Phantasmagoria (poem) - The Cantos - Canto 4. Hys Nouryture

Canto 4. Hys Nouryture

In Canto IV, the ghost makes a reference to Bradshaw’s Railway Guide (which Carroll had parodied as a young child in his “Guida di Braggia”).

“Oh, when I was a little Ghost,

A merry time had we!

Each seated on his favorite post,

We chumped and chawed the buttered toast

They gave us for our tea.”

"That story is in print!" I cried

"Don’t say it’s not, because

It’s known as Bradshsaw’s Guide!”

(The Ghost uneasily replied

he hardly thought it was).

Hailing from a long line of ghosts and of the order, the Phantom tells his family tree as such: His father was a Brownie; his mother was a Fairy. The children were of different stripe – there was a Pixy, two Fays, a Banshee, a Fetch and a Kelpie, a Poltergeist and a Ghoul, two Trolls (“which broke the rule”), a Goblin and a Double, then an Elf, a Phantom, and finally, a Leprechaun.

No Spectres, although he notes that when he was a young Phantom some Spectres did call on the family and were “dressed in the usual white" (p. 29). Spectres are the “ghost-nobility” and look upon the rest of the ghost species with disdain and scorn.

The ghost informs us of the ways of ghosts: it’s old-fashioned to groan, and instead now there is the more fashionable squeak – which the narrator tells us "chill me to the bone". (p. 31). A more difficult skill to master, the ghost says, is “gibbering” – “that’s something like a job” (p. 31). Ghosts are required to spend a great deal of money on skulls, crossbones, coloured fire, the fitting of robes, and other expenses. Ghosts also must conform to the standards of the Haunted House Committee, who "make a fuss / Because a Ghost was French, or Russ, / Or even from the City", and who disapprove of dialects such as the Irish brogue (p. 34).