics and public life and contrives to disappear in Italy—subsequently enjoying life as a sailor—thus enabling his younger brother to inherit the title) was Amelia’s most popular novel, running through fifteen editions and translated into Italian, German, French, and Russian. Around the same time, she penned her last ghost story, ‘Was it an Illusion?’, for Arrowsmith’s
Thirteen to Dinner
Christmas Annual in 1881.

During the next decade, Amelia devoted herself entirely to the Egypt Exploration Fund, now working as the sole honorary secretary, and (as stated in a tribute by the
Illustrated London News
) ‘made from a small beginning a national undertaking. The labour was enormous . . . she never spared herself, and never failed to give all information asked of her.’ Every year she edited a new volume ‘by Petrie, Ernest Gardiner and other scholars of distinction, describing the discovery or examination of the most interesting biblical and classical sites in Egypt. Thus it was really due to Miss Edwards that a mass of information was added yearly to the stores of learning. All this was unpaid labour . . . Her best memorial is in the hearts of her many friends, to whom she was endeared by acts of affection and by the unwonted charm of the greatest earnestness contrasted with the most lively wit.’

During the winter of 1889–90, Amelia made a triumphant lecture tour of the United States, ending in Boston, where she was presented with a bracelet inscribed ‘from grateful and loving friends—the women of Boston’. Her natural flair for acting and drama made her an ideal lecturer, and she was fêted wherever she went. The tour was not, however, entirely without mishap: in Columbus, Ohio she slipped and broke her left arm, an injury from which she never fully recovered.

Her last book was
Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers
(1891), a collection of her American lectures. These ranged from ‘The Explorer in Egypt’ and ‘Hieroglyphic Writing’ to ‘The Buried Cities of Ancient Egypt’ and ‘Queen Hatusu, and her Expedition to the Land of Punt’. Although by now in failing health, Amelia set off on a new lecture tour, this time around England. Sadly, it was to be her last: following a bout of influenza, and thoroughly exhausted by two years of almost continuous lecturing, she died at Weston-super-Mare on 15 April 1892. Not long before, she had been awarded a well-deserved Civil List Pension ‘in consideration of her services to literature and archaeology’.

She bequeathed her library and priceless collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London, together with the sum of £2,415 to found a Chair of Egyptology. The first occupant was her protégé, Flinders Petrie. The unique Edwards library and museum was a valuable bequest to the nation, and was much augmented and enlarged over the following years, fuelling the ever-growing British obsession with ancient Egypt, which culminated in the Carnarvon/Carter expedition of 1922 and the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb.

Amelia Edwards was an extraordinary woman, who made significant contributions to three very different fields: English literature, archaeology, and the cause of women’s suffrage. Readers can still appreciate her work in the first two fields through her many remarkable books. As Jane Robinson wrote in her 1990 study,
Wayward Women
, she was not just an outstanding scholar and traveller, but also ‘a marvellous writer, which is why
A Thousand Miles Up The Nile
has remained one of the most inspiring travel books in the language’. The same excellent writing imbues the sixteen ghost stories and supernatural tales in the present volume.

In addition to her complete ghost stories, I have selected two further tales with supernatural content. ‘The Recollections of Professor Henneberg’ involves an uncanny scene of déjà vû, found to be caused by reincarnation. A favourite Victorian device was a clairvoyant vision preventing disaster or imminent murder, the theme of both ‘The Professor’s Story’ and ‘A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest’—the latter is included here.

I have added three appendixes to this collection. The first, an anonymous essay entitled ‘Four Stories’, comprising a group of supposedly true stories, published in
All the Year Round
on 14 September 1861, is now known to be by Amelia Edwards, thanks to a reference on page 451 of the recently published definitive edition of
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, Volume IX. On 31 August 1861 Dickens wrote to his colleague and assistant-editor W.H. Wills: ‘In last Wednesday’s make up, is a paper which I have called “Four Stories” by Gleig’s fair friend. They are Ghost Stories. The first (by far the best) is a remarkably good and original one. I nearly rewrote them all.’ Gleig was Amelia’s friend, the Revd George Robert Gleig (1796–1888). Dickens was always very active as a sub-editor, and may have rewritten parts of stories by Amelia (and most other contributors), including ‘The Phantom Coach’; but Edwards always carefully revised all her own work before it reappeared in book form. (I am very grateful to Michael Flowers for bringing these items and correspondence to my attention.)

The second appendix contains a poem by Edwards. She was a prolific poet, with two clothbound collections to her credit, both published by Tinsley:
Ballads
(1865) and
The Conventiad
(1880; previously unrecorded in any of her bibliographies). These both contain a good variety of ghosts and hauntings, and one of her best ballads, ‘A Legend of Boisguilbert’, is reprinted here.

Finally, I am including an enchanting and captivating essay on ‘My Home Life’, in which Amelia gives a detailed description of her house, The Larches, in Westbury-on-Trym, and her incredible personal collection of antiquities. These included a baby’s foot in the Japanese cabinet; three mummified hands hidden behind some books on a shelf in the library; two arms with hands complete—‘the one almost black, the other singularly fair’—in her dressing-room drawer; and the heads of two ancient Egyptians in her bedroom wardrobe—‘who, perhaps, talk to each other in the watches of the night, when I am sound asleep’.

Richard Dalby

December 1998

My Brother’s Ghost Story

THE EVENTS WHICH I am about to relate happened to my only brother. I have heard him tell the story many and many a time, never varying in the minutest particular. It happened about thirty years ago, more or less, while he was wandering, sketch-book in hand, among the High Alps, picking up subjects for an illustrated work on Switzerland. Having entered the Oberland by the Brunig Pass, and filled his portfolio with what he used to call ‘bits’ from the neighbourhood of Meyringen, he went over the great Scheideck to Grindelwald, where he arrived one dusky September evening, about three-quarters of an hour after sunset. There had been a fair that day, and the place was crowded. In the best inn there was not an inch of space to spare—there were only two inns at Grindelwald, thirty years ago—so my brother went to the one other, at the end of the covered bridge next the church, and there, with some difficulty, obtained the promise of a pile of rugs and a mattress, in a room which was already occupied by three other travellers.

The Adler was a primitive hostelry, half farm, half inn, with great rambling galleries outside, and a huge general room, like a barn. At the upper end of this room stood long stoves, like metal counters, laden with steaming-pans, and glowing underneath like furnaces. At the lower end, smoking, supping, and chatting, were congregated some thirty or forty guests, chiefly mountaineers, char-drivers, and guides. Among these my brother took his seat; and was served, like the rest, with a bowl of soup, a platter of beef, a flagon of country wine, and a loaf made of Indian corn. Presently, a huge St Bernard dog came and laid his nose upon my brother’s arm. In the meantime he fell into conversation with two Italian youths, bronzed and dark-eyed, near whom he happened to be seated. They were Florentines. Their names, they told him, were Stefano and Battisto. They had been travelling for some months on commission, selling cameos, mosaics, sulphur casts, and the like pretty Italian trifles, and were now on their way to Interlaken and Geneva. Weary of the cold North, they longed, like children, for the moment which should take them back to their own blue hills and grey-green olives; to their workshop on the Ponte Vecchio, and their home down by the Arno.

It was quite a relief to my brother, on going up to bed, to find that these youths were to be two of his fellow-lodgers. The third was already there, and sound asleep, with his face to the wall. They scarcely looked at this third. They were all tired, and all anxious to rise at daybreak, having agreed to walk together over the Wengern Alp as far as Lauterbrunnen. So, my brother and the two youths exchanged a brief good night, and, before many minutes, were all as far away in the land of dreams as their unknown companion.

My brother slept profoundly—so profoundly that, being roused in the morning by a clamour of merry voices, he sat up dreamily in his rugs, and wondered where he was.

‘Good day, signor,’ cried Battisto. ‘Here is a fellow-traveller going the same way as ourselves.’

‘Christien Baumann, native of Kandersteg, musical-box maker by trade, stands five feet eleven in his shoes, and is at monsieur’s service to command,’ said the sleeper of the night before.

He was as fine a young fellow as one would wish to see. Light, and strong, and well proportioned, with curling brown hair, and bright, honest eyes that seemed to dance at every word he uttered.

‘Good morning,’ said my brother. ‘You were asleep last night when we came up.’

‘Asleep! I should think so, after being all day in the fair, and walking from Meyringen the evening before. What a capital fair it was!’

‘Capital, indeed,’ said Battisto. ‘We sold cameos and mosaics yesterday for nearly fifty francs.’

‘Oh, you sell cameos and mosaics, you two! Show me your cameos, and I will show you my musical-boxes. I have such pretty ones, with coloured views of Geneva and Chillon on the lids, playing two, four, six, and even eight tunes. Bah! I will give you a concert!’

And with this he unstrapped his pack, displayed his little boxes on the table, and wound them up, one after the other, to the delight of the Italians.

‘I helped to make them myself, every one,’ said he, proudly. ‘Is it not pretty music? I sometimes set one of them when I go to bed at night, and fall asleep listening to it. I am sure, then, to have pleasant dreams! But let us see your cameos. Perhaps I may buy one for Marie if they are not too dear. Marie is my sweetheart, and we are to be married next week.’

‘Next week!’ exclaimed Stefano. ‘That is very soon. Battisto has a sweetheart also, up at Impruneta; but they will have to wait a long time before they can buy the ring.’

Battisto blushed like a girl. ‘Hush, brother!’ said he. ‘Show the cameos to Christien, and give your tongue a holiday.’

But Christien was not so to be put off.

‘What is her name?’ said he. ‘Tush! Battisto, you must tell me her name! Is she pretty? Is she dark, or fair? Do you often see her when you are at home? Is she very fond of you? Is she as fond of you as Marie is of me?’

‘Nay, how should I know that?’ asked the soberer Battisto. ‘She loves me, and I love her—that is all.’

‘And her name?’

‘Margherita.’

‘A charming name! And she is herself as pretty as her name, I’ll engage. Did you say she was fair?’

‘I said nothing about it one way or the other,’ said Battisto, unlocking a green box clamped with iron, and taking out tray after tray of his pretty wares. ‘There! Those pictures all inlaid in little bits are Roman mosaics—these flowers on a black ground are Florentine. The ground is of hard dark stone, and the flowers are made of thin slices of jasper, onyx, cornelian, and so forth. Those forget-me-nots, for instance, are bits of turquoise, and that poppy is cut from a piece of coral.’

‘I like the Roman ones best,’ said Christien. ‘What place is that with all the arches?’

‘This is the Coliseum, and the one next to it is St Peter’s. But we Florentines care little for the Roman work. It is not half so fine, or so valuable as ours. The Romans make their mosaics of composition.’

‘Composition or not, I like the little landscapes best,’ said Christien. ‘There is a lovely one, with a pointed building, and a tree, and mountains at the back. How I should like that one for Marie!’

‘You may have it for eight francs,’ replied Battisto; ‘we sold two of them yesterday for ten each. It represents the tomb of Caius Cestius, near Rome.’

‘A tomb!’ echoed Christien, considerably dismayed. ‘
Diable!
That would be a dismal present to one’s bride.’

‘She would never guess that it was a tomb, if you did not tell her,’ suggested Stefano.

Christien shook his head.

‘That would be next door to deceiving her,’ said he.

‘Nay,’ interposed my brother, ‘the owner of that tomb has been dead these eighteen or nineteen hundred years. One almost forgets that he was ever buried in it.’

‘Eighteen or nineteen hundred years! Then he was a heathen?’

‘Undoubtedly, if by that you mean that he lived before Christ.’

Christien’s face lighted up immediately.

‘Oh! that settles the question,’ said he, pulling out his little canvas purse, and paying his money down at once. ‘A heathen’s tomb is as good as no tomb at all. I’ll have it made into a brooch for her, at Interlaken. Tell me, Battisto, what shall you take home to Italy for your Margherita?’

Battisto laughed, and chinked his eight francs.

‘That depends on trade,’ said he; ‘if we make good profits between this and Christmas, I may take her a Swiss muslin from Berne; but we have already been away seven months, and we have hardly made a hundred francs over and above our expenses.’

And with this, the talk turned upon general matters, the Florentines locked away their treasures, Christien restrapped his pack, and my brother and all went down together, and breakfasted in the open air outside the inn.

It was a magnificent morning, cloudless and sunny, with a cool breeze that rustled in the vine upon the porch, and flecked the table with shifting shadows of green leaves. All around and about them stood the great mountains, with their blue-white glaciers bristling down to the verge of the pastures, and the pine-woods creeping darkly up their sides. To the left, the Wetterhorn; to the right, the Eiger; straight before them, dazzling and imperishable, like peaks of frosted silver, the Viescher-hörner clustered on the verge of an icy precipice. Breakfast over, they bade farewell to their hostess, and, mountain-staff in hand, took the path to the Wengern Alp. Half in light, half in shadow, lay the quiet valley, dotted over with farms, and traversed by a torrent that rushed, milk-white, from its prison in the glacier. The three lads walked briskly in advance, their voices chiming together every now and then in chorus of laughter. Somehow, my brother felt sad. He lingered behind, and, plucking a little red flower from the bank, watched it hurry away with the torrent, like a life on the stream of time. Why was his heart so heavy, and why were their hearts so light?

As the day went on, my brother’s melancholy, and the mirth of the young men, seemed to increase. Full of youth and hope, they talked of the joyous future, and built up pleasant castles in the air. Battisto, grown more communicative, admitted that to marry Margherita, and become a master mosaicist, would fulfil the dearest wish of his life. Stefano, not being in love, preferred to travel. Christien, who seemed to be the most prosperous, declared that it was his darling ambition to rent a farm in his native Kander Valley, and lead the patriarchal life of his fathers. As for the musical-box trade, he said, one must live in Geneva to make it answer; but, for his part, he loved the pine-forests and the snow-peaks, better than all the towns in Europe. Marie, too, had been born among the mountains, and it would break her heart if she thought she were to live in Geneva all her life, and never see the Kander Thal again. Chatting thus, the morning wore on to noon, and the party rested awhile in the shade of a clump of gigantic firs festooned with trailing banners of grey-green moss.

Here they ate their luncheon, to the silvery music of one of Christien’s little boxes, and by-and-by heard the sullen echo of an avalanche far away on the shoulder of the Jungfrau.

Then they went on again in the burning afternoon, to heights where the Alp-rose fails from the sterile steep, and the brown lichen grows more and more scantily among the stone. Here, only the bleached and barren skeletons of a forest of dead pines varied the desolate monotony; and high on the summit of the pass stood a little solitary inn, between them and the sky.

At this inn they rested again, and drank to the health of Christien and his bride, in a jug of country wine. He was in uncontrollable spirits, and shook hands with all them over and over again.

‘By nightfall tomorrow,’ said he, ‘I shall hold her once more in my arms! It is now nearly two years since I came home to see her, at the end of my apprenticeship. Now I am foreman, with a salary of thirty francs a week, and well able to marry.’

‘Thirty francs a week!’ echoed Battisto. ‘
Corpo di Bacco!
that is a little fortune.’

Christien’s face beamed. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘we shall be very happy; and, by-and-by—who knows?—we may end our days in the Kander Thal, and bring up our children to succeed us. Ah! if Marie knew that I should be there tomorrow night, how delighted she would be!’

‘How so?’ said my brother. ‘Does she not expect you?’

‘Not a bit of it. She has no idea that I can be there till the day after tomorrow—nor could I, if I took the road all round by Unterseen and Frütigen. I mean to sleep tonight at Lauterbrunnen, and tomorrow morning shall strike across the Tschlingel glacier to Kandersteg. If I rise a little before daybreak, I shall be at home by sunset.’

At this moment the path took a sudden turn, and began to descend in sight of an immense perspective of very distant valleys. Christien flung his cap into the air, and uttered a great shout.

‘Look!’ said he, stretching out his arms, as if to embrace the dear familiar scene: ‘Oh, look! There are the hills and woods of Interlaken, and here, below the precipices on which we stand, lies Lauterbrunnen! God be praised, who has made our native land so beautiful!’