Daily Kennebec Journal

Tales and Sketches.

By Heaphey's Ghost-

The following story Charles Dickens declared to be the most wonderful tale of which he had ever heard. The great novelist left among his papers his own version which has been published in London. The following narrative is by a gentleman now living in New York who knew Mr. Heaphey and his family well; it was printed on Sunday last in the New York World.

"Mr. Thomas Heaphey was a distinguished and very accomplished man, an artist by inheritance as well as by training. He was one of the best of the many water-color painters to whom England owes her pre-eminence in that department of art, and was for some time President of the Royal Society of Water Color Painters, as I think his father, who died nearly fifty years ago, had been before him. It was from his sister, whom I knew very well and of whose death at an advanced age I have just received the news, that I heard the story originally. This lady, Mrs. Elizabeth Murray, was well known in New York some years ago. She resided here for some time, her husband, Henry John Murray, being then British Consul at Portland, in Maine. He was afterwards transferred to a post in South America. He was a brother, by the way, of Grenville Murray, of whom you must have heard, and who died only a year or two ago after a strange and troubled career as a diplomatist first and then as a journalist of rare vigor and originality.

"Mrs. Murray was a woman of considerable ability and a very clever artist. She wrote an entertaining and valuable book on the Canary Islands, where her husband was Consul for a number of years. Here is the book, which, as you see, is illustrated with engravings from drawings made by Mrs. Murray herself. She gave lessons in water-color painting in this city during one winter at the request of a number of ladies of her acquaintance, and yonder on the wall hangs a portrait painted by her in this very room in which you now sit.

"The strangest feature of the strange story I am now about to tell you is the combination in it of unearthly and improbable with ordinary and every-day incidents. The seen and the unseen world—if indeed there be a world unseen—are mingled and almost confounded in it, so that the action of the story passes from one world into the other and back again, as a man walks out of one room into the next. Mrs. Murray firmly believed in the truth of the narrative as she gave it to me. I have heard it since more than once related with variations, none of them affecting, however, the substantial framework of the tale, by persons of character and consideration in England, whose belief in it was as positive as hers. Thomas Heaphey himself was not only a man of genius, but a man of character. The material evidences of the extraordinary experiences which had occurred to him, still, I think, exist. In short, it is a most unaccountable business from the beginning to the end, and I am very glad to have an opportunity now of putting on record my own recollections of it, that I may compare them with Mr. Dickens' version when I receive it.

"Near the end of a long summer day, towards the close of a London season, Mr. Heaphey was alone in his studio in London. This studio was situated, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of Langham Place—but that is immaterial. It was a large apartment of two or three rooms, in one of which a number of portraits and pictures were hung upon the walls, with the usual bric-a-brac of an artist's reception-room. This room was entered directly from a landing-place at the head of a broad flight of stairs leading down into the street and past a small porter's room, for the studio was in a public building occupied by a number of persons. Coming into his reception-room from a smaller cabinet, in which he was putting away some papers, Mr. Heaphey was startled to see a lady quite unknown to him, young, of good figure and carriage, dressed quietly, in perfect taste and in the fashion, who was walking around the room and inspecting the pictures. Mr. Heaphey approached and saluted her, observing as he did so that while she was unquestionably fine-looking, her countenance was unusually pale and that her eyes, which she fixed upon him as he spoke to her, had a singular, and as he afterwards described it, almost 'uncanny' expression. She made no explanation whatever of her presence, but at once asked him whether he could paint immediately a portrait of her for a dear friend to whom she wished to send as soon as possible. Mr. Heaphey replied that he would be happy to do so if it were in his power, but that he was on the point of leaving London for a round of visits in the country; that he had many professional engagements which would probably occupy him during the remainder of the year, and that he could not at all see his way clear to doing what she was so good as to ask him to do. The lady treated these objections with polite indifference and persisted, saying that it would not be necessary for Mr. Heaphey that she should sit to him. 'You will not forget my face,' she said, with a singular intonation, 'and if I am not misinformed as to your talents, you can make a sketch of me this moment from which you could paint such a portrait as I wish.' Mr. Heaphey thanked her for her good opinion but again excused himself. Nothing would do, however, and the lady finally carried her point so far that Mr. Heaphey—he could hardly say why, and certainly against his own will and judgement—consented to undertake the commission.

'It will be necessary for me,' he said, 'to find some time when I can give you your sittings, and if you will oblige me with your name and address I will see what I can do and will let you know.'

'That is hardly necessary,' said the lady. 'I will be here at any time you may appoint.'

Mr. Heaphey looked at her with astonishment and said:

'But I don't see how you can be here unless I let you know when that will be.'

'I shall have no difficulty about that,' said the lady almost petulantly. In the meantime I will see that you have an engraving of a face which I am told strongly resembles my own—so strongly that it has sometimes been mistaken for a portrait of me. This will serve to keep me in your mind,' she said smiling; and, by the way, I wish you would try to make a sketch of me now.

"Puzzled by the lady's manner as much as by her words, he quietly said:

'Oh, excuse me, I must get my address-book and we will arrange matters;' and with this he turned his back for a moment to the lady, and, going to a desk, opened it to take out the book of which he spoke. When he turned again with the book in his hand, to his profound astonishment, the lady had vanished! The door of the studio was shut as it had been during the whole interview. It was a heavy door, and closed with a spring lock. It seemed to Mr. Heaphey hardly possible that it could have been opened and shut unheard by him; but he instantly ran to it, opened it and looked down the broad flight of stairs to the street, and this so rapidly that it seemed scarcely imaginable a lady could have got out of the house before he was upon the stairway. No trace of her, however, could be seen. He ran hastily down and questioned the porter, who happened to be standing near his window, which commanded a complete view of the stairway and of the entrance to the building. His amazement was heightened when he found that the porter not only protested that he had not seen any lady go out, but declared that, so far as he knew, no lady had entered the building for more than an hour before. The man looked at Mr. Heaphey as he told him this with a curious expression which satisfied Mr. Heaphey that he would not improve his reputation as a sane and sober person by pressing his questions any further on the porter. He went up stairs again and set about the occupation in which he had been interrupted by his extraordinary visitor. It was impossible, however, for him to shake off an unusual and uncomfortable feeling for which he could not account, but which finally became so strong that he closed his desk and left the building for the night. His arrangements to leave town being complete, the next morning he went back to the studio to see that everything was put in proper order for the vacation and to give some final directions. On his desk lay, with a number of letters from the mail, a small roll of paper addressed to him by name, but bearing no postmark or any sign of having passed through the mails. He took this roll of paper up carelessly, opened it, to his unspeakable astonishment found himself confronted with an engraved portrait of a lady bearing a most marvellous resemblance in the form of the head, manner of wearing the hair and the features to his mysterious visitor of the previous evening. This engraving on examination he found had been taken out of one of the handsome annuals which had been in vogue many years before—I think from one of Heath's 'Books of Beauty.' It was a portrait of a young lady of rank celebrated for her beauty, the daughter of an English earl, who many years before the time of which I am now speaking had been married to a Hungarian nobleman of great wealth, and of a historic name. It was quite impossible to suppose any connection between the original of this portrait and Mr. Heaphey's strange visitor beyond the fortuitous resemblance which impressed him so strongly. Calling up the porter, Mr. Heaphey asked him by whom this roll of paper had been left. The porter took it, examined it, turned it over, and then said:

'I have no idea. I never saw it before.'

(Continued to-morrow.)