The Tale of Terror Part 6

The deliberate, careful a.n.a.lysis of his mode of procedure, so characteristic of his mind and temper, is full of interest:

"I bent myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and pursuit: the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities and the pursuer by his ingenuity and resources keeping the victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume.

I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to alarm and hara.s.s his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer that he might deprive him of peace, character and credit, and have him for ever in his power. This const.i.tuted the outline of my second volume... To account for the fearful events of the third it was necessary that the pursuer should be invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle and with extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale be answered without his appearing to have been originally endowed with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him ... the tenant of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted almost to wors.h.i.+p him for his high qualities. Here were ample materials for a first volume."[77]

G.o.dwin hoped that an "entire unity of plot" would be the infallible result of this ingenious method of constructing his story, and only wrote in a high state of excitement when the "afflatus" was upon him. So far as we may judge from his description, he seems to have realised his story first as a complex psychological situation, not as a series of disconnected pictures. He thought in abstractions not in visual images, and he had next to make his abstractions concrete by inventing figures whose actions should be the result of the mental and moral conflict he had conceived. G.o.dwin's att.i.tude to his art forms a striking contrast to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. She has her set of marionettes, appropriately adorned, ready to move hither and thither across her picturesque background as soon as she has deftly manipulated the machinery which is to set them in motion.

G.o.dwin, on the other hand, first constructs his machinery, and afterwards, with laborious effort, carves the figures who are to be attached to the wires. He cares little for costume or setting, but much for the complicated mechanism that controls the destiny of his characters. The effect of this difference in method is that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe's plots, but remember isolated pictures. After reading _Caleb Williams_ we recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.

G.o.dwin's point of view was not that of an artist but of a scientist, who, after patiently investigating and a.n.a.lysing mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in the form of a novel. He spared no pains to make his narrative arresting and convincing. The story is told by Caleb Williams himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the pa.s.sions and emotions that had stirred him in the past. By this device G.o.dwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.

Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle in England after spending some years in Italy. Collins, the steward, tells Williams his patron's history. Falkland has always been renowned for the n.o.bility of his character. In Italy, where he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided, by "magnanimity," a duel with her lover. On Falkland's return to England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public a.s.sembly to denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making a personal a.s.sault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as duelling according to the G.o.dwinian principles was "the vilest of all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of meeting his a.s.sailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of chivalry ever to forget the situation"--as G.o.dwin seems to think a "man of reason" might have done in these circ.u.mstances. Tyrrel was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a stain on his character. Two men--a father and son called Hawkins--whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime. This is the state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland's service and takes up the thread of the narrative. On hearing the story of the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to gratify his overmastering pa.s.sion of curiosity determines to spy incessantly until he has solved the problem. One day, after having heard a groan of anguish, Williams peers through the half-open door of a closet, and catches sight of Falkland in the act of opening the lid of a chest. This incident fans his smouldering curiosity into flame, and he is soon after detected by his master in an attempt to break open the chest in the "Bluebeard's chamber." Not without cause, Falkland is furiously angry, but for some inexplicable reason confesses to the murder, at the same time expressing his pa.s.sionate determination at all costs to preserve his reputation. He is tortured, not by remorse for his crime, but by the fear of being found out, and seeks to terrorise Williams into silence by declaring:

"To gratify a foolishly inquisitive humour you have sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but can never share my affection. If ever an unguarded word escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death or worse."

From this moment Williams is helpless. Turn where he will, the toils of Falkland encompa.s.s him. Forester, Falkland's half-brother, tries to persuade Williams to enter his service.

Williams endeavours to flee from his master, who prevents his escape by accusing him, in the presence of Forester, of stealing some jewellery and bank-notes which have disappeared in the confusion arising from an alarm of fire. The plunder has been placed in Williams' boxes, and the evidence against him is overwhelming. He is imprisoned, and the sordid horror of his life in the cells gives G.o.dwin an opportunity of showing "how man becomes the destroyer of man." He escapes, and is sheltered by a gang of thieves, whose leader, Raymond, a G.o.dwinian theorist, listens with eager sympathy to his tale, which he regards as "only one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of the community against those who are less privileged than themselves." When a reward is offered for the capture of Williams, the thieves are persuaded that they must not deliver the lamb to the wolf. After an old hag, whose animosity he has aroused, has made a bloodthirsty attack on him with a hatchet, Williams feels obliged to leave their habitation "abruptly without leave-taking." He then a.s.sumes beggar's attire and an Irish brogue, but is soon compelled to seek a fresh disguise. In Wales as in London, he comes across someone who has known Falkland, and is reviled for his treachery to so n.o.ble a master, and cast forth with ignominy. He discovers that Falkland has hired an unscrupulous villain, Gines, to follow him from place to place, blackening his reputation. Finally desperation drives him to accuse Falkland openly, though, after doing so, he praises the murderer, and loathes himself for his betrayal:

"Mr. Falkland is of a n.o.ble nature ... a man worthy of affection and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of mankind."

The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:

"Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me together."

Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a n.o.ble spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human society:

"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth, and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into madness."

At the conclusion of the story, G.o.dwin has not succeeded in making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire. But, if the story does not "rouse men to a sense of the evils of slavery," or "const.i.tute an epoch in the mind of every reader," it has compensating merits and may be read with unfailing interest either as a study of morbid psychology or as a spirited detective story. G.o.dwin's originality in his dissection of human motive has hardly yet been sufficiently emphasised, perhaps because he is so scrupulous in acknowledging literary debts.[78] From Mrs.

Radcliffe, whose _Romance of the Forest_ was published the year before _Caleb Williams_, he borrowed the mysterious chest, the nature of whose contents is hinted at but never actually disclosed; but G.o.dwin was no wizard, and had neither the gift nor the inclination to conjure with Gothic properties. In leaving imperfectly explained the incident of the discovery of the heart in _The Monastery_, Scott s.h.i.+elded himself behind G.o.dwin's Iron Chest, which gave its name to Colman's drama.[79] G.o.dwin's peculiar interest was in criminal psychology, and he concentrates on the dramatic conflict between the murderer and the detective.

An unusual turn is given to the story by the fact that the criminal is the pursuer instead of the pursued. G.o.dwin intended later in life to write a romance based on the story of Eugene Aram, the philosophical murderer; and his careful notes on the scheme are said to have been utilised by his friend, Bulwer Lytton, in his novel of that name.[80] _Caleb Williams_ helped to popularise the criminal in fiction, and _Paul Clifford_, the story of the chivalrous highwayman, is one of its literary descendants.

G.o.dwin was a pioneer breaking new ground in fiction; and, as he was a man of talent rather than of genius, it is idle to expect perfection of workmans.h.i.+p. The story is full of improbabilities, but they are described in so matter-of-fact a style that we "soberly acquiesce." After an hour of G.o.dwin's grave society an effervescent sense of humour subsides. A mind open to suggestion is soon infected by his imperturbable seriousness, which effectually stills "obstinate questionings." Even the brigands who live with their philanthropic leader are accepted without demur. After all, Raymond is only Robin Hood turned political philosopher. The ingenious resources of _Caleb Williams_ when he strives to elude his pursuer are part of the legitimate stock-in-trade of the hero of a novel of adventure. He is not as other men are, and comes through perilous escapades with miraculous success. It is at first difficult to see why Falkland does not realise that his plan of ceaselessly hara.s.sing his victim is likely to force Williams to accuse him publicly, but gradually we begin to regard his mental obliquity as one of the decrees of fate. Falkland's obtuseness is of the same nature as that of the sleeper who undertakes a voyage to Australia to deliver a letter which anywhere but in a dream would have been dropped in the nearest pillar-box. The obvious solution that would occur to a waking mind is persistently evasive. The plot of _Caleb Williams_ hinges on an improbability, but so does that of _King Lear_; and if it had not been for Falkland's stupidity, the story would have ended with the first volume. G.o.dwin excels in the a.n.a.lysis of mental conditions, but fails when he attempts to trans.m.u.te pa.s.sionate feeling into words. We are conscious that he is a cold-blooded spectator _ab extra_ striving to describe what he has never felt for himself. It is not even "emotion recollected in tranquillity." Men of this world, who are carried away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and directly. G.o.dwin's characters pause to cull their words from dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that Williams has basely robbed his master is astonis.h.i.+ngly elegant: "Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81]

The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His style is a curious mixture of these two manners.

The aim of _St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century_, is to show that "boundless wealth, freedom from disease, weakness and death are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection and the charities of private life."[82] For four years G.o.dwin had desired to modify what he had said on the subject of private affections in _Political Justice_, while he a.s.serted his conviction of the general truth of his system. G.o.dwin had argued that private affections resulted in partiality, and therefore injustice.[83] If a house were on fire, reason would urge a man to save Fenelon in preference to his valet; but if the rescuer chanced to be the brother or father of the valet, private feeling would intervene, unreasonably urging him to save his relative and abandon Fenelon. Lest he should be regarded as a wrecker of homes, G.o.dwin wished to show that domestic happiness should not be despised by the man of reason. Instead of expressing his views on this subject in a succinct pamphlet, G.o.dwin, elated by the success of _Caleb Williams_, decided to embody them in the form of a novel. He at first despaired of finding a theme so rich in interest as that of his first novel, but ultimately decided that "by mixing human feelings and pa.s.sions with incredible situations he might conciliate the patience even of the severest judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a flash G.o.dwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He makes no pretence that _St. Leon_ grew naturally as a work of art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he doggedly accomplished it, the result is dull and laboured.

The plot of _St. Leon_ was suggested by Dr. John Campbell's _Hermippus Redivivus_,[85] and centres round the theories of the Rosicrucians. The first volume describes the early life of the knight St. Leon, his soldiering, his dissipations, and his happy marriage to Marguerite, whose character is said to have been modelled on that of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris he is tempted into extravagance and into playing for high stakes, with the result that he retires to Switzerland the "prey of poverty and remorse." Misfortunes pursue him for some time, but he at last enjoys six peaceful years, at the end of which he is visited by a mysterious old man, whom he conceals in a summer-house, and whom he refuses to betray to the Inquisitors in search of him. In return the old man reveals to him the secret of the elixir vitae, and of the philosopher's stone. Marguerite becomes suspicious of the source of her husband's wealth: "For a soldier you present me with a projector and a chemist, a cold-blooded mortal raking in the ashes of a crucible for a selfish and solitary advantage."

His son, Charles, unable to endure the aspersions cast upon his father's honour during their travels together in Germany, deserts him. St. Leon is imprisoned because he cannot account for the death of the stranger and for his own sudden acquisition of wealth, but contrives his escape by bribing the jailor. He travels to Italy, but is unable to escape from misfortune.

Suspected of black magic, he becomes an object of hatred to the inhabitants of the town where he lives. His house is burnt down, his servant and his favourite dog are killed, and he soon hears of the death of his unhappy wife. He is imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition, but escapes, and takes refuge with a Jew, whom he compels to shelter him, until another dose of the elixir restores his youthful appearance, and he sets forth again, this time disguised as a wealthy Spanish cavalier. He visits his own daughters, representing himself as the executor under their father's will. He decides to devote himself to the service of others, and is revered as the saviour of Hungary, until disaffection, caused by a shortage of food, renders him unpopular. He makes a friend of Bethlem Gabor, whose wife and children have been savagely murdered by a band of marauders. St.

Leon, we are told, "found an inexhaustible and indescribable pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul."

But Gabor soon conceives a bitter hatred against him, and entraps him in a subterranean vault, where he languishes for many months, refusing to yield up his secret. At length the castle is besieged, and Gabor before his death gives St. Leon his liberty.

The leader of the expedition proves to be St. Leon's long-lost son, Charles, who has a.s.sumed the name of De Damville. St. Leon, without at first revealing his ident.i.ty, cultivates the friends.h.i.+p of his son, but Charles, on learning of his dealings with the supernatural, repudiates his father. Finally the marriage of his son to Pandora proves to St. Leon that despite his misfortunes "there is something in this world worth living for."

The Inquisition scenes of _St. Leon_ were undoubtedly coloured faintly by those of Lewis's _Monk_ (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's _Italian_ (1798); but it is characteristic of G.o.dwin that instead of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and superior being in human form;"[86] but apart from this trait he is not an impressive figure. The only character who would have felt perfectly at home in the realm of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk"

Lewis is Bethlem Gabor, who appears for the first time in the fourth volume of _St. Leon_. He is akin to Schedoni and his compeers in his love of solitude, his independence of companions.h.i.+p, and his superhuman aspect, but he is a figure who inspires awe and pity as well as terror. Beside this personage the other characters pale into insignificance:

"He was more than six feet in stature ... and he was built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick and s.h.a.ggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had suffered considerable mutilation in the services through which he had pa.s.sed ... Bethlem Gabor, though universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of reserve and taciturnity... Seldom did he allow himself to open his thoughts but when he did, Great G.o.d! what supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud him... Bethlem Gabor's was a soul that soared to a sightless distance above the sphere of pity."[87]

The superst.i.tions of bygone ages, which had fired the imagination of so many writers of romance, left G.o.dwin cold. He was mildly interested in the supernatural as affording insight into the "credulity of the human mind," and even compiled a treatise on _The Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834).[88] But the hints and suggestions, the gloom, the weird lights and shades which help to create that romantic atmosphere amid which the alchemist's dream seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in G.o.dwin's story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly groans, no phosph.o.r.escent lights enhance the horror and mystery of the scene. G.o.dwin is coolly indifferent to historical accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather for its position in the history of the novel than for any intrinsic charm. G.o.dwin was the first to embody in a romance the ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_, _Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.

_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work called _St. G.o.dwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_, by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated, and the author finally satirises G.o.dwin bitterly:

"Thinking from my political writings that I was a good hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.

These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine high-sounding periods would a.s.sist to make the unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]

The parodist takes G.o.dwin almost as seriously as he took himself, and his attack is needlessly savage. G.o.dwin's political opinions may account for the brutality of his a.s.sailant who doubtless belonged to the other camp. When G.o.dwin attempts the supernatural in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the Ches.h.i.+re Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:

"I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from among the trees as I pa.s.sed. I saw the features as distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon them... It was by degrees that the features showed themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.

I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as insensible degrees as those by which it had become agonisingly clear. After a short time it returned."

G.o.dwin describes a ghost as deliberately and exactly as he would describe a house, and his delineation causes not the faintest tremor. Having little imagination himself, he leaves nothing to the imagination of the reader. In his _Lives of the Necromancers_, he shows that he is interested in discovering the origin of a belief in natural magic; but the life stories of the magicians suggest no romantic pictures to his imagination. In dealing with the mysterious and the uncanny, G.o.dwin was attempting something alien to his mind and temper.

In G.o.dwin's _St. Leon_ the elixir of life is quietly bestowed on the hero in a summer-house in his own garden. The poet, Thomas Moore, in his romance, _The Epicurean_ (1827), sends forth a Greek adventurer to seek it in the secret depths of the catacombs beneath the pyramids of Egypt. He originally intended to tell his story in verse, but after writing a fragment, _Alciphron_, abandoned this design and decided to begin again in prose. His story purports to be a translation of a recently discovered ma.n.u.script buried in the time of Diocletian. Inspired by a dream, in which an ancient and venerable man bids him seek the Nile if he wishes to discover the secret of eternal life, Alciphron, a young Epicurean philosopher of the second century, journeys to Egypt. At Memphis he falls in love with a beautiful priestess, Alethe, whom he follows into the catacombs. Bearing a glimmering lamp, he pa.s.ses through a gallery, where the eyes of a row of corpses, buried upright, glare upon him, into a chasm peopled by pale, phantom-like forms. He braves the terrors of a blazing grove and of a dark stream haunted by shrieking spectres, and finds himself whirled round in chaos like a stone shot in a sling. Having at length pa.s.sed safely through the initiation of Fire, Water and Air, he is welcomed into a valley of "unearthly sadness," with a bleak, dreary lake lit by a "ghostly glimmer of suns.h.i.+ne." He gazes with awe on the image of the G.o.d Osiris, who presides over the silent kingdom of the dead. Watching within the temple of Isis, he suddenly sees before him the priestess, Alethe, who guides him back to the realms of day. At the close of the story, after Alethe has been martyred for the Christian faith, Alciphron himself becomes a Christian.

In _The Epicurean_, Moore shows a remarkable power of describing scenes of gloomy terror, which he throws into relief by occasional glimpses of light and splendour. The journey of Alciphron inevitably challenges comparison with that of _Vathek_, but the spirit of mockery that animates Beckford's story is wholly absent. Moore paints a theatrical panorama of effective scenes, but his figures are mere shadows.

The miseries of an existence, prolonged far beyond the allotted span, are depicted not only in stories of the elixir of life, but in the legends centring round the Wandering Jew. Croly's _Salathiel_ (1829), like Eugene Sue's lengthy romance, _Le Juif Errant_, won fame in its own day, but is now forgotten. Some of Croly's descriptions, such as that of the burning trireme, have a certain dazzling magnificence, but the colouring is often crude and startling. The figure of the deathless Jew is apt to be lost amid the mazes of the author's rhetoric. The conception of a man doomed to wander eternally in expiation of a curse is in itself an arresting theme likely to attract a romantic writer, but the record of his adventures may easily become monotonous.

The "novel of terror" has found few more ardent admirers than the youthful Sh.e.l.ley, who saw in it a way of escape from the harsh realities and dull routine of ordinary existence. From his childhood the world of ideas seems to have been at least as real and familiar to him as the material world. The fabulous beings of whom he talked to his young sisters--the Great Tortoise in Warnham Pond, the snake three hundred years old in the garden at Field Place, the grey-bearded alchemist in his garret[90]--had probably for him as much meaning and interest as the living people around him. Urged by a restless desire to evade the natural and encounter the supernatural, he wandered by night under the "perilous moons.h.i.+ne," haunted graveyards in the hope of "high talk with the departed dead," dabbled in chemical experiments and pored over ancient books of magic. It was to be expected that an imagination reaching out so eagerly towards the unknown should find refuge from the uncongenial life of Sion House School in the soul-stirring region of romance. Transported by sixpenny "blue books" and the many volumed novels in the Brentford circulating library, Sh.e.l.ley's imagination fled joyously to that land of unlikelihood, where the earth yawns with bandits' caverns inhabited by desperadoes with b.l.o.o.d.y daggers, where the air continually resounds with the shrieks and groans of melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand for more thrilling incidents, for wilder pa.s.sions and more desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and we may be sure that Sh.e.l.ley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance, with the t.i.tle _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Sh.e.l.ley's imagination in after years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound_, and _h.e.l.las_. The grim and ghastly legends included in "Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) fascinated Sh.e.l.ley;[92] and the suggestive t.i.tles _Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his preoccupation with the supernatural. That Sh.e.l.ley's enthusiasm for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.

In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Sh.e.l.ley invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:

"The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded in the form of trees called by the mult.i.tude Elm trees.

Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the grave, that occasionally may blast your straining eyeb.a.l.l.s. Persevere even though h.e.l.l and destruction should yawn beneath your feet.

"Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight, when the h.e.l.l-demon leans over your sleeping form, and inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Suss.e.x solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=h.e.l.l Devil."[96]

That Sh.e.l.ley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A letter to Peac.o.c.k (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:

"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing a novel."

_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Sh.e.l.ley was still at Eton, and with the 40 paid for the romance, he is said to have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is little more than a _rechauffe_ of previous tales of terror, it evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like G.o.dwin, Sh.e.l.ley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the terrormongers. The book to which Sh.e.l.ley was chiefly indebted was _Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or "Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.

Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_ have been investigated in the _Modern Language Review_ (Jan. 1912), by Mr. A. M. D. Hughes, who gives a complete a.n.a.lysis of the plot of _Zofloya_, and indicates many parallels with Sh.e.l.ley's novels. The heroine of _Zofloya_ is clearly a lineal descendant of Lewis's Matilda, though Victoria di Loredani, with all her vices, never actually degenerates into a fiend. Victoria, it need hardly be stated, is n.o.bly born, but she has been brought up amid frivolous society by a worthless mother, and: "The wildest pa.s.sions predominated in her bosom; to gratify them she possessed an unshrinking, relentless soul that would not startle at the darkest crime."

Zofloya, who spurs her on, is the Devil himself. The plot is highly melodramatic, and contains a headlong flight, an earthquake and several violent deaths. In _Zastrozzi_, Sh.e.l.ley draws upon the characters and incidents of this story very freely. His lack of originality is so obvious as to need no comment. The very names he chooses are borrowed. Julia is the name of the pensive heroine in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian Romance_. Matilda carries with it ugly memories of the lady in Lewis's _Monk_; Verezzi occurs in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_; Zastrozzi is formed by prefixing an extra syllable to the name Strozzi from _Zofloya_. The incidents are those which happen every day in the realm of terror. The villain, the hero, the melancholy heroine, and her artful rival, develop no new traits, but act strictly in accordance with tradition. They never infringe the rigid code of manners and morals laid down for them by previous generations. The scenery is invariably appropriate as a setting to the incidents, and even the weather may be relied on to act in a thoroughly conventional manner. The characters are remarkable for their violent emotions and their marvellously expressive eyes. When Verezzi's senses are "chilled with the frigorific torpidity of despair," his eyes "roll horribly in their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is mystifying--Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly concealed until the end of the story, for reasons known only to writers of the novel of terror. Sh.e.l.ley's romance, in short, is no better and perhaps even worse than that of the other disciples of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.

_St. Irvyne: or the Rosicrucian_ (1811), though it was written by a "Gentleman of the University of Oxford" and not by a schoolboy, shows slight advance on _Zastrozzi_ either in matter or manner.

The plot indeed is more bewildering and baffling than that of _Zastrozzi_. The action of the story is double and alternate, the scene s.h.i.+fts from place to place, and the characters appear and disappear in an unaccountable and disconcerting fas.h.i.+on. This time G.o.dwin's _St. Leon_ has to be added to the list of Sh.e.l.ley's sources. Ginotti, whose name is stolen from a brigand in _Zofloya_, is not the devil but one of his sworn henchmen, who has discovered and tasted the elixir vitae. Like Zofloya, he is surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery. So that he may himself die, Ginotti, like the old stranger in _St. Leon_, is anxious to impart his secret to another. He chooses as his victim, Wolfstein, a young n.o.ble who, like Leonardo in _Zofloya_, has allied himself with a band of brigands. The bandit, Ginotti, aids Wolfstein to escape with a beautiful captive maiden, for whom Sh.e.l.ley adopts the name Megalena from _Zofloya_. While the lovers are in Genoa, Megalena, discovering Wolfstein with a lady named Olympia, whose "character has been ruined by a false system of education," makes him promise to murder her rival. In Olympia's bedchamber Wolfstein's hand is stayed for a moment by the sight of her beauty--a picture which recalls the powerful scene in Mrs.

Radcliffe's _Italian_, when Schedoni bends over the sleeping Ellena. After Olympia's suicide, Megalena and Wolfstein flee together from Genoa. In the tale of terror, as in the modern film-play, a flight of some kind is almost indispensable.

Ginotti, whose habit of disappearing and reappearing reminds us of the ghostly monk in the ruins of Paluzzi, tells his history to Wolfstein, and, at the destined hour, bestows the prescription for the elixir, and appoints a meeting in St. Irvyne's abbey, where Wolfstein stumbles over the corpse of Megalena. Wolfstein refuses to deny G.o.d. Both Ginotti and his victim are blasted by lightning, amid which the "frightful prince of terror, borne on the pinions of h.e.l.l's sulphurous whirlwind," stands before them.

"On a sudden Ginotti's frame, mouldered to a gigantic skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions, Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of h.e.l.l no influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti--a dateless and hopeless eternity of horror."

Interspersed with this somewhat inconsequent story are the adventures of Eloise, who is first introduced on her return home, disconsolate, to a ruined abbey. We are given to understand that the story is to unfold the misfortunes which have led to her downfall, but she is happily married ere the close. She accompanies her dying mother on a journey, as Emily in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ accompanied her father, and meets a mysterious stranger, Nempere, at a lonely house, where they take refuge. Nempere proves to be a less estimable character than Valancourt, who fell to Emily's lot in similar circ.u.mstances. He sells her to an English n.o.ble, Mountfort, at whose house she meets Fitzeustace, who, like Vivaldi in _The Italian_, overhears her confession of love for himself. Nempere is killed in a duel by Mountfort. At the close, Sh.e.l.ley states abruptly that Nempere is Ginotti, and Eloise is Wolfstein's sister. In springing a secret upon us suddenly on the last page, Sh.e.l.ley was probably emulating Lewis's _Bravo of Venice_; but the conclusion, which is intended to forge a connecting link between the tales, is unsatisfying. It is not surprising that the publisher, Stockdale, demanded some further elucidation of the mystery. Ginotti, apparently, dies twice, and Sh.e.l.ley's letters fail to solve the problem. He wrote to Stockdale: "Ginotti, as you will see, did _not_ die by Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that natural magic, which, when the secret was imparted to the latter, destroyed him."[97] A few days later he wrote again, evidently in reply to further questions: "On a re-examination you will perceive that Mountfort physically did kill Ginotti, which must appear from the latter's paleness." The truth seems to be that Sh.e.l.ley was weary of his puppets, and had no desire to extricate them from the tangle in which they were involved, though he was impatient to see _St. Irvyne_ in print, and spoke hopefully of its "selling mechanically to the circulating libraries."

Sh.e.l.ley took advantage of the privilege of writers of romance to palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the various characters, are introduced with the same laborious artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for existence. Peac.o.c.k, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Sh.e.l.ley of 1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and is troubled with a "pa.s.sion for reforming the world." "He slept with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.

He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and secret pa.s.sages, that would have baffled the skill of the Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like familiars."

Although Sh.e.l.ley outgrew his youthful taste for horrors, his early reading left traces on the imagery and diction of his poetry. There is an unusual profusion in his vocabulary of such words as ghosts, shades, charnel, tomb, torture, agony, etc., and supernatural similes occur readily to his mind. In _Alastor_ he compares himself to

"an inspired and desperate alchymist Staking his very life on some dark hope,"