Mrs. Henry Wood was one of a notable cadre of proficient authors of all manner of fiction, much of which appeared serially in the numerous periodicals of the Victorian period. Ellen Wood (formerly Price) was born in Worcestershire in 1815 and is principally remembered as the author of ‘East Lynne’—one of the most popular sensation novels of the mid-19th century. She wrote over 30 novels as well as many shorter works of mystery, crime and suspense. Her supernatural fiction has endured by virtue of its lasting quality and has been acclaimed by aficionados and critics alike, including the not lightly given approbation of M. R. James. The Victorian public’s appetite for stories of the weird and ghostly was insatiable and huge amounts of it was published. This resulted in a golden age for the genre. Almost every popular fiction writer of the period tried their hand at ghostly or terrifying stories, including some of the most notable authors of the time such as Dickens, R. L. Stevenson, Kipling and Conan Doyle. Some became well known and well regarded ‘specialists’ in the ghostly tale; foremost among these were women writers who had a particular talent for supernatural themes. Among the first rank of these was Mrs Henry Wood and this substantial Leonaur three volume collection is probably the first comprehensive collection of her other worldly fiction to be published. In volume one readers will discover ‘Featherston’s Story,’ ‘A Mystery,’ ‘Gina Montani’ and ten more stories of the strange and unusual.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.
“Our family has a tale attaching to it,” he went on, twirling the clover about with his lips.
“Yours has!—Oh I know,” I thoughtlessly added, as the recollection of what Webster had once said flashed up. “The head of your family always dies young.”
“That’s fact, Johnny: not superstition. Why it should be so, I don’t know, but for the past hundred years not one of the reigning Temples has lived to be much past thirty. The collateral branches, brothers and sisters, and that, live long enough: but not the possessor of Templemore.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“Well, amidst the people that enrol a ghost in their family archives, we boast of one. When any of the Temples are going to die, the laic runs that they are called.”
“Called!”
“Called by the head of the family, who has last departed. You are staring, Johnny,” he added with a half smile, biting the clover to bits: “you don’t understand, I suppose.”
“Not quite.”
“Well, I’ll make it plain. My father died several years ago: the superstition rife amid us is, that when any of us, his children, come to die, he will first of all appear to and beckon us.”
“But you don’t believe it, Temple!”
“Perhaps, in a case such as this, no one absolutely believes or disbelieves,” he returned. “You see, until the warning comes to our own individual selves, we can’t speak to it personally: no one, I believe man or woman, gives another unlimited credit for seeing an apparition: and after it has come, you know, we don’t live to assert our belief in it.”
Was he joking? I thought and said so.
“No I am not,” said Fred. “We Temples are all, so to say, brought up in the superstition, because we hear of it when we are young. You can’t shut people’s mouths, servants’ and dependents’ and neighbours’; and children always get hold of exactly what they ought not to.”
“Has the warning ever come in your time?”
“Yes; twice. Said to have come, at least. A day or two before my father died he had been out shooting partridges. It was the 4th of September. Coming home at dusk with the head-keeper, they we passing through a coppice, talking of the birds, when my father suddenly stopped, and put his hand upon the keeper’s arm. ‘Who’s that Patterson?’ said he. Patterson looked in the direction that his masters eyes had taken, but could see nothing at all but the tree. ‘Where, sir?’ he asked: ‘what is it?’ There was no answer, and upon looking at his master he saw that his eyes had a wild stare in them and his face had turned ghastly. Patterson has said many a time since that he felt as queer as could be, and did not like to speak again. ‘He’s gone,’ said my father in another minute, loosing hold off the man’s arm: ‘Patterson, that was my father standing there, he looked at me, and had his right arm lifted; I thought he beckoned with it.’
“Patterson, knowing of the superstition, felt worse at this: he says came into his mind with the words. But he thought—and said—that some intruder might have been pushing himself into the coppice; and he beat about a bit, but could see no one. Of course, he did not speak of the incident: he knew his place better than that: and the next morning the man thought his master seemed to have forgotten all about it, for he was in high spirits, full of some friends who were coming that day to stay at Templemore, and giving orders for a grand day’s shooting for the following one. Patterson got all things in readiness, and the party, a large one, went out early. Before ten o’clock had struck, Johnny, my father was brought home with his death-wound.”
“How dreadful!”
“I saw them bring him in. I was a little fellow of five, and I shall never forget the bustle and the grief. I shall never forget my mother s cries. She was in weak health: the baby was not a month old. Johnny, if I ever want to be sobered I think of that day.”
“Was your father dead?”
“No; but it was known that he could not live. Someone of them, in getting through a hedge, had let his gun go off and the charge entered my father’s body. He was quite sensible until he died; which was about twelve hours after he was shot; and he disclosed the fact of having seen, or thought he had seen, his father on the previous evening in the coppice. Patterson spoke of it afterwards, and there was a good deal of talk about it in the neighbourhood.”
It almost seemed to me that I could see that past day, its confusion, and its troubles. Temple broke the silence.
“Since then it has been said that my father has appeared to give this warning in his turn. My little sister—the one who was the baby when he died—had scarlet fever when she was about eight years old. You must know, Johnny, that just before my father’s death he had caused his portrait to be painted, life size. It was done by only a local artist, but the likeness was wonderful: it was himself on canvas. They painted him standing up, a roll of paper in his hand. Everybody agreed that it was a living likeness; and many a friend, entering the drawing-room where it was hung, has started back with an unpleasant sensation, believing for the moment that they saw himself.
your wishlist 
your account
Click on image to enlarge
Mouse over the image to zoom in
