The Lock and Key Library - The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations Volume 7

by Julian Hawthorne

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Classics, British Literature, 19th Century, Fiction, Historical Fiction

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Julian Hawthorne was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote poetry, novels, non-fiction, a series of crime novels based on the memoirs of New York's Inspector Byrnes, and edited several collections of short stories. He attended Harvard, without graduating, and later studied civil engineering.

In 1898, Julian submitted an eyewitness account of the destruction of the United States battleship, Maine off of the island of Cuba for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal (although it has been proven that Julian was in the United States at the time of the explosion). Hawthorne's eyewitness testimony of foul play and aggression by Spain was taken as fact and helped steer the United States towards war.

In 1908 Hawthorne was invited by a college friend to join him in Canada selling shares in silver mines that did not exist. They were tried, convicted of mail fraud, and served one year in prison.

There is also at least one other author named Julian Hawthorne, who writes about unexplained mysteries.

Reviews

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an interesting trip in mystery and ghost stories from the 19th century.

Granted a few of the stories were a bit on the confusing side, there were some hidden gems.

The last story had no author credit but it was well written. It will appeal to readers of dark fiction from the 19th century.

I highly recommend this tome.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Dickens: The haunted house A man in need of a country stay spends a very odd night on the train with another passenger who insists that he is communing with the spirits and taking notes. When he arrives to check out the house, ‘The Poplars’, he decides it is obviously haunted. The locals confirm this - a hooded woman with an owl that everyone has seen but no one can confirm. He decides to rent it anyway. The inside is ‘transcendently dismal’. (Snorts…)
But he engages servants and is soundly haunted, until he and his sister come up with a plan.
***
Rather amusing, and an interesting foray of Dickens into the debunking of hauntings.
Charles Dickens: No.1 branch line: the signal man The narrator visits a man working in the solitary post of signal man on an isolated rail line. The signal man says he has met him before, but enigmatically says he will only talk about this the next night. He also warns him not to call out to him as he approaches. The next night, the signal man tells how he saw an apparition that warned of a blocked line. He checked, found nothing, telegraphed to each station along the line, up and down from him, with no issues reported, but later that night there was a very bad accident in the tunnel close to his post.
The second time he saw that figure, a young woman died on the line. He confesses he is frightened to see it a third time and thought the narrator was the figure.
The narrator thinks he will come out again to suggest that he take the man to a specialist… but he is too late.
***
I guess it is understandable that people were so frightened of trains and motor cars, they still kill thousands of us every year.
Bulwer Lytton: the house and the brain
This one is a haunted house story; each person sees something different. In need of an adventure, the hero decides to rent it himself after a friend tells him of the house. He sends his manservant off to prepare it - as you do.
They spend one night in residence, find some letters that suggest a dire deed and the rest of the night goes very badly. So badly that the manservant runs out of the house and emigrates to Australia (That made me laugh - I’m Australian.). Regardless of what happened and what he saw and felt, he becomes determined to prove that it is not mystical but must be based in nature. Like an early debunker of the supernatural.
***
It is quite interesting because it not only has the elements of the scary story but also an attempt to demystify it.
Bulwer Lytton: the Incantation
The narrator is trying to use magic to heal his wife. (set in Australia) Margrave is an Alchemist who seeks pure gold. His litter arrives with a weird procession of oriental looking people and a dark veiled woman. They walk to an extinct volcano (the geologist in me rejoices) so that the narrator can help him extract the ‘life amber’. Even he questions this; the magician says he would be foolish to entrust this to his slaves as they are not brave enough. They stand guard for hours over the cauldron but are attacked by a giant eye, a ghostly army and finally a bushfire. They continue and as the twelve lamps go out, the narrator takes his place in the gap in the lit circle to face demons. They turn out to be a stampede of cattle terrified by the fire.
***
This one, unlike the earlier debunk by the same author, does end up being somewhat mystical. His wife is alive and well when he finally returns to his home. The magician, not so good. But as a kind of scam to obtain gold it all seems just a bit too over the top to me.
Thomas de Quincey: the Avenger
Unsolved murders in a German small town. The police have no clues and are mostly concerned for their own welfare. The narrator provides accommodation for an officer, Maximilian Wyndham, (described as a mix of moor and English but heir to an earldom) an impressive young man in all diplomatic and military circles and so handsome that he was the main topic of female discourse.
But when the narrator meets this man with such high expectations, he sees him as sad for some reason. (Interesting that an 1838 story depicts a man of mixed race as the epitome of beauty. It helps that he’s rich, I suppose.)

But the effect of these various advantages, enforced and recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare, was somewhat too potent for the comfort and self-possession of ordinary people; and really exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. (Kindle Locations 1442-1444)

A family of five is murdered a few doors up from a party and the prime suspect is a Negro servant. (Sighs. I spoke too soon. Interesting that Negro and Moor are different.) The accused argues the house wasn’t robbed (a poor man would have taken their jewels). People aren’t happy but weeks later others are dead; this time two older men clearly fought their attacker.
Three more murders. There is a witness - he says he let a man into the house who then let in a further three. They tied him up with a bag over his head. And a maidservant heard the second attack but did not see the attackers. The third, two sisters found a man hidden in the wardrobe and ran to lock themselves in another room before fainting from the stress. Then the gaoler of the local prison disappears and is found crucified in the woods.
In the midst of these events, a love has grown between Maximilian and Margaret Liebenheim, the granddaughter of a local lord. Another local man, Ferdinand von Harrelstein, had thought she would marry him. He is so distressed by this that he is hiding in the woods.
When the Liebenheim home is attacked, Margaret is spared only to birth a child too early. Maximilian was away hunting but brings proof that they married eight months ago in secret as her grandfather was opposed to it. This saves her reputation but she does not recover and falls into a kind of madness. After weeks, she dies in his arms.
After the funeral, he writes out his will and a testamentary document and gives them to the narrator to read after his death, along with an extracted promise to bury him with his wife. He is dead within hours.
The letter says that he is a descendant of the Maccabees (kings of Judea 160AD), his father was falsely charged and tortured, his mother was a Jewish princess and she and his sisters died at the hands of all the local men who sat in judgement of them, or carried out their vile punishments, or refused his calls for clemency.
Years later they were all hunted down by him and some like minded friends. He left Margaret’s family alive but the others acted without him.
It kind of leaves the whole thing as more of a tragic story than a mystery - at least to my mind. But now we know why he looked so sad.
Charles Robert Maturin: Melmoth the wanderer
Our hero is at the deathbed of his relative, who swears that he owns a portrait of a demon and his namesake, Melmoth. When he is left the estate, specific mention is made of a manuscript that he should burn, or read and then burn. (why didn’t the old man just do that?) He chooses, naturally, to read it.

… he found himself in the plains of Valencia, deserted by a cowardly guide, who had been terrified by the sight of a cross erected as a memorial of a murder, had slipped off his mule unperceived, crossing himself every step he took on his retreat from the heretic, and left Stanton amid the terrors of an approaching storm, and the dangers of an unknown country. The sublime and yet softened beauty of the scenery around, had filled the soul of Stanton with delight, and he enjoyed that delight as Englishmen generally do, silently. (Kindle Locations 2247-2251).

Oh, Englishmen… At a wedding banquet he meets another Englishman (Melmoth) but when the priest goes to make a benediction he cannot speak the words. He demands to know who brought evil amongst them. At this point no one knows who brought this strange man with the lustrous eyes. He stands and the priest drops dead. Further shock when they discover the bride dead in the groom’s arms.
Stanton travels on but cannot find Melmoth again, so he goes home. In 1677 he is at a play when he sees those eyes. Begging Melmoth to stop and talk, he asks when he will see him again. Melmoth tells him when he will be chained to the wall in a madhouse. Stanton, stupidly, takes no notice of this warning and is tricked into going to a madhouse by some relatives. His constant ramblings on Melmoth convinced them he was mad.
Later, the prophecy comes to pass, Melmoth stands before him and offers him freedom. But Stanton refuses.
Stanton is released years later and continues to hunt his demon down.

I have sought him everywhere.—The desire of meeting him once more is become as a burning fire within me,—it is the necessary condition of my existence. I have vainly sought him at last in Ireland, of which I find he is a native.—Perhaps our final meeting will be in. . . .(Kindle Locations 2685-2687)

And there the manuscript ends.
Incensed by this, and horrified by the realisation that this Melmoth may be his ancestor, the narrator destroys the portrait. It seems to smile at him. That night a vision grasps his wrist and tells him flames cannot harm him and that he is beside him. When he wakes his wrist is bruised.
And that’s where the story ends… wait… what?
***
Annoyed himself by this apparent lack of resolution, a form of sequel ‘Melmoth Reconciled (La Comédie Humaine)’ is written by Honoré de Balzac. [I am going to have to go find that… did that… and that was no help.]
Laurence Stern: a mystery with a moral
The Parisian Experience of Parson Yorick, on his "Sentimental Journey". This one is a little odd. It starts with the man watching a beggar in the Paris streets. He only approaches women and he seems to do well; they pay him more than a couple of centimes.
Then he rambles off on his social experiences and finally with an injured carriage horse, his dinner with a family that took him in out of charity.
I might have missed the moral in this one…
William Makepeace Thackeray: on being found out - and - the notch on the ax
The first story seems to be a rant on how we all have something to hide, and that we are all judged by our peers, but not by our women.

What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out! THEY don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take your measure. (Kindle Locations 2944-2945).

*eyes narrow*… right…
The second story is Thackeray’s version of the scary stories as told by the others; the current fad evidently was for this kind of work.
A man called Pinto seems to be older than he is, says he can see ghosts and takes the narrator out to see a guillotine in an antique store. The blade is notched - title drop - and he says he will tell him how it happened. He sees the narrator’s snuff box; says it belonged to a lady and shows her name tattooed on his arm. The narrator’s great grandmother. He adds that he lost his leg in a duel with the narrator’s great grandfather (before he married her). He talks to her spirit - she taps on the table for yes and no. He offers to buy the box for a thousand pounds. (an utter fortune in those days).

I saw a hand come quivering down from the ceiling—a very pretty hand, on which was a ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt stamp out of his blue leather pocketbook, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process; and the hand then wrote across the receipt stamp, went across the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as if waving him an adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling. (Kindle Locations 3125-3126).

The narrator takes his cheque to the bank. He knows the woman who signed it died months ago and so does the banker, but the hand appears and writes a threatening note ‘I’ll tell him where the diamonds from the robbery are hidden’), so the banker cashes it. The narrator wakes and he still has the cash and the snuffbox.
***
A bit of an odd one. In trying to be quirky, he’s just gone too far overboard. It’s not scary so much as ridiculous. Sleepwalkers walking to the guillotine and cutting their own heads off? And then carrying the head to the morgue? It is as if he, himself, didn’t take it seriously. I guess that might make it a scary story satire?
Anonymous: Bourgonef
Nuremberg 1848 the narrator is trapped in the horrors of a Baedeker style European holiday. Bored, he shares a table at a hotel with a Russian, Bourgonef, who is missing his right arm. It is recent because he struggles with using his left. The two men form a friendship but the Russian makes him feel off balance. The night of the murder of a girl he saw a man who looked familiar to him, but he can’t recall from where.

It scarcely admitted of argument, and at times seemed preposterous, nevertheless it persisted. The mind which in broad daylight assents to all that can be alleged against the absurdities of the belief in apparitions, will often acknowledge the dim terrors of darkness and loneliness—terrors at possibilities of supernatural visitations. In like manner, in the clear daylight of reason I could see the absurdity of my suspicion, but the vague stirrings of feeling remained unsilenced. (Kindle Locations 3628-3631).

They travel to Munich with the servant, Ivan who drops a box that contains make up, a beard and moustache. The narrator thinks that Bourgonef was the man he saw in the dark, but convinces himself he must be wrong; that man used a cane in his right hand.
The Russian tells him a whole sorry tale of a broken off engagement (and how pathetic and less intellectual women are *rolls eyes*) and his revenge. He planned to shoot Agalma’s new husband and after weeks of practice, he learns that she has died of scarlet fever and his revenge is thwarted. On an excursion, they argue and the narrator goes off alone. Another murder happens; the same as earlier - a beautiful girl, recently engaged, stabbed in the heart.
The second girl served them drinks at a restaurant and they heard she was engaged to the local brewery heir. He decides Bourgonef is the murderer and he must go back and confront him.

"And," I exclaimed, carried away by my indignation, "you suppose that the sight of these two happy girls, beaming with the quiet joy of brides, was torture to some miserable wretch who had lost his bride." (Kindle Locations 4073-4074).

The Russian distracts him with a chain made of iron from the blood, and Ivan tries to chloroform him. He makes so much noise, he is rescued, Ivan escapes and Bourgonef is hanged.
***
I am not sure I get his motive besides hold a grudge. I am also not convinced by the withered arm. He was clumsy with one hand and the injury was recent. The pink letters in perfect right hand writing were a loose thread.
Anonymous: The closed cabinet

We were all of us very proud of our cousins the Mervyns: it is not everybody that can claim kinship with a family who are in full and admitted possession of a secret, a curse, and a mysterious cabinet, in addition to the usual surplusage of horrors supplied in such cases by popular imagination. Some declared that a Mervyn of the days of Henry VIII had been cursed by an injured abbot from the foot of the gallows. Others affirmed that a dissipated Mervyn of the Georgian era was still playing cards for his soul in some remote region of the Grange. There were stories of white ladies and black imps, of bloodstained passages and magic stones. (Kindle Locations 4126-4129).

Details of the family curse are forgotten.
The cousins: George, Jack and Alan are the heirs. George is married to Lucy and has sons. The cousin Evie, is invited to the Grange. She notices their children are kept away from Alan; children irritate him. Jack is away. She and Alan ride to a ruin. It frightens Alan who won’t even go in.
She finds a board that reads:
"Where the woman sinned the maid shall win; But God help the maid that sleeps within."
It was Dame Alice’s home; her son was murdered by his wife. Alan says she was rumoured to be a witch and he launches into a speech about the sins of parents being foisted on their children, and how he will never have any for just that reason. (He’s 28 and she is 18 and I only just realised she is female.) Evie thinks it would be awful to live with those ghosts.
When they get back Evie has been moved to the haunted cabinet room. Lucy flippantly says they shouldn’t use it as the legend is that unmarried women die in that room. The cabinet is a puzzle. Seven handles with a key to slide, twist or screw. Evie sleeps well and is disturbed by a wind no one else heard.
Next night more winds. At breakfast, they tell her she was dreaming and that night, she and Alan head off for church. On the walk, they see a marker stone they called the ‘dead stone’ as children. Alan admits that the body of the murderess is under it. Unshriven. From suicide.
After mass they discuss various things, and it is her third night in the room.
The third time, is the charm. She awakes from a nightmare. The storm howls. Something breathes heavily in the bed behind her. She freaks. She feels the spirit of the murderess. The cabinet is open and in one of the drawers there is a fine Italian dagger. The woman’s spirit wants to kill him to stop his abuse. Evie talks her out of it and grabs the dagger; it cuts her palm in two slices.
In the morning, the maid tells her Alan has been waiting outside her room all night.
She demands he tell the truth.
The curse is for sibling to destroy sibling. It has happened every generation. He tells his own. He was twenty, studying for the bar and in love with a woman. His brother Jack knew she was bad news and proved it (after trying to convince Alan) by flirting with her even though he was engaged. Alan broke off their engagement, she showed up at Jack’s house and shot herself. Social disaster. Jack, monumentally angry with Alan blames him. (Why couldn’t Jack find some other way to discredit her?) Father says it is the curse.
Jack leaves, his life destroyed, and goes to America. Alan has never got over it.
Evie tells him her story. They run back to the bedroom and Alan opens the cupboard to find the bloodstained dagger. He knows the opening code.
A sign appears over the doorway where the warning sign was meant to be hung.
"Pure blood shed by the blood-stained knife Ends Mervyn shame, heals Mervyn strife."
Evie’s blood has broken the curse. She and Alan marry. (her first cousin - I hear all the Americans go ewww)
***
This one is creepy.
I assume the earlier victims let the spirit have her head and as result, killed themselves. Now isn’t that a metaphor?
***
An interesting mix of debunk efforts, satire and genuinely creepy mysteries.
4 stars

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.14⭐

Charles Dickens
The Haunted House (The Mortals in the House) 3.5⭐
No. I Branch Line: The Signal Man 4⭐

Bulwer-Lytton
The Haunted and the Haunters; or The House and the Brain 5⭐
The Incantation 4⭐

Thomas De Quincey
The Avenger 5⭐

Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth The Wanderer 4⭐

Laurence Sterne
A Mystery with a Moral 3⭐

William Makepeace Thackeray
On Being Found Out 4.25⭐
The Notch on the Ax 4⭐

Anonymous
Bourgonef 4.25⭐
The Closed Cabinet 4.5⭐

[Naticia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of short stories and selections from longer novels. My favorite was the last story.

[mkfs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty mixed bag. The Lawrence Sterne story was surprisingly weak, the Dickens surprisingly strong.

The version of Melmoth included here is clearly truncated (like those "condensed" books), and may have been the one I was exposed to back in the day. The original is often described as interminable, and clocks in at over 600 pages - double the length of this volume!

So I will still be giving that a go, as an interminable volume of constantly-interrupted nested narratives by possibly unreliable narrators is just the sort of grueling entertainment I like to set for myself.

[Starry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed bag of Gothic horror/suspense/mystery. I’m not a ghost story fan so wouldn’t have started this free Kindle book had I known that most of its contents were of that genre. Couldn’t get through a few of them. The first (Dickens) only contained the first half. Others included too much mesmerism and other odd beliefs from back when electricity seemed supernatural. The last two tales, Bourgonef and The Closed Cabinet (both by anonymous authors) were enjoyable, the first as a mystery and the second as a great example of Gothic horror.

[Leonardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting collection of stories involving a wide variety of mysteries and crimes, many of which indeed deserve the title "classic". Charles Dickens' "The Signal Man" is a very well-paced and elegant ghost story. The selection of Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a perfect choice that draws the reader into the world of the damned wanderer, without branching out into endless and labyrinth-like plots like some of the other sections of the novel do. The stories by Thomas de Quincey, Bulwer Lytton, Laurence Stern (the least satisfying of them all), and Thackeray have their own merits, although perhaps the hidden jewel of the crown is the haunting story by an anonymous writer that closes the anthology: "The Closed Cabinet" has all the elements of a classic ghost story, and manages to create one of the most haunting nocturnal scenes I can remember.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gothic and ghost stories along with a couple that are neither -- Laurence Sterne is in here, extracts that I have no idea quite why they were included and that contained no ghosts or hint of the gothic, but as I love Sterne that was fine by me. Mighty enjoyable all round.

[Patricia Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

An assortment of mysteries and ghost stories from the 19th Century. Many were hard to follow because of the 'Old English' language, but two or three were well written and enjoyable.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth reading!

[Alecsandra Velez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last two short stories are the best of the bunch, especially "The Closed Cabinet." It's probably one of the best ghost/ancestral curse stories I've read.

[Scribh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy stories perfect for a cold winter's night snuggled beneath a warm quilt! I couldn't have read this volume at a better time.