Long life
Terrors of the night
Nigel Nicolson
In about 1550 a terrible crime was com- mitted in the house where I now live. The then owner, Sir John Baker, who was Speaker of the House of Commons and later Henry VIII's Chancellor, enticed vil- lage girls to dine with him alone, and they, poor innocent creatures, accepted his invi- tation for the glamour of it. The conse- quences were inevitable. But one of them, resisting him with unusual fortitude, grasped the newel of the staircase that led to Sir John's bedroom. He drew his sword, `The NHS is too old to save.' and hacked off the girl's hand at the wrist. Or so it is alleged.
The newel still exists, gnarled and mina- tory, but not, as I imagined as a boy, blood- stained. I knew the story, and as my bedrom was the same as that of the impi- ous Sir John, I never dared grasp it.
That was not all. Two centuries later the house became a prison-camp for French- men captured in the Seven Years War. 5,000 of these wretched men were incarcer- ated here. One moonlit night, a light was showing in the upstairs window of a room where thirty of the prisoners lay asleep in hammocks. 'Put out that light!', shouted the sentry from the courtyard. There was no response. He repeated his warning. The light still shone brightly. Then he fired, killing a sleeping man. It was not an inter- nal light. It was the reflection of the moon on a diamond pane. That room, too, was Sir John's, and then mine. I never con- fessed my terror at the double atrocity associated with it. Children don't.
Still more alarming was my personal ghost at Knowle. It was the habit of Edwar- dian parents to allow their children to come down to the library for tea. It was a delicious tea, cucumber sandwiches and sticky cakes, but there always came a moment that we dreaded, when my mother would say that it was time to return to the nursery, some 500 feet of corridors and three staircases distant from the library. `You're sure you can find the way? You don't want me to come with you?' Of course not, Mummy.' But it was hell. I knew that at the final staircase I would be confronted by Van Dyck's beautiful full- length portrait of Frances Cranfield, dressed in oyster-white, mystic, wonderful. She terrified me.
Let me confess, too, another terror of the night. At that time we lived in a small 15th-century manor house where Caxton was born, or so it was reputed. I had been told about his printing-press, and as I lay in bed in the part of the house that adjoined the room known as Caxton's Room, I heard him grinding away at his machine, and expected him to appear, grey-bearded and ink-stained, at any moment at my door. I never told my parents how frightened I was, nor how my fears were only temporar- ily assuaged by non-ethereal sounds like a loo flushing or laughter from the kitchen.
I can identify the exact moment when my fear of the dark was finally conquered. I was 21. I was on holiday alone in Greece. I rose at dawn one morning, and walked from Athens to Marathon. I started to walk back over Hymettus. Night fell. I dared not risk the gorges. I slept, or half-slept, till suddenly the sun blazed on the columns of the Parthenon, far, far below me. It was one of the most wonderful moments of my life, and on my descent I found a wild fig- tree that made my most wonderful break- fast. It was then that I lost my fear. Pan, the spirit of Hymettus, the patron of ghosts, had exorcised me.
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