The Macabre Megapack: 25 Lost Tales from the Golden Age

by John Galt

  THE STORY OF THE UNFINISHED PICTURE, by Charles Hooten

  (1847)

  “Weigel was an intimate acquaintance of mine,—a good painter, and had commenced his career promisingly. Calculating on a fortune not yet made, and a reputation that still had to take root, although it put forth strongly, he married a handsome girl of poor and obscure parentage, and found himself involved in all the cares of a young family before he was three-and-twenty. Fortune almost seemed to abandon him from the very day of his wedding, and from hard experience he soon found that he had begun the world too soon. But he was ambitious to an excess, and frequently used to say to his acquaintances that he would willingly lay down his life, only to become an artist that the world would never forget. Nay, I have often heard him say he was in the nightly habit of invoking the aid, in prayers, of either good spirits or bad (he cared not which), whichever, if such existed, would come first to assist him in the attainment of a painter’s success and immortality. ‘What matters,’ says he, ‘even if a man could give away his immortality in the uncertain hereafter, for a certain immortality here, though he should go so far as to do it? ’Twould be but as exchange of equivalents; or perhaps a gain on the side of earth which is real, positive, known; rather than on the chance of the future beyond death, which to our philosophy is unreal, not positive, and unknown. It may be darkness and nothingness,—I do not say it is, but it may be: and to barter away our title to it may be nothing more than parting with the shadow of a shadow—even the shade—for such this future may be, and nothing more,—cast forwards by the light of real life, and called in our ignorance another world. For my part,’ he said, ‘if there were good spirits, they would assist me; if bad they would accept my offers. Now I have often tempted both, but never seen either, and hence conclude them to be only the idle work of idle imaginations,—the future to be a blank, the present only a reality, in which the power to create an immortality is given us and which, if not exercised, we return to a state after life and being, as perfect in its nonentity to us, as is that in which we were, if we really were at all, before life and being commenced. Talk as you will, we really know no more of the life after, than of the life prior to, this. Of the latter nobody professes either dogmas or doctrine; for men never saw profit or advantage to be derived from the establishment of a spiritual world anterior to earth-life; while of the former, the religious of the world give us but assertion and opinion, not knowledge; for I hold nothing to be knowledge which is beyond the definition of philosophy. Probability it may be, but it is not knowledge.’

  “Thus he used to think and talk, and every day getting poorer and poorer as the demands of his family increased, and his own unwearied exertions failed to meet with reward: a state of things, I fear, which went far to induce his peculiar belief. I have often seen him in a fearful burst of passionate excitement, when his wife and family and himself were in want of the most ordinary necessaries, cast some fine unsold picture into the fire, and swear most solemnly and deeply, that if there were a devil, and if he himself had a soul worth the devil’s purchase, he would sell it him in bonds of fire and blood, if the price would but redeem their present misery, and find all that he most loved on earth in even as much food for their wants as God could find for the wild wolf or raven, without toil, without the chance of an immortality to risk, and without heart or intellect to feel privation as he felt it, even should it come upon them. He would then turn suddenly to me and exclaim, “Now Zeittler, if these idle tales were true, why does this Evil One not come? Why not take me at my word? for he must know that in this I am no liar.”

  “At that time he occupied two small rooms on the upper story of a large old house in Heidelburg, the door of the outer one of which opened upon a common staircase and passage, in which he usually paced up and down with a large pipe in his mouth during several hours in the gloom of an evening, for the sake of fresher air and exercise, and perhaps also to dissipate, if possible, his miserable reflections. He also used to do the same at any time of the night when he could not sleep. He would rise in the dark from the side of his sleeping wife and child, fill his huge meerschaum pipe, light a tinder to fire his tobacco, and then stalk backwards and forwards in the blind passage with steps as noiseless as a ghost, and exactly as confident, calm, and un-apprehensive as though in the summer sunshine of a public road. I do not say there was anything to be frightened at, but my imagination would never allow me exactly to fancy his particular taste in that respect.”

  At this part of his story Zeittler charged his audience to mark particularly that he was not giving them opinions nor speculations.

  “I am speaking of facts and results,” said he, “of things I have seen and heard, and therefore known; make of them what you can or will.

  “One morning I walked into his chambers just to chat about the news of the day—for there had been a terrible storm in the night, and a church-spire rent from top to bottom by the lightning—when I found him intently engaged upon a new picture, a fact which somewhat surprised me by the waywardness of temper it displayed, as he had thrown down his pencils in vexation the afternoon before, and vowed never to touch them again, but buy a spade, and go and earn his bread like Cain, by the sweat of his brow.

  “‘Ah, Weigel,’ said I, ‘how is this? At it once more, as I knew you would be before another sun went round.’

  “‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I took good advice last night.’

  “I told him I was glad to hear of it, for the arts would have had reason to deplore his wild resolution of yesterday, if he had adhered to it. I then asked him what friend had had the good fortune so to influence him?

  “‘Why,’ he replied, ‘you know how it thundered between twelve and three o’clock? I could not sleep, so I got up, lit my pipe, and took my old walk in the passage. Crash came the thunder-claps on the roof, and the lightning flew about me like the blazes of a burning house. It might have withered me to ashes for what I cared, since I neither hoped here nor feared hereafter. I had nearly smoked my pipe out, when a man met me in the passage, and as is usual with the people here, just inquired how I was coming on. I told him my resolve, and added that I intended to keep it. He said, as you say, that it would be a pity to see such a poetical soul as mine reduced to the necessity of spending time in common labor that any peasant huid might do as well or better, just for the sake of finding food and shelter for myself and my family. I answered that that soul as constituted had been my curse, and swore the devil might have it if it were any use to him, providing I could but keep the bodies of those who were dependent on me from starvation worse than that of the beasts. He begged me not to speak rashly, but advised me to take heart and try once more. Go to your easel tomorrow, said he, you will find a subject ready in your own room. I will make a bargain with you. You shall work upon it as long as you fancy you can improve upon it; if you finish it anytime within one exact year—even a moment within—I will buy it of you at a price that shall make your fortune, on condition that if you do not, at the expiration of that time, you take leave of your family and walk away into the forest with me when I call for you. Done! said I, a bargain! And can you believe it, Zeitter, I fancied that I heard that word a bargain, a bargain, a bargain, repeated by twenty different echoes? We shook hands and parted. I filled my pipe again, and walked about till the storm was over.’

  “I then,” continued Zeitter, “asked Weigel who the man was. He said that he could not tell, as he never troubled himself to look particularly where he came from or where he went. ‘And the subject that you were to find in your room? said I,’ glancing upon his new, clear canvas—‘is this it?’ ‘That it is,’ answered he, ‘for though when I sat down I did not think what I was going to be about, yet half-unconsciously I began to draw that portrait. But the most odd thing about it is, that as I advanced with it, thinking I was sketching from fancy only, I happened to cast my eyes into the dark corner beside my easel, and there I saw the identical face looking through the gloom at me!’”


  “Exactly so,” remarked Stretcher,—“and you saw it as well, no doubt?”

  “Not so,” answered Zeitter,—“but as I looked on my friend, I concluded that misery had made him mad.”

  “Pretty shrewd guess, that. Well, go on, old fellow. What sort of picture was it?”

  “There was nothing but a rude outline then, but afterwards, as it seemed to grow towards perfection under his hands, it struck the spectator at first view as the highest conceivable manly beauty of an ethereal nature—a picture of a being whose very outward form was spiritual, yet heightened by a still deeper expression of remoter spirituality that made the heart quail as though standing before the presence of a very angel. But as you continued to gaze, that feeling grew imperceptibly into one of fear, you knew not how or why; and then again, and at last, into a sense of utter dread and horror; for the beauty seemed to become spiritually sinful, and what appeared to be an angel to the sight sunk into the soul like the lightening presence of a demon. Never,” continued Zeitter, “shall I get that picture from before my eyes; for against it even Raphael and Correggio were tame. After three months’ incessant labor, I thought it was finished, for so it seemed to all eyes save Weigel’s: but, on and on, he still worked as incessantly as before, for he said that the longer he went on, the more did his visionary model increase in beauty and expression, and finish:—the labor of a lifetime was before him—not of a year only; and even then he should drop into his grave and leave it an ‘unfinished picture.’ After six months’ toil, he fell sick from anxiety and incessant application, but still persisted in his labor. He said that the work grew under his hands, for the farther he proceeded, the more he had to do: a year seemed now but as a day, and yet he had but six months left. Only six months to do all in, or to lose all. The consciousness of this pressed heavily upon him, and incited him to labor even when he almost required to be supported on a seat before his easel. At the end of three hundred and sixty days he was worn to a shadow, while the picture was brought up to such a wonderful pitch of perfection that it seemed the living palpable reality, and he, the workman, only such a dim animated shade as human art and earthly colors might produce. Together they looked like spirit creating matter;—the invisible making the visible,—the supernatural and visionary giving form, and bulk, and substance to sensitive material. But what struck me as most singular was, that during the whole of this time he had never once alluded again to the strange speculations which previously (as I described at the setting out) appeared to occupy so great a portion of his thoughts. He did so, at length, in the following manner:—

  “‘Look what I have done, Zeitter, my friend. Behold this picture. Will it make a man immortal? But it is well you cannot see the original. I know now that no man in this world may truly see him and live. That accursed, glorious, and yet hideous shadow! It has blasted me with poring upon. Night and day; day and night, alike. Dream and reality, light and darkness; all have been alike to me: still the same unchangeably, until my eyes know no other object than that everlasting one. His look has become a part of my existence, and if I do not make haste, make haste,—I have but five days and some odd hours left,—I feel that he will swallow me up, body and soul! But I will be diligent; I will escape him yet; five days are a long time; and if I am in the hands of the Evil One—if, say, all I have doubted be true, I’ll finish in five days, five hours, and a half, and cheat the devil out of his prize at last.’

  “I endeavored to persuade him that the picture was more than finished already,—that in plain truth the world possessed not such another; and that he had better so consider it himself, and lay his pallet down for the close of labor. But he could not be convinced that it was finished. ‘Besides,’ said he, ‘he has not yet come to purchase it, for the time is not yet up. One moment within the year, exactly, and he will be here. I know he will, for I feel him, as it were, even now creeping through my blood and along my bones,’ and he shivered in agony as the pencils fell from his hands, and his whole form sunk almost as senseless as a corpse back in his antique chair.

  “In spite of even the daily conclusions of my own senses, that nothing more within the reach of the most consummate art could possibly be done to heighten the picture,—what actually was done day after day, contradicted me, and showed again and again, that Weigel was right: it was yet unfinished, because a higher perfection seemed still attainable, though only because the eye constantly distinguished that he did attain it.

  “Five days and five hours more were gone. The conclusion was at hand. Curious and anxious to know what it would be, I was alone by his side from the commencement of the last half hour until all was over. I know not how to describe it, for my own excitement was such, that the circumstances, impressions, and feelings of that time seemed to whirl through my brain confusedly and indistinct, like objects mingled together on the circumference of a revolving wheel. I knew a climax of some sort was at hand, and one all the more impressive and fearful, because though so close, it was inscrutable, though involving beyond doubt the fate of a man of a most gifted and rare genius. Weigel hung his watch upon the easel above his picture, while his eye, with painful regularity, and an expression of intensity, that seemed to dilate the pupil much beyond its ordinary size, while it partially closed the lids and drew down the brows closely and rigidly,—passed from the moving hands to the dark corner where his supernatural model was, and then to the picture:—only to return while touch was added to touch to the shadow again, to the picture, and then to the dial. His mouth was slightly opened in an indescribable expression of agony and fear, and whenever his pencil was not actually in contact with the palette or the painting, I observed it tremble in his grasp like a shivering reed.

  “‘Five minutes more!’ at length he gasped; ‘and the head grows more and more glorious, till this picture looks but a school-boy’s sketch! Three minutes! I shall never have done, never! One minute!—Ah!—not one—not half a one! Zeitter, Zeitter!—my friend!’ he shreiked; ‘ah!—ah!—ah!—the year is out, and it is not done!’

  “The palette and pencils fell from his hands to the floor, and his head sunk heavily upon his breast, as though bowed in death before the idol of his art. I flew to seize and support him, for he was apparently insensible. At that moment his wife and a strange man, whom I had never seen before, entered the room. The former wept and cried like a woman frantic; but the latter looked coldly on, and placing his finger on Weigel’s breast merely said solemnly, ‘He is better now.’ At that voice and touch the artist raised himself up, as though suddenly re-animated, and looked seriously, but confidently and calmly, in the face of the stranger. Not a word passed between them; but the latter turned towards Weigel’s wife, and told her that at a certain bank in the city, which he named, she would find payment for that picture to the amount of three thousand pounds.

  “‘It will at least,’ said he, ‘save you and your family from want for life; and that is all your husband cares for.’

  “‘All!—all!’ said Weigel; ‘and now for the forest!’

  “So saying, he arose with the alacrity of a youth whose health and spirits has never broken; put on his cap, filled his pipe, as though nothing had happened, and kissed his wife and children, after having extorted a promise from them to be happy until he came back again.

  “‘I will see that they fulfill it!’ murmured the stranger. ‘Come!—the moon is up, and we must be there by midnight.’

  “‘May I not accompany you, Weigel?’ I exclaimed.

  “‘No!—not as you value your life; and take heed, Zeitter, take heed also, that you never come to me.’

  “Nevertheless, I felt impelled to go along with them, and followed until we entered the shadows of the forest. Two black horses, or creatures that bore their resemblance, stood in the road.

  “‘Mount!’ cried the stranger, as he vaulted on to the back of one, and Weigel on the other; ‘DARKNESS is mine, and RUIN thine! Away, away!’

  “They swept the forest like a Winter’s blast; bow
ing the trees as they passed, sweeping leaves away like a hurricane, and gathering a tempest of black hurrying clouds from the skies along the horizon towards which they fled. The moon sunk like an opaque scarlet fire, and the hair of my head stood up as I returned home in darkness. Need I say that Weigel never came back again?”

  Here Herr Zeitter paused.

  “And the picture,—did they take that too?” asked Sapio Green.

  “The picture,” replied Zeitter, “was sent for the next day by a strange old baron, who inhabited a castle hard by, and who said he had purchased it by commission. However that might be, his name was on the check for payment, and the bank discharged it out of his deposits. I anticipate your next question, but he was not the stranger; nor was anyone like him known in that quarter of the country. Up to this day, however, it is believed that a figure like Weigel may be seen on moonlight nights still working away with his shadowy pencils upon the ‘Unfinished Picture,’ as it hangs in distinguished state in a room appropriated (with reference to works of art) to it alone.”

  EULE: THE EMPEROR’S DWARF, by John Rutter Chorley

  (1838)

  Before Spinola had burned Aix-la-Chapelle (in the seventeenth century), the old city had a wonderfully solemn and antiquated air. There was something in the place, even during its festival times, which reminded the stranger that he beheld the mausoleum of a great king. The grotesque buildings, and narrow, crooked streets, with the quaint costume and manners of the burghers, seemed yet to belong to the time of the Franks; and when the city was deserted by its summer guests, it was as somber and weariful a place as could be found in all Westphalia; as far, indeed, out of the world’s way as Malspart the strong-hold, to which the old lay tells how Reynard the Fox betook himself, when he foreswore the life of a courtier, and turned hermit.