R.S. Garnett

Some Book-hunting Adventures

From Blackwood's Magazine. Vol. CCXXIX, January-June 1931.

Chapter VIII
As I say, Lucile Vavasour early one morning is swimming in the waters of the Regent's Canal, when a villain who has watched her sweetly innocent movements...slides down the bank, and...privily steals and conveys away in a bundle all her apparel...At length she gracefully emerges, dripping (of course), looks wildly round for her garments, and seeing a barge with two drunken bargees approaching...rushes up the bank and takes refuge in a thicket in Regent's Park. Presently a handsome golden-moustached young lancer, from the almost adjacent Albany Street Barracks, passes the thicket. Lucile, chastely ensconced behind a bush, voices an appeal to him to lend her his regimentals

The lancer is at first 'uncertain whether to accede to her desires,' but on catching a glimpse of flesh 'the whiteness of Parian marble...his heart melts.'

Calling to the maiden not to look, he straightway strips himself of his outer garments, helmet and boots, and...returns to Albany Street...His Colonel...naturally demands an explanation of him...and dismisses Raoul to his quarters. But no sooner has he saluted and turned his back than the Colonel (he is a bad roué) makes a bee-line for the park. There, on reaching the thicket, he finds in the snow not only the prints of Lucile's lovely bare extremities (she wears "twos"), but unmistakable traces of the departure in the direction of Portland Place of her regimental boots. He follows those traces out of the park, across the Marylebone Road, and so up Portland Place, even to the very portico of the Langham Hotel

Chapter IX.
At six o'clock one October morning I found myself sitting up in my little bed under the night nursery window awakened by a light of extraordinary brilliance...The historic explosion...had just wrecked our neighbourhood, that of the North Gate, Regent's Park. Then divers reports filtered in from outside. The bridge at the North Gate and the porter's lodge had been blown up...Before the morning was over we children were taken out by Chapple [their nurse]. The first thing we noticed was a quantity of nuts - brazils and almonds - lying about

The explosion had occurred at 5am on 2nd October 1874, when a barge carrying gunpowder had blown up as it passed beneath North Bridge (now rebuilt as Macclesfield Bridge), killing the crew of three. (This is a fictional account; for an eye-witness report of the aftermath see the Campanella entry.)

Deeply versed as we were in the manifold experiences of the Swiss Family Robinson, we were not surprised (though Chapple was), and we hastened to pick the nuts up without, I think, connecting them with the explosion. Proceeding to the North Gate, we found there a large crowd of people, and saw that the bridge had vanished, while the canal banks adjoining had gaps...Fortunately for us all, the height of the banks prevented the demolition of all but the nearest houses. As for the nuts, they had been placed over the several tons of blasting gunpowder for the purpose of hoodwinking the 'Customs' (as I believe)