The opening and closing of Henry Colburn, Esq.’s, large, red front door had produced in the course of the morning, as if by force of suction, a bright eddy of human traffic. The brass plate of his name, mounted on the brickwork beside it, had felt the concentrated stare of dozens of passers-by. BOOKSELLER, the plaque additionally declared – a word that seemed to inspire an unusual number of people to stop, and, summoning courage, to enter, if only to hold in their hands what had become the ‘issue’ of the day. Lord Byron, rumour had it, after a three years’ exile, had returned with a ghost story, ‘The Vampyre’. Colburn had published it with suggestive anonymity, blazoning the title across the cover of his New Monthly Magazine, which had just gone on sale. His store-room could hardly satisfy the crowds of the curious who wandered in and out of his shop, hoping, perhaps, to stumble on the poet himself. Some of them even bought a copy of the magazine.

By lunchtime, however, the buzz of publication had mostly died away. The poet, it seemed clear enough, was unlikely to make an appearance. The strange rumour suggesting that he might had been answered by its echo, whose source was equally vague, that he wouldn’t. And the swell of customers, distinguished by their busy interest, had begun to subside, through their indifference, into the current of Great Marlborough Street. The little disturbance outside Colburn’s door eased again into a more continuous flow. It was only towards the quiet end of the afternoon, when the publisher himself had gone out, and the door was locked, that the gentleman whom our tale concerns approached the shop – in spite of his youth, with the support of a walking stick. His free hand held a copy of the New Monthly, as if he had only come to return what was no longer wanted. Even so, he continued to read from it, with a kind of reluctant satisfaction, given away by the murmur in his lips. As he reached Colburn’s door, he attempted to fold the magazine into the hand that held his walking stick – awkwardly enough. The paper was dropped and picked up again; afterwards, he stood for a minute frozen, as if to gather his thoughts, while staring at the name on the brass plate.

He wore his dark hair in curls, which fell loosely across his forehead in such a way as to hide the recession of his hairline. His features, on the whole, were very fine: eyes, black and large; a cleft of stubbornness in the chin; a sensual protrusion of his lips. His strong, straight nose and small, womanish ears suggested internal contradictions. In fact, he was somewhat womanish all round, in figure and pose; his boyhood seemed never to have escaped into manhood. Even the sharp broad lines of his jaw implied a certain delicacy: a precision that could not bear rough handling. When he was angry and puffed up, as now, they comically took on the appearance of a full mouth – an effect brought into clear relief by his high stiff white collar and coal-black coat.