A Rich Full Death

more than a hint of the outright horror and madness of our own poor Edgar Poe.

Baron Seymour Stocker Kirkup, to give him his full name, seems older than the city itself, whose every stone he knows. He is an accomplished student of Dante, of whose works many rare manuscript versions are to be found in the fabulous library which fills several rooms of the old palace he inhabits. Just for good measure, this building- which overlooks the Arno at the south end of the Ponte Vecchio, a few doors from where Cecil DeVere lived and died-was the Florentine headquarters of the Knights Templar until the brutal suppression of that mysterious order five and a half centuries ago. It contained the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, whose whereabouts Kirkup claims to have discovered by means of necromancy. He also claims to hold conversations with Dante, who revealed to him the location of his portrait by Giotto, which had been whitewashed over. It is even believed in some quarters that he possesses the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone! All in all, then, Kirkup is an eccentric although well-loved member of our little community-and one who enjoys the rare distinction of being notorious among the Florentines, who in general take as much notice of us as cattle of the flies that pester them in summer. Indeed, one reason Kirkup so rarely leaves home is that he is apt to be pursued through the streets by gangs of children yelling ‘Stregone!’ This means a sorcerer, one who exercises power through the agency of evil spirits; which may all seem mere superstitious rubbish in bright breezy Boston, but is still taken very seriously here.

And his connection with Isabel? I was ready for anything by now, particularly since I knew that Kirkup is given to recognising spritualistic ‘gifts’ in pretty young women-one of whom, a former servant, he has installed in his house, where she has subsequently proved to be with child. It turned out that my idea was not very wide of the mark, except that this was no mere senile fancy of Kirkup’s: no less an authority than Miss Edith Chauncey herself informed me solemnly that Isabel had had all the makings of a highly-gifted ‘medium’. Indeed, Miss Chauncey seemed to regret her ‘passing over’ almost solely for this reason. In all other respects, she assured me with a rather sickly smile, dear Isabel is so much better off ‘on the other side’, and once established over there will become a first-rate ‘control’ (whatever that may be)-indeed, it was for precisely this reason that this initial attempt to ‘make contact’ had been arranged.

I could not help feeling an instinctive revulsion at all this. There we were, five respectable gentlefolk seated in a primly decorous sitting-room, nibbling Miss Kate’s home-made cookies and chatting equably about the great army of the Dead, who it seems have nothing better to do than hang about their former haunts, as ubiquitous and pervasive as some stale odour.

Our company was not yet complete, however. It seems that the number required to initiate an experience of this kind is seven-a figure of considerable mystic significance, according to Kirkup, who treated me to a disquisition on numerical symbolism in Dante which might well have been considerably more protracted but for the arrival of the remaining two guests.

It having been established that these would be people whose relations with Isabel had been particularly intimate, the first thing to strike me about the newcomers was the fact that they were gentlemen. Well, one of them was, at any rate: Charles Nicholas Grant, an Englishman of some fifty years of age, whose family are long- established in the wine importing business. He is blessed with one of those faces which immediately inspire respect and trust, so clearly is it stamped with the great English civic virtues of rectitude and fair-dealing. So what had Isabel and Mr Grant been up to, that he should be invited to help contact her spirit? Well, it seems that Grant’s contacts with the Eakins were originally all with Joseph. However, he soon succeeded-as indeed was no matter for surprise, given the charming urbanity of his manner-in ingratiating himself with Isabel, whose passion for art he had helped to gratify by accompanying her on pilgrimages to various galleries, churches and palaces to which her husband, having once paid his respects, declined to return.

I should point out that Joseph Eakin shared the notion, not unknown among our fellow-countrymen, that the Uffizi and Santa Croce are comparable to such domestic points of pilgrimage as, say, Paul Revere’s house, or Bunker Hill, in the sense that a decent curiosity to view them may be satisfied by a single visit, and that any desire to go back smacks of excessive enthusiasm. Whereas Mr Jarves remarked to me recently that it was only on the fourth or fifth visit that he began to ‘see’ a picture at all-as opposed, that is, to seeing his ideas of it, or what other folk had told him they had seen, or what he had read somewhere he should see, and so on. Isabel, apparently, agreed with him-or at least wanted to get out of that glacial villa and down to the life and bustle of the city streets. In either case, Mr Grant served as an escort to whom her husband could not possibly object.

The other person I did not know at all-which you must understand speaks less of me than of him. For without any wish (for indeed I have no need) to brag, anyone that I have not met at least once must exist in some sense upon the fringes of society, unwilling or unable to gain admittance. I have no way of knowing which was the case with the Very Reverend Urizen K. Tinker.

This individual hails, unmistakably, from Illinois, being by his own account one of a veritable tribe of Tinkers begot with what sounds like indecent haste by a Chicago schoolmaster. Urizen K. seemed destined, if his luck held good, for a lowly clerkship in some canal company, when his life was transformed by the first in a series of communications from a source which he terms ‘Guard’. These communications concern themselves with the very largest issues: the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the history and future prospects of the human race, and Mr Tinker’s apparently critical role in all three.

As is invariably the case for men of destiny, Tinker’s early days were far from easy. He described in colourful terms the pettifogging and obscurantist attitude of various local churches in which he had attempted to have himself ordained, all of whom proved to be tiresomely insistent on the need for a minimum of theological qualifications, and deaf to Tinker’s contention that direct revelation-‘a telegraph line to the Deity’, as he vividly put it-was worth more than any number of ‘bits of paper’. And so, with that spirit of hardy initiative and independence which is said to characterise those who dwell beyond the Catskills, Mr Tinker promptly founded his own church, based on the usual biblical material, supplemented by the so-called ‘Prophetic Epics’ of one William Blake, a crackpot Cockney mystic-Urizen K.’s father had somehow got his paws on some of this Blake’s doggerel, lengthy extracts from which he used to read aloud to all the tiny Tinkers to help while away the long dark cold Chicago winter evenings.

Well, all this was of course ludicrous enough-my only concern was to keep a face straight enough to avoid offending the Very Reverend Tinker, who like most autodidacts is extremely sensitive to slights. What interested me considerably more was the discovery that Tinker’s church is supported financially by the bottomless purse of none other than Mr Joseph Eakin! He thus sank even lower in my estimation-particularly when I learned that Tinker’s relations with Isabel had been encouraged by her husband, and this very much against her own wishes.

I am happy to be able to report that in this matter, at least, Isabel’s behaviour was irreproachable. Unlike her fool of a husband-for these tough calculating captains of industry always have their Achilles’ heel, which some smart operator will find out-she held that the Very Reverend Urizen K. Tinker was an impostor and a buffoon, and made little or no attempt to disguise the fact. There can be no doubt about this, for I had it from the lips of the prophet himself, who reported his response to have been one of exemplary mildness.

‘I turned the other cheek, Mr Booth, sir; and when that would not avail, I turned the first one a-gain! But though meek and lamb-like, very, do not for one single solitary moment permit yourself to imagine that I could be detracted from my plain and bounden dooty. Do not! For you would err, sir, you would err. From that sacred path I would not deviate, nor could not be forced. Back I went to that unhappy female, a-gain and a-gain, in perpetuity and without respite. And but for the fatal catastrophe, I do not scruple to pronounce that the exquisite bliss of inducting a-nother stray sheep into my little flock would once more have been mine. Ah me, the bliss of succouring a lost soul, Mr Booth, sir! Verily I tell you, it is a very unique and exceptionable grace.’

Hearing the wretched creature thus preen and prattle about having pressed his unwelcome attentions on Isabel, aided and abetted by that credulous pander of a husband, I could cheerfully have strangled him on the spot. Fortunately, Edith Chauncey chose that moment to announce that the proceedings would begin.

14

We were led through into a back parlour, hung with tapestries and very sparsely furnished: just a plain sideboard, supporting a single candlestick, and a circular table surrounded by seven high-backed chairs. On the