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Authors: Avram Davidson

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On seeing her, he freely confesses, he had no hopes other than for an amorous adventure, and was encouraged by her lack of shyness. He spoke to her in Turkish, but she shook her head. She understood Greek, however, though her accent was strange to him, and she said that her name was Diana. She offered him a drink from her cup, he accepted, and they fell into conversation.
“Although she gave no Details about her Home, and I pressed her for none. I understood that she was without present Family and was in what we should call Reduced Circumstances. For she spoke of Times past, when she had many Maid Servants and much Wealth, and the tears stood in her Eyes. I took her hand and she offered no objections.”
The next lines are written in ink of a different color, as if he had put off writing until another time. Then,
“In short, Brother, I pursued the Way usual to me in those Days, and although she gave me her Lips, I was not content to stop, but was emboldened to thrust my Hand into her Bodice … and thus perceived in very short order that she was not
a Human Female but an Unnatural Monstrosity. I firmly believe, and was encouraged in Belief by a worthy Divine of the Eastern Church to whom I revealed the Matter, that this Creature who called herself Diana had no Natural Existence, but was a Daemon, called forth, I first thought, by the Devil himself … .
“I am now convinced that she was a very Type of Lust, sent to test or prove me. That is, to horrify me in that same Sin in which I had so long wallowed, and to turn those Features, in which I had intended to take illicit Delight, into a Terror and Revulsion. I ran, I am not ashamed to own it, until I fell bleeding and exhausted at the Forge, and was taken by a Fever of which I am long recovering …”
According to the standards of his time there was only one thing for him to do under the circumstances, and he did it. He got religion. There had lately been established in Jerusalem an office of the British and Overseas Society for the Circulation of Uncorrupted Anglican Versions of the Scriptures; Henry Taylor became a colporteur, or agent, of this Society, and was sent among the native Christians of Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, and Persia.
He never knew, because he died before it became known, that the Turkish village where he had his shocking experience was near the site of the ancient city of Ephesus. Its famous Temple of Diana was one of the Seven Wonders of the World and was served by hundreds of priestesses and visited by pilgrims in throngs. But that was before the Apostle Paul came that way and
“Many of those which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men.
” But not every one in Ephesus was so quickly convinced.
A certain
“Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana … called together the workmen of like occupation, and said … that not alone in Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger … but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full
of wrath, and cried out saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion … .”
“I am also filled with confusion,” Don said. “First we hear about this Limey, Taylor: he tries to grab a feel and gets the screaming meemies. All of a sudden—a Bible class.”
Jim clicked his tongue. “That
word
—it’s slipped my mind again Poly—? Ploy—?”
“Patience,” Fred pleaded. “Why aren’t you more patient?”
The confusion in Ephesus [Fred said] was finally ended by a city official who
“appeased”
the mob by asking,
“What man is there that knoweth not now that the City of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter? … Ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly.”
Long after Henry Taylor’s time, the archeologists uncovered the temple site. Among the many images they found was one which may perhaps be that same one
“which fell down from Jupiter.”
It is carven from black meteoric stone, and was obviously intended for reverence in fertility rituals, for the goddess is naked to the waist, and has, not two breasts, but a multitude, a profusion of them, clustering over the front of the upper torso …
“Well, you’re not going to make too much out of this story, are you?” Jim asked. “Obviously this condition was hereditary in that district, and your pal, H. Taylor, just happened to meet up with a woman who had it, as well as the name Diana.”
“It is certainly a curious coincidence, if nothing more,” said Fred.
Don wanted to know what finally became of Henry Taylor. “He convert any of the natives?”
“No. They converted him. He became a priest.”
“You mean,
he gave up women?”
“Oh, no: Celibacy is not incumbent upon priests of the Eastern Church. He married.”
“But not one of those babes from the Greater Ephesus area, I’ll bet,” Don said.
Jim observed, musingly, “It’s too bad old Alexander Graham Bell didn’t know about this. He needn’t have bothered with sheep. Of course, it
takes
longer with people—”
Fred pointed out that Dr. Bell had been an old man at the time.
“He could have set up a foundation. I would have been
glad
to carry on the great work. It wouldn’t frighten
me,
like it did Taylor … . Say, you wouldn’t know, approximately, how
many
this Diana had—?”
“It must sure have taken a lot out of Taylor, all right,” Don said. “I bet he was never much good at anything afterwards.”
Fred took one last swallow of his last drink. The jug and bottle, he observed, were empty. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “In the last letter he wrote to his brother before the latter’s death, he says:
‘My dear Wife has observed my sixty-fifth Birthday by presenting me with my Fifth Son and ninth Child … I preach Sunday next on the Verse, “His Leaf Also Shall not Wither” (Psalms).’”
This story is part of Davidson’s long sequence of writings exploring the notion of the survival of mythical beings. Further examples include “The Case of the Mother-in-Law of Pearl,” “Something Rich and Strange,” and the essays on mermaids, unicorns, and werewolves in
Adventures in Unhistory.
There are also echoes of the club story as practiced by Buchan in
The Runagates Club
or Dunsany in the Jorkens stories. Its quasi-epistolary form—letters from an expatriate Englishman to his brother—evokes that most literary of outcasts, the remittance man, whose activities past and present bar him from his native soil. The story’s resolution stems from Davidson’s abiding interest in the many obscure sects of Eastern Christianity, so that there are strands linking “Great Is Diana” to the magisterial essay “Postscript on Prester John,” also in
Adventures in Unhistory.
—
Henry Wessells
Samuel came down with red eyes, seeking coffee and a biscuit. William was not there. Dorothy was, looking pale, and twining her hands together. “Dorothy,” he said, “coffee, please, and a biscuit.” She looked very pale, uttered a stifled exclamation, and twisted her hands together. After a moment he said again, “If you please, Dorothy, I desire you will direct the servant to bring me coffee and a biscuit.”
“Oh God! Samuel!” she cried. “How can you sit there talking of coffee and a biscuit—” “Because it is far too early in the day to talk of butcher’s meat,” he said. She uttered a stifled shriek and tugged at the opposite ends of her cambric handkerchief. “—and butcher’s meat, when—” “No no, far too early for that,” he muttered; “coffee and a biscuit.”
“—when it must be evident to you by my appearance that I am laboring under the greatest conceivable strain to which a passionate and virtuous woman can possibly be subject, particularly when her sentiments are of a loyal and patriotical nature?”
“Java, preferably,” he said. “But mocha will do tolerably enough. I’ve no great objection to mocha. Dorothy, for pity’s sake take pity
on me and ring for the servant to bring me a cup of—”
Dorothy uttered a stifled scream. “Oh God, Samuel, do you wish to drive me mad?” she exclaimed. She gave the bell-pull a tug, and staggered.
“Less of that French brandy, Miss W., is my advice to you,” he said.
“It is not the minute quantity of French brandy, which I take purely upon the advice of my medical man, who pronounces it a sovereign alexipharmacal against the vapours, it is that Mr. Fitzgeorge has again offered to place me in an establishment which—”
In came Jenny the servantgirl, dropping a courtesy. Samuel leered at her behind a copy of the
Unitarian Intelligencer.
“Jenniver, a cup of coffee—Java if we have it—and a biscuit, for Mr. Samuel.”
“Yesmum,” said the girl. “Almond, caraway seed, currant, sugar, or plain?”
“Provoking girl!” exclaimed Dorothy; “leave the room at once and bring a cup of coffee, do you hear, and a biscuit of any description. Go! They all want to kill me,” she said, in a low, strained voice. William came in, looking pale and spiritual.
“I don’t want to kill you, Doll,” said Samuel. “You’ve got the vapours again. Tell me all about your fat friend, do.”
Dorothy pressed her hand to her bosom. “I have often desired you not to refer to Mr. Fitzgeorge by that oleaginous descriptive,” she said. “You know that he assures me he holds a very high though confidential position in His Majesty’s Government. William! Why are your knees green again?”
William sighed, staggered suddenly, sat down suddenly, looked dreamily at his knees.
“’Tis grass! Of all substances exceedingly difficult to a
degree
to remove from the knees of linen unmentionables, William, grass is the—”
“It was the loveliest daffodil, dearest Dorothy,” William said.
Samuel sniggered. “Was
that
her name?” he enquired. “No wonder you look so weak.”
William gazed at him, ethereally. “I do. I do? Ah, you see, you observe it also, Samuel. There is something about flowers which—Ah, Jenniver, bless you, gel, I needed that coffee and that biscuit.” His fingers touched her, lightly. She jumped and gave a small scream, “La Mr. Wulliam sir!”
Samuel watched with open mouth and working throat as William, his eyes raised politely, drank the coffee. Samuel turned to Jenniver, but she, with a flounce and a simper, had already left the room, after pausing at the door to smile at William, who gave a gentle and benevolent ogle.
Dorothy said, “I have informed Mr. Fitzgeorge that although I have not been unmindful of his regard, whilst his dear Papa is unable to give consent to his son’s offering marriage, all other considerations, such as a carriage, a cottage, a curricle—
“Samuel! Samuel, where are you going, Samuel, with that horrid look upon your face? Samuel, Samuel, not that dreadful substance in the vile vial again?”
But Samuel was already halfway up the stairs. Behind him he heard William say, “Dearest Dorothy, it is merely med’cine, Samuel’s nerves are not strong … Eh? What is that? My knees? Ah,’twas the loveliest flower, so soft, so swee—” And then the bed-sitting-room door closed.
Samuel half-groaned, half-sighed his relief, opened the huge Bible on his table to the Apocrypha, and, bending his head, from in between The Book of Tobit and The Song of the Three Children, took out a small bottle containing a ruby tincture of which he promptly filled a wineglassful, and tossed it down with a glottal sound of gratification. Then he seated himself and reached very slowly for some sheets of blank papers and the bottle of ink. He stayed thus for quite some time whilst an expression of serenity and of knowing slowly spread across his face, totally replacing the look of confusion and vexation which had been there before. And, so, at last, with an air of dreamy beatitude, he trimmed a fresh point to the quill and dipped it and wrote and wrote and he wrote and—
“I see that it is quite useless for me to endeavor to act the part
of a true friend, Samuel,” the voice of Dorothy rang in his ears. He wrote on. He wrote on. “Nay, Samuel, have the modicum of common gentility which would oblige you to give ear even to the address of a servant, and set aside your pen for one mere moment, Samuel: There is a person to see you.”
Presently he became aware that she had left and that a strange face was looking at him. Slowly his hand faltered. He tried to go on with his writing, but the face grew larger and redder and sterner and then began speaking to him and although he urged it to go away, go away it would not. “The Doge of Venice?” he asked, hissingly. “The Great Cham? The Old Man of the Mountains?”
Ssssss.
“The Negusss of—”
“None of them coves,” the red face said. “Samivel ‘Uggins, h’of’Is Majesty’s Hexcise Sarvice, sir. Sarvint, sir. Hin regards now, to that ‘ere little flagon or as yer might call it h’a flask sir, h’of hopium, sir, now, no doubt you ‘as the recee
p
t to show h’as ‘ow the proper hexcise tax as been paid h’on it?”
Numbly, dumbly, Samuel shook his head.
The gager nodded. “Just has I thort. One a them gents has thinks yer habove the Lore, does yer? Well, we knows ‘ow to’andle the likes of you, come along now and no strugglin’, see, hor it’s the mace—” Then his expression changed as he saw Samuel’s eyes rolling about like those of some cornered beast; instead of brutal, became sly. “Hunless, h’of course, now, you’appens to want to settle hout of court; say, two guineas, to cover hexcise tax, fines, costs, h’and—”
A furious voice shouted, “What’s this? What’s
this?”
It was Dorothy’s fat friend again. Mr. Huggins’ red face went white and he fell to his knees. “Ho Gord, hit’s the Prince!” he cried.
Mr. Fitzgeorge’s fat fist, covered in greasy hand-lotion and bright with jeweled rings, came down upon the head of the terrified gager with a thump. “Get out of this, never come back, don’t breathe a word, or it’s Botany Bay!” Thump, thump, thump, he thumped the revenuer out the door; turned and gave Samuel a look and a wink and placed his index finger alongside his nose, and was gone.
In came William. In came Dorothy. “Was it about the French brandy?” asked Dorothy.
William said, “Ah, you’ve been writing again, Samuel. Oh, good. Excellent. Let me see.” Samuel’s eyes were very red. His throat and mouth dreadfully dry. He opened his lips and he croaked his want. “Not bad,” said William indulgently.
Dorothy said, “What, Samuel?
Coffee? Again?
No wonder your eyes are red!”
William said, “Not bad.
For he hath fed on honeydew, and drunk the milk of paradise
. Rather a nice image, and not at all bad for a closing line.”
Samuel’s head jerked up. “Closing line? Nonsense? What do you mean? There are at least thirty more verses!” Sheet after sheet of paper he scattered and scanned; but all were blank. “I had them all in my head,” he muttered, stunned. “In my mind …” But his head ached, and his mind was as blank as the paper.
Dorothy said, “You must endeavor to lead a more regular life, Samuel, and avoid low associates. What did that vulgar person from the Porlock Excise Station want with you?”
Samuel uttered a wail. He
had
to regain his lost images. He snatched for the vial of laudanum. But there was only a bottle-shaped dent in the pages of the Apocrypha to show where it had been. “My poem!” he screamed. “My beautiful poem! Gone! Everything gone! I’ll never get it back, never! That bloody nark! He’s busted my stash!”
Dorothy shrieked, pressed her hands to her ears. But William, tolerant, indulgent, merely looked at him benignly. “Sometimes you use very curious expressions, Samuel,” he said.
The composition of Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” reduced to a fragment through the inopportune arrival of “a person on business from Porlock,” is one of the central episodes of the Romantic period
in English literature. Davidson here offers a compact, briskly orchestrated explanation that accords with Coleridge’s opium use. Davidson wrote this story late in his career and adopted narrative structures quite different from those he used fifteen or twenty years earlier. The black humor of “Traveller from an Antique Land” yields to a lighter tone in this piece full of incidents and asides; there are memorable sketches of the differing characters of William Words-worth and his sister Dorothy. “Kubla Khan” was written in late 1797 or early 1798, but not published until 1816, “at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity,” namely, Lord Byron.
—
Henry Wessells

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