May 2
"Tu omnia."
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"Tu omnia."
A Romance by Santiago Rusinol (1894)
i was compelled to start reading wuthering heights at like midnight and ive been reading it throughout the day. im now 200 pages in and i am soooooo baffled by whatever the fuck is happening with that movie. they’re telling this story as a ROMANCE?????? NOTHING ELSE STOOD OUT TO YOU?????
—𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇: 𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄.
𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈:
❝Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thy eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down...❞
-Ezekiel 24:16.
A chill roused him from sleep.
Barnabas Allenbrought found no difficulty in leaving his frigid bed; once the languor of slumber subdued, he stood with a shiver and, with drowsy steps, he walked behind the screen of his bedroom.
He followed his usual routine: He washed his face and neck with cool water, then, with the help of a comb and rosemary water, he gave shape to his hair until it was tame and orderly. With the tip of his fingers he applied some whitish ointment in his brow, to conceal the wan scar that, like a crack in porcelain, crossed it. His pince-nez glasses, dusty from the past day, were conscientiously cleaned. A black frock coat, a waistcoat and an undershirt with a high starched neck he had neatly placed near his bed were the replacement of his nightshirt and.
His breakfast was composed of a single, soft-boiled egg, a day-old crumpets, and a cup of warm tea, all of this disposed in the austere and corresponding order in the table, almost as if someone else would sit there to enjoy the first moments of morning alongside him. But that was not the case. Entertaining himself with the reading of a little book of ornithology, he was very much aware of his deep state of solitude, yet paid no mind to iIt wasn’t until he had finished his breakfast, taken his coat and picked his canary’s cage —a friendly fellow with a vivid yellow plumage and beady eyes, whose chants never failed to bring him a sense of peace—, that he felt the familiar sting of sorrow stab his side. When he was about to cross the threshold, he gave a glance to the small mirror that hang there, and he soon repented.
His condition had always been an endless source of discontent: A pallor of hair, skin and eyes, a remarkable sensitivity to sunlight and a rather short vision were the most noticeable signs of it, and thus, were treated as a heinous stain to his being, just like the scar on his brow or the obscure nature of his first years. Furthermore, none of his other features inspired great affection: He had a stern physiognomy with an elongated face, a long aquiline nose and haggard cheeks, and that sort of heavy-lidded eyes that seem apathetic and languid; his mouth was thin and very much roughened by the cold weather, and it seldomly smiled.
He had once been a wholesome, mild young boy during his student days, and he had earned tease and, sometimes, friendship; but now he was a quiet man of twenty eight, with an unsmiling sharp face and a dour disposition, and his presence never failed to make everyone in the room feel cold. He could hardly bear to see what he was to himself.
What an unloveable creature he had become.
He gave one last glance to his reflection, then took his coat from the hook and, holding the canary's cage, he left to the streets, were the fog received him with a cold embrace.
Liverpool was a dim place.
The old borough was no longer the wholesome, homely coastal town it had once been known as, but a port that reeked from the sulphuric breath of the factories, the corrupted water of the canals, the eroded wood and saltpeter of the docks. A greenish fog —the smog, as they called it— snaked through the alleys like a chilling sigh and the old cobbled floor shone beneath it, damp and slippery. But at those hours, where the monstrous factories still slumbered like sleeping dragons, the quiet solitude of its streets invited the wanderer to think.
The St. Alphonsus Hospital rose between two streets, and it exuded that religious melancholy all the formerly church-directed institutions have. Moss spotted its tall walls like a trimming, and the stone of its bricks had been severely darkened by years of ill weather and even iller maintenance. A foundling home turned into a hospital, it was a sterile and silent place, too vast, too lonely and too gloomy, that fitted much its staff. It gave that sort of impression that a man could possibly get lost in its halls and never be seen again.
Barnabas Allenbrought’s office had once belonged to the head of the place, an old, stingy priest whose reputation of corrupt preceded him and for whom nobody had shed a truthful tear upon his death. Upon his arrival, Barnabas had made sure to remove all testimony of the former man’s presence, in a silent quest to cleanse the dead man’s print from that space. Nobody needed to ask why: The doctor’s marked religiosity was well known by his peers, and accepted as some eccentricity. Under his watch, gone were the lavishly lined furniture, the paintings of disrobed biblical women, all that suggested the existence of a long gone man in the office. All, but the old cross that still, hang heavily over the desk, a somber reminder that there were powers higher than man, higher than theirs.
Death, the first of them.
Someone knocked on his door, and soon, the familiar voice of nurse Ludlow, a veteran of the trade, and one of the few that did not regard him with the usual mix of morbid curiosity or contempt for his rather young age.
"Doctor Allenbrought," the nurse called him, “There is a man asking for you.”
"Let him come in. I shall receive him in a moment."
Indeed, the man came in, and Barnabas soon noticed that he had the bearing of a butler belonging to a romance: silver hair, a well-shaped moustache, a tidy black suit, and those affected gestures that hinted what had brought him there. His canary chirped curiously, jumping from one bar to the other, as if to see the stranger better.
“What brings you to this hospital, mr…?” he asked. The man took a deep breath.
“Catherine, the beloved wife of my employer, the Honorable Meredith Walding, is very ill” his tone, soft and moderated, almos remembered him of a play.
“And where is she?” Barnabas inquired, barely paying attention to the title.
“Resting in bed, doctor. She woke up very afflicted, and could not possibly accompany me.”
"I see. For how long has your mistress been sick?" he asked.
“For almost two weeks now, doctor.”
Barnabas could not help but to raise his eyebrow.
“That seems a long time to start seeking help. Has it become virulent all of a sudden, or else?”
“… This last years, her health as not been as good as it would be expected, and she waved off all concerns. Besides, her episodes have been… Fleeting, erratic and most unexpected.”
“I see. And what exactly ails your mistress?” At the question, the man seemed to pale even further.
"It… It would be very mortifying to say so," he replied lamely. Barnabas blinked, indolent.
"Very mortifying” he repeated, “You seem to ignore that the work of a doctor is, by nature, a very mortifying job.”
“For the privacy of my employers, I mean” the man quickly added, “It would be embarrassing to talk about them in this unbecoming way.”
Barnabas closed the eyes slightly behind his glasses, and took an encyclopaedia from the shelf with a languid gesture.
"My good sir, this is a doctor's office, not a society hall. If you don't trust me, I invite you not to waste my time and that of your lady and to look for another doctor who does have the patience to listen to your preambles and to intuit whatever you are hiding with them. If you want to trust me your case, then I shall be here to hear. If not, go, and good day” he dispatched him.
"Doctor…”
"Good morning, I said," he said, opening the encyclopaedia. The man tensed visibly, and finally spoke.
“Vomiting. Dizziness… Diarrhea.”
"The bloody kind?”
“Aye, yes… The episodes are unpredictable, and she is left frail… The family doctor does not see the cause of this, and the service is very preoccupied for her wellbeing.”
“… Is your mistress stable now?”
The man hid from his eyes: “… Hardly, doctor. Hardly.”
Barnabas left the volume over his desk, and picked his coat.
“Then lead the way: I shall pay your mistress a visit.”
My liege @lordbettany / @theboarsbride / @nealsneen / @borbon-casual
Guess who’s back!
[REVIEW] The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
3/5 stars (★★★)
“The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of the moonbeams; they dance hand-in-hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual world.”
First of all, I want to recommend Ben Wickey's 2023 animated adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables. I was struggling a bit to read the book on its own, but then I watched Wickey's short movie and it really sealed the deal for me. I liked reading Hawthorne's novel a lot more after I saw that adaptation, even though Wickey changes and omits a significant amount of the plot due to time constraints, which I can appreciate. The book and adaptation were very delightful to have together for comparison during my reading experience. Nathaniel Hawthorne's such a goofball and I love that Wickey captured both the Gothic romantic horror and silliness of THotSG.
Even though I know why he had to cut them, there were a lot of bonkers scenes in this book. I didn't expect the street performer slash miser monkey and his musically talented Italian master. Hawthorne really just threw that in there. Another notable comic figure was Ned Higgins, who was Hepzibah's first customer for her cent shop and whom Hawthorne described in the most exasperatedly passive aggressive ways: He called Ned a cannibal because he liked to eat candy and gingerbread cookies. So dramatic. There was also the love confession scene between Phoebe and Holgravee/Maule Jr where they were professing their devotion and happiness to one another but Judge Pyncheon's fuckass dead body -- which we still haven't reported to the proper authorities -- was just lowkey vibing in the parlor. Like oh yeah nothing says will you marry me than your demonic middle-aged cousin stone cold dead in the other room; that silly old family curse, amirite?
My favorite wacky part was when Clifford just sat in front of the top gable window and blew bubbles down onto the street below and, while some people found joy and wonder in it, there were also some people who literally popped Clifford's bubbles because it's indecent to blow bubbles apparently. Good old New England Puritan logic. Made me laugh.
There was also that part when Clifford randomly decided to jump out that same window in a spontaneous instance of suicidality. It was meant to be dreadful but the image of Phoebe and Hepzibah screeching and pulling him back to safety was too funny for me. I honestly didn't like Clifford that much as a character, especially in the beginning, but he got a few snorts out of me for sure.
I'm a Hawthorne fan and I quite enjoyed this book, although not nearly as much as I loved The Scarlet Letter or Hawthorne's short stories. (He doesn't know how to write women without talking about their virginal appeal in this one, but I can forgive him since Hepzibah and Phoebe were very dynamic characters in their own right). Ironically though, THotSG felt a lot more Hawthorne-y; it wasn't exactly autobiographical, but it felt personal all the same, which makes sense since Hawthorne essentially based Colonel Pyncheon on his ancestor John Hathorne, who was a judge at the Salem witch trials in 1692. In the Preface Hawthorne alludes to this ancestral curse and legacy that looms over a household even years after the fact, so I found that aspect of the book to be really gripping. This theme came to a glorious head at the "Judge Pyncheon" chapter, which is very long but I loved every (scarlet) letter of it (hehe). It was easily the best part with how sardonic, bitter, and condescending the narrator was to the Judge's petrified corpse. Hawthorne really just roasted the ever living hell out of that guy and he was already dead! I loved how Hawthorne drew a sharp distinction between Pyncheon's social status, wealth, and surface-level reputation and who he actually was, which was basically the devil: “Or will he, after the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a humbled and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldly honor, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow man, and to do him what good he may?” I think that chapter could've carried more emotional weight if the reader had been told in advance what Clifford had been condemned to jail for (it's only revealed in that section, and Hawthorne doesn't provide too much details to really hone in on the injustice of it all). I feel like I would've been more invested in the book if I'd at least gotten more hints of why Clifford and Judge Pyncheon were sworn enemies, though of course it was relatively easy to guess why: “But ambition is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft.” I loved that line.
The multiple layers of judgement Hawthorne heaps on Pyncheon and all his misdeeds were brilliant; his writing really shone in that section. My edition's Afterword by Edward C. Sampson gave it the proper appreciation it needs, so it was nice reading that after I finished the book.
Unlike in TSL, I found this book showed off more of Hawthorne's narrative range as well. One moment he's being cheeky by talking about the goings-on of a male rooster and his persnickety harem of two hens, and then in the next he's despondent over how some people like Clifford are just born to never belong and live out tragic, lonesome lives: “Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of the common track of things, even were it for a better system, desire nothing so much as to be led back. They shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountain-top or in a dungeon.”
Lastly, I liked this book because, as much as I love psychological horror and classic Edgar Allan Poe Gothic, I still appreciated how Hawthorne imbued hope and love into the haunted house genre: “You have lost a day. But tomorrow will be here anon. Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it? Tomorrow. Tomorrow! Tomorrow. We, that are alive, may rise betimes tomorrow. As for him that has died today, his morrow will be the resurrection morn.” I like that every -- even cousin Venner, as irrelevant as he was -- got a happy, prosperous ending, and that the two houses of Maule and Pyncheon could be joined together through Holgrave and Phoebe's marriage. Hepzibah got her gentility back (which she deserved: “But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my heart has gone through without breaking." You get that teacup fixed, girl! You and your resting bitch face!) and Clifford regained a semblance of contentment that he'd been so deprived of all his life. The book is pretty sappy and corny in that sense, but I don't really care. Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery, as Jane Austen has said, to which Hawthorne adds,
“… After hours like these latter ones, through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made sensible that there is a living world, and that even this old, lonely mansion retains some manner of connection with it.”
Me and my MC everytime A say something gentlemanly.
Only to be disappointed at the next thing it comes out of his mouth.
Detective Mylla Kingston belongs to @scgplace
I did this for artfight and I’m really happy with how it turned out! ^^