Note 1. Author’s note.—“No
longer could play at quarter-staff with Ned.”
Note 2. Author’s note.—“Referring
to places and people in England: the Bloody Footstep
sometimes.”
Note 3. In the original the following occurs,
but marked to indicate that it was to be omitted:
“And kissed his hand to her, and laughed feebly;
and that was the last that she or anybody, the last
glimpse they had of Doctor Grimshawe alive.”
Note 4. Author’s notes.—“A
great deal must he made out of the spiders, and their
gloomy, dusky, flaunting tapestry. A web across
the orifice of his inkstand every morning; everywhere,
indeed, except across the snout of his brandy-bottle.—Depict
the Doctor in an old dressing-gown, and a strange
sort of a cap, like a wizard’s.—The
two children are witnesses of many strange experiments
in the study; they see his moods, too.—The
Doctor is supposed to be writing a work on the Natural
History of Spiders. Perhaps he used them as a
blind for his real project, and used to bamboozle
the learned with pretending to read them passages
in which great learning seemed to be elaborately worked
up, crabbed with Greek and Latin, as if the topic drew
into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men thought
and knew; plans to cultivate cobwebs on a large scale.
Sometimes, after overwhelming them with astonishment
in this way, he would burst into one of his laughs.
Schemes to make the world a cobweb-factory, etc.,
etc. Cobwebs in his own brain. Crusty
Hannah such a mixture of persons and races as could
be found only at a seaport. There was a rumor
that the Doctor had murdered a former maid, for having,
with housewifely instinct, swept away the cobwebs;
some said that he had her skeleton in a closet.
Some said that he had strangled a wife with web of
the great spider.”
—“Read the description of Bolton
Hall, the garden, lawn, etc., Aug. 8, ’53.—Bebbington
church and churchyard, Aug. 29, ’53.—The
Doctor is able to love,—able to hate; two
great and rare abilities nowadays.— Introduce
two pine trees, ivy-grown, as at Lowwood Hotel, July
16, ’58.—The family name might be
Redclyffe.—Thatched cottage, June 22, ’55.—Early
introduce the mention of the cognizance of the family,—the
Leopard’s Head, for instance, in the first part
of the romance; the Doctor may have possessed it engraved
as coat of arms in a book.—The Doctor shall
show Ned, perhaps, a drawing or engraving of the Hospital,
with figures of the pensioners in the quadrangle, fitly
dressed; and this picture and the figures shall impress
themselves strongly on his memory.”
The above dates and places refer to passages in the
published “English Note-Books.”
Note 1. Author’s note.—“Compare
it with Spenser’s Cave of Despair. Put
instruments of suicide there.”
