Erewhon Revisited | Page 8

these nuggets would be worth in Erewhon fully ten times as much as
they would in Europe, owing to the great scarcity of gold in that country. The
Erewhonian coinage is entirely silver--which is abundant, and worth much what it is in
England--or copper, which is also plentiful; but what we should call five pounds' worth of
silver money would not buy more than one of our half-sovereigns in gold.
He had put his nuggets into ten brown holland bags, and he had had secret pockets made
for the old Erewhonian dress which he had worn when he escaped, so that he need never
have more than one bag of nuggets accessible at a time. He was not likely, therefore, to
have been robbed. His passage to the port above referred to had been paid before he

started, and it seemed impossible that a man of his very inexpensive habits should have
spent two hundred pounds in a single month--for the nuggets would be immediately
convertible in an English colony. There was nothing, however, to be done but to cable out
the money and wait my father's arrival.
Returning for a moment to my father's old Erewhonian dress, I should say that he had
preserved it simply as a memento and without any idea that he should again want it. It
was not the court dress that had been provided for him on the occasion of his visit to the
king and queen, but the everyday clothing that he had been ordered to wear when he was
put in prison, though his English coat, waistcoat, and trousers had been allowed to remain
in his own possession. These, I had seen from his book, had been presented by him to the
queen (with the exception of two buttons, which he had given to Yram as a keepsake),
and had been preserved by her displayed upon a wooden dummy. The dress in which he
escaped had been soiled during the hours that he and my mother had been in the sea, and
had also suffered from neglect during the years of his poverty; but he wished to pass
himself off as a common peasant or working-man, so he preferred to have it set in order
as might best be done, rather than copied.
So cautious was he in the matter of dress that he took with him the boots he had worn on
leaving Erewhon, lest the foreign make of his English boots should arouse suspicion.
They were nearly new, and when he had had them softened and well greased, he found he
could still wear them quite comfortably.
But to return. He reached home late at night one day at the beginning of February, and a
glance was enough to show that he was an altered man. "What is the matter?" said I,
shocked at his appearance. "Did you go to Erewhon, and were you ill-treated there?"
"I went to Erewhon," he said, "and I was not ill-treated there, but I have been so shaken
that I fear I shall quite lose my reason. Do not ask me more now. I will tell you about it
all to-morrow. Let me have something to eat, and go to bed."
When we met at breakfast next morning, he greeted me with all his usual warmth of
affection, but he was still taciturn. "I will begin to tell you about it," he said, "after
breakfast. Where is your dear mother? How was it that I have . . . "
Then of a sudden his memory returned, and he burst into tears.
I now saw, to my horror, that his mind was gone. When he recovered, he said: "It has all
come back again, but at times now I am a blank, and every week am more and more so. I
daresay I shall be sensible now for several hours. We will go into the study after
breakfast, and I will talk to you as long as I can do so."
Let the reader spare me, and let me spare the reader any description of what we both of us
felt.
When we were in the study, my father said, "My dearest boy, get pen and paper and take
notes of what I tell you. It will be all disjointed; one day I shall remember this, and
another that, but there will not be many more days on which I shall remember anything at
all. I cannot write a coherent page. You, when I am gone, can piece what I tell you
together, and tell it as I should have told it if I had been still sound. But do not publish it
yet; it might do harm to those dear good people. Take the notes now, and arrange them
the sooner the better, for