Nightmare Abbey quotes

This gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, and much troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are commonly called “blue devils.”

He had been deceived in an early friendship: he had been crossed in love; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady, who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment.

Her vanity was gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very lively, establishment; but all the springs of her sympathies were frozen. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the participation of affection, was wanting.

for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does it surpass all others in discord, when stretched into unnatural shrillness by anger and impatience.

Mr. Glowry used to say that his house was no better than a spacious kennel, for everyone in it led the life of a dog.

Disappointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner; and this his parsimonious lady seldom suffered him to enjoy:

At the house of Mr. Hilary, Scythrop first saw the beautiful Miss Emily Girouette.

He fell in love; which is nothing new. He was favourably received; which is nothing strange.

Mr. Glowry and Mr. Girouette had a meeting on the occasion, and quarrelled about the terms of the bargain; which is neither new nor strange. The lovers were torn asunder, weeping and vowing everlasting constancy;

It is only after marriage that they show their true qualities, as I know by bitter experience.

Marriage is, therefore, a lottery, and the less choice and selection a man bestows on his ticket the better

; for, if he has incurred considerable pains and expense to obtain a lucky number, and his lucky number proves a blank, he experiences not a simple, but a complicated disappointment;

Glowry was his very fine sense of the grim and the tearful. No one could relate a dismal story with so many minutiae of supererogatory wretchedness. No one could call up a “raw-head and bloody-bones” with so many adjuncts and circumstances of ghastliness.

Mystery was his mental element. He lived in the midst of that visionary world in which nothing is but what is not.

He dreamed with his eyes open, and saw ghosts dancing round him at noontide.

He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, from the face of the earth.

Because all this was not done, he deduced that nothing was done; and from this deduction, according to his system of logic, he drew a conclusion that worse than nothing was done

; that the overthrow of the feudal fortresses of tyranny and superstition was the greatest calamity that had ever befallen mankind;

Mr. Glowry returned from London with the loss of his lawsuit.

Justice was with him, but the law was against him.

He found Scythrop in a mood most sympathetically tragic; and they vied with each other in enlivening their cups by lamenting the depravity of this degenerate age, and occasionally interspersing divers grim jokes about graves, worms, and epitaphs. Mr.

Mr. and Mrs. Hilary brought with them an orphan niece, a daughter of Mr. Glowry’s youngest sister, who had made a runaway love-match with an Irish officer.

The lady’s fortune disappeared in the first year: love, by a natural consequence, disappeared in the second: the Irishman himself, by a still more natural consequence, disappeared in the third.

Mr. Glowry had allowed his sister an annuity, and she had lived in retirement with her only daughter, whom, at her death, which had recently happened, she commended to the care of Mrs. Hilary.

and, deeming it expedient to soothe him, took one of his hands in hers, placed the other hand on his shoulder, looked up in his face with a winning seriousness, and said, in the tenderest possible tone, “What would you have, Scythrop?”

Scythrop was in heaven again.

“What would I have? What but you, Marionetta? You, for the companion of my studies, the partner of my thoughts, the auxiliary of my great designs for the emancipation of mankind.”

“Do as Rosalia does with Carlos, divine Marionetta.

Let us each open a vein in the other’s arm, mix our blood in a bowl, and drink it as a sacrament of love.

Then we shall see visions of transcendental illumination, and soar on the wings of ideas into the space of pure intelligence.”

“And what, sir, is love to a windmill? Not grist, I am certain: besides, sir, I have made a choice for you.

I have made a choice for you, Scythrop. Beauty, genius, accomplishments, and a great fortune into the bargain.

Such a lovely, serious creature, in a fine state of high dissatisfaction with the world, and everything in it. Such a delightful surprise I had prepared for you. Sir, I have pledged my honour to the contract—the honour of the Glowries of Nightmare Abbey:

who, tripping across the room, peeped into his book, and said to him, “I see you are in the middle of Purgatory.”

“I am in the middle of hell,” said Scythrop furiously.

“Are you?” said she; “then come across the room, and I will sing you the finale of Don Giovanni.”

You will confer on me an inexpressible obligation. I am all impatience to learn it.

Sit with your back to the lady and read Dante; only be sure to begin in the middle, and turn over three or four pages at once⁠—backwards as well as forwards, and she will immediately perceive that you are desperately in love with her⁠—desperately.

The Honourable Mr. Listless sitting between Scythrop and Marionetta, and fixing all his attention on the beautiful speaker, did not observe Scythrop, who was doing as she described.

… imaginary quantity in algebra, and commencing its course with taking for granted some two assertions which cannot be proved, from the union of these two assumed truths produces a third assumption, and so on in infinite series, to the unspeakable benefit of the human intellect.

The beauty of this process is, that at every step it strikes out into two branches, in a compound ratio of ramification; so that you are perfectly sure of losing your way, and keeping your mind in perfect health

, by the perpetual exercise of an interminable quest; and for these reasons I have christened my eldest son Emanuel Kant Flosky.

I should be sorry if you could;

I pity the man who can see the connection of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connection of whose ideas any other person can see.

Sir, the great evil is, that there is too much commonplace light in our moral and political literature; and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm.

for Claydyke, the nearest village, was ten miles distant; and what female would come ten miles across the fens, for no purpose but to hover over the surf under the walls of Nightmare Abbey? Might it not be a mermaid?

It was possibly a mermaid. It was probably a mermaid. It was very probably a mermaid. Nay, what else could it be but a mermaid? It certainly was a mermaid.

Mr. Asterias stole out of the library on tiptoe, with his finger on his lips, having beckoned Aquarius to follow him.

Non, monsieur: de cup too little. De fen be very unwholesome, and I drink-a-de ponch vid Raven de butler, to keep out de bad air.

Fatout! I insist on your being sober.

Oui, monsieur; I vil be as sober as de révérendissime père Jean. I should be ver glad of de merry maid; but de butler be de odd fish, and he swim in de bowl de ponch. Ah! ah!

Asterias, to inquire into the cui bono of all the pains and expense you have incurred to discover a mermaid? The cui bono, sir, is the question I always take the liberty to ask when I see anyone taking much trouble for any object.

I am myself a sort of Signor Pococurante, and should like to know if there be anything better or pleasanter, than the state of existing and doing nothing?

I have made many voyages, Mr. Listless, to remote and barren shores: I have travelled over desert and inhospitable lands: I have defied danger—I have endured fatigue—I have submitted to privation.

But is there not in such compositions a kind of unconscious self-detection, which seems to carry their own antidote with them?

For surely no one who cordially and truly either hates or despises the world will publish a volume every three months to say so.

There is a secret in all this, which I will elucidate with a dusky remark. According to Berkeley, the esse of things is percipi. They exist as they are perceived.

“It is the mind that maketh well or ill.” The elements of pleasure and pain are everywhere. The degree of happiness that any circumstances or objects can confer on us depends on the mental disposition with which we approach them.

If you consider what is meant by the common phrases, a happy disposition and a discontented temper, you will perceive that the truth for which I am contending is universally admitted.

Mr. Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionally trespassing within the limits of common sense.

If you consider what is meant by the common phrases, a happy disposition and a discontented temper, you will perceive that the truth for which I am contending is universally admitted.

Mr. Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionally trespassing within the limits of common sense.

It is very true; a happy disposition finds materials of enjoyment everywhere.

In like manner, these cankers of society complain of human nature and society, when they have wilfully debarred themselves from all the good they contain, and done their utmost to blight their own happiness and that of all around them.

Misanthropy is sometimes the product of disappointed benevolence; but it is more frequently the offspring of overweening and mortified vanity, quarrelling with the world for not being better treated than it deserves.

To Marionetta. These remarks are rather uncharitable. There is great good in human nature, but it is at present ill-conditioned. Ardent spirits cannot but be dissatisfied with things as they are;

A happy disposition derives pleasure from both, a discontented temper from neither, but is always busy in detecting deficiencies, and feeding dissatisfaction with comparisons.

The one gathers all the flowers, the other all the nettles, in its path.

The one has the faculty of enjoying everything, the other of enjoying nothing. The one realises all the pleasure of the present good;

I must apologise for intruding on you, Mr. Flosky; but the interest which I—you—take in my cousin Scythrop—

Pardon me, Miss O’Carroll; I do not take any interest in any person or thing on the face of the earth; which sentiment, if you analyse it, you will find to be the quintessence of the most refined philanthropy.

I will take it for granted that it is so, Mr. Flosky; I am not conversant with metaphysical subtleties, but—

It is impossible, my dear Miss O’Carroll.

I never gave a plain answer to a question in my life.

Do you, or do you not, know what is the matter with my cousin?

poor Scythrop growing every moment more soft and submissive—till, at length, he threw himself at her feet, and declared that no competition of beauty, however dazzling, genius, however transcendent, talents, however cultivated, or philosophy, however enlightened, should ever make him renounce his divine Marionetta.

“Competition!” thought Marionetta, and suddenly, with an air of the most freezing indifference, she said, “You are perfectly at liberty, sir, to do as you please; I beg you will follow your own plans, without any reference to me.”

Scythrop was confounded. What was become of all her passion and her tears? Still kneeling, he kissed her hand with rueful timidity, and said, in most pathetic accents, “Do you not love me, Marionetta?”

“Whims, brother Hilary,” said Mr. Glowry; “some little foolish love quarrel, nothing more. Whims, freaks, April showers. They will be blown over by tomorrow.”

“If not,” said Mr. Hilary, “these April showers have made us April fools.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Glowry, “you are a happy man, and in all your afflictions you can console yourself with a joke, let it be ever so bad, provided you crack it yourself.

I shall hold all difficulties light, all sacrifices cheap, all obstacles gossamer. But for love so total, I shall claim a return as absolute. I will have no rival: whether more or less favoured will be of little moment.

I will be neither first nor second⁠—I will be alone.

The heart which I shall possess I will possess entirely, or entirely renounce.”

if she found that her coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either was, or pretended to be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind, and raise him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him down.

Thus, when his love was flowing, hers was ebbing: when his was ebbing, hers was flowing.

Now and then there were moments of level tide, when reciprocal affection seemed to promise imperturbable harmony;

We see children perishing in manufactories, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves.

They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbut.

The false knave, sir, is my honest friend; therefore, I beseech you, let him be countenanced. God forbid but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request.

What is it, and why? How, where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing?

We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one.

We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in the workhouse, where they saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, where they saw none. We see paper, where they saw gold.

There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind’s idea.

Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind.

Confusion, thrice confounded, is the portion of him who rests even for an instant on that most brittle of reeds—the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict or to endure.

But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is not responsible; and, in the common name of humanity, I protest against these false and mischievous ravings.

To rail against humanity for not being abstract perfection, and against human love for not realising all the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail at the summer for not being all sunshine, and at the rose for not being always in bloom.

Human love! Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the Athenians did their unknown God:

How can we be cheerful in the midst of disappointment and despair?

Let us all be unhappy together.

Let us sing a catch.

When hope, love, life itself, are only Dust—spectral memories—dead and cold— The unfed fire burns bright and lonely, Like that undying lamp of old: And by that drear illumination, Till time its clay-built home has rent, Thought broods on feeling’s desolation—

The soul is its own monument.

Admirable. Let us all be unhappy together.

“Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my nerves,

I am afraid it would be too much for me.

There—loosen the lace of my stays a little, for really this plebeian practice of eating—Not too loose—consider my shape. That will do. And I desire that you bring me no more stories of ghosts;

Really, that is very alarming!

Sunt geminoe somni portoe. There are two gates through which ghosts find their way to the upper air: fraud and self-delusion.

In the latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visus, an ocular spectrum, an idea with the force of a sensation. I have seen many ghosts myself. I dare say there are few in this company who have not seen a ghost.

We have such high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism to disbelieve them.

Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did not wait for an answer.

Because Job was too frightened to give one.

We have such high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did not wait for an answer.

Because Job was too frightened to give one.

Spectres appeared to the Egyptians during the darkness with which Moses covered Egypt. The witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel. Moses and Elias appeared on Mount Tabor.

Pausanias relates, that the neighing of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon: that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered severely for their curiosity; but those who heard them by accident passed with impunity.

I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where anyone but a ghost would look for me.

I had not been into it for three months, and was going to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing gown, sitting in my armchair, and reading my Jeremy Taylor.

By no means, sir. You reflect upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly my friend Mr. Sackbut, are famous for our purity. No, sir, genuine untangible ghosts.

I live in a world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment.

Mr. Flosky fixed his eyes on a door at the farther end of the library. The company looked in the same direction.

Mr. Flosky, familiar as he was with ghosts, was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mrs. Hilary and Marionetta followed, screaming.

The Honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first off the sofa and then under it.

The Reverend Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipitation, that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ear of Mr. Toobad. Mr.

He rose, sat down on the other side, and took her other hand. She snatched it away, and turned from him again. Scythrop continued entreating Mr. Glowry to leave them alone; but the old gentleman was obstinate, and would not go.

“I suppose, after all,” said Mr. Glowry maliciously, “it is only a phenomenon in acoustics, and this young lady is a reflection of sound from concave surfaces.”

Some one tapped at the door: Mr. Glowry opened it, and Mr. Hilary entered. He had been seeking Mr. Glowry, and had traced him to Scythrop’s tower. He stood a few moments in silent surprise, and then addressed himself to Mr. Glowry for an explanation.

Marionetta opened her eyes and fixed them on Celinda; Celinda in return fixed hers on Marionetta. They were at remote points of the apartment.

Scythrop was equidistant from both of them, central and motionless, like Muhammad’s coffin.

“Mr. Glowry,” said Mr. Toobad, “can you tell by what means my daughter came here?”

“Shall I bring your dinner here?”

“A pint of port and a pistol.”

“And a pint of port. I will make my exit like Werther. Go. Stay. Did Miss O’Carroll say anything?”

“Yes; and the dinner is getting cold.

There is a time for everything under the sun. You may as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards.

”