udal days,--several suits of which
Curzon told me he had tried to wear on some occasion, but couldn't; most
were too small for him, though by no means a tall man; and those which
he could struggle into were too heavy. Then there was the interminable
companion gallery of full-length portraits, some of whom, probably the
wicked ancestors, _walked_! and I'm sure that when I slept in a
tapestried chamber under that gallery, I did hear footsteps--could it
be, horrible fancy! in procession? When I told Curzon this, he answered
that he had often heard them himself, from boyhood, but that familiarity
bred contempt: he said also, with a twinkle in his eye, that there _was_
a room which was usually set apart for new-married couples, as such
would probably not be so much startled as lonely maids and bachelors
might be, at the whispered conversations across the bed! Moreover, evil
wings (possibly owls or bats, looking after glow-worm candles)
occasionally flapped at the casements. But Curzon was a humorist as well
as inventive. Perhaps one secret as to ghosts at Parham lay in the fact
that in the old thick walls were concealed staircases and "priests'
chambers," which possibly might be of use, even now, to vagrant lovers
(like Mr. Pickwick at Ipswich), or perhaps sleep-walkers,--or
burglarious, thieves. Anyhow, I liked to lock my bedroom door there,--as
indeed I do generally elsewhere, if lock and key are in good agreement;
for once I couldn't get out without the surgical operation of a
carpenter, having too securely locked myself in. This shall not happen
twice, if I can help it. Curzon's great glory, however, was his library,
full of rarities: he showed me, amongst other MSS., his unique purple
parchments, with gold letter types, being (if I remember rightly)
Constantine's own copy of the New Testament; and, to pass by other
curios, some tiny Elzevirs uncut: imagine his horror when I volunteered
to cut these open for him!--their chief and priceless wonder being that
no eye has ever seen, nor ever can see, the insides of those virgin
pages! I know there is such a rabies as bibliomania,--and I have myself,
at Albury, a "breeches" Bible, which belonged to a maternal ancestor, a
Faulkner, of course valued beyond its worth as a readable volume; and I
might name many other instances; but to esteem a book chiefly because it
has never been cut open, did strike my ignorance as an abnormal fatuity.
Curzon was one of our Aristotelians, as bef