A moment of whimsy, for which I hope I"ll be forgiven: my second epigraph is taken from The Lodger, first published in 1913.¹ There are two readings at least in this line, two inventions to be observed. Nothing new is created, but something is found, hence invention. What is found is within, and yet other than the obvious reading; as such, it is necessary that we read this if we are to see through the fog. First reading: the descent of the fog provides an atmospheric and mood-inducing setting. In anticipation of horror, of that which should not be witnessed, the curtain descends on the stage of the city. At the same time, however, the city is 'staged" in this gesture. Written two decades at least after the canonical fin de siècle texts of Wilde, Stevenson, Conan Doyle, and others, The Lodger has recourse to invention, to unearthing the correct register, the appropriate discourse, for a fictionalized account of the Ripper murders. The image with which this line toys is clearly a potent one: The Lodger might be said to travel back, back into time, even as, it may be suggested, this novel — published when Modernism was well underway if not in full swing — appears to be haunted by the ghosts of both older texts and older Londons; which phantoms can be glimpsed all the more plainly, albeit paradoxically, because of that yellow pall of fog.