to broach a subject at once which I would rather have
postponed until the idea had taken possession of you by
degrees— ”
“ I know what it is you want to say, sir,” she broke in,
“and I’ve reproached myself that I haven’t warned you
before, but I didn’t like to be the one to speak first. You
want Blanche— of course, I couldn’t help seeing that; but
I can’t let her go, sir, indeed, I can’t.”
“Yes,” he said, firmly, “I want to adopt Blanche, and I
hardly think you .can refuse, for you must know how
greatly it will be to her advantage. She is a wonderful
child; you have never been blind to that; she should have
every opportunity, not only of money, but of association. If I adopt her legally, I shall, of course, make her my heir, and— there is no reason why she should not grow
up as great a lady as any in England.”
The poor woman turned white, and burst into tears.
“ I’ve sat up nights and nights, struggling,” she said,
when she could speak. “That, and missing her. I couldn’t
stand in her light, and I let her stay. I know I oughtn’t to,
now— I mean, stand in her light— but, sir, she is dearer
than all the others put together.”
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125
“Then live here in England— at least, for some years
longer. I will gladly relieve your children of your support,
and you can see Blanche as often as you choose.’’
“ I can’t do that, sir. After all, she is only one, and there
are six others. I can’t desert them. They all need me, if
only to keep them together— three girls unmarried and
out in the world, and three boys just a little inclined to be
wild. There is another point, sir— I don’t exactly know
how to say it.”
“Well?” asked Orth, kindly. This American woman
thought him the ideal gentleman, although the mistress
of the estate on which she visited called him a boor and a
snob.
“ It is— well— you must know— you can imagine—
that her brothers and sisters just worship Blanche. They
save their dimes to buy her everything she wants— or
used to want. Heaven knows what will satisfy her now,
although I can’t see that she’s one bit spoiled. But she’s
just like a religion to them; they’re not much on church.
I’ll tell you, sir, what I couldn’t say to anyone else, not
even to these relations who’ve been so kind to me— but
there’s wildness, just a streak, in all my children, and I
believe, I know, it’s Blanche that keeps them straight. My
girls get bitter, sometimes; work all the week and little
fun, not caring for common men and no chance to marry
gentlemen; and sometimes they break out and talk
dreadful; then, when they’re over it, they say they’ll live
for Blanche— they’ve said it over and over, and they
mean it. Every sacrifice they’ve made for her— and
they’ve made many— has done them good. It isn’t that
Blanche ever says a word of the preachy sort, or has
anything of the Sunday-school child about her, or even
tries to smooth them down when they’re excited. It’s just
herself. The only thing she ever does is sometimes to
draw herself up and look scornful, and that nearly kills
them. Little as she is, they’re crazy about having her
respect. I’ve grown superstitious about her. Until she
came I used to get frightened, terribly, sometimes, and I
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Gertrude Atherton
believe she came for that. So—you see! I know Blanche
is too fine for us and ought to have the best; but, then,
they are to be considered, too. They have their rights,
and they’ve got much more good than bad in them. I
don’t know! I don’t know! It’s kept me awake many
nights.”
Orth rose abruptly. “Perhaps you will take some
further time to think it over,” he said. “You can stay a
few weeks longer— the matter cannot be so pressing as
that.”
The woman rose. “I’ve thought this,” she said; “let
Blanche decide. I believe she knows more than any of us.
I believe that whichever way she decided would be right.
I won’t say anything to her, so you won’t think I’m
working on her feelings; and I can trust you. But she’ll
know.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Orth, sharply. “There
is nothing uncanny about the child. She is not yet seven
years old. Why should you place such a responsibility
upon her?”
“Do you think she’s like other children?”
“ I know nothing of other children.”
“I do, sir. I’ve raised six. And I’ve seen hundreds of
others. I never was one to be a fool about my own, but
Blanche isn’t like any other child living— I’m certain of
it.”
“What do you think?”
And the woman answered, according to her lights: “ I
think she’s an angel, and came to us because we needed
her.”
“And I think she is Blanche Mortlake working out the
last of her salvation,” thought the author; but he made
no reply, and was alone in a moment.
It was several days before he spoke to Blanche, and
then, one morning, when she was sitting on her mat on
the lawn with the light full upon her, he told her abruptly
that her mother must return home.
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127
To his surprise, but unutterable delight, she burst into
tears and flung herself into his arms.
“You need not leave me,” he said, when he could find
his own voice. “You can stay here always and be my little
girl. It all rests with you.”
“ I can’t stay,” she sobbed. “I can’t!”
“And that is what made you so sad once or twice?” he
asked, with a double eagerness.
She made no reply.
“Oh!” he said, passionately, “give me your confidence,
Blanche. You are the only breathing thing that I love.”
“If I could I would,” she said. “But I don’t know— not
quite.”
“How much do you know?”
But she sobbed again and would not answer. He dared
not risk too much. After all, the physical barrier between
the past and the present was very young.
“Well, well, then, we will talk about the other matter. I
will not pretend to disguise the fact that your mother is
distressed at the idea of parting from you, and thinks it
would be as sad for your brothers and sisters, whom she
says you influence for their good. Do you think that you
do?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know this?”
“Do you know why you know everything?”
“No, my dear, and I have great respect for your
instincts. But your sisters and brothers are now old
enough to take care of themselves. They must be of poor
stuff if they cannot live properly without the aid of a
child. Moreover, they will
be marrying soon. That will
also mean that your mother will have many little grandchildren to console her for your loss. I will be the one bereft, if you leave me. I am the only one who really
needs you. I don’t say I will go to the bad, as you may
have very foolishly persuaded yourself your family will
do without you, but I trust to your instincts to make you
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realize how unhappy, how inconsolable I shall be. I shall
be the loneliest man on earth!”
She rubbed her face deeper into his flannels, and
tightened her embrace. “Can’t you come, too?” she
asked.
“No; you must live with me wholly or not at all. Your
people are not my people, their ways are not my ways.
We should not get along. And if you lived with me over
there you might as well stay here, for your influence over
them would be quite as removed. Moreover, if they are
of the right stuff, the memory of you will be quite as
potent for good as your actual presence.”
“Not unless I died.”
Again something within him trembled. “Do you believe you are going to die young?” he blurted out.
But she would not answer.
He entered the nursery abruptly the next day and
found her packing her dolls. When she saw him, she sat
down and began to weep hopelessly. He knew then that
his fate was sealed. And when, a year later, he received
her last little scrawl, he was almost glad that she went
when she did.
E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822)
The Sand-man
Ernst Theodor W ihelm Hoffm an, who in 1808 changed one
o f his middle names from W ilhelm to Am adeus in honor of
M ozart, is the only candidate to rival Poe (who was
influenced by him) as the creator o f the modern supernatural tale. His stories are a large part o f the founding texts of the "fantastic" in European literature. His reputation rivalled those of Lord Byron and S ir W alter Slcott in the Europe of his day. He is the greatest fantasy w riter of
the nineteenth century; his most famous stories include
"The Golden Pot,” which Everett B leiler calls the greatest
fantasy story o f the nineteenth century, “ N utcracker and
the King of the M ic e ,” the source o f Tchaikovsky’s The
Nutcracker, “ Mademoiselle D e Scuddry," arguably
the first detective story. His great innovation was to bring
the fantastic into the everyday present (fairy and folk tales
had traditionally been set long ago and far aw ay), a
foundation of all horror literature since. His novella, "The
Sand-m an," a nightmarish piece that fascinated Sigmund
Freud so much that he used it as the basic text o f his essay,
"The Uncanny," was w ritten in 1816. As John Sladek
pointed out in Horror. The 100 Best Books. "This dark tale
was w ritten tw o years before M ary Shelley's Frankenstein,
in a similar spirit o f horrified fascination with science and its
application to artificial life. Hoffm an is concerned with the
horror of autom ata indistinguishable from real people."
This them e has grown and reverberated through literature
since, and is particulary common in science fiction. It is
interesting to com pare “The Sand-m an” to G eorge R.R.
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E.T.A. Hoffman
M artin 's "Sandkings.” Philip K. D ick's “ Faith o f O ur
Fathers,” and John W . C am pbell’s "W ho Goes There?”
N ath an ael to L o th air
I know you are all very uneasy because I have not
written for such a long, long time. Mother, to be sure,
is angry, and Clara, I dare say, believes I am living here
in riot and revelry, and quite forgetting my sweet angel,
whose image is so deeply engraved upon my heart and
mind. But that is not so; daily and hourly do I think of
you all, and my lovely Clara's form comes to gladden me
in my dreams, and smiles upon me with her bright eyes,
as graciously as she used to do in the days when I went in
and out amongst you. Oh! how could I write to you in the
distracted state of mind in which I have been, and which,
until now, has quite bewildered me! A terrible thing has
happened to me. Dark forebodings of some awful fate
threatening me are spreading themselves out over my
head like black clouds, impenetrable to every friendly
ray of sunlight. I must now tell you what has taken place;
I must, that I see well enough, but only to think upon it
makes the wild laughter burst from my lips. Oh! my dear,
dear Lothair, what shall I say to make you feel, if only in
an inadequate way, that that which happened to me a
few days ago could thus really exercise such a hostile and
disturbing influence upon my life? Oh that you were here
to see for yourself! but now you will, I suppose, take me
for a superstitious ghost-seer. In a word, the terrible
thing which I have experienced, the fatal effect of which I
in vain exert every effort to shake off, is simply that some
days ago, namely, on the 30th October, at twelve o’clock
The Sand-man
131
at noon, a dealer in weather-glasses came into my room
and wanted to sell me one of his wares. I bought nothing,
and threatened to kick him downstairs, whereupon he
went away of his own accord.
You will conclude that it can only be very peculiar
relations— relations intimately intertwined with my life
— that can give significance to this event, and that it
must be the person of this unfortunate hawker which has
had such a very inimical effect upon me. And so it really
is. I will summon up all my faculties in order to narrate
to you calmly and patiently as much of the early days of
my youth as will suffice to put matters before you in such
a way that your keen sharp intellect may grasp everything clearly and distinctly, in bright and living pictures.
Just as I am beginning, I hear you laugh and Clara say,
“What’s all this childish nonsense about!” Well, laugh at
me, laugh heartily at me, pray do. But, good God! my
hair is standing on end, and I seem to be entreating you
to laugh at me in the same sort of frantic despair in
which Franz Moor entreated Daniel to laugh him to
scorn. But to my story.
Except at dinner we, i.e., I and my brothers and sisters,
saw but little of our father all day long. His business no
doubt took up most of his time. After our evening meal,
which, in accordance with an old custom, was served at
seven o’clock, we all went, mother with us, into father’s
room, and took our places around a round table. My
father smoked his pipe, drinking a large glass of beer to
it. Often he told us many wonderful stories, and got so
excited over them that his pipe always went out; I
used then to light it for him with a spill, and this formed
my chief amusement. Often, again, he would give us
picture-books to look at, whilst he sat silent and motionless in his easy-chair, puffing out such dense clouds of smoke that we were all as it were enveloped in
mist.
On such evenings mother was very sad; and
directly it struck nine she said, “Come, children! off to
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E.T.A. Hoffman
bed! Come! The ‘Sand-man’ is come I see.” And I always
did seem to hear something trampling upstairs with slow
heavy steps; that must be the Sand-man. Once in particular I was very much frightened at this dull trampling and knocking; as mother was leading us out of the room I
asked her, “O mamma! but who is this nasty Sand-man
who always sends us away from papa? What does he look
like?” “There is no Sand-man, my dear child,” mother
answered; “when I say the Sand-man is come, I only
mean that you are sleepy and can’t keep your eyes open,
as if somebody had put sand in them.” This answer of
mother’s did not satisfy me; nay, in my childish mind the
thought clearly unfolded itself that mother denied there
was a Sand-man only to prevent us being afraid,— why, I
always heard him come upstairs. Full of curiosity to
learn something more about this Sand-man and what he
had to do with us children, I at length asked the old
woman who acted as my youngest sister’s attendant,
what sort of a man he was— the Sand-man? “Why,
’thanael, darling, don’t you know?” she replied. “Oh!
he’s a wicked man, who comes to little children when
they won’t go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their
eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody; and
he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half-moon
as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest
and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty
little boys’ and girls’ eyes out with them.” After this I
formed in my own mind a horrible picture of the cruel
Sand-man. When anything came blundering upstairs at
night I trembled with fear and dismay; and all that my
mother could get out of me were the stammered words
“The Sand-man! the Sand-man!” whilst the tears
coursed down my cheeks. Then I ran into my bedroom,
and the whole night through tormented myself with the
terrible apparition of the Sand-man. I was quite old
enough to perceive that the old woman’s tale about the
Sand-man and his little ones’ nest in the half-moon
The Sand-man
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Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 16