Notice in Writing

by Bram Stoker, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

There were two rules at Hollins Lodge, and they were printed on a card in a black frame that hung in the hall beside the lamp, so that whoever came in under the fanlight read them before anything else. I copied them into my pocket-book on the first day, because I was a type-writer and it was my habit to take down what was put in front of me.

The front door is kept locked at all hours. The key is held by the Medical Superintendent.

Any boarder residing in this House of his own free will may leave it upon giving twenty-four hours' notice in writing to the Medical Superintendent.

Below these, smaller: Hollins Lodge, near Epsom. Licensed for the reception of seven patients. H. W. Moberly, M.D.

I went there on Tuesdays and Fridays in the winter of 1896, from ten o'clock until four, by the 9.12 from Wimbledon and the fly from the station. Miss Pinnock's Type-Writing Office, where I had my desk, had sent me down in answer to a letter from Dr. Moberly asking for "a young woman of steady habits and no curiosity, who has used the phonograph". I had used it twice. Miss Pinnock said that would do, and that the curiosity was my own affair.

The doctor opened the door to me himself. He always did. He had the key on a chain to his waistcoat, and he unlocked the door and drew it back, and then he stood in the hall beside the lamp and did not come forward on to the step, though it was raining. He was a tall man of about sixty, very clean, with a soft grey beard and a voice that I came to know better than his face.

"Miss Thorley. Come in, come in out of the wet. You are very welcome."

When I was over the sill he moved at once, took my umbrella, shut the door behind me, and turned the key. I heard it go round twice. That was the first morning, and I thought nothing of it, because the card had told me it would be so.

I

The study was at the back of the house on the ground floor, a square room with a bay window on the garden and a fire. My table stood in the bay. On it were the Remington, a ream of the doctor's foolscap, the case-book in which my typed sheets were to be pasted, and the machine.

It was an Edison of the newer kind, worked by a battery in a box under the table, with a cabinet of cylinders beside it in their cardboard tubes, packed in cotton wool, each tube numbered in the doctor's hand. He dictated his notes in the evenings, at this same table, speaking into the horn after his last round of the house; I came in the morning and typed them. There were the two hearing tubes, joined in a fork of brass, which I put to my ears, and a screw by which the speed could be governed, and on the right of the carriage the shaving-knife, a little blade on an arm, which pared the wax down smooth so that a cylinder might be spoken on again.

He showed me all this himself, standing at my shoulder. Then he gave me my instructions, and I took them down in my pocket-book under the two rules.

"You will type my voice," he said. "Only my voice. It is a quiet house, but no house is silent, and you will hear things on the wax behind me: the clock, a door, the boarders at their evening occupations. None of that is for the book. When a cylinder is typed, you will shave it, and put it back in its tube, and it will be ready for me at night. Is that clear?"

I said it was clear.

"Then you are welcome here, Miss Thorley. You will find us very dull, I hope."

He went out and left me with the fork of brass at my ears.

II

The notes were very dull, and I was glad of it. There were seven boarders that winter, all of them, the doctor said, residing of their own free will; I came to know them by their entries before I ever saw one of them. Mrs. Ince, who would not eat unless the plate was turned so that the pattern ran north and south. Major Corrie, who walked the garden by the clock. Mr. Royle and his letters to the bishop. A young Mr. Pask, who was improving. And Mr. Purslow, in Number Four, over my head.

The doctor's voice on the wax was the same as at the door: pleasant, slow, a little pleased with itself, the voice of a host who has had a good dinner and is speaking of his guests.

Purslow. Twenty-third day of November. A good day. Took his walk in the morning with the attendant Gage. Ate well. Played two games of chess with me in the evening, and won the second, which pleased him. Asked after his former employer, Sir Joseph, and was told that Sir Joseph continues to pay his account and sends his kind regards. No change in his state. Contented. Expresses no wish to leave.

Mr. Purslow had been confidential clerk to Sir Joseph Tarrant, the bill-broker, for twenty-two years, and had broken down in the spring of 1895 over a ledger; I put this together from the earlier pages of the case-book, which the doctor allowed me to read so that I should know how the entries were to be set out. He had come to Hollins Lodge in a cab, with a portmanteau and a letter from Sir Joseph, and had signed himself in as a voluntary boarder in a very good copperplate. The signature was pasted in at the front. It was the hand of a man who had written other people's letters all his life.

Contented. Expresses no wish to leave. I typed it, on the Tuesday, and again on the Friday, and again on the Tuesday after. It was in every entry for Number Four, at the end, the same five words; the doctor never varied them.

III

The sound was on the Friday cylinders of the second week, behind the entry for Purslow.

It was very faint. I took it at first for the wind, which had been in the east all that week, and which made a noise in the chimney of the study like a kettle a long way off. Then I heard that it rose and fell in a measure, and had a voice in it.

When the doctor came in at noon with the second post, as he did each day to see how I went on, I asked him what it was. I had the fork still in one ear.

He bent and listened at the other tube, and smiled.

"That is Purslow," he said. "He sings in the evenings. He was in the choir at St. Mary Woolnoth for twenty years, in the City; he has a very fair baritone still. It comes down the flue. His grate and this one are on the same stack, and when the wind is in the east you can hear him from here as plain as if he were in the room. I sit and listen to him sometimes when I have finished my notes. It is the pleasantest thing in the house."

He was looking at my face while he said it, not at the machine. I do not know what he saw there. I had heard nothing yet but a noise.

He had a letter in his hand among the others, a half-sheet of ruled paper folded small, written in pencil. He opened it, read it standing, and dropped it on the fire.

"Purslow writes to me," he said. "Every day. He was a clerk; it is the habit of the hand. One must not take it from him."

When he had gone I sat a long while with my hands on the keys and did not type. Then I put the fork back in my ears and turned the screw.

IV

I should explain about the screw, because it is the whole of what I did, and I had it from Miss Pinnock, who had it from the man who sold the office its machine. If a cylinder is played slow, a fast speaker becomes plain, and a high voice drops. If it is played slow enough, a thing that sounded like music may stop being music, because the tune was only the speed of it.

I took the speed down by half and set the needle back to the start of the Purslow entry.

The doctor's voice came very deep and drawn out, like a man speaking in his sleep: Purr — slow. Twen — ty — third — day. Behind it, under it, through the kettle-noise of the chimney, I heard the other voice come out of the measure and separate into words, as a crowd separates into faces when you come near it. It was not singing. It was a man saying the same thing over and over, in the even, careful voice in which a clerk reads back a letter to the man who has dictated it, to be sure he has it right.

I, Daniel Purslow, of Number Four. Give notice. Twenty-four hours. In writing. I have written it. I, Daniel Purslow, give notice.

And then a number, and then again from the start.

I listened to it three times through. That was Tuesday evening's entry, and the number was twenty-nine. I could not go back further than Tuesday; what the doctor had spoken before that I had typed and shaved, and the knife had had it. But I had the rest of the week's wax still, unshaved, because I had not finished the round of the house, and on Wednesday's and on Thursday's, when the entry came to Number Four, he was there behind the doctor, under the chess and the walk with Gage, saying his notice into the chimney. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.

He had given it thirty-one times, and they had gone on the fire, and in the evening he had stood at his own grate and said it down the flue to the room where the notes were made, because that was the only door in the house that he could reach.

V

I am not a brave woman, and I had my position to think of. I was paid by the doctor through Miss Pinnock, and there were other girls in the office who would have had my Tuesdays and Fridays. I did not believe it was my business to know what was the matter with Mr. Purslow, or whether he was fit to go, and I do not believe it now. I had been engaged to take down one voice and I had been told, very clearly, which.

But it was a rule on a card in a frame in the hall, and I had copied it into my pocket-book under the other, and the doctor himself had shown it to me. Notice, in writing, to the Medical Superintendent. It did not say what was to be done if the Medical Superintendent put the writing on the fire.

So I did what I was paid to do, which was to type.

I typed the doctor's entries first, on the foolscap, as he had ordered, his voice only, and pasted them in the case-book in their places. Contented. Expresses no wish to leave. Then I took six sheets of my own paper out of my bag, the office paper with Miss Pinnock's heading on it, and put one in the machine with a carbon under it, and took down the other voice.

I set it out as I set out a deposition at the office, with the hour and the source of each part.

Doctor's entry for Number Four, spoken the evening of Tuesday. Behind the doctor's voice, heard through the chimney, the machine slowed to one half: "I, Daniel Purslow, of Number Four. Give notice. Twenty-four hours. In writing. I have written it. I, Daniel Purslow, give notice. Twenty-nine."

The same, spoken the evening of Wednesday . . .

I typed what he said and not what I thought of it. When I had done the three evenings I typed underneath, Taken down by me from the wax at Hollins Lodge, near Epsom, on Friday, between the hours of one and three, the cylinders afterwards shaved by me under instruction. Agnes Thorley, Type-writer, Miss Pinnock's Type-Writing Office, Wimbledon, and signed it. I folded the top copy into an envelope from my bag and addressed it to the Commissioners in Lunacy, London, and I put the carbon in the lining of my hat.

Then I shaved the cylinders.

I should have liked to keep one. But there were twelve tubes in the cabinet and the doctor counted them at night, and I knew that a cylinder can be lost, or dropped, or melted on a hob, or simply asked for back, and that a sheet of typing in a post-bag is out of the house. The knife went along the wax and the doctor's voice came off it in one thin curl, and Mr. Purslow's under it, and the curl lay in the tray like a shaving of soap.

At four the doctor came to let me out. He did not come on to the step. He stood by the lamp and the card and gave me my umbrella, and said I had been very quick today, and that I was welcome on Tuesday. The key went round twice behind me. I posted the letter at the station, in the box on the down platform, and went home on the 4.40.

VI

On the Tuesday after, I did not know whether to go. I went, because I had been engaged to go, and because if I did not he would ask Miss Pinnock why.

He opened the door himself and stood back by the lamp and said I was very welcome; that it was a raw morning; that I should go and warm myself in the study, where the fire was made up. Everything was as it had been. The card was in its frame. I listened all that day, at the speed and at half the speed, and on Tuesday's wax there was nothing behind the entry for Number Four but the chimney, because the wind had gone round into the west. Contented. Expresses no wish to leave.

On Friday it was the same, and on the Tuesday after that.

I will not pretend I was easy. On those mornings I came in under the fanlight and he locked the door behind me, and I sat with my back to the fire and the brass fork at my ears, and I thought that he had only to see the heading of my office on a letter, if the Commissioners showed it to him, as perhaps they did, to know who had taken down the other voice; and I thought too that twenty-four hours is a long time in a house where the front door has one key, and that a certificate is to be had in a day, if the doctor wants one. I had made my notice in writing for a man who could not make it reach, and I did not know whether I had opened a door for him or shut one.

It was the second Tuesday in December. The first cylinder in the cabinet was the Purslow entry, and the doctor had put it first, out of its order. I set the needle down.

Purslow, said the doctor's voice, very pleasantly. Monday. Two Commissioners attended unannounced in the afternoon, upon information received by letter, and saw him alone for one hour in Number Four. He asked them for pen and paper and gave notice to me in writing in their presence, which I received. He left the house at four o'clock this afternoon by the front door, by his own wish, with his portmanteau, in a cab, for an address in Lewisham. I let him out myself. I am sorry to lose him. He was the best of my guests.

The voice stopped, and I heard the chair go back, and then it came on again, nearer to the horn, as if he had leaned down to speak to me alone.

Miss Thorley will not be required after Friday. Note this in the book. Thank you, Miss Thorley. You have been most exact.

There was nothing behind it on the wax. I slowed the screw and listened to the end of it twice, and there was only the clock and the fire, and a door somewhere, and the wind in the west, not reaching the flue.

I typed it, his voice only, and pasted it in its place. Then I set the knife to the wax and turned the handle, and took him off in one long curl, and laid the curl in the tray with the others.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem quīntum decimum Kalendās Novembrēs (18 October 2026), ā Bramō Stokerō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Bram Stoker, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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