Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 64 No. 396 October 1848

I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that, as I sate down to begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly slipt from my hand, and, leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing into the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening – even for that time of year. And while I was so gazing, I felt something crawling, just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth – What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing – a dark thing – a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went – where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty points in the whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance not to have examined it more closely – not to have ascertained what the creature was. It might have been an earwig – a very large motherly earwig – an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a profound horror of earwigs – I firmly believe that they do get into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless to argue with me upon philosophical grounds. I have a vivid recollection of a story told me by Mrs Primmins – How a lady for many years suffered under the most excruciating headaches; how, as the tombstones say, "physicians were in vain;" how she died; how her head was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs – ma'am – such a nest! – Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring! They sit on their eggs like hens – and the young, as soon as they are born, creep under them for protection – quite touchingly! Imagine such an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum!

But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It might have been one of that genus in the family of Forficulidæ , called Labidoura – monsters whose antennæ have thirty joints! There is a species of this creature in England, but, to the great grief of naturalists, and to the great honour of Providence, very rarely found, infinitely larger than the common earwig or Forficulida auriculana . Could it have been an early hornet? It had certainly a black head, and great feelers. I have a greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high. However, the creature was gone. – Yes, but where? Where had I so rashly thrown it? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown – or into my slippers – or, in short, any where, in the various recesses for earwigs and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford. I satisfy myself at last, as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone in the room – that it is not upon me. I look upon the carpet – the rug – the chair – under the fender. It is non inventus . I barbarously hope it is frizzing behind that great black coal in the grate. I pluck up courage – I prudently remove, to the other end of the room. I take up my pen – I begin my chapter – very nicely, too, I think upon the whole. I am just getting into my subject, when – cr-cr-cr-cr-cr-crawl – crawl – crawl – creep – creep – creep. Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before! Oh, by the Powers! I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having scrutinised its genus before, whether Forficulida or Labidoura . I made a desperate lunge with both hands, something between thrust and cut, ma'am. The beast is gone. Yes, but again where? I say that that where is a very horrible question. Having come twice, in spite of all my precautions – and exactly on the same spot, too – it shows a confirmed disposition to habituate itself to its quarters – to effect a parochial settlement upon me; there is something awful and preternatural in it. I assure you that there is not a part of me that has not gone cr-cr-cr! – that has not crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since; and I just put it to you what sort of a chapter I can make after such a – My good little girl, will you just take the candle, and look carefully under the table? – that's a dear! Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and inclined to be corpulent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an acquaintance with the Phœnician language, are aware that Belzebub, examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less than Baal-zebub – "the Jupiter-Fly" – an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes, more or less. Wherefore, as Mr Payne Knight, in his Inquiry into Symbolical Languages , hath observed – the Egyptian priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbour any of the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, by the souls of the Ptolemies! I would, – and I will, too. Ring the bell, my little dear! John, – my – my cigar-box! There is not a cr in the world that can abide the fumes of the Havannah! Pshaw, sir, I am not the only man who lets his first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter, in – Pff – pff – pff – !

Every thing in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over the nape of one's neck! Grim unknown, I shall make of thee – a simile!

I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and ladylike horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring,) and also of early hornets, and indeed of all unknown things of the insect tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers or forceps, just by your ear – I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find it difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and innocent stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your nerves – and cr'd – cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And the worst is, that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel obliged to look pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor always be shaking your flounces, and looking into a dark corner of your apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects. One has a secret care – an abstraction – a something between the memory and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr, which one has never dared to analyse. So I sate by my mother, trying to smile and talk as in the old time, – but longing to move about and look around, and escape to my own solitude, and take the clothes off my mind, and see what it was that had so troubled and terrified me – for trouble and terror were upon me. And my mother, who was always (heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all that concerned her darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that evening. She made me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how I had spent my time, – and Fanny Trevanion, (whom she had seen, by the way, three or four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the world) – oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!

And all this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over my mother's chair, and my hand in hers – I answered my mother's questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at volubility, when, at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my heart, I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine. Fixed, as they had been – when, and none knew why, I pined and languished, and my father said "he must go to school." Fixed, with quiet watchful tenderness. Ah no! – his thought had not been on the great work – he had been deep in the pages of that less worthy one for which he had yet more an author's paternal care. I met those eyes, and yearned to throw myself on his heart – and tell him all. Tell him what? Ma'am, I no more knew what to tell him, than I know what that black thing was which has so worried me all this blessed evening!