other boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this
Academy, to see him let down out of window with a sheet. So with
Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of
being usually misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and
the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and
many hundreds of places – I was never at them, yet it is an affair
of my life to keep them intact, and I am always going back to them.
But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations
of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my
experience in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no
account, by the quantity of places and people – utterly impossible
places and people, but none the less alarmingly real – that I found
I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old,
and used to be forced to go back to at night without at all wanting
to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than
the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find
our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced
to go back to, against our wills.
The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful
youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain
Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the
Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in
those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no
general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best
society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer’s mission
was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with
tender brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused both
sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers; and
when his bride said, ‘Dear Captain Murderer, I ever saw flowers
like these before: what are they called?’ he answered, ‘They are
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
called Garnish for house-lamb,’ and laughed at his ferocious
practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the
noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then
displayed for the first time. He made love in a coach and six, and
married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white
horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden
by the harness. For, the spot WOULD come there, though every horse
was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot was
young bride’s blood. (To this terrific point I am indebted for my
first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads on the
forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting and
revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with his
wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical
custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.
Now, there was this special feature in the Captain’s courtships,
that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if
she couldn’t by nature or education, she was taught. Well. When
the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and
silver pie-board, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk
sleeves to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter
and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of
materials for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out
none. Then said the lovely bride, ‘Dear Captain Murderer, what pie
is this to be?’ He replied, ‘A meat pie.’ Then said the lovely
bride, ‘Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.’ The Captain
humorously retorted, ‘Look in the glass.’ She looked in the glass,
but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with
laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade her
roll out the crust. So she rolled out the crust, dropping large