
Luke Batterham
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TERROR PURCHASED IN THE CALEDONIAN MARKET: "'The voice?' I said, and a feeling of chill horror crept over me./ 'The voice', said Denton wildly. 'I, in the twentieth century, have spoken with the Oracle of Delphi, and I neglected its warning. That serpent's head, one of the three which supported the golden bowl; the serpent's head, lost Heaven knows when, from Constantinople, and coming to light in Elsmere's rooms! it's fantastic, it's unbelievable, and I have spoken with it". This seemingly unpublished cautionary tale for buyers of un-provenanced antiquities tells the story of a bronze serpent's head that surfaces on a stall in the Caledonian Market, the forerunner of today's Bermondsey Antiques Market. It turns out to be one of the fittings of the Delphic Oracle and is bought by Elsmere, an antiquarian with a taste for the fantastic. Unaware of what it is, he takes it home and suffers horribly as a result. (Such irresponsibility would have been deplored by Michael Silverman, who was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2008).
This story was written when Vita Sackville-West was living in Constantinople, where Harold Nicholson, whom she had married on 1 October 1913, was serving as Third Secretary at the British Embassy. We can find no record of the story in Cross and Ravenscroft-Hulme's bibliography. See illustration on previous leaf.