The Tale of Terror Part 4

In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy of horrors.

Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks casually, "has, written several other plays besides _The Robbers."_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardingh.e.l.lo_(1787), Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as "the bowl and dagger department," where

"Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror, the spectre nun and the charmed moons.h.i.+ne, shall not be wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers, and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and the like suspicious characters will be found in abundance."[42]

Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_, are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a h.o.a.rding who must at all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he confesses: "Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture produce."[44]

One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play, aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to those who delight in the pursuit of "parallel pa.s.sages." At the age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attache_ to the British emba.s.sy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in 1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.

_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for instance, than Sh.e.l.ley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In _The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill, was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her character during the course of the book, and fails to make her early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a pa.s.sionate soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep: "The time will come when you will be convinced that my pa.s.sion is pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares to Ambrosio:

"I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not principle, and I seized the fit moment for your seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty spirit a.s.sume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded to the blandishments of Matilda."

The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is too swift.

Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its very crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable than Lewis's attempts to depict pa.s.sion or describe character.

Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, pa.s.sionate faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short, staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.

A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:

"The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the _Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from _The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe."

The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's "borrowings." It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a sage of reputed sanct.i.ty seduces and slays a maiden brought to him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's _Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated almost beyond recognition.

In fas.h.i.+oning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_, a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.

The "explained supernatural" plays a less prominent part in _The Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.

Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to incidents in the story of Ambrosio.

The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799, _The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of midnight, who "uttered noises that wintered the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff." _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's own heart, declares:

"To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise of a n.o.ble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter, Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo, under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double ident.i.ty. He is hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds detail after detail without considering the final effect on the eye:

"Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened every feature; the wind from the unclosed window agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to writhe itself. His eyeb.a.l.l.s glared, his teeth chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark tincture of an African; the expression of his countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a demon."

Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the "horrid, horrible, horridest horror." But in _Konigsmark the Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such stories as this that Peac.o.c.k had in mind when he declared, through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become "too base and popular" for the surfeited appet.i.te of readers of fiction. Yet, as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: "If any man wish to amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money."[51]

Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with irony the triumphs of terror:

"Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard, Who fain would make Parna.s.sus a churchyard!

Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's s.e.xton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds With small grey men--wild yagers and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott; Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please, St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.

Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper h.e.l.l!"[52]

Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively sketch of the fas.h.i.+onable reading of the day. It has been insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious, that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, "none of those light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her hair was papering." To redeem the reputation of the journal, Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the "flitting and evanescent productions of the times." After a laborious inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for their monotony, a deadly sin.

"We strolled through a variety of castles, each of which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as many captains of condottieri, heard various e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of legends as stupid as the main history; examined such suites of deserted apartments as might set up a reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights as would make a respectable illumination." It was no easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by circulating library readers a hundred years ago, deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as 1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superst.i.tion and Chivalry_:

"It is not one of the least objections against these fas.h.i.+onable fictions that the imagery of them is essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands, clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar etcetera are continually tormenting us."

Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"

meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Sh.e.l.ley, not a pamphlet filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six s.h.i.+llings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen, wearing gold c.o.c.kades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring t.i.tles, _The Priory of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found there Mrs. Henrietta Rouviere's romance, (published in the same year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouviere, in her preface,

"flatters herself that, aided by records and doc.u.ments, she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a dim yet not distorted nor discoloured gla.s.s, A Peep at our Ancestors";

but her story is entirely devoid of the colour with which Mrs.

Radcliffe, her model, contrived to decorate the past. It is, moreover, written in a style so opaque that it obscures her images from view as effectually as a piece of ground gla.s.s. To describe the approach of twilight--an hour beloved by writers of romance--she attempts a turgid paraphrase of Gray's Elegy:

"The grey shades of an autumnal evening gradually stole over the horizon, progressively throwing a duskier hue on the surrounding objects till glimmering confusion encompa.s.sing the earth shut from the accustomed eye the well-known view, leaving conjecture to mark its boundaries."

The adventures of Adelaide and her lover, Walter of Gloucester, are so insufferably tedious that Scott doubtless decided to "leave to conjecture" their interminable vicissitudes. The names of other novels, whose pages he may impatiently have scanned, may be garnered by those who will, from such works as _Living Authors_ (1817), or from the four volumes of Watts' elaborate compilation, the _Bibliotheca Britannica_ (1824). The t.i.tles are, indeed, lighter and more entertaining reading than the books themselves. Anyone might reasonably expect to read _Midnight Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter_, as Henry Tilney vows he read _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, with "hair on end all the time"; but the actual story, notwithstanding a wandering ball of fire, that acts as guide through the labyrinths of a Gothic castle, is conducive of sleep rather than shudders. The notoriety of Lewis's monk may be estimated by the procession of monks who followed in his train. There were, to select a few names at random, _The New Monk_, by one R.S., Esq.; _The Monk of Madrid_, by George Moore (1802); _The b.l.o.o.d.y Monk of Udolpho_, by T.J. Horsley Curties; _Manfroni, the One-handed Monk_, whose history was borrowed, together with those of Abellino, the terrific bravo, and Rinaldo Rinaldini,[55] by "J.J." from Miss Flinders' library;[56] and lastly, as a counter-picture, a monk without a scowl, _The Benevolent Monk_, by Theodore Melville (1807). The nuns, including "Rosa Matilda's" _Nun of St. Omer's_, Miss Sophia Francis's _Nun of Misericordia_ (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's _Apostate Nun_, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_ would have been a suitable abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported to other climes. We find him in Scotland in _The Mysterious Bravo_, or _The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend_, and in Austria in _The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest_. No country is safe from the raids of banditti. _The Caledonian Banditti_ or _The Banditti of the Forest_, or _The Bandit of Florence_--all very much alike in their manners and morals--make the heroine's journey a perilous enterprise. The romances of Mrs.

Radcliffe were rifled unscrupulously by the snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, and many of the t.i.tles are variations on hers. In emulation of _The Romance of the Forest_ we find George Walker's _Romance of the Cavern_ (1792) and Miss Eleanor Sleath's _Mysteries of the Forest_. Novelists appreciated the magnetic charm of the word "mystery" on a t.i.tle-page, and after _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ we find such seductive names as _Mysterious Warnings_ and _Mysterious Visits_, by Mrs. Parsons; _Horrid Mysteries_, translated from the German of the Marquis von Grosse, by R. Will (1796); _The Mystery of the Black Tower_ and _The Mystic Sepulchre_, by John Palmer, a schoolmaster of Bath; _The Mysterious Wanderer_ (1807), by Miss Sophia Reeve; _The Mysterious Hand or Subterranean Horrors_ (1811), by A.J.

Randolph; and _The Mysterious Freebooter_ (1805), by Francis Lathom. Castles and abbeys were so persistently haunted that Mrs.

Rachel Hunter, a severely moral writer, advertises one of her stories as _Let.i.tia: A Castle Without a Spectre_. Mystery slips, almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's _Old Manor House_ (1793). The author of _The Ghost_ and of _More Ghosts_ adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of night broods over many of the stories, for we know:

"affairs that walk, As they say spirits do, at midnight, have In them a wilder nature than the business That seeks despatch by day,"

and we are confronted with t.i.tles like _Midnight Weddings_, by Mrs. Meeke, one of Macaulay's favourite "bad-novel writers," _The Midnight Bell_, awakening memories of Duncan's murder, by George Walker, or _The Nocturnal Minstrel_ (1809), by Miss Sleath. These "dismal treatises" abound in reminiscences of Mrs. Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis, and many of them hark back as far as _The Castle of Otranto_ for some of their situations. The novels of Miss Wilkinson may perhaps serve as well as those of any of her contemporaries to show that Scott was not unduly harsh in his condemnation of the romances fas.h.i.+onable in the first decade of the nineteenth century, when "tales of terror jostle on the road."[57] The sleeping potion, a boon to those who weave the intricate pattern of a Gothic romance, is one of Miss Wilkinson's favourite devices, and is employed in at least three of her stories. In _The Chateau de Montville_ (1803) it is administered to the amiable Louisa to aid Augustine in his sinister designs, but she ultimately escapes, and is wedded by Octavius, who has previously been borne off by a party of pirates. He "finds the past unfortunate vicissitudes of his life amply recompensed by her love." In _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Rosalthe happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a "cottage ornee" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After Rosalthe's death, spectres, blue flames, corpses, thunderstorms and hairbreadth escapes are set forth in generous profusion.

In _The Priory of St. Clair_ (1811), Julietta, who has been forced into a convent against her will, like so many other heroines, is drugged and conveyed as a corpse to the Count de Valve's Gothic castle. She comes to life only to be slain before the high altar, and revenges herself after death by haunting the count regularly every night. _The Fugitive Countess or Convent of St. Ursula_ (1807) contains three spicy ingredients--a mock burial, a concealed wife and a mouldering ma.n.u.script. The social status of Miss Wilkinson's characters is invariably lofty, for no self-respecting ghost ever troubles the middle cla.s.ses; and her manner is as ambitious as her matter. Her personages, in _Lopez and Aranthe_, behave and talk thus:

"Heavenly powers!" exclaimed Aranthe, "it is Dorimont, or else my eyes deceive me!" Overpowered with surprise and almost breathless, she sunk on the carpet. Lopez stood aghast, his countenance was of a deadly pale, a gla.s.s of wine he had in his hand he let fall to the floor, while he articulated: "What an alteration in that once beauteous countenance!"

Miss Wilkinson's sentences stagger and lurch uncertainly, but she delights in similes and other ornaments of style:

"Adeline Barnett was fair as a lily, tall as the pine, her fine dark eyes sparkling as diamonds, and she moved with the majestic air of a G.o.ddess, but pride and ambition appeared on the brow of this famed maiden, and destroying the effect of her charms."

She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to "grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are "composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her d.u.c.h.esses "figure away with _eclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ a.s.semble at their _dejeune_." It is noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.

In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of Catherine Morland:

"My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are none of the turrets of your old family mansion in Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet, wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pa.s.s it after twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and their poor knees knock together?"

That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to raise their diminished heads.

From a medley of novels, similar to those of Miss Wilkinson, Scott singled out for commendation _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev.

Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the author." His generous estimate of Maturin's gifts and his prediction of future success is the more impressive, because _The Fatal Revenge_ undeniably belongs to the very cla.s.s of novels he was ridiculing.

Maturin was an eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. Wild anecdotes are told of his idiosyncrasies.[58] He preferred to compose his stories in a room full of people, and he found a noisy argument especially invigorating. To prevent himself from taking part in the conversation, he used to cover his mouth with paste composed of flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes of literary composition and expected forbearance and consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had naturally a high colour, and to have gone fis.h.i.+ng in a resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. Such was the flamboyant personality of the man whose first novel attracted the kindly attention of Scott. His oddities, which would have rejoiced the heart of d.i.c.kens, are not without significance in a study of his literary work, for his love of emphasis and exaggeration are reflected in both the substance and style of his novels.

Maturin's writings fall into three periods. Of his three early novels, _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1807), _The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808) and _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), the first only is a tale of horror. _The Wild Irish Boy_ is a domestic story, and forms a suitable companion for Lady Morgan's _Wild Irish Girl_. _The Milesian Chief_ is a historical novel, and is now chiefly remembered on account of the likeness of the opening chapters to Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819). After the publication of these novels, Maturin turned his attention to the stage. His first tragedy, _Bertram_ (1816), received the encouragement of Scott and Byron. The character of Bertram is modelled on that of Schiller's robber-chief, Karl von Moor, who captivated the imagination of Coleridge himself, and who is reflected in _Osorio_ and perhaps in Mrs. Radcliffe's villains.

The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the "moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. _Bertram_ was succeeded in 1817 by _Manuel_, and in 1819 by _Fredolfo_.

Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. _Women, or Pour et Contre_, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably reviewed by Scott.[59] _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by his last work, _The Albigenses_, a historical romance, following Scott's design rather than that of Mrs. Radcliffe.

In reviewing _The Family of Montorio_, Scott prudently attempted only a brief survey of the plot, and forsook Maturin's sequence of events. In his sketch the outline of the story is comparatively clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered, baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an adventurer must have lain down, dispirited and exhausted, without ever reaching his distant and elusive goal. Disentangled and simplified almost beyond recognition, the story runs thus: In 1670, Count Orazio and his younger brother are the sole representatives of the family of Montorio. Orazio has married Erminia di Vivaldi, whom he loves devotedly. She does not return his love. The younger brother determines to take advantage of this circ.u.mstance to gain the t.i.tle and estates for himself, and succeeds in arousing Orazio's jealousy against a young officer, Verdoni, to whom Erminia had formerly been deeply attached. In a violent pa.s.sion Orazio slays Verdoni before the eyes of Erminia, who falls dead at his feet. This part of his design accomplished, the younger brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however, discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of his brother. Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone on a desert island. When his senses are restored, he resolves to devote the rest of his life to vengeance. For fifteen years he buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the scene of the murder. He becomes confessor to his brother, who has a.s.sumed the t.i.tle and estates. It is his intention to compel the Count's sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father. Death at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate catastrophe for the Count's career of infamy. To reconcile the two victims--Annibal and Ippolito--to their task, he "relies mainly on the doctrine of fatalism." The most complex and ingenious "machinery" is used to work upon their superst.i.tious feelings. No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose. Even the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the brothers. Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny, and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count's body. When the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and Erminia. By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for Schemoli to save his children from the crime. At the close of a lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of their lands. Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of Barcelona. Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by self-administered poison. Intertwined with the main theme of Schemoli's fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two brothers. Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with Shakespeare's comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of sentimental verses. She only reveals her s.e.x just before her death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.

Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a convent against her will--a fate almost inevitable in the realm of Gothic romance. When letters are received authorising her release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that she is dead. She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes. The ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards. Ere the close it proves that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio. Such is the skeleton of Maturin's story, when its scattered members have been patiently collected and fitted together. The impressive figure of Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it possesses. But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story. Like the doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal's dolorous cry:

"Why should I be shut up in this house of horrors to deal with spirits and d.a.m.ned things and the secrets of the infernal world while there are so many paths open to pleasure, the varieties of human intercourse and the enjoyment of life?"

Maturin, a disciple of Mrs. Radcliffe, feels it his duty to explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story, but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets which have hara.s.sed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are merely waxen images that spout blood automatically.

Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling phenomena are accounted for in the same trivial fas.h.i.+on.

Maturin seems to have crowded into his story nearly every character and incident that had been employed in earlier Gothic romances. Schemoli is a remarkably faithful portrait of Mrs.