The Tale of Terror Part 10

"When the reader lays down this strange story, perhaps he will detect, through all the haze of Romance, the outlines of these images suggested to his reason: Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation before it settles at last into the simple faith which unites the philosopher and the infant. And thirdly, the image of the erring but pure-thoughted Visionary, seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom and reason is lost in the s.p.a.ce between earth and the stars."

These three conceptions are embodied in Margrave, who has renewed his life far beyond the limits allotted to man; a young doctor, Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose, there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go forward.

In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest, old-fas.h.i.+oned spectre.

CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.

For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole, Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.

Before the close of the century we may trace, in the conversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in _Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignant excitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after the publication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from the field. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdain the vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators, who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as the contents of a witch's cauldron. Until the appearance in 1820 of Maturin's _Melmoth_, which was redeemed by its psychological insight and its vigorous style, the Gothic romance maintained a disreputable existence in the hands of those who looked upon fiction as a lucrative trade, not as an art. In the meantime, however, an easy device had been discovered for pandering to the popular craving for excitement. Ingenious authors realised that it was possible to compress into the five pages of a short story as much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of a Gothic romance. For the brevity of the tales, which were issued in chapbooks, readers were compensated by gaudily coloured ill.u.s.trations and by double-barrelled t.i.tles. An anthology called "Wild Roses" (published by Anne Lemoine, Coleman Street, n.d.) included: _Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers, The Monks of Cluny, or Castle Acre Monastery, The Tomb of Aurora, or The Mysterious Summons, The Mysterious Spaniard, or The Ruins of St.

Luke's Abbey_, and lastly, as a _bonne bouche_, _Barbastal, or The Magician of the Forest of the b.l.o.o.d.y Ash_.[127] There are many collections of this kind, some of them dating back to 1806, among the chapbooks in the British Museum. It is in these brief, blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the short tale of terror, which became so popular a form of literature in the nineteenth century. The taste for these delicious morsels has lingered long. Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted in _Brigand Tales, Tales of Chivalry, Tales of Wonder, Legends of Terror_; and it was in search of such booty, "a penny plain and twopence coloured" that, more than fifty years later, Robert Louis Stevenson and his companions ransacked the stores of a certain secluded stationer's shop in Edinburgh.

It was probably the success of the chapbook that encouraged the editors of periodicals early in the nineteenth century to enliven their pages with sensational fiction. The literary hack, who, if he had lived a century earlier, would have been glad to turn a Turkish tale for half-a-crown, now cheerfully furnished a "fireside horror" for the Christmas number. In his search after novelty he was often driven to wild and desperate expedients.

Leigh Hunt, who showed scant sympathy with Lewis's bleeding nun and scoffed mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munching hearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute his quota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear a death's head as part of his _insignia_, he included in _The Indicator_ (1819-21) a supernatural story, ent.i.tled _A Tale for a Chimney Corner_. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of veal or a German sausage," he unfortunately dismissed from his imagination the nightmarish hordes of

"Haunting Old Women and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean Hands, and Empusas on one leg, and Ladies growing Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through Keyholes; and Plaintive Heads and Shrieking Statues and Shocking Anomalies of Shape and Things, which, when seen, drove people mad,"

and in their place he conjured up a placid, ladylike ghost from a legend quoted in Sandys' commentary on Ovid. Leigh Hunt's story has the air of having been written by one who cared for none of these things; but there were others who wrote with more gusto.

Many of the tales in such collections as _The Story-Teller_ (1833) or _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ (1839-42) show the persistence of Gothic story. In these periodicals the grave and the gay are intermingled, and when we are weary of dark intrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighter reading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors that we cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of some sort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, as a Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many of the stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room for all the old machinery:

"A novel now is nothing more Than an old castle, and a creaking door, A distant hovel, Clanking of chains--a galley--a light-- Old armour, and a phantom all in white, And there's a novel."

In _The Story-Teller_, a magazine which reprinted many popular tales, we find German legends like _The Three Students of Gottingen_, a "True Story Very Strange and Very Pitiful"; _The Wood Demon; The Wehr-Wolf; The s.e.xton of Cologne, or Lucifer_, a striking story of an Italian artist who was haunted by a terrible figure he had painted in the church at Arezzo. Yet the first tale in the collection, _The Story-Haunted_, which describes the sad fate of a youth brought up in a solitary library reading romances to his mother, was intended, like _The Spectre-Smitten_, in _Pa.s.sages from the Diary of a Late Physician_,[128] as a solemn warning against over-indulgence in fict.i.tious terrors. The mother dies in an agony of horror, as her son reads aloud the account of the Gentleman of Florence, who was pursued by a spectre of himself, which vanished with him finally into the earth, as the priest endeavoured to bless him. The son, left alone, enters the world, and judges the people around him by the standard of books.

The story-haunted youth falls in love with the phantom of his own imagination, whom he endows with all the graces of the heroines of romance. He finds her embodied at last, but she dies before they are united. _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_, in ten volumes, contains a comprehensive selection of tales of terror by the "best authors." Walpole, Miss Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"

Lewis, Maturin, Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, and Charles Brockden Brown are all represented; and there are many translations of tales by French and German authors. We may take our choice of _The Spectre Barber_ or _The Spectre Bride_, or, if we are inclined to incredulity, see _The Spectre Unmasked_. The entertainment offered is of bewildering variety. Some of the stories, such as D.F. Hayne's _Romance of the Castle_, seem like familiar, well-tried friends, and conceal no surprises for the readers of Gothic romance. Others, like _The Sleepless Woman_, by W. Jerdan, are more piquant. The hero is warned by his dying uncle to beware of women's bright eyes. In spite of this he marries a lady, whose eyes unite the qualities of the robin and the falcon. After the wedding he makes the awful discovery that she is of too n.o.ble a lineage ever to sleep. Turn where he may, her eyes are always upon him. At last, we find him pallid, haggard, and emaciated, wandering alone in an avenue of cedar trees beside a silent lake:

"At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside--a sunbeam fell upon the baron's face; he took it for the eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly before him, the still, the profound, the shadowy lake.

De Launaye took one plunge--it was into eternity."

The writer foolishly ruins the effect of this climax by super-imposing an allegorical interpretation.

Like the _Story-Teller, The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ should be read

"At night when doors are shut, And the wood-worm p.r.i.c.ks, And the death-watch ticks, And the bar has a flag of s.m.u.t,-- And the cat's in the water-b.u.t.t-- And the socket floats and flares, And the housebeams groan, And a foot unknown Is surmised on the garret stairs, And the locks slip unawares."

But "tales of terror" lose some of their power when read one after another; they are most effective read singly in periodicals. _Blackwood's Magazine_ was especially famous for its tales, the best of which have been collected and published separately. The editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_ shows a marked preference for tales of a supernatural or sensational cast. Le Fanu, who claimed that his stories, like those of Sir Walter Scott, belonged to the "legitimate school of English tragic romance," was one of the best-known contributors. _All the Year Round_ and _Household Words_, under the editors.h.i.+p of d.i.c.kens, often found room for the occult and the uncanny. Wilkie Collins' fascinating serial, _The Moonstone_, was published in _All the Year Round_ in 1868; _The Woman in White_ had appeared six years earlier in _Blackwood_. The stories included in these magazines are of various types. The old-fas.h.i.+oned spook gradually declines in popularity. He is ousted in a scientific age by more recondite forms of terror. Before 1875, with a few belated exceptions:

"Ghosts, wandering here and there Troop home to churchyards, d.a.m.ned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone."

The "explained supernatural" is skilfully improved and developed.

Le Fanu's _Green Tea_ is a story from the diary of a German doctor, concerning a patient who was dogged by a black monkey.

The creature, "whose green eyes glow with an expression of unfathomable malignity," is medically explained to be an illusion; but it is so vividly presented that it fastens on our imagination with remarkable tenacity. Wilkie Collins' short story, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _After Dark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous woman appears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of the face of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the author deliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears by accounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazingly popular type. It reappears continually in different guises.

Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _Die Geistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _Dublin University Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which the mysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that a cow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope was mended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes a strong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of the terrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimately be rea.s.sured.

Another group of short tales of terror consists of those which purport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simple people. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which first appeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).

Cunningham has the tact to preserve the legends of elves, fairies, ghosts and bogles, as they were pa.s.sed down from one generation to another on the lips of living beings. Later he attempted, in a novel, _Sir Michael Scott_ (1828), a kind of Gothic romance; but there is no trace in the _Traditional Tales_ of the influence of the terrormongers with whose works he was familiar. Perhaps the finest story of the collection is _The Haunted s.h.i.+ps_, in which are embodied the traditions a.s.sociated with two black and decayed hulls, half immersed in the quicksands of the Solway. Lewis would have dragged us on board s.h.i.+p, and would have shown us the devil in his own person. Cunningham wisely keeps ash.o.r.e, and repeats the tales that are told concerning the fiendish mirth and revelry to be heard, when, at certain seasons of the year, they arise in their former beauty, with forecastle and deck, with sail and pennon and shroud. James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who was a friend of Cunningham, was steeped in the same folk-lore. _The Mysterious Bride_, printed among his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady, dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.

Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, after the night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, a blackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of a maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and a.s.sures her parents of her welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_ (1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders, dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury has suggested that Lockhart probably had the princ.i.p.al hand in this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the _Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the unearthly.

The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for story-telling made d.i.c.kens call her his Scheherazade, were, like those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was always attracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected a store of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervous ladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly down Darkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short tales is perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmas number of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happy gift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days.

_The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's _Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--the unforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the lady and her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, but the conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor, pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the living child, is delicately wrought. The tale is told in the rambling, circ.u.mstantial style, suitable to the fireside and the long leisure of a winter's evening. d.i.c.kens tells a very different nurse's story in one of the chapters of _An Uncommercial Traveller_. The tone of Mrs. Gaskell's nurse is kindly and protective; that of d.i.c.kens' nurse severe, admonitory and emphatic. She, who told the grim legend of Captain Murderer, meant, clearly, to scare as well as to entertain her hearer. She leads up to the climax of her story, the deadly revenge of the dark twin's poisoned pie, with admirable art. The nurse's name was Mercy, but, as d.i.c.kens remarks, she showed none to him.

Though d.i.c.kens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful stories, he himself, like the fat boy in _Pickwick_, sometimes "wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety, and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs, besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us _The Monkey's Paw_; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, _Told in the Dark_, are as forcible as any of his humours to be read in the daylight.

d.i.c.kens, in his excursions into the supernatural, does not, however, always cast off his mood of jocularity. His treatment of Marley's ghost lacks dignity and decorum. Clanking its chains in a remote cellar of the silent, empty house, it has the power to disturb us, but we lose our respect for the shade when we gaze upon it eye to eye. Applied to the spirit world, there is much truth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. The account of the thirteenth juryman, in _Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions_, is much more alarming. The story of the signalman, No. 1 Branch line, in _Mugby Junction_, is indefinably horrible. The signalman's anguish of mind, his exact description of the Appearance, his sense of overhanging calamity, are all strangely disquieting. The coincidence of the manner of his death, with which the story closes, is wisely left to make its own inevitable impression.

Some of the stories in _Blackwood_ are the more striking because they depend for their effect on natural, not supernatural, horror. We may feel we are immune from the visits of ghosts, but the accident in _The Man in the Bell_ (1821) is one which might happen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightful images that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended in the belfry, are described with an unflinching realism that reminds us of _The Pit and the Pendulum_. To the same cla.s.s belongs the skilfully constructed _Iron Shroud_ (1830), by William Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal, "loves to play at cherry-pit with Satan." The suspense is ingeniously maintained as, one by one, the windows of the iron dungeon disappear, until, at last, the ma.s.sive walls and ponderous roof contract into the victim's iron shroud. Wilkie Collins' story, _A Terribly Strange Bed_, which describes the stratagem of a gang of cardsharpers for getting rid of those who happen to win money from them, is in the same vein. The canopy slowly descends during the night, and smothers its victim. A similar motive is used, with immeasurably finer effect, by Joseph Conrad in his story of the disappearance of the sailor at the lonely inn in the mountains of Spain. The experience of Byrne in _The Inn of the Two Witches_[129] is a masterpiece in the psychology of terror. The dense darkness, in which the young naval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind,"

the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in the candlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil, slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are a fitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpse of the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pa.s.s with Byrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until, completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner in which Tom Corbin was done to death, we feel "the hot terror that plays upon the heart like a tongue of flame that touches and withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes."

In the short stories of the latter half of the nineteenth century, it is hard to escape from the terrible. We light upon it suddenly, here, there and everywhere. We find it in Stevenson's _New Arabian Nights_, in his _Merry Men_, and his stories of the South Seas, as indeed we should expect, when we recall the tapping of the blind man's stick in _Treasure Island_, the scene with the candles in the snow after the duel between the two brothers in _The Master of Ballantrae_, or David Balfour's perilous adventure on the broken staircase in _Kidnapped_.

Kipling is another expert in the art of eeriness, and has a wide range. His Indian backgrounds are peculiarly adapted for tales of terror. The loathsome horror of _The Mark of the Beast_, with its intangible suggestion of mystery, the quiet restraint of _The Return of Imray_, in which so much is left unsaid, are two admirable ill.u.s.trations of his gift.

The tale of terror wins its effect by ever-varying means.

Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentieth century will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves.

The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with a phantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeys and wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold, and it is impracticable here to do more than pick up a few threads in the tangled skein. Terror becomes inextricably interwoven with other motives according to the bent of the author. It is allied with psychology in James' sinister _Turn of the Screw_, with scientific phantasy in Wells' _Invisible Man_.

It may enhance the excitement of a spy story, add zest to the study of crime, or act as a foil to a romantic love interest.

CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.

In 1797 we are told that in America "the dairymaid and hired man no longer weep over the ballad of the cruel stepmother, but amuse themselves into an agreeable terror with the haunted houses and hobgoblins of Mrs. Radcliffe."[130] In _The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa_, published in Ploughkeepsie in 1811, the Gothic castle, with its full equipment of "explained ghosts," has been safely conveyed across the Atlantic and set up in South Carolina; and _The Sicilian Pirate or the Pillar of Mystery: a Terrific Romance_, is, if we may trust its t.i.tle, a hair-raising story, in the style of "Monk" Lewis. Charles Brockden Brown, one of the earliest American novelists, prides himself on "calling forth the pa.s.sions and engaging the sympathy of the reader by means not hitherto employed by preceding authors," and speaks slightingly of "puerile superst.i.tions and exploded manners, Gothic castles and chimeras."[131] Brown, who, like Sh.e.l.ley, was an enthusiastic admirer of G.o.dwin, sought to embody the theories of _Political Justice_ in romances describing American life. The works, which are said by Peac.o.c.k to have taken deepest root in Sh.e.l.ley's mind and to have had the strongest influence in the formation of his character, are Schiller's _Robbers_, Goethe's _Faust_, and four novels--_Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly_, and _Mervyn_--by C.B.

Brown.[132]

Notwithstanding his lofty scorn for "Gothic castles and chimeras," even Brown himself condescended to take over from the despised Mrs. Radcliffe the device of introducing apparently supernatural occurrences which are ultimately traced to natural causes. Like Mrs. Radcliffe he is at the mercy of a conscience which forbids him to thrust upon his readers spectres in which he himself does not believe. He lacks Lewis's reckless mendacity. In _Wieland_ mysterious voices are heard at intervals by various members of the family. To the hero, who has inherited a tendency to religious fanaticism, they seem to be of divine origin, and when a voice bids him sacrifice those who are dearest to him, he obeys implicitly. He slays his wife and children, and his sister only escapes death by accident. After this catastrophe it proves that the voices are produced by a skilled ventriloquist, Carwin, who has been admitted as an intimate friend of the family.

Realising that this explanation may seem somewhat incredible, Brown seeks to make it appear more plausible by dwelling on Wieland's abnormal state of mind, which would render him peculiarly open to suggestion. Carwin's motive for thus persecuting the Wieland family with his accursed gift is never satisfactorily explained. His att.i.tude is apparently that of an obtuse psychologist, who does not realise how serious the consequence of his experiments may be.

In _Ormond_ and _Arthur Mervyn_, Brown describes the ravages of the yellow fever, of which he had personal experience in New York and Philadelphia. The hero of _Ormond_ is a member of a society similar to that of the Illuminati, whose ceremonies and beliefs are set forth in _Horrid Mysteries_ (1796). The heroine, Constantia Dudley, who was Sh.e.l.ley's ideal feminine character, is the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity."

The most memorable of Brown's novels is _Edgar Huntly_, which bears an obvious resemblance to _Caleb Williams_. Like G.o.dwin, Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds pleasure in tracing the workings of the brain in times of emotional stress. The description of a sleepwalker digging a grave--a picture which captivated Sh.e.l.ley's imagination--is the starting-point of the book. Edgar Huntly is impelled by curiosity to track him down. The somnambulist, c.l.i.thero, has, in self-defence, killed the twin-brother of his patron, Mrs, Lorimer, to whom he is deeply attached. Obsessed by the idea of the misery his deed will arouse in her mind, he attempts, in a moment of frenzy, to slay her. Believing that Mrs. Lorimer has died after hearing of the murder, c.l.i.thero flees to America. When he disappears from his home, Huntly resolves to follow him, and in his search loses himself amid wild and desolate country. He is attacked by Indians, and after frightful adventures at length reaches his home. c.l.i.thero, whom he believed dead, has been rescued. Mrs. Lorimer is still alive, and is married to a former lover. This news, however, fails to restore c.l.i.thero, who, in a fit of insanity, flings himself overboard when he is in a s.h.i.+p in charge of Huntly.

Brown's plots, which often open well, are spoilt by hasty, careless conclusions. It was his habit to write two or three novels simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have raised."

Brown takes very little trouble over his denouements, but his characters leave so faint an impression on our minds that we are not deeply concerned in their fates. He is interested rather in conveying states of mind than in portraying character. We search the windings of c.l.i.thero's tormented conscience without realising him as an individual. The background of rugged scenery, though it is described in vague, turgid language, is more definite and distinct than the human figures. We feel that Brown is struggling through the obscurity of his Latinised diction to depict something he has actually seen. An air of dreadful solemnity hangs heavily over each story. Every being is in deadly earnest.

Brown has G.o.dwin's power of hypnotising us by his serious persistence, and of reducing us to a mood of awestruck gravity by the sonority of his pompous periods.

From the oppressive gloom of Brown's "novels with a purpose," it is a relief to turn to the irresponsible gaiety of "Geoffrey Crayon," whose tales of terror, published some twenty years later, are usually fas.h.i.+oned in a jovial spirit, only faintly tinged with awe and dread. In _The Spectre Bridegroom_, included in _The Sketch Book_ (1820), the ghostly rider of Burger's far-famed ballad is set amid new surroundings and pleasantly turned to ridicule. The "supernatural" wooer, who now and again arouses a genuine thrill of fear, is merely playing a practical joke on the princess by impersonating the dead bridegroom, and all ends happily. The story of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow is set against so picturesque a background that we are almost inclined to quarrel with those who laughed and said that Ichabod Crane was still alive, and that Bram Jones, the lovely Katrina's bridegroom, knew more of the spectre than he chose to tell. The drowsy atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow makes us see visions and dream dreams. The group of "Strange Stories by a Nervous Gentleman" in _Tales of a Traveller_ (1824) prove that Was.h.i.+ngton Irving was well versed in ghostly lore. He, as well as any, can call spirits from the vasty deep, but, when they appear in answer to his summons, he can seldom refrain from receiving them in a jocose, irreverent mood, ill befitting the solemn, dignified spectre of a German legend. Even the highly qualified, irrepressibly loquacious ghost of Lewis Carroll's _Phantasmagoria_ would have resented his genial familiarity. The strange stories are told at a hunting-party in a country-house, a cheerful, comfortable background for ghost stories. A h.o.a.ry, one-eyed gentleman, "the whole side of whose head was dilapidated and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted," sets the ball rolling with the old story of a spectre who glides into the room, wringing her hands, and is later identified, like Scott's Lady in the Sacque, by her resemblance to an ancestral portrait in the gallery. The "knowing" gentleman tells of a picture that winked in a startling and alarming fas.h.i.+on, and immediately explains away this phenomenon by the presence of a thief who has cut a spy-hole in the canvas. _The Bold Dragoon_ is a spirited, riotous nightmare in which the furniture dances to the music of the bellows played by an uncanny musician in a long flannel gown and a nightcap. The _Story of the German Student_ is in a different key. Here Irving strikes a note of real horror.

The student falls in love with an imaginary lady, woven out of his dreams. He finds her in distress one night in the streets of Paris, takes her home, only to find her a corpse in the morning.

A police-officer informs him that the lady was guillotined the day before, and the student discovers the truth of this statement when he unrolls a bandage and her head falls to the floor. The young man loses his reason, and is tormented by the belief that an evil spirit has reanimated a dead body to ensnare him. The morning after the recital of this gruesome story, the host reads aloud to his guests a ma.n.u.script entrusted to him, together with a portrait, by a young Italian. This youth, it chances, learnt painting with a monk, who, as a penance, drew pictures, or modelled waxen images, representing death and corruption, a detail which reminds us of what was concealed by the Black Veil in _Udolpho_. He later falls in love with his model, Bianca, who, during his absence abroad, marries his friend Filippo. In a jealous rage the young Italian slays his rival, and is unceasingly haunted by his phantom. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving has no desire to endure for long the atmosphere of mystery and horror his story has created, and quickly relieves the tension by a return to ordinary life. The host promises to show the picture, which is said to affect all beholders in an extraordinary fas.h.i.+on, to each of his guests in turn. They all profess themselves remarkably affected by it, until the host confesses that he has too sincere a regard for the feelings of the young Italian to reveal the actual picture to any of them; With this moment of disillusionment the strange stories come to an end. The t.i.tle, _Tales of a Traveller_, under which Irving placed his tales of terror, indicates the mood in which he fas.h.i.+oned them.

He regarded them much as he would regard the wonderful adventures of Baron Munchausen. They were to be taken, like one of Dr.

Marigold's prescriptions, with a grain of salt. The idea of blending levity with horror, suggested perhaps by German influence, was very popular in England and France at this period.

Balzac's _L'Auberge Rouge_ and _L'Elixir de la Longue Vie_ are written in a similar mood.

It is not always the boldest and most adventurous beings who elect to dwell amid "calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire."

The "virtuous mind," whom supernatural horrors may "startle well but not astound," sometimes finds a melancholy pleasure in beguiling weaker mortals into haunted ruins to watch their firm nerves tremble. Sometimes too, though a man be wholly innocent of the desire to alarm, he is led astray, whether he will or not, among the terrors of the invisible world. Grey ghosts steal into his imagination unawares. It was so that they came to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who speaks sorrowfully of "gaily dressed fantasies turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves." He would gladly have written a "suns.h.i.+ny" book, but was capriciously fated to live ever in the twilight, haunted by spectres and by "dark ideas." He fas.h.i.+ons his tales of terror delicately and reluctantly, not riotously and shamelessly like Lewis and Maturin.