The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Benson We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Mousehole lies two miles along the coast road from Penzance, and Mousehole Lane appears to run through a shallow valley, which may be the combe referred to.Negotium Perambulans E. Southward along the coast from Newlyn is the Penlee Quarry. A road named 'The Coombe' (referring to a valley, sometimes steep and narrow, usually without a watercourse) runs through Newlyn, which might have inspired the combe wherein Polearn lies. Both Penzance and Newlyn are towns on the western tip of Cornwall. The young man leaves, resolute never to see his beloved village again.Ī number of the locations mentioned in the story are real. The young man tries to fight it of, but he cannot harm it and he cannot prevent it from reducing the artist to but skin and bones. A short while after, he is found by the young man in darkness, cornered by the horrible thing. Everything on him and his drawings repel and also attract the young man and thusly, he visits his home. The young man then meets an old acquaintance of his, an artist, who now lives in the cursed house. The man had died, after one night loosing the light with whose possession he became obsessed and was found dead, as a sack of skin and bones, with all blood drenched from him.

When he grows up he eventually moves to London and only when his education is complete, he returns, intending never to leave again.Īs he learns from his widowed aunt, the person, who possessed the house, on whose grounds the murder described in the church panel. 'Negotium perambulans in tenebris,' mistakenly translated as 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness' and coming from the ninety first psalm.

The panel bears the following biblical text: He stays at his uncles house during this entire time, hearing his uncle (who is a vicar) give sermons that are especially terrifying, mostly when referring to a couple of painted panels, on which is detailed the horrible death of a sacrilegious person at the hands of of a horrible creature. The story details the tale of a man, who, as a child, comes to an isolated fisher village in West Cornwall and is enchanted with it. Benson Negotium Perambulans is a short story by British writer E.

Negotium Perambulans by E.F. Benson