THE BIOGRAPHY OF PETER PARKINSON
WITHIN the confines of that hidden state rather humorously called “the other world”—as if the worlds numbered no more than two—we enjoy a measure of knowledge which you mundane folks are but now attaining through processes both painful and slow. Thanks to our perfection in a system, towards which your “wireless telegraphy” has already made some distant approach, it is possible for me to tell an interesting tale and cast some light upon a recent literary mystery.
Now when that great and good man Professor Peter Parkinson passed out of life, his notable earthly labours very properly entitled him to a resting-place amongst our great ones, and I was among those privileged men of light and leading invited to bear his pall.
I remember that I walked next to Thomas Gridd, the little busybody who in life for someobscure reason won Peter Parkinson’s regard, and who was left by the Professor as his literary executor. Even during the solemn moment of sepulchral rites, Gridd found time to speak to me.
“The only official and recognised biography will be mine,” he whispered. “Remember that. Tell everybody. It is going to be a great book; and it will surprise some of us not a little.”
How those words came back to my mind after the event! Perhaps the most sensational biography of the last century was that by Thomas Gridd of Peter Parkinson. In public life Parkinson had passed for a remarkable man, an original thinker, a live force in ethics, a dynamic power exercised for good, and one who, to speak generally, most surely left his corner of earth better, wiser and cleaner than he found it. His privacy had of course been probed also; and it was pretty generally conceded that no better husband or father than the Professor could well be found. His amusements were pathetically innocent and high-minded; the Athenæum was his only club; when he left England upon a vacation during later life, it was in order that his family might visit the Alps, the French Exhibition of1900 and other improving and unique phenomena of Nature and the times.
Upon a general appreciation of the dead man’s worth and virtue there burst the biography of Thomas Gridd, than which anything more sensational, outrageous and unexpected could not well be imagined. After a great parade of the necessity for Truth, of his own high motives in this matter, and of the abundant grief that his task had brought upon him, the unutterable Gridd set out upon his ruffianly way and exhibited before the amazed and incredulous vision of England the spectacle of a great reputation torn to ribbons.
Indignation raged amongst the friends of the late Professor; violent controversies burst forth in the public prints. The worst passages were denied on the one hand; while Gridd undertook to prove them to the hilt if anybody dared to have the law of him. In fact that famous romance of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” appeared to have been repeated in real life, and arising out of the Parkinson of public enterprise and honourable renown—the scientist, the philanthropist, the great sociologist—there dawned hideously within the pages of Thomas Gridd a nocturnal, subterranean and blackguard Parkinson—a man ofdeplorable habits and disreputable ideas—a vicious ghoul.
Of course this remarkable book sold prodigiously. Thousands of copies were purchased by the libraries alone, and a work so full of pepper and salt for the time being quite eclipsed the sale of popular fiction, of history, travel, verse, and of more amiable and conventional biography.
For myself I just lived long enough to see the scoundrel Gridd get a large fortune by his abominable book and then, in the midst of a rather promising literary career, it pleased Providence to remove me from the sub-lunar puppet-show. Overwork and a chill—but all that does not matter, as it has nothing to do with this narrative. All I need say is that I have frankly forgiven the man who finished my last novel for the press and shall meet him without prejudice if ever he comes here.
Almost the first person I met in the Elysian Fields of our order (for I am thankful to say that my modest merits entitled me to a place therein) was my old friend Professor Parkinson. He greeted me with good taste and that particular shade of sympathy proper from a happy spectre to the event of my passing in mid-career. Then, after discussing everythingand everybody but himself, he said in his humble way:
“I know you will pardon my egotism, but Ishouldlike to know how the autobiography went.”
“Whose?” I asked.
“I blush to answer,” he made reply; “but I was thinking of my own.”
“No such thing ever appeared,” I told him. “The man Gridd, in whom you trusted—rather foolishly I am afraid—published a biography of you, written by himself; and it has been an enormous and infamous success. I should not have mentioned this, be sure, had not you invited me to do so.”
“I left my autobiography complete in his hands,” said the Professor, much concerned.
“It was probably a very different work to the one he has published,” I replied. “In fact, not to mince matters, if all or even one half of what the man Gridd has written of you was true, Professor, you wouldn’t be here. He makes you a flagrant scoundrel and worse, for in his pages you appear as the most nauseous, calculating, double-dealing humbug and hypocrite that ever played a public part on earth and deceived mankind.”
“This is very disturbing,” said the Professor.“I never thought such baseness was possible. Why, I rescued Thomas Gridd from the gutter when he was a boy!”
“The usual reward of the great—well doing, ill report. Gridd was not the sort of man to forgive such a Samaritan,” I said. “They’ve torn me to pieces since I left them—not a doubt of it. But you don’t care, do you?”
“I care very much,” he answered. “I care for my Institute; I care for my dear wife; I care for my family. And, what is more, I won’t suffer it if I can bring our sub-committee to see the outrage with my eyes. In the interests of reputation there are certain great ones daily gathered together amongst us for the express purpose of adjudicating between the quick and dead in these affairs; and many a startling, literary Nemesis and unexplained, quick-handed and providential act of justice is the direct result of our personal interest and personal power in such matters. Where our reputations are concerned, we are in fact permitted some supernatural indulgences. This is a case in point, and if ever a literary ghost had a grievance, I take it that I who speak to you am that spirit. Come with me immediately; the sub-committee is sitting at this moment. It consists of Mr. Ben Jonsonin the chair, Doctor Johnson and Mr. Carlyle. The last clamoured to be put on it so unceasingly after the little matter of Mr. Froude that we had to meet his wishes, and Virgil resigned in his favour. You see Virgil’s contemporaries have come by their own now, and it was right that the recent generations should have a modern representative.”
In another moment we stood before the three great shades.
“Welcome, Master Parkinson; what would you?” asked immortal Ben.
“Be brief, sir, for we are busy to-day,” added Doctor Johnson. “I beg therefore that you will unfold your purpose with as little flux of words as may be necessary to its elucidation.”
Carlyle did not speak, but thrust out his chin, as he does in the picture by Watts, and listened.
The Professor thereupon introduced me and related my black news.
Jonson shook his head and seemed to find a humorous side to the tragedy; Carlyle thundered his indignation and went from a generalisation upon all biography into personal matters not necessary to set down here; while Doctor Johnson defended biography with some slashing blows.
“You are to remember, sir,” he said to Mr. Carlyle, “that it is most unphilosophic to frame general theories upon the trumpery foundation of a personal experience. You, sir, have permitted us to gather that you are incensed against the literary record of your own career—a very good book in the judgment of many persons. To found general principles upon this solitary example is at once short-sighted, narrow-minded and absurd. No, sir; the thing can be very well done and has been very well done.”
“Nevertheless we cannot all come by a Boswell, Doctor,” said Mr. Jonson.
“We do not all deserve a Boswell, Ben,” answered the great lexicographer. “Many amongst us lack that congeries of flexible characteristics—the mental amalgam of humour and common-sense, weight, scholarship and piety that may be said to afford just material for a biographer. For my part, indeed, I cannot think that in life such a man as Boswell would have been edified or inspired to any great work by a close and personal intercourse with yourself, for instance. I may err, but that is my deliberate opinion, framed upon those endless personal reminiscences of which you deny us no vinous detail. Nor would the table-talkof such an one as Milton have afforded over-much delight. We should rather——”
“When you can make an end, the Professor will speak,” interrupted Carlyle.
Whereupon my distinguished friend put in his plea boldly.
“Nobody, honoured sirs, has power to arrest this outrage but myself,” said Professor Parkinson. “The application I make is unusual but not unprecedented. Briefly, I beg permission to visit the earth and rectify in person this grave wrong. Permit my spectre one week with this ungenerous and unjust steward of my reputation. I ask no more.”
“Only a mind conscious of right would contemplate such a painful design,” declared Doctor Johnson; “and yet it is a question whether the awful demonstration of a professorial apparition to one still in life be not too terrible a punishment for his crime.”
“Not so,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle. “Parkinson is in the right. This vile Gridd has earned the worst that can overtake him. Fury and chaos! let justice be done and an example made. Must dead lions suffer for ever from these live asses? Let Parkinson be despatched upon his errand without more ado. He is a Scotch spectre, and may therefore be trustedto use discretion and employ his powers with decency.”
“I will not allow my antipathy to the Scotch, just and well-grounded though that sentiment may be——” answered the Sage; but here Ben Jonson held up his hand.
“Suffer me to put one question to our learned friend,” he said, then turned to Professor Parkinson.
“Dost think all this pother about a trashy scribbler is worthy of thee? He and his lies will all go down to the pit together presently. And Truth prevails.”
“But it won’t prevail in my wife’s lifetime, Mr. Jonson,” answered the Professor. “Consider her and my family. Picture to yourself how this scandalous libel must be breaking the hearts of those that loved me. And remember my Institute.”
“There struts no vainer figure in literature or rhetoric than that ‘breaking of hearts,’” said Doctor Johnson. “As one not dead to humanity’s tenderer emotions, I may be allowed to declare that hearts do not break. Moreover, worthy Parkinson, we have but the testimony of this new-come shade that things are in so parlous a plight with your reputation. Does he speak what he knows or what he merely believes?”
The massive spectre puffed his cheeks and looked at me.
“It is idle, most honoured Doctor Johnson, to discuss the subject of circulating libraries with you,” I answered firmly but respectfully. “Nor would a circulation of fifty thousand copies convey any particular idea perhaps to your experience. But you will recollect the old trick of putting everything into the newspapers. That trick, worthy sir, has now become a confirmed habit—a part of our national system. There is to-day such machinery for scattering of news as you would marvel at. This wicked book has been read throughout the English-speaking world. If uncontradicted its end must be that Professor Parkinson’s life labours are seriously threatened.”
“If the edifice of his toil be fundamentally assured, this book cannot assail the issue,” declared Doctor Johnson. “Nevertheless,” he added, “it may be that evil has been done and cries for chastisement. I doubt nothing but that we can trust the Professor wisely to conduct his enterprise and order his apparitional manifestations alike with sound judgment and just taste.”
“It will only be necessary for me to appearto the man Thomas Gridd, and that in strict privacy,” declared Peter Parkinson.
“’Tis well,” said Ben Jonson. “There are a sort of spectres who abuse their privileges and play the fool—a thing very vile and improper and against right feeling. Indeed the best spectres shall be found in fiction rather than fact. Take Will’s ghost inHamlet. Never stalked real spirit truer. Will yet stands first exemplar for ghost and man. So be it. Depart in peace, Master Parkinson. We can trust you to remember that the spectral condition has its obligations. Good luck attend ye. Ah! there’s Tennyson!”
Ben Jonson rose and followed a tall black figure that floated past down a cypress walk.
“By Jove!” I said, surprised into an indiscretion; “does he know how Tennyson always declared that he found reading Jonson was like wading through a sea of glue?”
And Carlyle answered—
“Alfred told him so to his beard, with customary frankness, and Ben laughed his great thunder laugh—like roll of an Elizabethan drum—and said, ‘My glue sticks, brother, my glue sticks. We shall see if thine holds on so stoutly to the literature of England after passage of centuries!’”
“Concerning Tennyson,” began Doctor Johnson, “we may take him first as to hismachinery, so-called from θεὸς απὸ μηχανῆς, or the occasional interposition of supernatural power; next upon hisepisodes; and lastly as to hissentiments, as expressive of manners. Now, in so far as I am able to judge, the man, regarded as a moral——”
I felt Professor Parkinson pulling at my sleeve and together we stole away. Carlyle had already turned his back and departed.
“Won’t the Doctor be hurt?” I murmured.
“Not in the least,” replied my friend. “See! There goes Boswell to him.”
A jaunty shade tripped by us with his eyes reverently lifted to the Colossus of Words.
“Still at it, you see,” said the Professor.
Peter Parkinson did not delay his departure and was absent about his affairs for exactly one week. Then he returned weary and cast down, but apparently well satisfied with the results of his expedition.
He was good enough to tell us the sequel of Gridd’s baseness, and I cannot do better than employ the good man’s own words in the narrative. Many great ghosts gave ear to him. Indeed, he enjoyed the attention of the highest.
“I found the audacious villain at Monte Carlo,” he began, “and Providence so willed that our meeting came plump upon the high-water mark of his ill-gotten fortunes. For he retired to bed in high good humour after breaking the bank at the gambling house there. I suffered him to sink into a sound sleep before availing myself of our spectral privileges. Then settling myself upon the bottom rail of his bed (I spare no detail) I awoke him with his favourite word. I breathed the magic syllables firmly and at the sound of ‘Royalties!’ the wretch turned, gradually roused himself, sat up and beheld me with my phantom eyes fixed upon him.
“‘Good Lord! It’s Parkinson!’ he exclaimed, instantly became wide awake and fell into a cold perspiration. Never have I seen guilt and terror at once so horribly manifested as upon that occasion. The terror we inspire, at least upon a sinner, has surely not been exaggerated.
“‘Traitor!’ I cried, ‘unhallowed breaker of vows, base thief and cruel coward! You, who would steal a dead man’s fame and fatten on your perversion of the truth, hear me! Even to the nether shades has this infamous treachery descended; each new-come spiritenters indignant with the horror of it; and so out of high justice I am thus allowed to protect my own honour, to revisit the realms of the quick and right such a wrong as all literature can scarcely match. Well may you quail, ignoble murderer of a reputation, who have requited my kindness thus!’
“Thomas Gridd scarcely comprehended all these utterances of mine, for the very madness of terror was upon him. His hair stood on end, his teeth chattered, his limbs were reflexed, his eyes glared and his hands gripped the sheet about his neck.
“‘Mercy! Mercy!’ he screamed. ‘Mercy, avenging ghost! Be merciful, even as you were always merciful in this world. Have pity, terrible spirit!’
“‘Miscreant!’ I cried. ‘Wretch to profane that divine word with your lips! I want my autobiography. Where is it?’
“‘Burnt!’ he said. ‘As Heaven’s above us both I burnt every line.’
“It was apparent that he told the truth.
“‘In that case,’ I replied, ‘you will send a statement of the fact to the first daily newspaper—a statement signed and witnessed. You will also declare that your own fabrication is devoid of the bare bones of truth—a calculatedand cold-blooded lie to gain your own mercenary ends. And, finally, every farthing that has accrued to you from this villainous action must be handed over to the Peter Parkinson Institute at Glasgow.’
“Now, had he defied me,” continued the Professor, “I really know not how I should have proceeded. I lacked all power to enforce my directions, as you will perceive. I could only haunt the man—and that temporarily during my leave of absence—a proceeding perhaps more painful for myself than for the criminal. But the wretch was overborne by the nameless horror of a visit from the grave. His guilty conscience reeled before me, and he was physically and mentally prostrated. He had barely strength to promise faithfully upon his oath that he would do all I bid him; and then he lost consciousness.
“He was suffering from acute nervous excitation upon the following morning. He took his first meal in bed and it consisted solely of ardent spirits. I limned before his eyes while he was shaving and he shrank back and dropped his razor and screamed. Pointing to his writing-desk, I spoke:
“‘Delay not a moment, or the consequences will be beyond my power to describe to you.’
“This I am willing to admit was a prevarication of the truth, but it may perhaps be pardoned.
“He tottered to his writing-desk and anon I dictated a letter to the Editor of theMorning Post, which he wrote with trembling fingers.
“‘Dear Sir,—“‘I desire through the medium of your journal to declare to the world that my recent biography of the late Professor Peter Parkinson is a deliberate and calculated tissue of fraud and falsehood. I have twisted and turned the truth into a malignant fable and, upon the foundation of much private and secret work, undertaken by my benefactor in the interests of humanity, I have erected a shameful structure of mendacity. My sole reason was the desire to create a sensation and acquire wealth by it. The truth is that Professor Parkinson left with me his autobiography and directed me to see it through the press. This work would have explained all that unknown labour on behalf of mankind which I so shamefully distort into an attack upon him. I have destroyed this book. I also desire to say that I have directed my bankers in London (Messrs. Dunster and Boyle, of Lombard Street, E.C.) to pay to thePeter Parkinson Institute at Glasgow ten thousand pounds, a sum representing the amount of my royalties on the biography I concocted and dared to publish. My publishers did not know the truth and are, to that extent, blameless.’
“‘Dear Sir,—
“‘I desire through the medium of your journal to declare to the world that my recent biography of the late Professor Peter Parkinson is a deliberate and calculated tissue of fraud and falsehood. I have twisted and turned the truth into a malignant fable and, upon the foundation of much private and secret work, undertaken by my benefactor in the interests of humanity, I have erected a shameful structure of mendacity. My sole reason was the desire to create a sensation and acquire wealth by it. The truth is that Professor Parkinson left with me his autobiography and directed me to see it through the press. This work would have explained all that unknown labour on behalf of mankind which I so shamefully distort into an attack upon him. I have destroyed this book. I also desire to say that I have directed my bankers in London (Messrs. Dunster and Boyle, of Lombard Street, E.C.) to pay to thePeter Parkinson Institute at Glasgow ten thousand pounds, a sum representing the amount of my royalties on the biography I concocted and dared to publish. My publishers did not know the truth and are, to that extent, blameless.’
“Then,” continued Parkinson, “I bid the knave send for two witnesses and, myself invisible, saw them attest the signature of Thomas Gridd.
“Having observed him post this confession in a public letter-box, I next directed him to visit a house of business. Into this he paid the mass of gold and notes won at his infamous pastime overnight, and then commissioned the banking people to convey the money by cable to the firm of Dunster and Boyle in London.
“That done, Gridd wrote two other letters. One of these contained a cheque for ten thousand pounds, and this he despatched to my Institute in Scotland; the other was directed to his bankers and requested those gentlemen to honour the cheque when it should be presented.
“So I left him to reflect upon his egregious sins, for physically the man was now reduced to mere palpitating flesh and my continued presence must doubtless have rendered himinsane. It is quite certain that no spectre could thus oppress a mind fortified by virtue.
“He slunk about Monte Carlo like one pursued by the Furies, and doubtless he expected to see my stern shadow reflected once more within his bloodshot eyes at every step. An analysis of his emotions would be terribly instructive. I could even find it in my heart to have pitied him then. But I thought of my wife, my children, my Institute, and was firm.
“He made no attempt to go back upon my commands or to evade them. Within twenty-four hours the metropolis was ringing with a new sensation, the book was recalled as far as might be, and the Parkinson Institute had grown richer by ten thousand pounds. Indeed that does not represent all the advantage accruing to the institution from my action. Numberless benefactions have sprung from this revelation and the consciences of many tender persons have been touched into practical action. Thus the right-feeling have compounded with their better natures. And what is even more to me: this terrible cloud has been lifted from off the hearts of my dear wife and children.
“My mission was accomplished within threeshort days. I visited Thomas Gridd once more, begged him be of good cheer, to endeavour yet to justify his existence, and to make his peace with Heaven, even as he had now made it with men and ghosts. Then I vanished from his eyes. Frankly I regret the unfortunate man’s position. It is terrible, indeed hopeless, from a worldly point of view, yet a just and due reward for unparalleled perfidy, if one may say so without being vindictive.”
The Professor sighed and ceased.
A week later, thanks to the arrival of an aged journalist, we learned the end of this incident.
“Thomas Gridd committed suicide after writing a most astounding confession to theMorning Post,” he explained.
“Then how comes it that he has not joined us?” I asked, rather foolishly.
There was an awkward silence, upon which Ben Jonson, who chanced to be present with other celebrities already mentioned, broke in with his great laughter.
“It would seem, young man, thou art scarce so heedful of thy company as an honest shade should be,” he said. “Know that we harbournot with such varlets here. They have their proper kennel. Ask Dante about him.”
“The man Gridd now descends upon a locality of purgatorial discomfort, situated beyond the limits of our knowledge, though not of our conjecture,” declared Dr. Johnson.
“In brief, Gridd goes to grid-iron,” flashed a grim shadow in the corner. “Tophet has him, mad-blazing, mad-dancing with flame of unimaginable tints. Basting with pitch and fire. Thunder and bolt above; blackness of Erebus beneath. And so ‘good-night’ to Gridd.”