Mr. Arthur Wilberforce Simms did not look like a sex fiend. Quite the contrary; his most intimate friends would have agreed that he most resembled an unusually diffident rabbit in pince-nez. To much of London society, he was a distinguished expert on sculpture, ancient and medieval, with special emphasis on Eastern art. Yet, in certain more rarefied circles, Arthur Simms was a well-respected collector of smut.
He lived in a comfortable residence in Berkeley Square with his elder sister, Amelia, who kept house for him and chivvied him about the state of his soul and his woollen underclothes. He was considered to be something of a bore by his club acquaintances who generally steered clear of his pet subject as he was apt to become overly informative about patinas and crockets. All the Nice Girls that he knew yawned and murmured privately amongst themselves that Dear Arthur was a bit of a stick but would do to fill out a bridge four and you could count on him to blush at the most innocuously risqué music hall lyrics.
Still, his income of twelve thousand a year and the desirable residence in Berkeley Square rendered him a welcome visitor in households where the daughters had gifts of an intellectual or spiritual nature rather than mere chocolate-box prettiness.
His calls to these households generally followed one of two lines: “Would you believe it, Mr Simms,” a Mama would say, “Helen not only took the Schartz-Metterklume Prize for the Best Essay on Improving the Race through Female Emancipation, but was also named Captain of the Varsity Rowing team!” At which Helen would slap Arthur on the back, and invite him to “come for a row on the river, Simms, old cock!”
The other sort of call was more restful, but equally predictable.
“Dear Jane is so soulful,” a Mama would murmur after Jane had completed a limp rendition of Gates of Pearl (by Mrs A.P. Molesworthy, author of Tuneful Hymns for Sinful Tots, &c.) on the piano and before announcing coyly that Mama would just leave them alone for the teensiest instant while she had a word with Cook about luncheon.
Had these Mamas known about Mr Simms’s collection, it is likely that these same Mamas would have donned their most becoming tea gowns and sent Jane to her room when he called, preferring to have a cosy chat aux deux with “that clever Mr Simms.”
Like most men, he separated his avocation from his daily life. He displayed part of his sculptural collections in an elegant gallery in his house where, several times a year, he would hold an exhibition of new acquisitions accompanied by a lecture on a learned topic such as “Some Aspects of Pre-Reformation Piscinae.” But in addition to his public collection, Arthur kept a studio at Number 15 Mornington Crescent. This retreat was tastefully fitted up with scarlet velvet wall hangings and yards of gilded wood vitrines containing sculptures for every esoteric taste with titles such as “Young Faun with Goat”, the monolithic “Manhood”, and the rather daring “Crack of Dawn.”
Behind the scarlet velvet hangings were walls of padded drawers for smaller, more intimate items, including the largest collection of erotic origami in private hands. Arthur’s latest acquisition was an ivory rosary bead, rumoured to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, which opened to reveal a minute nun paying her respects to the Prince of Darkness whose lineaments looked very like those of King Henry VIII.
Amelia was aware of the existence of what she called “Arthur’s Little Snuggery,” but indulgently assumed it was a library where he worked on his scholarly articles, entertained gentlemen friends, and smoked.
She, and most of Arthur’s club acquaintances, would have been astonished at the less academic attractions of Number 15. Perhaps once a month Arthur hosted a small supper for his fellow-collectors: Lord Mapplethorpe, impartial fancier of Greek boys in marble at the British Museum or on a moonlit Thracian beach; the red-haired poet Halifax who made no secret of his patronage of Mrs Whipwell’s Academy for Recalcitrant Gentlemen. There was also Thaddeus Spicer, who had contrived to have his play Madame Satan denounced from the pulpits of a dozen bishops and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, making it, in consequence, the best-attended play in London. And, of course, the wicked-eyed painter Lamprey whose gaudy oils of gypsy maidens, water nymphs, and other females in various states of undress graced gentlemen’s chambers from Camberwell to Calcutta. These connoisseurs enjoyed the convivial flow of champagne and conversation and the tableaux vivants arranged by the personnel of Madame Zoe’s establishment in Curzon Street. Arthur particularly enjoyed seeing Violet, Charlotte, and Nell talcum-powdered to marble whiteness posing as Canova’s Three Graces.
Despite his predilection for curiosa, Arthur Simms was remarkably pure-minded. Not for him the crude joke snuffbox where a papier-mâché appendage sprang to attention when the lid was lifted. He shuddered at garishly coloured prints labelled “The Cuckold’s Wedding Night” or “Convent Frolics”. He appreciated Craftsmanship, he told himself and paid handsomely for it. He preferred subtlety—works of sensuous, symbolic, mythological smut, the elevated amours of the Gods, or a piece which you had to know the complete works of Ovid to truly appreciate. He first studied patinas, bas relief textures, and gilded bronze mountings, only belatedly allowing himself to be seduced by the subject matter.
In his private life Arthur was equally sentimental. He was fond of the romantic novels of the prolific Rosie M. Banks and privately hoped he resembled her hero “Mervyn Keene, Clubman, the Idol of all who knew him.” Someday, he felt, a Cynthia Grey, the Most Beautiful Girl in London, would cross his path, dropping her chiffon handkerchief for him to retrieve, bewitching him with her loveliness.
But until that time, he would dutifully pay his calls on the Mamas of all the Janes and Helens. He would play endless rubbers of bridge at house parties. And he would go on commissioning his agents to scour Europe and the Far East for pieces of the highest artistic value and exceptional indecency.
There were, however, times when he liked to sally into the sale rooms himself and have a go. And so it was that he was at Snellgrove & Mason Auctioneers in Fulham Street on a hot August morning. He had seen an unusual oriental carving in the catalogue, and, if he was not mistaken, it was a true rarity.
“Now this next lot, Lot 570, exotic boxwood carving in the form of a ring,” said the auctioneer, simpering slightly, “relief carved with, shall we say, frank depictions of the delights of love. Perhaps a piece of decorative erotica.” He rolled the word around on his tongue, tasting the delights. “Or perhaps an actual appliance, although,” he smiled knowingly at the room, “for a gentleman of unusual, not to say prodigious endowment.”
The gentlemen in the room chuckled appreciatively, taking long drags on their cigars.
“Start me off at 2 pounds, please. I have 2 here on commission.”
The porter circled the room with Lot 570 on a salver. The ring of carved wood was mounted, upright, in a half-moon cradle of gilt bronze dragons. The dark brown wood had a warm, silky sheen and the carvings were less frank than when new for they showed a good deal of wear. Arthur blushed as he caught himself wondering what kind of oil had been used to create that delightful patina.
“3 pounds, with me,” said the auctioneer in response to a bid from the front row.
Arthur motioned with his catalogue.
“4 pounds, thank you, sir,” said the auctioneer. “The bid is with the gentleman to the left.”
There were a few more desultory bids—Arthur knew that most of the big collectors were out of London in August. He himself would have been gone to the country, but the catalogue listing had caught his eye: “Oriental boxwood carving. Sung Dynasty Yuan,” which he knew was a ring-shaped object. “Low-relief carvings of court gentleman and lady-in-waiting embracing. Property of a Lady.”
“Your bid, sir, at 8 pounds.” The auctioneer looked around. “Are we all done at 8 pounds? Eight pounds….”
“10 pounds,” came a clear voice from the back of the room.
Heads swivelled. It was a woman’s voice, both commanding and cultured. She was tall and dressed in black velvet. Her face was veiled.
“I beg your pardon, Madam,” said the auctioneer. “You are bidding on this, er, carving?”
“I am,” said the lady.
“Sir?” said the auctioneer uneasily to Arthur. And Arthur found himself nodding, trying not to stare at the faceless woman in black.
The auctioneer stroked the handle of his gavel meditatively before continuing.
“The bid is with you then, sir, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty…” said the auctioneer. Arthur flushed as he watched the man’s rhythmic back- and-forth motion with his gavel. They had warned the boys at his school about that kind of thing.
The crowd in the room drew back and stood, hushed, as they watched him gesture alternately to Arthur, then to the mysterious lady. They seemed to sense that they were about to witness some epic battle of the sexes.
After her startling initial bid, Arthur had edged around to where he could see his rival. She did not speak again, but only made a languid motion with her closed fan. A thin slit of something pink and silken was visible beneath the polished black lacquered sticks. Arthur’s cheeks burned.
“Forty!” he said weakly.
He could see her black-gloved grip tighten on the fan. Then she made a quick upward thrust.
“Forty-five with the lady,” said the auctioneer.
“Fifty!” cried Arthur.
She caught her lip in her perfect, porcelain teeth, yet once again she held the fan out rigidly from her breast.
“I have fifty-five with the lady,” said the auctioneer.
“Sixty,” Arthur said, hoarsely. His collar suddenly seemed two sizes too small.
Beneath her veil he saw her nostrils flare. Her breath came quickly. She made a small frantic fluttering motion with the fan.
“Sixty-five, Madam?” asked the auctioneer. She nodded.
“Seventy!” said Arthur masterfully. He’d gotten her on the run, he thought.
She suddenly unfurled the fan with a snap, revealing the interior petal-pink leaves—the very colour of love, he thought, blushing a deeper pink and clutching his rolled catalogue before him.
“Seventy-fi… “ began the auctioneer.
“Eighty!” cried Arthur, more shrilly than he had intended. He glanced guiltily around him. Surely everyone in the showroom could read his thoughts!
He could see that her colour had changed too. She had gone from parian bisque to pink lustre.
“One hundred and ninety-five,” she said, the hand with the fan falling limply to her side.
Arthur felt something like a bomb go off inside of him and the room began to spin.
“Two hundred pounds!” he gasped, and slid to the floor. Faintly he heard the auctioneer call out, “SOLD! To the gentleman on the floor!” The man in the next seat tried to prop him up. “This heat’s enough to give anybody a turn,” his neighbour remarked sympathetically to the room.
By the time his collar had been loosened and he had been given a nip of brandy from someone’s flask, the lady in black had disappeared.
Arthur had his new purchase wrapped at the cashier’s department. He had a particular reason for wishing to carry it home with him. On the pavement outside, Arthur mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He felt quite spent. He could well afford the 200 pounds, but he hadn’t expected such resistance, such an obstruction… He desperately needed a cigarette. Groping for his case and his matches, his hand brushed the parcel in his coat pocket. It seemed to glow warmly through his glove.
A carriage pulled up beside him in the street. The window was opened to reveal the faceless lady. Above the veil the dark wings on her hat seemed to unfurl in the breeze. He thought he heard a distant roll of thunder.
“You obviously are a man of more resources than I, Mr Arthur Simms, but there may come a time when you wish to—dispose of the carving you have just bought. Should you ever change your mind about it, just think of me and I will be ready.”
Ready for what? he wondered. He caught a glimpse of brilliant blonde hair beneath the veil and the most delightful little mouth with a perfectly placed beauty mark on the upper lip. She lowered her veil and tapped the roof of the carriage and the driver drove on.
He could have sworn that there had been a whiff of Turkish tobacco on her breath.
Despite the kind assurances of the girls at Madame Zoe’s, Arthur had always thought of himself as rather average in size. Nevertheless, he decided to wait until morning when he was at his best to—experiment—with his new purchase. His sister was out of town and he would be alone, unless she had managed to dig up some ghastly specimen of a cook or housemaid from the agency.
“You know how impossible it is to find good servants these days,” she had told him before leaving, “and this time of year it is even more impossible. If I can’t locate a likely girl before my train goes on Thursday, you’ll just have to sleep and take your meals at your club.”
So he would be alone and glad of the leisure to experiment. Domestics were always underfoot when you least wanted them. He went to bed with his new purchase sitting on his bedside table, his pince-nez propped up beside it.
The next morning he awoke with a real sense of anticipation. He removed the carving from its brass dragon cradle and tried it on for size. Of course he had known that it wouldn’t actually fit, but it was a bit of a disappointment to find it not fitting to such an extent. Secretly he had been hoping that some of the magic that had created that lovely patina would rub off on him. Thinking of that, he blushed, but actually felt a stirring such as he had never felt before.
To his astonishment, he found that the ring was becoming almost a snug fit. He clambered out of bed and stood before the mirror which revealed a prodigious silhouette, quite proportional to the ring surrounding it. It was the body of a God, he thought, awed, like something to be worshiped in one of those Hindu temples where dozens of stone couples writhed across the façade….
The door opened and the housemaid came in with a tray of morning tea. He gaped at her and she gaped at him. He wondered, in spite of his complete and abject embarrassment, as he groped for his dressing gown, how his sister had managed to find such an utter stunner of a housemaid.
“Oooh, er,” squeaked the housemaid, although she managed to retain her grip on the tray. Squeaked was not absolutely the mot just, for her voice was cultured and commanding.
“I, er, really must apologize,” began Arthur, edging towards the hearth rug. Even the robust Jaeger wool of his dressing gown was not enough to hide the minaret-like eminence and he hoped that something more substantial would lessen the effect. One didn’t want to frighten the staff. Once again, he wondered how Amelia had managed to find such a lovely creature, or more to the point, that she had hired her at all. Amelia suspected all housemaids of having designs on her brother and made a point of engaging only plain girls with the result that they often were deaf or dotty as well. It was such a pleasure to see a pretty face bringing his morning tea. No, he didn’t want to frighten her.
The girl gently set down the tea tray on the table by the bed.
“You really mustn’t think that I…,” he began incoherently, scarlet with mortification. But she walked up to him and, smiling, touched his cheek.
“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked.
And to his surprise, he explained that he was trying out a—er—device recommended by his doctor, but it, er, seemed to be stuck.
“Well,” she murmured, removing his pince-nez, “there’s only one way to remove it safely.”
Arthur only noted after her cap had tumbled off that she had golden hair. And at close range, he observed a delightful little mouth with a perfectly placed beauty mark on the upper lip.
He awoke with his feet on the pillows and his head under the blanket to the sound of a woman sobbing. He fervently hoped that nobody was dead or, if somebody was, that it was not him.
The housemaid was sitting on the carpet, fully dressed, crying into her apron. Arthur’s heart throbbed painfully. He was a cad, a swine, a bounder. To seduce an innocent housemaid, a perfect stranger without so much as a diamond bracelet or supper at Delmonico’s—it was iniquitous!
He wrapped a sheet around himself and sat up. He found that he was no longer encumbered by the boxwood ring. In fact, it seemed to have disappeared somewhere in the bedclothes. Putting the exploits of the previous twenty-four hours firmly out of his mind, Arthur stood up, determined to fulfil his obligations as an English gentleman: viz, to get the girl out of the house and into her own bijou residence in St. John’s Wood before his sister returned.
He explained all of this to her, patting her hand ineffectually. She only put her head down and cried harder. Arthur sat down beside her on the floor.
“Dearest, what is it? Tell your Arthur….”
While these epithets sprang naturally to his lips, he blushed. He recalled a great many things he had said to her the night before. It seemed somehow improper to address her so intimately in the cold light of morning—almost as if she were his wife.
Wife—he bit his tongue with surprise. And blushed again as he realized that he had no intention of setting this girl up in any dashed pied-a-terre with a cook and a coachman. Housemaid or no—she was a perfect angel with an uncanny resemblance to the ivory-skinned model in Gerome’s Pygmalion and Galatea and he couldn’t think of parting with such a treasure! He would make an honest woman of her!
He knelt beside her and tenderly took her tear-soaked hands in his. He saw with pleasure that she hadn’t gone all blotchy and red-eyed, despite crying for what seemed like hours.
She put her head down in her hands again and Arthur noted with fascination, another beauty mark on the back of her neck.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” she wailed.
“I know, I know,” said Arthur, patting her hand. “And I assure you,” he said gallantly, “that it shall not happen again…”
His gaze fell on that delicious little mouth. “Er, until… that is… if… I mean, unless you want to. Again,” he finished limply.
She looked at him with despair and began to weep again into her apron. Something heavy slid off her lap and onto the carpet. It was the carved object d’ art.
He stared at it, and then found himself looking into her tearful blue eyes.
“Yes, I intended to steal it!” she sobbed. “But you don’t understand! It has been in my family for years. My older sister (who is a good deal too fond of the gin) was converted by a handsome Salvation Army major and decided to send the carving to auction, even though it was a family heirloom. I was desperate! It was essential for my work! And when I saw the notice of the sale, I went to the sales room where, as you know, you outbid me. I should have been better prepared, but I didn’t expect any competition this time of year. You see, we are a family rich in ancient lineage, but poor in worldly goods,” she explained.
“Where is your sister now?” Arthur wondered, playing for time until he could discover if she was a dangerous lunatic or a merely harmless one.
She sighed.
“She had the queerest ideas about earning her own living; about the equality of men and women, saying that both sexes should have the same opportunities in life. After her conversion she did district visiting in the East End. I worried about her so! She was exposed to the most hideous temptations in the back alleys and the public houses! It was a great relief when she took a respectable job as housekeeper for the Dashwood family of West Wycombe.”
“But how did you find me?”
“I made enquiries and got the agency to send me here as a housemaid. I was going to wait until you were asleep and then take the ring with me. I suppose you will be wanting to call the police,” she said, wiping her eyes with the handkerchief Arthur automatically proffered. He gaped at her.
“But why are you still here?”
She lowered her head and spoke so softly he could barely hear.
“Because you treated me with kindness and respect. Because you looked at me, told me I was beautiful, and cared about my pleasure, not just your own. Because you found something in me lovely, apart from your own desires. You are the first man in millennia to not just use me and dismiss me as a dream.”
Arthur reeled. “Millennia? USE you? Your—er—work? “ Struck by a belated sense of the proprieties, he said “Er, what is your name, my girl?”
“Sukie,” she replied coolly. “Short for succubus.”
After that they had much to talk about. Sukie explained that she was known to the world as Lady Sophia Maltravers, of an old, but impoverished Sussex family.
“Our coat of arms is a Shield Rouge quartered with a sheela-na-gig, supported by two cats. Motto: Amo, ut invenio. [“I love just as I find”]. My sister gave the herald who designed it an exhilarating two weeks before he was found dead in his bed of exhaustion. Despite our unusual occupation, we have always tried to move within society and the law as well as give good value,” she assured him.
Society? The law? Good value? His head was reeling.
“I’m afraid I’m a bit fogged here,” he confessed. “What exactly is it that you do?”
She described for him the sisterhood of the succubus, their ancient heritage—descended from Adam’s first wife Lilith, their long-standing mission to men in need, their charitable visitations, the annual meetings where they elected officers for the upcoming year, followed by a charabanc outing to some local beauty spot. Arthur thought the whole thing sounded very much like the local Women’s Altar Guild.
But then her blithe demeanour changed and she pressed his hand. “Although we take our mission very seriously, to give release to the repressed, manhood to the weak—too often we are used and then flung away like a soiled glove! I could tell you distressing stories of, decades, nay, centuries! of vitriol directed at our efforts. Of oafish behaviour, of selfishness, ill-usage, and deliberate cruelty to creatures who wish only to delight and give pleasure. I could tell you tales that would curl your hair of gaining access to a needy client through an arrow slit in a keep or a top-story window in a snow-storm, only to be flung out (or worse, exorcised!) by the ungallant recipient of my services.
“Please try to understand, Mr Simms,” she said, stroking his arm urgently. “We of the sisterhood are bound by the succubus oath to go on in perpetuity with our mission: to give ourselves unstintedly to all of those in need. Think of it! Centuries of the succubus lineage devoted to bringing—love—to the lives of the widower, the bachelor, the unhappy husband, and the celibate. And what thanks do we get? Vulgar abuse! Our name a hissing and a byword! It is a cruel world… Yet without the life-force, the energy we draw from our—clients, we would die and the world would be the poorer for our extinction.”
Looking at her face, flushed like a dew-bespangled rose, he wholeheartedly agreed. She smiled wanly at him. “That is where the ring comes in. It boosts the vigour of the most debilitated. We succubae can go only a short time without a renewal of the life-force. The ring is the key to our life. But now you have bought it. It is legally yours. And we try to obey the laws of man as much as humanly possible.”
She handed it to him. It felt unnaturally heavy. Leaden, he thought brokenly, like his heart….
“If you do not intend to turn me over to the police, I will go now,” she said, rising to her feet. “Goodbye, Mr Simms,” she said. Arthur thought that she sounded wistful. ”I thank you for your kindness.” She leaned down and gave him a chaste, sisterly kiss on the cheek, then turned to go.
Arthur rose on his knees with dignity.
“Miss Maltravers, please wait!” he said, making ineffectual little grabs at the entangling sheet. She turned back to look at him.
“I have something of the greatest importance I wish to discuss with you…,” said Arthur, and in his emotion, he dropped the sheet entirely.
It would be indecorous and perhaps tedious to relate what passed between them then, involving, as it does, the declarations of love, the honourable proposal of matrimony, the endearments and pet names, and the exchanging of rings—his signet ring on her dainty hand and the boxwood ring reaffirming its magic of the night before.
“But, my darling,” said Arthur much later, “what will happen when I grow older and I am not so, er, energetic as I am now, even with—assistance? You yourself have said that you would fade and die without the life force.”
Sukie took his hand and looked deeply into his eyes. She was silent for a long space.
“Who can tell what the future will bring?” she said, thoughtfully. Then she smiled. “My dearest Arthur…”
And they embraced.
When Amelia returned and found Arthur engaged to be married, she was at first delighted, assuming that he had been snared by a soulful Jane or a masterful Helen. She could have coped with either of those specimens, but she hadn’t expected her brother to attract such an expensively upholstered article as Lady Sophia. While the new fiancé was delightfully civil to her, she felt like screaming whenever she noted the bride-to-be’s perfect, unlacquered complexion (“If only she painted one could hate her,” she observed bitterly to a rapt circle at the Women’s Altar Guild.) She was further exasperated by the unalloyed affection and respect that the bride-to-be showed her brother. Having been dominated first by a mother, a nanny, and an elder sister, and then bullied at school, Arthur rightfully ought to have been dominated by a wife, thought Amelia resentfully. In a fit of pique she chivvied a dreamy curate cousin into an engagement of her own. He held the living at the Simms’ family seat down at Little Clickton-in-the-Wold in Kent and wanted looking after.
Within his hearing Arthur’s friends and acquaintances referred to him heartily as a “lucky dog”. Out of it, they wondered how such a bespectacled rabbit of a chap got to be such a lucky dog.
“Money, I expect. The Maltravers haven’t a bean,” drawled the painter Lamprey, whose recent oeuvre showed a marked trend away from exotic brunettes and towards parian-bisque blondes.
The bride-to-be threw herself into Arthur’s little hobby with a gratifying enthusiasm, scanning auction catalogues and helpfully circling items he might find of interest. An extensive honeymoon tour was planned for India. Naturally, as an authority on East Asian art Arthur looked forward to introducing his new bride to the fascinating world of Indian temple sculpture.
His sister Amelia was heard to remark acidly that Dear Arthur was looking a touch peaky, “no doubt from his ceaseless round of galleries and exhibitions with Dear Sophia. I do hope that she will take better care of him when they are married,” she sniffed to her friends.
The wedding, a brilliant affair, was held at St. George’s, Hanover Square, June 12, 1891. Unusually, it was a double-ring ceremony.
In the quiet churchyard at the Simm’s ancestral seat in Kent stands a unique funerary monument “erected to the memory of Arthur Wilberforce Simms and his beloved wife, Sophia.” Embedded in the center of the tombstone, a few feet from the ground, is a stone representation of an ancient Chinese yuan. Arthur had left explicit instructions that his wife was to inherit the carved ring and a replica of it should be carved on his tombstone. As it happened, Lady Sophia did not long survive her husband.
“Even after so many years of marriage, she would have to go and grieve herself to death over my poor brother,” sniffed Amelia to her curate (now vicar), as if the lady had done it out of spite. “You would have thought with a son about to go into the army and young Gwendolyn about to make her debut, she would have had something to live for. And she had all those men flocking around her like bees about a honey pot! That dreadful artist—Lambrequin? Lambskin?—was completely besotted. But she refused all of them, went into a decline and died!”
Amelia made it sound like a deliberate and calculated insult.
“And just as we were coming out of full mourning for Dear Arthur. I’d already ordered my half-mourning summer gowns. It’s most provoking!”
Amelia’s vicar murmured something soothing. His mind was on the unusual tombstone. He had tried to make out the low-relief figures, but the stone cutter had found the original to be so worn that he could only guess at the subject of the reliefs. Already it had attracted the attention of the more superstitious of his flock, who believed that a barren couple who embraced over the stone would subsequently conceive.
“No doubt a quaint survival of some ancient pagan fertility custom,” he mused to himself, thinking that it would make an excellent subject for the local antiquarian society of which he was the secretary.
He examined his diary. Yes, tonight there was a near-full moon and he had no other engagements. It would be an excellent opportunity to observe and interview any couples he found in the churchyard…
The unexpected death of the vicar of Little-Clickton-in-the-Wold caused a sensation in the county.
“Lor’!” said one of the awed rustics who helped to pry the vicar loose from the stone. “’oo knew old Parson were such a tup?”
Given the coroner’s masterful summing-up at the inquest: a suffusion of blood to the brain revealed by the doctor’s post-mortem and the suggestion of an apoplexy brought on by an ill-advised exposure to the frigid night air; the jury rendered a verdict of death by misadventure without a murmur. There was, however, a good deal of ribaldry at the public house, post-adjournment.
A testament in stone to conjugal felicity, the Simms monument has become a popular place of pilgrimage, the resort of the childless and the lovelorn. Mr. Arthur Wilberforce Simms, that late connoisseur, would no doubt be gratified to observe the interesting patina that the stone’s opening has begun to acquire.
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