CHAPTER I

The

Supernatural in Modern

English Fiction

By

Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.

Instructor in English in Extension, Columbia University

[Illustration: Logo]

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917

BY

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To

GEORGE AND ANNE SCARBOROUGH

PREFACE

The subject of the supernatural in modern English fiction has been

found difficult to deal with because of its wealth of material. While

there has been no previous book on the topic, and none related to it,

save Mr. C. E. Whitmore's work on _The Supernatural in Tragedy_, the

mass of fiction itself introducing ghostly or psychic motifs is simply

enormous. It is manifestly impossible to discuss, or even to mention,

all of it. Even in my bibliography which numbers over three thousand

titles, I have made no effort to list all the available examples of

the type. The bibliography, which I at first intended to publish in

connection with this volume, is far too voluminous to be included here,

so will probably be brought out later by itself.

It would have been impossible for me to prosecute the research work

or to write the book save for the assistance generously given by many

persons. I am indebted to the various officials of the libraries of

Columbia University and of New York City, particularly to Miss Isadore

Mudge, Reference Librarian of Columbia, and to the authorities of

the New York Society Library for permission to use their priceless

out-of-print novels in the Kennedy Collection. My interest in English

fiction was increased during my attendance on some courses in the

history of the English novel, given by Dr. A. J. Carlyle, in Oxford

University, England, several years ago. I have received helpful

bibliographical suggestions from Professor Blanche Colton Williams,

Dr. Dorothy Brewster, Professor Nelson Glenn McCrea, Professor John

Cunliffe, and Dean Talcott Williams, of Columbia, and Professor G. L.

Kittredge, of Harvard. Professors William P. Trent, George Philip

Krapp, and Ernest Hunter Wright very kindly read the book in manuscript

and gave valuable advice concerning it, Professor Wright going over

the material with me in detail. But my chief debt of gratitude is to

Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, Head of the Department of English and

Comparative Literature in Columbia, whose stimulating criticism and

kindly encouragement have made the book possible. To all of these--and

others--who have aided me, I am deeply grateful, and I only wish that

the published volume were more worthy of their assistance.

D. S.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

April, 1917.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER

I.--THE GOTHIC ROMANCE 6

II.--LATER INFLUENCES 54

III.--MODERN GHOSTS 81

IV.--THE DEVIL AND HIS ALLIES 130

V.--SUPERNATURAL LIFE 174

VI.--THE SUPERNATURAL IN FOLK-TALES 242

VII.--SUPERNATURAL SCIENCE 251

VIII.--CONCLUSION 281

The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction

INTRODUCTION

The supernatural is an ever-present force in literature. It colors our

poetry, shapes our epics and dramas, and fashions our prose till we are

so wonted to it that we lose sense of its wonder and magic. If all the

elements of the unearthly were removed from our books, how shrunken in

value would seem the residue, how forlorn our feelings! Lafcadio Hearn

in the recently published volume, _Interpretations of Literature_, says:

There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old

or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of

the supernatural. In English literature I believe there is no

exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare,

and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the

consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do

not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great

philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great

art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It

touches something within us that relates to infinity.[1]

[1] The word _ghostly_ is used here in its earlier sense

signifying spiritual.

This continuing presence of the weird in literature shows the popular

demand for it and must have some basis in human psychosis. The night

side of the soul attracts us all. The spirit feeds on mystery. It

lives not by fact alone but by the unknowable, and there is no highest

mystery without the supernatural. Man loves the frozen touch of fear,

and realizes pure terror only when touched by the unmortal. The hint

of spectral sounds or presences quickens the imagination as no other

suggestion can do, and no human shapes of fear can awe the soul as

those from beyond the grave. Man's varying moods create heaven, hell,

and faery wonder-lands for him, and people them with strange beings.

Man loves the supernatural elements in literature perhaps because they

dignify him by giving his existence a feeling of infinity otherwise

denied. They grant him a sense of being the center of powers more than

earthly, of conflicts supermortal. His own material life may be however

circumscribed and trivial yet he can loose his fancy and escape the

petty tragedies of his days by flight beyond the stars. He can widen

the tents of his mortal life, create a universe for his companionship,

and marshal the forces of demons and unknown gods for his commands. To

his narrow rut he can join the unspaced firmament; to his trivial hours

add eternity; to his finite, infinity. He is so greedy of power, and

has so piteously little that he must look for his larger life in dreams

and in the literature of the supernatural.

But, whatever be the reasons, there has been a continuity of the

ghostly in literature, with certain rise and fall of interest. There is

in modern English fiction, as likewise in poetry and the drama, a great

extent of the supernatural, with wide diversity of elements. Beginning

with the Gothic romance, that curious architectural excrescence that

yet has had enormous influence on our novel, the supernatural is found

in every period and in every form of fiction. The unearthly beings meet

us in all guises, and answer our every mood, whether it be serious or

awed, satiric or humoresque.

Literature, always a little ahead of life, has formed our beliefs

for us, made us free with spirits, and given us entrance to immortal

countries. The sense of the unearthly is ever with us, even in the

most commonplace situations,--and there is nothing so natural to

us as the supernatural. Our imagination, colored by our reading,

reveals and transforms the world we live in. We are aware of unbodied

emotions about us, of discarnate moods that mock or invite us. We go

a-ghosting now in public places, and a specter may glide up to give us

an _apologia pro vita sua_ any day in Grand Central or on Main Street

of Our-Town. We chat with fetches across the garden fence and pass the

time of day with demons by way of the dumb-waiter. That gray-furred

creature that glooms suddenly before us in the winter street is not a

chauffeur, but a were-wolf questing for his prey. Yon whirring thing in

the far blue is not an aeroplane but a hippogriff that will presently

alight on the pavement beside us with thundering golden hoofs to bear

us away to distant lovely lands where we shall be untroubled by the

price of butter or the articles lost in last week's wash. That sedate

middle-aged ferry that transports us from Staten Island is a magic

Sending Boat if only we knew its potent runes! The old woman with

the too-pink cheeks and glittering eye, that presses August bargains

upon us with the argument that they will be in style for early fall

wear, is a witch wishful to lure away our souls. We may pass at will

by the guardian of the narrow gate and traverse the regions of the

Under-world. True, the materialist may argue that the actual is more

marvelous than the imagined, that the aeroplane is more a thing of

wonder than was the hippogriff, that the ferry is really the enchanted

boat, after all, and that Dante would write a new _Inferno_ if he could

see the subway at the rush hour, but that is another issue.

We might have more psychal experiences than we do if we would only

keep our eyes open, but most of us do have more than we admit to the

neighbors. We have an early-Victorian reticence concerning ghostly

things as if it were scandalous to be associated with them. But that

is all wrong. We should be proud of being singled out for spectral

confidences and should report our ghost-guests to the society columns

of the newspaper. It is hoped that this discussion of comparative

ghost-lore may help to establish a better sense of values.

In this book I deal with ghosts and devils by and large, in an

impressionistic way. I don't know much about them; I have no learned

theories of causation. I only love them. I only marvel at their

infinite variety and am touched by their humanity, their likeness to

mortals. I am fond of them all, even the dejected, dog-eared ghosts

that look as if they were wraiths of poor relations left out in the

rain all night, or devils whose own mothers wouldn't care for them. It

gives me no holier-than-thou feeling of horror to sit beside a vampire

in the subway, no panic to hear a banshee shut up in a hurdy-gurdy box.

I give a cordial how-do-you-do when a dragon glides up and puts his paw

in mine, and in every stray dog I recognize a Gladsome Beast. Like us

mortals, they all need sympathy, none more so than the poor wizards and

bogles that are on their own, as the Scotch say.

While discussing the nineteenth century as a whole, I have devoted

more attention to the fiction of the supernatural in the last thirty

years or so, because there has been much more of it in that time than

before. There is now more interest in the occult, more literature

produced dealing with psychal powers than ever before in our history.

It is apparent in poetry, in the drama, the novel, and the short

story. I have not attempted, even in my bibliography, to include all

the fiction of the type, since that would be manifestly impossible.

I have, however, mentioned specimens of the various forms, and have

listed the more important examples. The treatment here is meant to

be suggestive rather than exhaustive and seeks to show that there is

a genuine revival of wonder in our time, with certain changes in the

characterization of supernatural beings. It includes not only the

themes that are strictly supernatural, but also those which, formerly

considered unearthly, carry on the traditions of the magical. Much of

our material of the weird has been rationalized, yet without losing

its effect of wonder for us in fact or in fiction. If now we study a

science where once men believed blindly in a Black Art, is the result

really less mysterious?

CHAPTER I

The Gothic Romance

The real precursor of supernaturalism in modern English literature

was the Gothic novel. That odd form might be called a brief in behalf

of banished romance, since it voiced a protest against the excess of

rationalism and realism in the early eighteenth century. Too great

correctness and restraint must always result in proportionate liberty.

As the eternal swing of the pendulum of literary history, the ebb

and flow of fiction inevitably bring a reaction against any extreme,

so it was with the fiction of the period. The mysterious twilights

of medievalism invited eyes tired of the noonday glare of Augustan

formalism. The natural had become familiar to monotony, hence men

craved the supernatural. And so the Gothic novel came into being.

_Gothic_ is here used to designate the eighteenth-century novel of

terror dealing with medieval materials.

There had been some use of the weird in English fiction before Horace

Walpole, but the terror novel proper is generally conceded to begin

with his Romantic curiosity, _The Castle of Otranto_. The Gothic

novel marks a distinct change in the form of literature in which

supernaturalism manifests itself. Heretofore the supernatural elements

have appeared in the drama, in the epic, in ballads and other poetry,

and in folk-tales, but not noticeably in the novel. Now, however, for

a considerable time the ghostly themes are most prominent in lengthy

fiction, contrasted with the short story which later is to supersede it

as a vehicle for the weird. This vacillation of form is a distinct and

interesting aspect of the development of supernaturalism in literature

and will be discussed later.

With this change in form comes a corresponding change in the materials

of ghostly narration. Poetry in general in all times has freely

used the various elements of supernaturalism. The epic has certain

distinct themes, such as visits to the lower world, visions of

heaven, and conflict between mortal and divine powers, and brings in

mythological characters, gods, goddesses, demigods, and the like. Fate

is a moving figure in the older dramas, while the liturgical plays

introduced devils, angels, and even the Deity as characters in the

action. In the classical and Elizabethan drama we see ghosts, witches,

magicians, as _dramatis personæ_. Medieval romances, prose as well as

metrical and alliterative, _chansons de geste_, _lais_, and so forth,

drew considerably on the supernatural for complicating material in

various forms, and undoubtedly much of our present element comes from

medievalism. Tales of the Celtic Otherworld, of fairy-lore, of magic,

so popular in early romance, show a strong revival to-day.

The Gothic novel is more closely related to the drama than to the epic

or to such poetry as _The Faerie Queene_ or _Comus_. On the other

hand, the later novels and stories, while less influenced by the

dramatic tradition, show more of the epic trace than does the Gothic

romance. The epic tours through heaven and hell, the lavish use of

angels, devils, and even of Deity, the introduction of mythological

characters and figures which are not seen in Gothic fiction, appear to

a considerable extent in the stories of recent times. In Gothicism we

find that the Deity disappears though the devil remains. There are no

vampires, so far as I have been able to find, though the were-wolf and

the lycanthrope appear, which were absent from the drama (save in _The

Duchess of Malfi_). Other elements are seen, such as the beginnings

of the scientific supernaturalism which is to become so prominent in

later times. The Wandering Jew comes in and the elixir of life and the

philosopher's stone achieve importance. Mechanical supernaturalism and

the uncanny power given to inanimate objects seem to have their origins

here, to be greatly developed further on. Supernaturalism associated

with animals, related both to the mythological stories of the past and

to the more horrific aspects of later fiction, are noted in the terror

romance.

Allegory and symbolism are present in a slight degree, as in _Melmoth_

and Vathek's Hall of Eblis, though not emphasized as in more modern

literature. Humor is largely lacking in the Gothic romance, save as

the writers furnish it unintentionally. In Gothicism itself we have

practically no satire, though Jane Austen and Barrett satirize the

terror novel itself in delicious burlesques that laugh it out of court.

=Elements of Gothicism.= In the terror tale the relationship between

supernatural effect and Gothic architecture, scenery, and weather

is strongly stressed. Everything is ordered to fit the Gothic plan,

and the conformity becomes in time conventionally monotonous. Horace

Walpole, the father of the terror novel, had a fad for medievalism,

and he expressed his enthusiasm in that extraordinary building at

Strawberry Hill, courteously called a Gothic castle. From a study of

Gothic architecture was but a step to the writing of romance that

should reproduce the mysteries of feudal times, for the shadows

of ancient, gloomy castles and cloisters suggested the shades of

ghost-haunted fiction, of morbid terrors. _The Castle of Otranto_

was the outcome of a dream suggested by the author's thinking about

medieval structures.

The Gothic castle itself is represented as possessing all the antique

glooms that increase the effect of mystery and awe, and its secret

passage-ways, its underground vaults and dungeons, its trap-doors,

its mouldy, spectral chapel, form a fit setting for the unearthly

visitants that haunt it. A feudal hall is the suitable domicile for

ghosts and other supernatural revenants, and the horrific romance

throughout shows a close kinship with its architecture. The novels of

the class invariably lay their scenes in medieval buildings, a castle,

a convent, a monastery, a château or abbey, or an inquisitional prison.

The harassed heroine is forever wandering through midnight corridors of

Gothic structure. And indeed, the opportunity for unearthly phenomena

is much more spacious in the vast piles of antiquity than in our

bungalows or apartment-houses.

Mrs. Radcliffe erected many ruinous structures in fiction. Her

_Mysteries of Udolpho_ shows a castle, a convent, a château, all Gothic

in terror and gloomy secrets, with rooms hung with rotting tapestry,

or wainscoted with black larch-wood, with furniture dust-covered and

dropping to pieces from age, with palls of black velvet waving in the

ghostly winds. In other romances she depicts decaying castles with

treacherous stairways leading to mysterious rooms, halls of black

marble, and vaults whose great rusty keys groan in the locks. One

heroine says:[2] "When I entered the portals of this Gothic structure a

chill--surely prophetic--chilled my veins, pressed upon my heart, and

scarcely allowed me to breathe."

[2] In _The Romance of the Castle_.

_The Ancient Records of the Abbey of St. Oswyth_[3] says of its

setting: "The damp, cold, awe-inspiring hall seemed to conjure up ten

thousand superstitious horrors and terrific imaginary apparitions." In

Maturin's _Albigenses_ the knights assemble round the great fire in

the baronial hall and tell ghost tales while the storm rages outside.

In _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ the scene changes often, yet it is always

Gothic and terrible,--the monastery with its diabolical punishments,

the ancient castle, the ruined abbey by which the wanderer celebrates

his marriage at midnight with a dead priest for the celebrant, the

madhouse, the inquisition cells, which add gloom and horror to the

supernatural incidents and characters. In _Zofloya_,[4] the maiden is

imprisoned in an underground cave similar to that boasted by other

castles. This novel is significant because of the freedom with which

Shelley appropriated its material for his _Zastrozzi_, which likewise

has the true Gothic setting. In Shelley's other romance he erects the

same structure and has the devil meet his victim by the desolate, dear

old Gothic abbey.

[3] By T. J. Horsley-Curties.

[4] By Mrs. Dacre, better known as "Rosa Matilda."

Regina Maria Roche wrote a number of novels built up with crumbling

castles, awesome abbeys, and donjon-keeps whose titles show the

architectural fiction that dominates them. A list of the names of the

Gothic novels will serve to show the general importance laid on antique

setting. In fact, the castle, abbey, monastery, château, convent,

or inquisition prison occupied such an important place in the story

that it seemed the leading character. It dominated the events and was

a malignant personality, that laid its spell upon those within its

bounds. It shows something of the character that Hawthorne finally

gives to his house of seven gables, or the brooding, relentless power

of the sea in Synge's drama.[5] The ancient castle becomes not merely

haunted itself but is the haunter as well.

[5] _Riders to the Sea._

Not only is architecture made subservient to the needs of Gothic

fiction, but the scenery likewise is adapted to fit it. Before Mrs.

Radcliffe wrote her stories interlarded with nature descriptions,

scant notice had been paid to scenery in the novel. But she set the

style for morose landscapes as Walpole had for glooming castles, and

the succeeding romances of the _genre_ combined both features. Mrs.

Radcliffe was not at all hampered by the fact that she had never laid

eyes on the scenes she so vividly pictures. She painted the dread

scenery of awesome mountains and forests, beetling crags and dizzy

abysses with fluent and fervent adjectives, and her successors imitated

her in sketching nature with dark impressionism.

The scenery in general in the Gothic novel is always subjectively

represented. Nature in itself and of itself is not the important

thing. What the writer seeks to do is by descriptions of the outer

world to emphasize the mental states of man, to reflect the moods of

the characters, and to show a fitting background for their crimes and

unearthly experiences. There is little of the light of day, of the

cheerfulness of ordinary nature, but only the scenes and phenomena that

are in harmony with the glooms of crimes and sufferings.

Like the scenery, the weather in the Gothic novel is always

subjectively treated. There is ever an artistic harmony between

man's moods and the atmospheric conditions. The play of lightning,

supernatural thunders, roaring tempests announce the approach and

operations of the devil, and ghosts walk to the accompaniment of

presaging tempests. In _The Albigenses_ the winds are diabolically

possessed and laugh fiendishly instead of moaning as they do as

seneschals in most romances of terror. The storms usually take place

at midnight, and there is rarely a peaceful night in Gothic fiction.

The stroke of twelve generally witnesses some uproar of nature as

some appearance of restless spirit. Whenever the heroines in Mrs.

Radcliffe's tales start on their midnight ramble through subterranean

passages and halls of horror, the barometer becomes agitated. And

another[6] says: "The storm, that at that moment was tremendous, could

not equal that tempest which passed in the thoughts of the unhappy

captive."

[6] St. Oswyth.

In _Zofloya_ Victoria's meetings in the forest with the Moor, who

is really the devil in disguise, are accompanied by supernatural

manifestations of nature. The weather is ordered to suit the dark,

unholy plots they make, and they plan murders against a background

of black clouds, hellish thunder, and lurid lightning. When at last

the Moor announces himself as the devil and hurls Victoria from the

mountain top, a sympathetic storm arises and a flood sweeps her body

into the river. This scene is accusingly like the one in the last

chapter of Lewis's _Monk_, where the devil throws Ambrosio from the

cliff to the river's brink.

Instantly a violent storm arose; the winds in fury rent up rocks

and forests; the sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with

fire; the rain fell in torrents; it swelled the stream, the waves

over-flowed their banks; they reached the spot where Ambrosio lay,

and, when they abated, carried with them into the river the corse

of the despairing monk.

No Gothic writer shows more power of harmonizing the tempests of the

soul with the outer storms than does Charles Robert Maturin.[7] As

Melmoth, doomed to dreadful life till he can find some tortured soul

willing to exchange destinies with him, traverses the earth in his

search, the preternatural aspects of weather both reflect and mock

his despair. As the young nephew alone at midnight after his uncle's

death reads the fated manuscript, "cloud after cloud comes sweeping

on like the dark banners of an approaching host whose march is for

destruction." Other references may illustrate the motif. "Clouds go

portentously off like ships of war ... to return with added strength

and fury." "The dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advance slowly seem

like the shrouds of specters of departed greatness. Peals of thunder

sounded, every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart."

[7] In _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ and _The Albigenses_.

In general, in the Gothic novel there is a decided and definite attempt

to use the terrible forces of nature to reflect the dark passions of

man, with added suggestiveness where supernatural agencies are at work

in the events. This becomes a distinct convention, used with varying

effectiveness. Nowhere in the fiction of the period is there the power

such as Shakespeare reveals, as where Lear wanders on the heath in

the pitiless clutch of the storm, with a more tragic tempest in his

soul. Yet, although the idea of the inter-relation of the passions of

man and nature is not original with the Gothicists, and though they

show little of the inevitability of genius, they add greatly to their

supernatural effect by this method. Later fiction is less barometric as

less architectural than the Gothic.

=The Origin of Individual Gothic Tales.= The psychological origin of

the individual Gothic romances is interesting to note. Supernaturalism

was probably more generally believed in then than now, and people were

more given to the telling of ghost stories and all the folk-tales of

terror than at the present time. One reason for this may be that they

had more leisure; and their great open fires were more conducive to the

retailing of romances of shudders than our unsocial steam radiators.

The eighteenth century seemed frankly to enjoy the pleasures of fear,

and the rise of the Gothic novel gave rein to this natural love for the

uncanny and the gruesome.

Dreams played an important part in the inspiration of the tales of

terror. The initial romance was, as the author tells us, the result of

an architectural nightmare. Walpole says in a letter:

Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this romance? I

waked one morning from a dream, of which all that I could recall

was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural

dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that at

the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand

in armor. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without

knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work

grew on my hands.

Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ was likewise born of a dream. "Monk"

Lewis had interested Byron, Polidori, and the Shelleys in supernatural

tales so much so that after a fireside recital of German terror stories

Byron proposed that each member of the group should write a ghostly

romance to be compared with the compositions of the others. The results

were negligible save _Frankenstein_, and it is said that Byron was much

annoyed that a mere girl should excel him. At first Mrs. Shelley was

unable to hit upon a plot, but one evening after hearing a discussion

of Erasmus Darwin's attempts to create life by laboratory experiments,

she had an idea in a half waking dream. She says:

I saw--with shut eyes but acute mental vision--I saw the pale

student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put

together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,

and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of

life.... The artist sleeps but he is awakened; and behold, the

horrid thing stands at his bedside, looking on him with watery,

yellow yet speculative eyes!

And from this she wrote her story of the man-monster.

The relation of dreams to the uncanny tale is interesting. Dreams

and visions, revelatory of the past and prophetic of the future,

played an important part in the drama (as they are now widely used in

motion-picture scenarios) and the Gothic novel continues the tradition.

It would be impossible to discover in how many instances the authors

were subconsciously influenced in their choice of material by dreams.

The presaging dreams and visions attributed to supernatural agency

appear frequently in Gothic fiction. The close relation between dreams

and second sight in the terror novel might form an interesting by-path

for investigation. Dream-supernaturalism becomes even more prominent in

later fiction and contributes passages of extraordinary power of which

De Quincey's _Dream-Fugue_ may be mentioned as an example.

The germinal idea for _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ was contained in a

paragraph from one of the author's own sermons, which suggested a theme

for the story of a doomed, fate-pursued soul.

At this moment is there one of us present, however we may have

departed from the Lord, disobeyed His will, and disregarded His

word--is there one of us who would, at this moment, accept all that

man could bestow or earth could afford, to resign the hope of his

salvation? No, there is not one--not such a fool on earth were the

enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer!

True, the theme of such devil-pact had appeared in folk-tales and

in the drama previously, notably in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, but

Maturin here gives the idea a dramatic twist and psychologic poignancy

by making a human being the one to seek to buy another's soul to save

his own. A mortal, cursed with physical immortality, ceaselessly

harried across the world by the hounds of fate, forever forced by an

irresistible urge to make his impitiable offer to tormented souls, and

always meeting a tragic refusal, offers dramatic possibilities of a

high order and Maturin's story has a dreadful power.

Clara Reeve's avowed purpose in writing _The Old English Baron_ was to

produce a ghost story that should be more probable and realistic than

Walpole's. She stated that her book was the literary offspring of the

earlier romance, though Walpole disclaimed the paternity. She deplored

the violence of the supernatural machinery that tended to defeat its

own impressiveness and wished to avoid that danger in her work, though

she announced: "We can conceive and allow for the appearance of a

ghost." Her prim recipe for Romantic fiction required, "a certain

degree of the marvelous to excite the attention; enough of the manners

of real life to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of

the pathetic to engage the heart in its behalf." But her ingredients

did not mix well and the result was rather indigestible though devoured

by hungry readers of her time.

Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, that energetic manipulator of Gothic enginery,

wrote because she had time that was wasting on her hands,--which may be

an explanation for other and later literary attempts. Her journalist

husband was away till late at night, so while sitting up for him she

wrote frightful stories to keep herself from being scared. During that

waiting loneliness she doubtless experienced all those nervous terrors

that she describes as being undergone by her palpitating maidens,

whose emotional anguish is suffered in midnight wanderings through

subterranean passages and ghosted apartments. There is one report that

she went mad from over-much brooding on mormo, but that is generally

discredited.

Matthew Gregory Lewis was impelled to write _The Monk_ by reading

the romances of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, together with Schiller's

_Robbers_, which triple influence is discernible in his lurid tale.

He defended the indecency of his book by asserting that he took the

plot from a story in _The Guardian_,[8] ingeniously intimating that

plagiarized immorality is less reprehensible than original material.

Shelley, in his turn, was so strongly impressed by Lewis's _Monk_,

and Mrs. Dacre's _Zofloya_ in writing his _Zastrozzi_, and by William

Godwin's _St. Leon_ in his _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, that

the adaptation amounts to actual plagiarism. Even the titles show

imitation. In writing to Godwin, Shelley said he was "in a state of

intellectual sickness" when he wrote these stories, and no one who is

familiar with the productions will contradict him in the matter.

[8] "The History of Santon Barsis," _The Guardian_, Number 148.

The influence of the crude scientific thought and investigation of the

eighteenth century is apparent in the Gothic novels. _Frankenstein_,

as we have seen, was the outcome of a Romantic, Darwinian dream, and

novels by Godwin, Shelley, and Maturin deal with the theme of the

elixir of life. William Beckford's _Vathek_ has to do with alchemy,

sorcery, and other phases of supernatural science. Zofloya, Mrs.

Dacre's diabolical Moor, performs experiments in hypnotism, telepathy,

sorcery, and satanic chemistry. And so in a number of the imitative and

less known novels of the _genre_ science plays a part in furnishing

the material. There is much interest in the study of the relation of

science to the literature of supernaturalism in the various periods and

the discoveries of modern times as furnishing plot material. The Gothic

contribution to this form of ghostly fiction is significant, though

slight in comparison with later developments.

=The Gothic Ghosts.= The Ghost is the real hero or heroine of the

Gothic novel. The merely human characters become for the reader

colorless and dull the moment a specter glides up and indicates a

willingness to relate the story of his life. The continuing popularity

of the shade in literature may be due to the fact that humanity finds

fear one of the most pleasurable of emotions and truly enjoys vicarious

horrors, or it may be due to a childish delight in the sensational.

At all events, the ghost haunts the pages of terror fiction, and

the trail of the supernatural is over them all. In addition to its

association with ancient superstitions, survivals of animistic ideas in

primitive culture, we may see the classical and Elizabethan influence

in the Gothic specter. The prologue-ghost, naturally, is not needed

in fiction, but the revenge-ghost is as prominent as ever. The ghost

as a dramatic personage, his talkativeness, his share in the action,

reflect the dramatic tradition, with a strong Senecan touch. The Gothic

phantoms have not the power of Shakespeare's apparitions, nothing

approaching the psychologic subtlety of _Hamlet_ or _Julius Cæsar_

or the horrific suggestiveness of _Macbeth_, yet they are related to

them and are not altogether poor. Though imitative of the dramatic

ghosts they have certain characteristics peculiar to themselves and are

greatly worth consideration in a study of literary supernaturalism.

There are several clearly marked classes of ghosts in Gothicism. There

is the real ghost that anybody can pin faith to; there is the imagined

apparition that is only a figment of hysterical fear or of a guilty

conscience; and there is the deliberate hoax specter. There are ghosts

that come only when called,--sometimes the castle dungeons have to be

paged for retiring shades; others appear of their own free will. Some

have a local habitation and a name and haunt only their own proper

premises, while others have the wanderlust. There are innocent spirits

returning to reveal the circumstances of their violent demise and to

ask Christian burial; we meet guilty souls sent back to do penance for

their sins in the place of their commission; and there are revenge

ghosts of multiple variety. There are specters that yield to prayers

and strong-minded shades that resist exorcism. It is difficult to

classify them, for the lines cross inextricably.

The genealogical founder of the family of Gothic ghosts is the giant

apparition in _The Castle of Otranto_. He heralds his coming by an

enormous helmet, a hundred times larger than life size, which crashes

into the hall, and a sword which requires a hundred men to bear it in.

The ghost himself appears in sections. We first see a Brobdignagian

foot and leg, with no body, then a few chapters later an enormous hand

to match. In the last scene he assembles his parts, after the fashion

of an automobile demonstration, supplies the limbs that are lacking

and stands forth as an imposing and portentous shade. After receiving

Alfonso's specter--Alfonso will be remembered as the famous statue

afflicted with the nose-bleed--he "is wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze

of glory." That seems singular, considering the weighty material of

which he and his armor are made. There is another interesting specter

in the castle, the monk who is seen kneeling in prayer in the gloomy

chapel and who, "turning slowly round discovers to Frederick the

fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton wrapped in a hermit's

cowl."

Clara Reeve's young peasant in _The Old English Baron_, the

unrecognized heir to the estate, who is spending a night in the

haunted apartment, sees two apparitions, one a woman and the other a

gentleman in armor though not of such appalling size as the revenant

in _Otranto_. The two announce themselves as his long-lost parents

and vanish after he is estated and suitably wed. Mrs. Radcliffe[9]

introduces the shade of a murdered knight, a chatty personage who

haunts a baronial hall full of men, and at another time engages in a

tournament, slaying his opponent.

[9] In _Gaston de Blondeville_.

Mrs. Bonhote[10] shows us a migratory ghost of whom the old servant

complains in vexation:

Only think, Miss, of a ghost that should be at home minding its

own business at the Baron's own castle, taking the trouble to

follow him here on special business it has to communicate! However,

travelling three or four hundred miles is nothing to a ghost that

can, as I have heard, go at the rate of a thousand miles a minute

on land or sea.

In this romance the baron goes to visit the vault and has curdling

experiences.

[10] In _Bungay Castle_.

"A deep groan issues from the coffin and a voice exclaims, 'You hurt

me! Forbear or you will crush my bones to powder!'" He knocks the

coffin in pieces, whereupon the vocal bones demand decent burial and

his departure from the castle. Later the baron sees the ghost of his

first wife, who objects to his making a third matrimonial venture,

though she has apparently conceded the second. In the same story a

young woman's spook pursues one Thomas, almost stamping on his heels,

and finally vanishing like a sky-rocket, leaving an odor of brimstone

behind. A specter rises from a well in _The History of Jack Smith, or

the Castle of Saint Donats_,[11] and shakes its hoary head at a group

of men who fire pistols at it.

[11] By Charles Lucas, Baltimore.

_The Castle of Caithness_[12] shows a murdered father indicating his

wounds to his son and demanding vengeance. An armored revenge ghost

appears in _Count Roderick's Castle_, or _Gothic Times_, an anonymous

Philadelphia novel, telling his son the manner of his murder, and

scaring the king, who has killed him, to madness. The revenge ghosts in

the Gothic do not cry "Vindicta!" as frequently as in the early drama,

but they are as relentless in their hate. In _Ancient Records_, or _The

Abbey of St. Oswyth_,[13] the spirit of a nun who has been wronged

and buried alive by the wicked baron returns with silent, tormenting

reproach. She stands beside him at midnight, with her dead infant on

her breast.

Suddenly the eyes of the specter become animated. Oh!--then what

flashes of appalling anger dart from their hollow orbits on the

horror-stricken Vortimer! Three dreadful shrieks ring pealing

through the chamber now filled with a blaze of sulphurous light.

The specter suddenly becomes invisible and the baron falls

senseless on his couch.

Scant wonder! In the same story Rosaline, the distressed heroine, is

about to wed against her will, when a specter appears and forbids the

bans. Again, Gondemar has a dagger at her throat with wicked intent,

when a spook "lifts up his hollow, sunken countenance and beckons with

angry gestures for his departure." Gondemar departs!

[12] By F. H. P.

[13] By T. J. Horsley-Curties.

Another revenge ghost creates excitement in _The Accusing Spirit_. A

murdered marquis appears repeatedly to interested parties and demands

punishment on his brother who has slain him. Another inconsiderate

specter in the same volume wakes a man from his sleep, and beckoning

him to follow, leads him to a subterranean vault, stamps his foot on

a certain stone, shows a ghastly wound in his throat and vanishes. On

investigation, searchers find a corpse in a winding-sheet beneath the

indicated spot. Another accusing spirit appears in the same story--that

of Benedicta, a recreant nun, who glides as a headless and mutilated

figure through the cloisters and hovers over the convent bed where

she "breathed out her guilty soul." The young heroine who has taken

temporary refuge in the convent and has to share the cell with this

disturbing room-mate, is informed by an old nun that, "Those damned

spirits who for mysterious purposes receive permission to wander over

the earth can possess no power to injure us but that which they may

derive from the weakness of our imagination." Nevertheless, the nervous

girl insists on changing her room! Another famous cloistered ghost,

one of the pioneer female apparitions of note, is the Bleeding Nun

in Lewis's _The Monk_, that hall of Gothic horrors. He provides an

understudy for her, who impersonates the nun in times of emergency,

providing complicating confusion for the other characters and for the

reader.

Ghosts begin to crowd upon each others' heels in later Gothic novels.

No romance is so poor as not to have a retinue of specters, or at

least, a ghost-of-all-work. Emboldened by their success as individuals,

spooks appear in groups and mobs. William Beckford in his _Vathek_

presents two thousand specters in one assembly. Beckford was no

niggard! In Maturin's _The Albigenses_, de Montfort, passing alone

through a dark forest, meets the phantoms of countless victims of his

religious persecution. Men, women, young maidens, babes at the breast,

all move toward him with unspeakable reproach, with "clattering bones,

eyeless sockets, bare and grinning jaws." Aside from Dante the most

impressive description of unhappy spirits in a large number is given

in _Vathek_ in that immortal picture of the Hall of Eblis. Beckford

shows here a concourse of doomed souls, each with his hand forever

pressed above his burning heart, each carrying his own hell within him,

having lost heaven's most precious boon, the soul's hope! In the Hall

of Eblis there are the still living corpses, "the fleshless forms of

the pre-adamite kings, who still possess enough life to be conscious

of their deplorable condition; they regard one another with looks of

the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless above his

heart." The prophet Soliman is there, from whose livid lips come tragic

words of his sin and punishment. Through his breast, transparent as

glass, the beholder can see his heart enveloped in flames.

In James Hogg's _The Wool-Gatherer_, a man of very evil life is haunted

by the wraiths of those he has wronged. As he lies on his death-bed,

not only he, but those around him as well, hear the pleading voices of

women, the pitiful cries of babes around his bed, though nothing is

visible. We have here a suggestion of the invisible supernaturalism

that becomes so frequent and effective a motif in later fiction. After

the man is dead, the supernatural sounds become so dreadful that "the

corpse sits up in the bed, pawls wi' its hands and stares round wi' its

dead face!" When the watchers leave the room for a few moments, the

body mysteriously disappears and is never found. A somewhat similar

instance occurs in one of Ambrose Bierce's modern stories of dead

bodies.

There is some attempt to exorcise restless spirits in a number of

Gothic novels. On various occasions the priests come forth with

bell, book, and candle to pronounce anathema against the troublesome

visitants. In one story a monk crosses his legs to scare away the

specter, but forgets and presently tumbles over. In another,[14] the

priest peremptorily bids the ghosts depart and breaks the news firmly

to them that they cannot return for a thousand years. But one bogle,

whether of feeble understanding or strong will, comes in to break up

the ceremonies of incantation, and scares the priest into hysterics.

[14] _The Spirit of Turrettville._

The imagined ghost appears in many of the Gothic tales, whose writers

lack the courage of their supernaturalism. Mrs. Radcliffe, for

instance, loves to build up a tissue of ghostly horrors, yet explains

them away on natural grounds after the reader fancies he sees a spirit

around every corner.

The ghosts that are deliberately got up for the purposes of deception

form an interesting feature of Gothic methods. The reasons behind

the spectral impersonations are various, to frighten criminals into

restitution after confession, to further crime, or merely to enliven

the otherwise lagging story. In _The Spirit of Turrettville_ two youths

follow the sounds of plaintive music till, in a deserted, spookish

apartment, they see a woman playing at an old harp. As they draw near,

they see only skeleton hands on the keys and the apparition turns

toward them "a grinning, mouldering skull." She waves her hands with

haughty rebuke for their intrusion and "stalks" out of the oratory. She

gives further performances, however, singing a song composed for the

occasion. But the reader, after such thrills, resents finding out later

that she is the living wife, attempting to frighten the villain into

confession.

In _The Accusing Spirit_ a bogus spook is constructed by means of

phosphorus, aided by a strong resemblance between two men, to accuse

an innocent man of murder. The apparition dramatically makes his

charge, but is unmasked just in time to save the victim's life. A tall,

cadaverous young man makes up for a ghost in an anonymous novel,[15]

while a mysterious woman in a black veil attends a midnight funeral in

the castle, then unaccountably disappears.

[15] In _Ariel, or the Invisible Monitor_.

In _Melmoth_ the monks persecute a despised brother by impersonating

spirits in his cell. They cover the walls with images of fiends, over

which they smear phosphorus, and burn sulphur to assist the deception.

They utter mocking cries as of demons, seeking to drive him mad. In

Lewis's _Monk_ there is a false Bleeding Nun as well as the _bona

fide_ specter. In other Gothic novels there are various spectral frauds

cleverly planned, and then revealed, but their explanation does not

altogether dispel the uncanny impression they make.

The ghost that stays at home in a definite place, haunting its own

demesne, is a familiar figure in the fiction of the period. Every

castle has its haunted tower or dungeon or apartment with its shade

that walks by night. Several appear carrying candles or lamps to

light them through the blackness of architectural labyrinths. Several

evince a fondness for bells and herald their coming by rings. In one

romance,[16] the ghost takes the form of a white cow. (Doubtless many

ghosts in real life have had a similar origin.) In another,[17] a

specter in armor appears to terrify his murderer, and supernatural

lightning aids in his revenge.

[16] _The Spirit of the Castle._

[17] _Ethelwina, or the House of Fitz-Auburne_, by T. J.

Horsley-Curties.

It would be impossible to designate all the ghosts in Gothic fiction

for there is wholesale haunting. They appear in the plot to warn, to

comfort or command, and seem to have very human characteristics on the

whole. Yet they are not so definitely personated, not so individual and

realistic as the spirits in later fiction, though they do achieve some

creepy effects. It is not their brute force that impresses us. We are

less moved by the armored knight and the titanic adversary in Otranto

than by the phantoms in the Hall of Eblis. The vindictive ghosts,

mouldy from the vault, are less appalling than the bodiless voices of

wronged women and children that haunt the death-bed and bring a corpse

back to dreadful life. The specters with flamboyant personality, that

oppress us with their egotistic clamor, may be soon forgotten, but the

ghostly suggestiveness of other spirits has a haunting power that is

inescapable. Some of the Gothic ghosts have a strange vitality,--and,

after all, where would be the phantoms of to-day but for their early

services?

=Witches and Warlocks.= While not at all equal in importance to the

ghosts, witches and warlocks add to the excitement in Gothic fiction.

There is but little change from the witch of dramatic tradition, for

we have both the real and the reputed witch in the terror novel, the

genuine antique hag who has powers given her from the devil, and the

beautiful young girl who is wrongly suspected of an unholy alliance

with the dark spirits.

In _Melmoth_, there is an old woman doctor who has uncanny ability.

She tells fortunes, gives spells against the evil eye and produces

weird results "by spells and such dandy as is beyond our element."

She turns the mystic yarn to be dropped into the pit, on the brink of

which stands "the shivering inquirer into futurity, doubtful whether

the answer to her question 'Who holds?' is to be uttered by the

voice of a demon or lover." In _The Albigenses_ three Weird Sisters

appear that are not altogether poor imitations of Shakespeare's own.

Matilda in _The Monk_ possesses dæmonic power of enchantment and in

the subterranean passages of the monastery she works her unhallowed

arts. The hag Carathis, in _Vathek_, is a witch of rare skill, who

concocts her magic potions and by supernatural means forces all things

to her will. There are several witches and warlocks in James Hogg's

_The Hunt of Eildon_, who work much mischief but at last are captured

and convicted. They have the choice of being burned alive or being

baptized, but with wild cries they struggle against the holy water and

face the flames.

In Hogg's _Brownie of Bodbeck_, Marion Linton believes her own daughter

is a witch and thinks she should be given the trial by fire or water.

There is an innocent young reputed witch in _The Hunt of Eildon_, who

is sentenced to death for her art.

=The Devil.= The devil incarnate is one of the familiar figures in the

terror novel. Here, as in the case of the ghost, we see the influence

of the dramatic rather than of the epic tradition. He is akin to

Calderon's wonder-working magician and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus rather

than to the satanic creations of Dante and Milton. He is not a dread,

awe-inspiring figure either physically or as a personality, though he

does assume terrifying, almost epic proportions in the closing scenes

of _The Monk_ and _Zofloya_. Neither is he as human, as appealing to

our sympathies as the lonely, misjudged, misunderstood devils in later

fiction. We neither love nor greatly fear the Gothic demon. Yet he does

appear in interesting variants and deserves our study.

In Hogg's _Hunt of Eildon_ the devil comes in as a strange old man who

yet seems curiously familiar to the king and to everyone who sees him,

though no one can remember just when he knew him. There is a clever

psychologic suggestiveness here, which perhaps inspired a similar idea

in a recent play, _The Eternal Magdalen_. Later he is recognized and

holy water thrown on him.

The whole form and visage of the creature was changed in a moment

to that of a furious fiend. He uttered a yell that made all the

abbey shake to its foundations and forthwith darted away into the

air, wrapt in flames. As he ascended, he waved his right hand and

shook his fiery locks at his inquisitors.

There is nothing dubious about his personality here, certainly!

Satan appears dramatically in _The Monk_ as well. His first visits

are made in the form of attractive youth. Ambrosio, who has been led

into sin by the dæmonic agent, Matilda, is awaiting death in the

Inquisition cell, when she comes to see him to urge that he win release

by selling his soul to the devil. But the repentant monk refuses her

advice, so she departs in a temper of blue flame. Then he has a more

dread visitant,--Lucifer himself, described as follows:

His blasted limbs still bore the marks of the Almighty's thunders;

a swarthy darkness spread itself over his gigantic form; his hands

and feet were armed with long talons.... Over his huge shoulders

waved two enormous sable wings; and his hair was supplied by living

snakes which twined themselves with frightful hissings. In one hand

he held a roll of parchment, and in the other an iron pen. Still

the lightnings flashed around him and the thunder bursts seemed to

announce the dissolution of nature.

Ambrosio is overawed into selling his soul and signs the compact with

his blood, as per convention.

The devil doesn't keep to his agreement to release him, however, for

Lewis tells us that taking his victim to the top of a mountain and

"darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him

from the rock. The caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks.

The demon continued to soar aloft till, reaching a dreadful height,

he released the sufferer. Headlong fell the monk." He plunges to the

river's brink, after which a storm is evoked by the devil and his body

swept away in the flood.

A similar dæmonic manifestation occurs in _Zofloya_. Victoria has been

induced to bind herself to the Evil One, who has appeared as a Moorish

servant of impressive personality and special powers. He grants her

wishes hostile to her enemies, holding many conferences with her in

the dark forest where he is heralded by flute-like sounds. He appears

sometimes like a flame, sometimes like a lightning flash. He comes with

the swiftness of the wind and tells her that her thoughts summoned

him. At last, he announces himself as Satan, and assumes his own

hideous form of gigantism.

Behold me as I am, no longer that which I appeared to be, but the

sworn enemy of all created nature, by men called Satan. Yes, it was

I that under semblance of the Moor appeared to thee.

As he spoke, he grasped more firmly the neck of Victoria, with one

push he whirled her headlong down the dreadful abyss!--as she fell

his loud dæmonic laugh, his yells of triumph echoed in her ears;

and a mangled corpse she fell, she was received into the foaming

waters below.

The devil is seen in _Vathek_ as a preternaturally ugly old man with

strange powers. James Hogg has rather a penchant for the demon, for he

uses him in The _Wool-Gatherer_, and in _Confessions of a Justified

Sinner_, which is a story of religious superstition, of the use of

diablerie and witchcraft, introducing a satanic tempter. On the whole,

the appearances of the devil in Gothic fiction lack impressiveness, are

weak in psychologic subtlety, and have not the force either of the epic

or of the dramatic representations. Nor have they the human appeal that

the incarnations of the devil in later fiction make to our sympathies.

In addition to the unholy powers possessed by the devil and given by

him to his agents, the witches, warlocks and magicians, we see in

Gothic fiction other aspects of dæmonology, such as that associated

with animals and with inanimate objects. Supernaturalism in the horror

novel is by no means confined to human beings, but extends to beasts

as well. Animals are supposed to be peculiarly sensitive to ghostly

impressions, more so than men, and the appearance of a specter is

often first announced by the extreme terror of some household pet,

or other animal. Gothic dogs have very keen noses for ghosts and howl

lugubriously when an apparition approaches. Ravens are represented as

showing the presence of evil powers, somewhat as the Southern darkey

believes that the jay-bird is the ally of the devil and spends every

Friday in torment. And one does not forget the snaky coiffure that

writhed around the demon's head in _The Monk_.

Maturin's _Albigenses_ introduces the story of a gruesome loup-garou,

or werewolf, which figures extensively in folk-tales. In this case

the husband of a beautiful young woman is a werewolf who during his

savage metamorphosis tears her to pieces then disappears to return no

more. This is suggestive--with a less satisfactory ending--of Marie de

France's charming little _lai_, _Le Bisclavret_. Professor Kittridge

has shown the frequency of the werewolf motif in medieval story, by

the variants he brings together in his _Arthur and Gorlogon_. In _The

Albigenses_ a lycanthrope also is described, a hideous human being that

fancies himself a mad wolf.

There is much use of animal supernaturalism in James Hogg's romances.

In one,[18] Sandy is saved from going over a precipice by the warning

of a hare that immediately after vanishes, having left no tracks in

the snow. In another,[19] the two white beagles that the king uses in

hunting are in reality maidens bound by enchantment, who are forced

to slay human beings then transform them into deer for the king and

his company to eat. The other dogs are aware of the unnatural state

of affairs, while the men are too stupid to realize it. The clownish

Croudy is changed into a hog, which brings amusing and almost tragic

complications into his life. His old dog knows him and follows him

pathetically, and a drove of cows go off in a stampede at his approach,

for they, too, sense the supernatural spell. Croudy is put on the

block to be killed for pork, when the fairy changes him back suddenly

to the consternation of the butcher. But Croudy does not behave well

after his transformation, so he is changed into a cat with endless

life. He may resume mortal shape one night in the year and relate his

feline experiences.

[18] _The Wool-Gatherer._

[19] _The Hunt of Eildon._

In the same story the king of Scotland is proposing a toast when his

favorite dog dashes the cup from his hand. This is repeated several

times, till the king learns that the drink is poisoned, and the dog has

thus by supernatural knowledge saved his life. An innocent young girl,

sentenced to death for witchcraft because a fairy has taken her form

and worked enchantment, and her lover are transformed into white birds

that fly out of the prison the night before the execution and live

eternally on the shores of a far lake.

The ghostly power extends to inanimate objects as well as to human

beings and animals. Armor and costumes seem to have a material

immortality of their own, for it is quite common to recognize

spectral visitants by their garments or accouterments. Armor clanks

audibly in the terror scenes. In _The Castle of Otranto_, the giant

ghost sends his immense helmet crashing into the hall to shatter the

would-be-bridegroom and the hopes of his father. The head-gear has

power of voluntary motion and moves around with agility, saves the

heroine from danger by waving its plumes at the villain and generally

adds excitement to the scenes. Later a titanic sword leaps into place

of itself, after having been borne to the entrance by a hundred men

fainting under the weight of it, while a statue of Alfonso sheds three

drops of blood from its nose and a portrait turns round in its frame

and strolls out into the open.

Pictures in general take a lively part in horrific fiction. The

portrait of a murdered man in _The Spirit of the Castle_ picks itself

up from the lumber heap where it has been thrown, cleans itself and

hangs itself back on the wall, while[20] a portrait in a deserted

chamber wags its head at a servant who is making the bed. The portrait

of Melmoth is endowed with supernatural power, for its eyes follow the

beholder with awful meaning, and as the nephew in desperation tears

it from its frame and burns it, the picture writhes in the flames,

ironically, and mocks him. This might be compared with Oscar Wilde's

_Picture of Dorian Gray_ and with other later stories.

[20] In _The Spirit of Turrettville_.

The statue of Alfonso in Walpole's _Castle_ moves from its place with

no visible means of support, and[21] a great effigy of black marble

is said to "march all round and come back into its place again with a

great groan." In _St. Oswyth_ the soil of the abbey grounds obtained

by gross injustice is haunted by the ghost of the wronged nun who

inflicts a curse upon it, rendering it "spell-blighted, unprolific,

and impossible to till." The key to the room in the old house in which

Melmoth's diabolic portrait is kept, turns in its lock with a sound

like the cry of the dead.

[21] In _Ariel_.

Gothic romance contains magic mirrors wherein one can see any person

he wishes no matter how distant he may be, and watch his movements

after the fashion of a private moving-picture show,--such as that used

by Ambrosio.[22] There are enchanted wands with power to transform

men to beasts or _vice versa_, as in _The Hunt of Eildon_. There

are crystal balls that reveal not only what is going on in distant

parts, but show the future as well.[23] The same volume describes

magic swords that bear changing hieroglyphics to be read only by

enchantment and other uncanny objects. These will serve to illustrate

the preternatural powers possessed by inanimate objects in the terror

literature. In some instances the motif is used with effectiveness,

definitely heightening the impression of the weird in a way that

human supernaturalism could not accomplish. We do not see here the

mechanistic supernaturalism, which is to become important in later

tales, and the effects here are crude, yet of interest in themselves

and as suggesting later uses of the idea.

[22] In _The Monk_.

[23] As in _Vathek_.

Dæmonology manifests itself in the supernatural science in the Gothic

novels as well as in the characterization of the devil and his

confreres. We have diabolical chemistry besides alchemy, astrology,

hypnotism, ventriloquism, search for the philosopher's stone, infernal

biology, and the other scientific twists of supernaturalism. In

_Vathek_, where we have a regular array of ghostliness, we see a magic

potion that instantly cures any disease however deadly,--the progenitor

of the modern patent medicine. There is an Indian magician who writes

his messages on the high heavens themselves. Vathek's mother is an

industrious alchemist strangling an assembly of prominent citizens in

order to use their cadavers in her laboratory, where she stews them

up with serpent's oil, mummies, and skulls, concocting therefrom a

powerful potion. Vathek has an uncurbed curiosity that leads him into

various experiments, to peer into the secrets of astrology, alchemy,

sorcery, and kindred sciences. He uses a magic drink that gives the

semblance of death, like that used later in _The Monk_, as earlier, of

course, in _Romeo and Juliet_, and elsewhere.

The Moor in _Zofloya_ is well versed in dæmonic science. He tells of

chemical experiments where he forces everyone to do his will or die.

By his potions he can change hate into love or love into hate, and

can give a drug which produces semi-insanity. Under the influence of

this a man weds a dæmonic temptress thinking her the woman he loves,

then commits suicide when he wakes to the truth. This reminds us of

Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu stories of diabolic hypodermics that produce

insanity.

In _Ankerwich Castle_ a woman lying at the point of death is

miraculously cured by a drug whose prescription the author neglects

to state. In the same story a child is branded in a peculiar fashion.

A new-born babe whose birth must remain secret yet who must be

recognizable in emergency, is marked on its side with letters burnt in

with a strange chemical, which will remain invisible till rubbed with a

certain liquid. Matilda in _The Monk_ dabbles in satanic chemistry and

compounds evil potions in her subterranean experiments.

Mary Shelley uses the idea of supernatural biology in her story of the

man-monster, _Frankenstein_, the story of the young scientist who after

morbid study and experiment, constructs a human frame of supernatural

size and hideous grotesqueness and gives it life. But the thing created

appalls its creator by its dreadful visage, its more than human size,

its look of less than human intelligence, and the student flees in

horror from the sight of it. Mrs. Shelley describes the emotions of the

lonely, tragic thing thrust suddenly into a world that ever recoils

shuddering from it. She reveals the slow hate distilled in its heart

because of the harsh treatment it meets, till at last it takes diabolic

revenge, not only on the man who has created it but on all held dear

by him. The struggles that rend his soul between hate and remorse are

impressive. The wretched being weeps in an agony of grief as it stands

over the body of Frankenstein whom it has harried to death, then goes

away to its own doom. The last sight of it, as the first, is effective,

as, in tragic solitude, towering on the ice-floe, it moves toward the

desolate North to its death.

In the characterization of this being, as in the unusual conception,

Mrs. Shelley has introduced something poignantly new in fiction. It

was a startling theme for the mind of a young girl, as were _Vathek_

and _The Monk_ for youths of twenty years, and only the abnormal

psychological conditions she went through could have produced it. There

is more curdling awfulness in Frankenstein's monster than in the museum

of armored ghosts, Bleeding Nuns, and accompanying horrors of the early

Gothic novels. The employment of the Frankenstein motif in a play

produced recently in New York,[24] illustrates anew the vitality of the

idea.

[24] _The Last Laugh._

The search for the philosopher's stone appears in various novels of

the period. _St. Leon_, by William Godwin, relates the story of a man

who knew how to produce unlimited gold by a secret formula given him

by a mysterious stranger who dies in his home. Shelley[25] brings

in this power incidentally with the gift of endless life. There is

an awe-inspiring use of ventriloquism in Charles Brockden Brown's

novel, _Wieland_, while _Arthur Mervyn_ gives a study in somnambulism.

_Zofloya_ suggests hypnotism or mesmerism by saying that Victoria's

thought summoned the Moor to her,--that they could have brought him

had he been "at the further extremity of this terrestrial globe." This

seems a faint foreshadowing of Ibsen's idea in The _Master Builder_.

These may illustrate the use of science in Gothicism.

[25] In _St. Irvyne_.

The elixir of life is brewed in divers Gothic novels. Dramatic and

intense as are the psychological experiences connected with the

discovery of the magic potion, the effects of the success are more

poignant still. The thought that endless mortality, life that may not

be laid down, becomes a burden intolerable has appeared in fiction

since Swift's account of the Struldbrugs, and perhaps before. Godwin's

_St. Leon_ is a story of the secret of perpetual life. The tiresome

Godwinistic hero is visited by a decrepit old man who wishes to tell

him on a pledge of incommunicability what will give him the power of

endless life and boundless wealth. The impoverished nobleman accepts

with consequences less enjoyable than he has anticipated.

Shelley's hectic romance,[26] whose idea, as Shelley admitted to

Stockdale, came from Godwin's book, uses the same theme. The young

student with burning eyes, who has discovered the elixir of life, may

be compared with Mary Shelley's later picture of Frankenstein. Events

are rather confused here, as the villain falls dead in the presence of

the devil but comes to life again as another character later in the

story,--Shelley informing us of their identity but not troubling to

explain it.

[26] _St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian._

The most impressive instance of the theme of fleshly immortality in

the early novels is found in _Melmoth_. Here the mysterious wanderer

possesses the power of endless life, but not the right to lay it down

when existence becomes a burden. Melmoth can win the boon of death

only if he can find another mortal willing to change destinies with

him at the price of his soul. He traverses the world in his search and

offers the exchange to persons in direst need and suffering the extreme

torments, offering to give them wealth as well as life eternal. Yet no

man nor woman will buy life at the price of the soul.

=Aids to Gothic Effect.= Certain themes appear recurringly as first

aids to terror fiction. Some of them are found equally in later

literature while others belong more particularly to the Gothic. An

interesting aspect of the supernatural visitants is gigantism, or

the superhuman size which they assume. In _The Castle of Otranto_,

the sensational ghost is of enormous size, and his accouterments are

colossal. In the last scene he is astounding:

A clap of thunder shook the castle to its foundations; the earth

rocked and the clank of more than mortal armor was heard behind....

The walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a

mighty force, and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense

magnitude, appeared in the center of the ruins. "Behold the true

heir of Alfonso!" said the vision.

This reminds one of an incident in F. Marion Crawford's _Mr. Isaacs_,

where the Indian magician expands to awful size, miraculously draws

down a mist and wraps it round him as a cloak. Zofloya is frequently

spoken of as immense, and it is said that "common objects seem to

sink in his presence." In the last scene the wicked Victoria sees

the Moor change from a handsome youth to a fierce gigantic figure. A

diabolic apparition eight or nine feet high pursues a monk,[27] and the

knight[28] engages in combat with a dæmonic giant who slays him. The

devil in _The Monk_ is represented as being of enormous stature, and

much of the horror excited by the man-monster that Frankenstein created

arises from the creature's superhuman size. In most cases gigantism

connotes evil power and rouses a supernatural awe in the beholder. The

giant is an Oriental figure and appears in _Vathek_, along with genii,

dwarfs, and kindred personages, but the Gothic giant has more diabolism

than the mere Oriental original. He seems to fade out from fiction,

appearing only occasionally in later stories, while he has practically

no place in the drama, owing doubtless to the difficulties of stage

presentation.

[27] In _The Spirit of the Castle_.

[28] In _The Spirit of Turrettville_.

* * * * *

Insanity as contributing to the effect of supernaturalism affords many

gruesome studies in psychiatry. Madness seems a special curse of the

gods or torment from the devil and various instances of its use occur

in Gothic fiction. The devil in _Zofloya_, at Victoria's request, gives

Henrique an enchanted drug which renders him temporarily insane,

during which time he marries Victoria, imagining her to be Lilla whom

he loves. When he awakes to the realization of what he has done, real

madness drives him to suicide. In _The Castle of Caithness_ the wicked

misanthrope goes mad from remorse. He imagines that the different

ones he has murdered are hurling him into the pit of hell, until, in

a maniac frenzy, he dashes his brains out against the prison walls.

In _Ethelwina_ the father who has sold his daughter to dishonor flies

shrieking in madness through the corridors of the dungeon to escape the

sight of his child's accusing specter. Poor Nanny in Hogg's _Brownie of

Bodbeck_ is described as having "a beam of wild delight in her eye, the

joy of madness." She sings wild, unearthly songs and talks deliriously

of incomprehensible things, of devilish struggles.

Melmoth uses the idea with special effectiveness. The insanity of the

young husband whose bride is mysteriously slain on their wedding day

by the supernatural power accompanying Melmoth, may be compared with

the madness of the wife in Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_. Maturin

also shows us a scene in a mad-house, where a sane man, Stanton, is

confined, whom Melmoth visits to offer exchange of destinies. Melmoth

taunts him cruelly with his hopeless situation and prophecies that he,

too, will go mad from despair. We hear Stanton's wild cry, echoed by a

hundred yells like those of demons, but the others are stilled when the

mad mother begins her lamentation,--the mother who has lost husband,

home, children, reason, all, in the great London fire. At her appalling

shrieks all other voices are hushed. Another impressive figure in the

mad-house is the preacher who thinks himself a demon and alternately

prays and blasphemes the Lord.

Charles Brockden Brown rivals Maturin in his terrible use of insanity

for supernatural effect. The demented murderer in _Edgar Huntley_

gives an impression of mystery and awe that is unusual, while _Wieland_

with its religious mania produced by diabolic ventriloquism is even

more impressive. Brown knew the effect of mystery and dread on the

human mind and by slow, cumulative suggestion he makes us feel a

creeping awe that the unwieldy machinery of pure Gothicism never could

achieve. In studies of the morbid mentality he has few equals. For

psychologic subtlety, for haunting horror, what is a crashing helmet

or a dismembered ghost compared with Brown's Wieland? What are the

rackings of monkish vindictiveness when set against the agonies of an

unbalanced mind turned in upon itself? What exterior torture could

so appeal to our sympathies as Wieland's despair, when, racked with

religious mania, he feels the overwhelming conviction that the voice of

God--which is but the fiendish trick of a ventriloquist--is calling him

to murder his wife and children as a sacrifice to Deity? Such a tragedy

of dethroned reason is intolerably powerful; the dark labyrinths of

insanity, the gloom-haunted passages of the human mind, are more

terrible to traverse than the midnight windings of Gothic dungeons. We

feel that here is a man who is real, who is human, and suffering the

extremity of anguish.

Perhaps the most hideous aspect of insanity in the terror novel is

that of the lycanthrope in _The Albigenses_. The tragic wolf-man

imagines himself to be a mad wolf and cowers in his lair, glaring with

gleaming, awful eyes at all who approach him, gnawing at a human head

snatched from the graveyard. There are various other uses of insanity

in the novel of the period, but these will serve to illustrate. The

relation between insanity and the supernatural has been marked in later

literature.

* * * * *

The use of portents is a distinct characteristic of the horror romance.

Calamity is generally preceded by some sign of the supernatural

influence at work, some presentment of dread. Crime and catastrophe

are forefelt by premonition of woe and accompaniment of horror. In

_The Accusing Spirit_ supernatural thunder heralds the discovery of

the corpse in its winding-sheet, and the monk says, "Yes, some dread

discovery is at hand. These phenomena are miraculous; when the common

laws of nature are violated, the awful portents are not sent in vain."

In _The Romance of the Castle_, an anonymous story, a woman hears the

clock strike two and announces that she will be dead at three.

This night an awful messenger sent from that dread tribunal from

whose power there is no appeal, by signs terrific foretold my fate

approached--foretold my final moment. "Catherine, behold!" was all

that issued from the specter's lips, but in its hand it held a

scroll which fixed my irrevocable doom, in letters which fascinated

while they appalled my sight.

She keeps her appointment promptly. Her experience might be compared

with the vision which revealed his date of death to Amos Judd in James

Mitchell's novel of that name, and to the foreknowledge in George

Eliot's _The Lifted Veil_.

In _The Spirit of the Castle_,[29] the ghost of the old marquis knocks

three times on the door preceding the arrival of the heir, and a black

raven flies away as he enters. At the approach of the true heir to the

estate from which he has been kept by fraud in _The Old English Baron_,

the doors of the ancient castle fly open, upon which the servants cry,

"The doors open of themselves to receive their master!" When Walpole's

usurping Manfred sees the plumage on the miraculous casque shaken

in concert with the brazen trumpet, he exclaims, "What mean these

portents? If I have offended----" At this point the plumes are shaken

still more strenuously, and the helmet is equally agitated when the

great sword leaps in. Manfred cries to the apparition, "If thou art a

true knight, thou wilt scorn to employ sorcery to carry thy power. If

these omens be from heaven or hell, Manfred trusts to righteousness to

protect his cause." But the omens bring bad luck to Manfred.

[29] By W. C. Proby.

There is much use of portent in _Melmoth_. The specter of the Wanderer

appearing just before the old man's death predicts the spiritual doom

of the dying. As the old uncle is almost breathing his last, he cries

out, "What the devil brings you here?" at which the servants cross

themselves and cry, "The devil in his mouth!" Melmoth, the Wanderer,

is a walking portent of evil, for the priest is unable to pray in his

presence, the communion bread turns viperous when he is there and

the priest falls dead in the attempt to exorcise the fiendish power.

Mysterious strains of music sound as heralds of disaster in several

Gothic novels, as[30] where the inexplicable strains are heard only by

the bride and groom preceding the strange tragedy that befalls them.

[30] In _Melmoth_.

At the approach of a supernatural visitant in the terror novel the fire

always burns blue,--where there is a fire, and the great hearth usually

affords ample opportunity for such portentous blaze. The thermometer

itself tends to take a downward path when a ghost draws near. The

three drops of blood shed from the statue's nose in _Otranto_, while

ridiculed by the critics, are meant simply as a portent of evil. Prof.

William Lyon Phelps points out[31] that the idea did not originate

with Walpole, but was familiar as a superstition regarding premonition

of ill, as referred to in Dryden's _Amboyna_, IV., 1. This instance

may be compared with the much more skillfully handled omens in later

drama, as Maeterlinck's and Ibsen's, particularly in _The Emperor and

Galilean_. Various other portents of ill appear in Gothic fiction.[32]

[31] In his _Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement_, p.

108.

[32] Eliza Heywood's romance, _Lasselia: or, the Self-Abandoned_,

shows a similar portent, as Dr. George Frisbee Whicher notes in

his _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Heywood_.

Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, in his _Tragedy_, in speaking

of the plays of the Restoration dramatist John Banks (p. 273),

says: "Even the portents are reduced to a peculiar decorum:--

"Last night no sooner was I laid to rest

Than just three drops of blood fell from my nose!"

These three drops of blood probably have a much more extended

history in romance and the drama, which it would be interesting

to trace out.

The symbols of dread and the ghostly are used to good effect in

the terror romance. The cumulative effects of supernatural awe

are carefully built up by the use of gruesome accompaniments and

suggestions. The triple veil of night, desolation, and silence usually

hangs over the haunter and the haunted, predisposing to an uncanny

psychosis. The Gothic ghost does not love the garish day, and the

terror castle, gloomy even under the brightest sun, is of unimaginable

darkness at night. Certain houses add especially to the impression of

fear. At crucial moments the stroke of twelve or one o'clock is sure

to be sounded appallingly by some abbey bell or castle clock or other

rusty horologue. In addition to its services as time-keeper, the bell

has a predisposition to toll.

Melancholy birds fly freely through these medieval tales, their dark

wings adding to the general gloom. The principal specimens in the

Gothic aviary are the common owl, the screech or "screeching" owl, the

bat and the raven, while the flock is increased by anonymous "birds of

prey," "night birds," "gloomy birds" and so forth. In _St. Oswyth_,

as the murderer steals at midnight through the corridor toward his

helpless victim, "the ill-boding bird of night that sat screeching on

the battlement of the prison tower, whose harsh, discordant notes were

echoed by the hoarse croaking of the ominous raven" terrifies but does

not deter the villain.

The "moping, melancholy screech owl" is one of the prominent personages

in _The Accusing Spirit_, emphasizing the moments of special suspense,

as in _St. Oswyth_ as the wicked baron lies quaking in remorse for

having caused a nun to be buried alive, the condemning cry of the

doleful birds increases his mental anguish. Similar instances, with

or without special nomenclature, occur in countless Gothic novels.

Much use is also made of the dark ivy in its clambering over medieval

architecture, shutting out the light and adding to the general gloom.

The effect of horror is increased frequently by the location of the

scenes in vaults and graveyards with all their gruesome accessories,

and skulls are used as mural ornaments elsewhere, or as library

appointments by persons of morbid temperament. Enough skeletons are

exhumed to furnish as large a pile of bones as may be seen in certain

antique churches in Italy and Mexico.

* * * * *

The element of mystery and mystification is another family feature of

the novel of suspense. There is no proper thrill without the suspense

attained by supernatural mystery. Even the novels that in the end

carefully explain away all the ghostly phenomena on a natural basis

strive with care to build up plots which shall contain astounding

discoveries. Mrs. Radcliffe and Regina Maria Roche are noted in this

respect. They have not the courage of their ghosts as such but, after

they have thrilled the reader to the desired extent, they tear down the

fabric of mystification that they have constructed and meticulously

explain everything.

The black veil constitutes a favorite method of suspense with Mrs.

Radcliffe. On various occasions Emily pales and quivers before a dark

velvet pall uncannily swaying in the midnight wind, and on one such

ramble she draws aside the curtain and finds a hideous corpse, putrid

and dropping to decay, lying on a couch behind the pall. Many chapters

further on she learns that this is a wax figure made to serve as

penance for an ancient sinner. Again she shivers in front of the inky

curtain, watching its fold move unaccountably, when a repulsive face

peers out at her. She shrieks and flees, thinking she has seen a ghost,

but discovers later that it is _only_ one of a company of bandits that

have taken up their secret abode in the house. Black veils are in

fashion in all of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances and she drapes them very

effectively, while the arras waves likewise in other tales as well.

Mysterious manuscripts are another means of mystification. Mrs.

Radcliffe's novels also abound in such scripts. In _The Romance of

the Forest_ Adeline discovers a decaying paper which reads, "Oh, ye,

whoever ye are, that chance or misfortune may direct to this spot, to

you I speak, to you reveal the story of my wrongs and ask you to avenge

them." This injunction to avenge wrongs is a frequent assignment,

though rather much to ask in most cases. _The Spirit of the Castle_ has

its dusty document that starts off: "Already my hand brandishes the

dagger that shall close my eyes forever. (Mysterious manuscripts are

not strong on grammar and make slight attempt to avoid mixed figures.)

I will expire by the side of the clay-cold corpse of my Antoinette." In

_St. Oswyth_ the paper says, "Beneath the deep foundations of the ruin

the recorded mystery of the house of Oswyth lies buried from all mortal

discovery." But the most impressive manuscript is the one in _Melmoth_

that records the wanderings of the agonized fate-harried man and those

whose tortures he witnesses. A codicil to the old uncle's will advises

his nephew against reading the document, but of course he does read

it, since what are mouldy manuscripts in Gothic novels for, but to be

deciphered by the hero or heroine?

Reference to dread secrets occur otherwise than in written form. In one

favored tale,[33] we are told of "a mystery whose elucidation I now

have a presentiment would fill me with horror!" In another,[34] Vincent

on his death-bed speaks of "a horrid secret which labors at my breast,"

and the Abate speaks to the marquis of "a secret which shall make

your blood run cold!" In _St. Oswyth_ we hear that "an impenetrable

cloud of cureless sorrow hung over Sir Alfred and there was a dreadful

mystery in his life destiny, unknown, as it should seem, to any one,

and which he was unwilling should be questioned." The dungeoned

prisoner in _Bungay Castle_ cries, "Were I at liberty to speak I could

a tale unfold would tempt you to curse the world and even detest those

claims which bind man to man. You would be ready to forego the ties of

nature and shun society. Time must, it will develop the whole of this

mystery!" And so on.

[33] Regina Maria Roche's _Clermont_.

[34] _A Sicilian Romance_, by Mrs. Radcliffe.

Inexplicable music forms one of the commonest elements of mystification

in these romances. Its constant recurrence suggests that there

must have been victrolas in medieval times. The music is chiefly

instrumental, sometimes on a harp, sometimes on a violin, though

occasionally it is vocal. Mrs. Radcliffe and Regina Maria Roche

accompany the heroine's musings at all hours with doleful strains

suspected to be of supernatural performance. The appearance of the

devil masquerading as the Moor[35] is heralded by flute-like sounds,

and in _The Spirit of Turrettville_ the specter plays on the harp and

sings. The recurrence of the theme is so constant that it acquires the

monotony of a tantalizing refrain.

[35] In _Zofloya_.

Groans and wails of unexplained origin also aid in building up

suspense. In fact, a chorus of lugubriousness arises so that the Gothic

pages groan as they are turned. Mysterious disappearances likewise

increase the tension. Lights appear and vanish with alarming volition,

doors open and close with no visible human assistance, and various

other supernatural phenomena aid in Gothic mystery and mystification.

* * * * *

Although the ghosts and devils occupy the center of interest in the

horrific romance, the human characters must not be lightly passed over.

There are terror temperaments as well as Gothic castles, tempests, and

scenes. The interfering father or other relative, brutal in threats

and breathing forth slaughter, comes in frequently to oppress the

hero or heroine into a loathed marriage. The hero is of Radcliffian

gloom, a person of vague past and saturnine temper, admired and

imitated by Byron. Sir Walter Raleigh,[36] says, "The man that Byron

tried to be was the invention of Mrs. Radcliffe." The officials of

the Inquisition and the dominant figures in convents and monasteries

show fiendish cruelty toward helpless inmates, gloating in Gothic

diabolism over their tortures. There are no restful human shades of

gray, only unrelieved black and white characters. The Romantic heroine

is a peculiar creature, much given to swooning and weeping, yet always

impeccably clad in no matter what nocturnal emergency she is surprised.

She tumbles into verse and sketching on slight provocation, but her

worst vice is that of curiosity. In her search for supernatural horrors

she wanders at midnight through apartments where she does not belong,

breaks open boxes, desks, and secret hiding-places to read whatever

letters or manuscripts she can lay her hands on, behaving generally

like the yellow journalist of fiction.

[36] In _The English Novel_, p. 228.

The pages of the Gothic novel are smeared with gore and turn with

ghostly flutter. The conversation is like nothing on land or sea or

in the waters under the earth, for the tadpoles talk like Johnsonian

whales and the reader grows restless under Godwinistic disquisitions.

The authors are almost totally lacking in a sense of humor, yet the

Gothic novel, taken as a whole, is one of the best specimens of

unconscious humor known to English literature.

=Conclusion.= Perhaps the most valuable contribution that the Gothic

school made to English literature is Jane Austen's inimitable satire

of it, _Northanger Abbey_. Though written as her first novel and sold

in 1797, it did not appear till after her death, in 1818. Its purpose

is to ridicule the Romanticists and the book in itself would justify

the terroristic school, but she was ahead of her times, so the editor

feared to publish it. In the meantime she wrote her other satires on

society and won immortality for her work which might never have been

begun save for her satiety of medieval romances. The title of the story

itself is imitative, and the well-known materials are all present,

yet how differently employed! The setting is a Gothic abbey tempered

to modern comfort; the interfering father is not vicious, merely

ill-natured; the pursuing, repulsive lover is not a villain, only a

silly bore. The heroine has no beauty, nor does she topple into sonnets

nor snatch a pencil to sketch the scene, for we are told that she has

no accomplishments. Yet she goes through palpitating adventures mostly

modelled on Mrs. Radcliffe's incidents. She is hampered in not being

supplied with a lover who is the unrecognized heir to vast estates,

since all the young men in the county are properly provided with

parents.

The delicious persiflage in which Jane Austen hits off the fiction of

the day may be illustrated by a bit of conversation between two young

girls.

"My dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all

the morning? Have you gone on with _Udolpho_?"

"Yes; I have been reading it ever since I woke, and I have got to

the black veil."

"Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh, I would not tell you what is

behind that black veil for the world! Are you not wild to know?"

"Oh, yes, quite! What can it be? But do not tell me--I would not be

told on any account. I know it must be a skeleton; I am sure it is

Laurentina's skeleton. Oh, I am delighted with the book! I should

like to spend my whole life reading it, I assure you. If it had not

been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for the world."

"Dear creature! How much obliged I am to you; and when you have

finished _Udolpho_, we will read _The Italian_ together; and I have

made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you."

"Have you, indeed? How glad I am! What are they all?"

"I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my

pocket-book: _Castle of Wolfenbach_, _Clermont_, _Mysterious

Warnings_, _Necromancer of the Black Forest_, _Midnight Bell,

Orphan of the Rhine_, and _Horrid Mysteries_. These will last us

some time."

"Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid? Are you sure they are

all horrid?"

"Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss

Andrews--a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the

world--has read every one of them!"

Mr. George Saintsbury[37] expresses himself as sceptical of this list

as a catalogue of actual romances, stating that he has never read one

of them and should like some other authority than Miss Andrews for

their existence. He is mistaken in his doubt, however, since during

the progress of this investigation four out of the eight have been

identified as to authorship, and doubtless the others are lurking in

some antique library. _Clermont_ is by Maria Regina Roche; _Mysterious

Warnings_ by Mrs. Parsons, in London, 1796; _Midnight Bell_ by Francis

Latham; and _Horrid Mysteries_ by Marquis Grosse, London, 1796.

[37] In his introduction to his pocket volume of _Tales of

Mystery_.

Jane Austen's stupid bore, John Thorpe, and Mr. Tilney, the impeccable,

pedantic hero, add their comment to Gothic fiction, one saying with a

yawn that there hasn't been a decent novel since _Tom Jones_, except

_The Monk_, and the other that he read _Udolpho_ in two days with his

hair standing on end all the time.

But the real cleverness of the work consists in the burlesque of Gothic

experiences that Catherine, because of the excited condition of her

mind induced by excess of romantic fiction, goes through with on her

visit to Northanger Abbey. She explores secret wings in a search for

horrors, only to find sunny rooms, with no imprisoned wife, not a

single maniac, and never skeleton of tortured nun. Mr. Tilney's ironic

jests satirize all the elements of Gothic romance. Opening a black

chest at midnight, she finds a yellowed manuscript, but just as she is

about to read it her candle flickers out. In the morning sunshine she

finds that it is an old laundry list. The only result of her suspicious

explorings is that she is caught in such prowlings by the young man

whose esteem she wishes to win. He sarcastically assures her that his

father is not a wife-murderer, that his mother is not immured in a

dungeon, but died of a bilious attack. These delicately tipped shafts

of ridicule riddle the armor of medievalism and give it at the same

time a permanency of interest because of Jane Austen's treatment of

it. The Gothic novel will be remembered, if for nothing else, for her

parody of it.

But Miss Austen is not the only satirist of the _genre_. In _The

Heroine_, Eaton Stannard Barrett gives an amusing burlesque of it.

It is interesting to note in this connection that while _Northanger

Abbey_ was written and sold in 1797 it was not published till 1818, and

Barrett's book, while written later, was published in 1813.

In the introduction, an epistle, supposed to be endited by one

Cherubina, says:

MOON, May 1, 1813.

Know that the moment that a mortal manuscript is written in a

legible hand and the word End or Finis attached thereto, whatever

characters happen to be sketched therein acquire the quality

of creating a soul or spirit which takes flight and ascends

immediately through the regions of the air till it arrives at the

moon, where it is embodied and becomes a living creature, the

precise counterpart of the literary prototype.

Know farther that all the towns, villages, rivers, hills, and

valleys of the moon also owe their origin to the descriptions which

writers give of the landscapes of the earth.

By means of a book, _The Heroine_, I became a living inhabitant

of the moon. I met with the Radclyffian and Rochian heroines, and

others, but they tossed their heads and told me pertly that I was a

slur on the sisterhood, and some went so far as to say that I had a

design on their lives.

Cherry, an unsophisticated country girl, becomes Cherubina after

reading romantic tales. She decides that she is an heiress kept in

unwarranted seclusion, and tells her father that he cannot possibly be

her father since he is "a fat, funny farmer." She rummages in his desk

for private papers, discovering a torn scrap that she interprets to her

desires. She flies, leaving a note to tell the fleshy agriculturist

that she is gone "to wander over the convex earth in search of her

parents," with what comic experiences one may imagine. There is

much discussion of the Gothic heroine, particularly those from Mrs.

Radcliffe's and Regina Maria Roche's pages. The girl sprinkles her

letters with verse. She passes through storms, explores deserted

houses, and comes to what she thinks is her ancestral castle in London,

but is told that it is Covent Garden Theatre. She decides that she is

Nell Gwynne's niece and goes to that amiable person to demand all her

property. She pokes around in the cellar to find her captive mother,

and discovers an enormously fat woman playing with frogs, who drunkenly

insists that she is her mother. Leaving that place in disgust she takes

possession of somebody else's castle and orders it furnished in Gothic

style, according to romance. She has the fat farmer shut up in the

madhouse.

The book is very amusing, and a more pronounced parody on Gothicism

than _Northanger Abbey_ because the whole story turns round that

theme,--but, of course, it is not of so great literary value. It seems

strange, however, that it is so little known. It burlesques every

feature of terror fiction, the high-flown language, the excited oaths,

the feudal furniture, the medieval architecture, the Gothic weather,

the supernatural tempers, the spectral apparitions--one of which is

so muscular that he struggles with the heroine as she locks him in a

closet, after throwing rapee into his face, which makes him sputter in

a mortal fashion. Cherubina finds a blade bone of mutton in some Gothic

garbage and takes it for a bone of an ancestor. Radcliffian adjectives

reel across the pages and the whole plays up in a delightful parody the

ludicrous weaknesses and excesses of the terror fiction.

Likewise the Anti-Jacobin parodies the Gothic ghost and there is

considerable satire directed at the whole Gothic _genre_ in Thomas Love

Peacock's novel _Nightmare Abbey_.

In general, Gothicism had a tonic effect on English literature, and

influenced the continental fiction to no small degree. By giving an

interest and excitement gained from ghostly themes to fiction, the

terror writers made romance popular as it had never been before and

immensely extended the range of its readers. The novel has never lost

the hold on popular fancy that the Gothic ghost gave to it. This

interest has increased through the various aspects of Romanticism

since then and in every period has found some form of supernaturalism

on which to feed. True, the machinery of Gothicism creaks audibly

at times, some of the specters move too mechanically, and there

is a general air of unreality that detracts from the effect. The

supernaturalism often lacks the naturalness which is necessary. Yet

it is not fair to apply to these early efforts the same standards

by which we judge the novels of to-day. While their range is narrow

they do achieve certain impressive effects. Though the class became

conventionalized to an absurd degree and the later examples are

laughable, while a host of imitations made the type ridiculous, the

Gothic novel has an undeniable force.

Besides the bringing of supernaturalism definitely into fiction, which

is a distinct gain, we find other benefits as well. In Gothicism,

if we examine closely, we find the beginnings of many forms of

supernaturalism that are crude here, but that are to develop into

special power in later novels and short stories. The terror novel

excites our ridicule in some respects, yet, like other things that

arouse a certain measure of laughter, it has great value. It seems a

far cry from the perambulating statue in _Otranto_ to Lord Dunsany's

jade gods that move with measured, stony steps to wreak a terrible

vengeance on mortals who have defied them, but the connection may be

clearly enough seen. The dreadful experiments by which Frankenstein's

monster is created are close akin to the revolting vivisections of

Wells's Dr. Moreau, or the operations described by Arthur Machen

whereby human beings lose their souls and become diabolized, given

over utterly to unspeakable evil. The psychic elements in _Zofloya_

are crudely conceived, yet suggestive of the psychic horrors of the

work of Blackwood, Barry Pain, and Theodore Dreiser, for example. The

animal supernaturalism only lightly touched on in Gothic novels is to

be elaborated in the stories of ghostly beasts like those by Edith

Wharton, Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, and others. In fact, the greater

number of the forms of the supernatural found in later fiction and

the drama are discoverable, in germ at least, in Gothic romance. The

work of this period gave a tremendous impetus to the uncanny elements

of romanticism and the effect has been seen in the fiction and drama

and poetry since that time. Its influence on the drama of its day

may be seen in Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ and Lewis's _Castle

Specter_. Thomas Lovell Beddoe's extraordinary tragedy, _Death's Jest

Book_, while largely Elizabethan in materials and method, is closely

related to the Gothic as well. It would be impossible to understand or

appreciate the supernatural in the nineteenth-century literature and

that of our own day without a knowledge of the Gothic to which most of

it goes back. Like most beginnings, Gothicism is crude in its earlier

forms, and conventional in the flood of imitations that followed the

successful attempts. But it is really vital and most of the ghostly

fiction since that time has lineally descended from it rather than from

the supernaturalism of the epic or of the drama.