This is uttered before Bertram has murdered Aldobrand; but that being

done, the exaltation of the venerable prelate remains the same:

This majesty of guilt doth awe my spirit--

Is it th’embodied fiend who tempted him

Sublime in guilt?

-- -- -- --

Oh thou, who o’er thy stormy grandeur flingest

A struggling beam that dazzles, awes, and vanishes--

Thou, who dost blend our wonder with our curses--

Why didst thou this?

It is the great fault of Bertram as a dramatic character, that he

so poorly upholds the high attitude assigned to him by others, and

that his imposing qualities chiefly rest on declamatory effects. As a

poetical figure he occasionally becomes, thanks to life antecedents,

surrounded with a gloomy splendour exciting the kind of admiration so

keenly resented by critics who felt themselves called upon to extend

their verdict to the moral side of the question. The heroine was,

though unjustly, comprised[78] in the condemnation of the pernicious

tendency of the play:--‘it is too much the taste of the present day,

to bring forward the guilty passion of a wife for her paramour -- --

-- not, indeed, with direct admiration, but in such a manner, and with

such a mixture of virtuous remorse and high-toned feeling, that we

cannot hate the crime. Now a heroine who commits adultery certainly was

a startling phenomenon on the English stage, and it was the occurrence

of this offence which is said[79] finally to have caused _Bertram_ to

be put aside. Yet in the play there is no connivance at the frailty

of Imogine. When she comes to unburthen her heart to the prior, this

arbiter of morals has nothing but harsh words for her; he sees nothing

sublime in _her_ guilt, which at the end plunges her into the deepest

misery. In the preface to his next play Maturin says, with reference

to the shock he had given with the story of Imogine: ‘If Tragedy is

not allowed to exhibit crimes and passions, what is left for her to

exhibit?--If crime is attended with punishment as its consequence, I

conceive the interests of morality are not compromised’--but he was

not aware that it is sometimes the criminal more than the crime that

the guardians of the interests of morality desire to hate.--Otherwise

Imogine is sketched with something of Maturin’s skill at depicting

female character, and hers is, as Kean observed, the principal part

in the play as far as histrionic powers are concerned. Her reviving

passion for Bertram, her misery and repentance are developed in a

language comparatively free from the tinge of melodrama, and sometimes

pervaded with a deep and natural feeling, like her confession to the

prior:

Last night, oh! last night told a dreadful secret--

The moon went down, its sinking ray shut out,

The parting form of one beloved too well.--

The fountain of my heart dried up within me,--

With nought that loved me, and with nought to love

I stood upon the desert earth alone--

I stood and wondered at my desolation--

For I had spurned at every tie for him,

And hardly could I beg from injured hearts

The kindness that my desperate passion scorned--

And in that deep and utter agony,

Though then, than ever most unfit to die,

I fell upon my knees, and prayed for death.

The character of Aldobrand, little as he appears, is drawn with

peculiar skill. He is an excellent man and has brought about the

ruin of Bertram out of disinterested zeal for state and sovereign; in

private life he is kindness itself and greatly revered by all, not

least by his wife. It might seem as if the author had unnecessarily

hazarded the _sublime_ element in Bertram by making his enemy a man of

worth; but where, then, would be the _guilt_ in knocking down a rascal?

Considering the character Bertram is intended to support, Aldobrand

could hardly be otherwise, and he is, in all his respectability,

somehow made clearly to display a total want of those brilliant and

interesting traits the absence of which is his only disadvantage by the

side of the hero.--Other characters to speak of there are not in the

play. It is incomprehensible how Charles Nodier[80] could ascribe so

important a part to the prior: ‘cependant c’est le Prieur qui est le

héros de la tragédie, et son calme sublime contraste avec le désordre

et les passions des corsaires, comme l’immobilité de ses antique

murailles avec l’agitation des flots, domaine inconstant de ce peuple

désespéré.’ The prior really presents an extraordinarily sorry figure.

His calmness--which asserts itself only when action is required; in

words he is as tempestuous as Bertram--is most akin to inertness,

not to say imbecility. He is from the first initiated into Bertram’s

vindictive designs against Aldobrand--who is a great friend of his--and

does nothing to prevent them except talking in a way which gives vent

to his fantastic admiration for Bertram, very unnatural in a person

of his character and situation. His high-flown comments upon the hero

are, throughout the play, nothing short of ridiculous, which they by

no means are meant to be. It was, however, quite in keeping with the

romantic spirit to introduce the convent into the turbulent scenes as

an asylum of peace, inhabited by good and holy men--in contradiction to

the Gothic Romance, where a convent usually is described as a nest of

all sorts of devilry. This is the only instance in Maturin’s work where

the milder view prevails; he was, in _Melmoth_, soon to return to the

terrific style again with a force seldom equalled in literature.

* * * * *

The motive of adverse circumstances driving a high-souled man to

become a captain of robbers is most famous from _Die Räuber_ (1781) of

Schiller. In that drama Gustave Planche[81] finds the ‘idée mère’ of

_Bertram_, though he prefers the latter play:--‘les mêmes idées, qui

dans Schiller resemblent à une dissertation, prennent dans Maturin la

forme vivante et animée d’une légende surnaturelle, et cette différence

suffirait pour établir la supériorité de _Bertram_ sur les _Brigands_.’

It is, however, difficult to see where, in _Bertram_, the ideas of

_The Robbers_ come in at all. The drama of Schiller is, despite its

bombastic language, a typical 18:th century production with a social

tendency. The hero and his followers are--as in the case of the

theorizing ‘Arcadian’ robbers in Godwin’s _Caleb Williams_--revolting

against the constituent principles of society, the perverseness

of which alone has occasioned their desperate enterprise; but the

enterprise is, after all, discovered to be an unjustifiable means of

changing the existing state of things. In _Bertram_ there is nothing

of the 18:th century. The adventure presented to the spectator is of

a quite individual character, the case being applicable to the hero

and no one else. He does not want to reform society; he does not place

himself at the head of a gang of robbers on any ideal grounds; he

falls. Nor are his companions robbers of the chivalrous type who keep a

court of honour among themselves and take from the rich to give to the

poor. Bertram himself says to some of them:

--ye are slaves that for a ducat

Would rend the screaming infant from the breast

To plunge it in the flames.

The play thus aims at nothing but the poetical exhibition of a man

blending sublimity in guilt. The catchword of Karl Moor expresses his

determination to surrender himself to justice, that is, voluntarily

to meet the ‘felon death’ which Bertram, in his last cry, rejoices at

having escaped. In all this there would appear, in _Bertram_, not a

formally different application, but a total absence, of the ideas of

_The Robbers_, and any influence from Schiller seems uncertain.--In

some detached passages of _Bertram_ critics tried to detect loans from

several obscure plays, from Shakespeare, and even from Scott; but

excepting the fact that _The Tempest_ necessarily is called to mind by

any play opening with a shipwreck, these loans are unimportant. The

treatment of the other principal motive, the marriage of Imogine to

the enemy of her lover, shows less originality. Its model, as pointed

out in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ 1852, is to be found in a play

called _Percy_ (1778), by Miss Hannah More. This was one of the first

English dramas where the action is placed in romantic surroundings,

although it resolves round the favourite topics of the day.[82] Percy,

Earl of Northumberland, is the lover and destined husband of Elwina,

daughter of Earl Raby. For some offence Raby breaks off all relations

with Percy, who subsequently joins a crusade. During his absence Raby

compels his daughter to marry Earl Douglas, an inveterate foe of

Percy, and shortly after that the hero returns to England. Elwina, on

one occasion, relates the story of her misfortunes to her maid, which

passage has a direct correspondence in _Bertram_. The most conspicuous

resemblance, however, is afforded by the scene where Elwina meets Percy

and discloses to him that she is the wife of Douglas. Percy, like

Bertram, is seized with a violent fury, and his words:

And have I ’scap’d the Saracen’s fell sword,

Only to perish by Elwina’s guilt?

are distinctly echoed in Bertram’s:

And did I ’scape from war, and want, and famine

To perish by the falsehood of a woman?

The further development of the conflict is, as easily can be imagined,

totally different in the two dramas--a heroine of Hannah More was the

least likely of any to suggest the character of the lady Imogine.

* * * * *

It is generally asserted by biographers[83] that contemporary

critics--with the single exception of Coleridge--were ‘enraptured’

about _Bertram_; but this, undoubtedly, is to say too much. Its

supposed immoral tendency, as has already been seen, roused a storm

of indignation in the columns of the reviews, where the passing

acknowledgments of the author’s talent almost vanished. The opening

lines of the criticism in the _Eclectic Review_ are characteristic of

the way in which the play was treated of:

This tragedy has obtained, upon the stage, a popularity that would

seem altogether undeserved. That the Author has strong powers no

one can doubt; and as we are not uncandid, the reader will find in

the course of our extracts, passages that prove him to have _very_

strong powers. The piece might be objected to for its want of dramatic

interest, for the bad taste of its poetry, but its principal fault,

(in the absence of which objection indeed, we should quietly have left

it to its fate,) is its vicious and abominable morality.

Nor were the opinions even of those very strong powers always

undivided. While the _British Review_ makes mention of ‘vivacious

touches of a very glowing pencil’ and pronounces that ‘the description

as well as the pathetic force of many passages is admirable, and

the rhythm and cadence of the verse is musical, lofty, and full of

tragic pomp’--the _Monthly Review_ maintains that the language is

‘strained, inverted, and bombastic on many occasions,’ and that

‘the versification, also, is often rough and imperfect; and a want

of _keeping_, of harmonious _colouring_, and, we fear, of just

_design_, is visible throughout.’ The severest attack upon Maturin’s

play, however, was delivered by Coleridge[84] in an article uniting

much cutting sarcasm with savage and indiscriminating abuse. It was

supposed that Coleridge was irritated by the rejection of his _Fall of

Robespierre_ in favour of _Bertram_; in that light the article was, at

least, regarded by Byron,[85] who refers to it in a letter to Murray,

dated October 12:th 1819:

In Coleridge’s Life, I perceive an attack upon the then Committee of

Drury Lane Theatre for acting Bertram, and an attack upon Maturin’s

Bertram for being acted. Considering all things, this is not very

grateful nor graceful on the part of the worthy autobiographer; and

I would answer, if I had _not_ obliged him. Putting my own pains to

forward the views of Coleridge out of the question, I know there was

every disposition on the part of the Sub-Committee to bring forward

any production of his, were it feasible. The play he offered, though

poetical, did not appear at all practicable, and Bertram did--and

hence this long tirade, which is the last chapter of his vagabond life.

It is not quite clear in what manner Coleridge had been obliged, his

play never appearing on the stage. If his criticism of _Bertram_

was dictated by disappointment, that must have been galling indeed,

for the tone prevailing in it is exceedingly acrimonious.[86] Every

blunder in the composition, and unhappy turn of phrase in the impetuous

style--not over-difficult to expose--is made the most of and the whole

play torn to fragments, scene by scene, cleverly enough, but with

a rancour which really conveys the impression of proceeding from a

personal cause. The critic’s virtuous horror at the incidents is worked

up to a pitch that leaves all other reviewers far behind; even the

circumstance of Imogine, before she has recognized Bertram, sending for

him and speaking to him, _alone_, is represented as a piece of gross

indelicacy!--and if any spectator felt inclined to take a fancy to the

hero, it certainly was no fault of Coleridge’s, who characterizes him,

in a single breath, as ‘this _felo de se_, and thief-captain, this

loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and

cowardly assassination, this monster -- -- --.’

However, some nonsense though these reviewers utter, their opinion

of Maturin’s first play comes nearer to its final valuation than

that of many later writers who boldly prophesied the author’s lasting

immortality on account of _Bertram_. Among admiring biographers whose

verdict was unsupported by any literary authority, there were critics

of some reputation; Gustave Planche, writing in 1833, does not hesitate

to say that _Bertram_ contains scenes worthy of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_.

In opposition to this enthusiasm of the French, it is interesting to

note the very sound judgment of Goethe. He had, in 1817, read the play

and written a kind of advertisement of it, in which he reaches in a few

words the kernel of the matter and explains the secret of its success:

‘Das neuste englische Publikum ist in Hass und Liebe von den Dichtungen

des Lord Byron durchdrungen, und so kann denn auch ein _Bertram_

Wurzel fassen, der gleichfalls Menschenhass und Rachegeist, Pflicht

und Schwachheit, Umsicht, Plan, Zufälligkeiten und Zerstörung mit

Furienbesen durcheinander peitscht und eine, genau besehen, emphatische

Pose zur Würde eines tragischen Gedichtes erhebt.’[87]

* * * * *

One result of the success attending _Bertram_ was--the play being

produced anonymously--that several individuals began to make claims

for the authorship. This circumstance contributed to Maturin’s

determination to emerge from his anonymity and publicly take his

place among the men of letters of his day. With regard to any further

professional preferment this was definitely to burn his boats: a

clergyman of the established church the writer of a play whose morality

was generally pronounced to be an abomination. On the other hand the

dream of his life now seemed realized, and the way open to the circles

to which he felt himself to belong. He took the step; and, in order to

make the most of it, accepted an invitation from London to come over

to witness the triumph of his production. This was the only journey

of any length ever undertaken by Maturin; if not very adventurous,

it still was something of an enterprise at that time, when a crossing

between Dublin and Liverpool could take up to 36 hours. Maturin’s stay

in London did not exceed a month. He arrived there in the latter part

of May, and the 22:nd of June he wrote, from home, his first letter to

Murray, in acknowledgment of the kindness shown him by the publisher.

In the _New Monthly Magazine_ 1827 we read that Maturin was, while in

the metropolis, ‘suddenly elevated to the most dizzy and flattering

distinction,’ being ‘caressed by the first men of the day, recognized

by the audience during the performance of his play, and received

with acclamations.’ The language, however, in Maturin’s own letters

referring to his reception is very different, and suggestive rather of

a disappointment. Even in his first letter, when sending his respects

to Mrs. Murray, he assures his correspondent that ‘to your friendly and

hospitable attention I am indebted for the only pleasant hours passed

during my sojourn in London.’ In another letter, from July 6:th, he

returns to the theme with marked bitterness:

I should be particularly obliged by your letting me know at your

leisure, and as a _friend_ (in which light I shall always consider,

and feel my obligations to you) whether the impression I made in

London was favourable or otherwise, or, whether _I made any impression

at all_. My reason for urging this strange question is, _the marked

coldness of my reception at every house but yours and Lord Essex’s_,

and the singular circumstance of my never being invited to Mr. Lamb’s.

I am aware that long struggle with distress and difficulty will not

only cloud the mind, but degrade the manners of the sufferer, but

still I cannot but think that my habits and conduct could not justify

my exclusion from the line of society to which I was born, and in

which till latterly I have always lived.

When you have time to write, tell me if my apprehensions are true, and

if I was really though unfit for the company of men who invited me

over and on whose hospitality and courtesy I had therefore some claim

during my very short stay.

In spite of a soothing answer from Murray, the idea that he had

not appeared to advantage continued to haunt Maturin. It ought to

be mentioned, however, that in the letter quoted above there is an

allusion to a member of the fair sex upon whom the impression made by

the Irish guest seems to have been even more favourable than he could

have wished--yet at the same time something to gratify the vanity of

which he had, perhaps a little more than the usual allotment:

I have received a letter from--since my return to Ireland. I really

would be glad of your advice in this unpleasant business. I dread

her resentment if provoked, and _I am determined not to answer her

letters_. I wish it could be intimated to her that I was in the

country and never received her Epistle--you know what Congreve says of

“woman spurned.”--

_Bertram_ was the first of Maturin’s works that appeared with his

name. It was published by Murray, and ran through seven editions in

the course of 1816; the current price of 3 sh. for a new play was

on this occasion raised to 4 sh. 6 d.[88] Together with the profits

of the performance, the sum cleared by Maturin for his tragedy is

said to have amounted to £ 1000. The consequences, however, of the

unhappy transaction in which he had been involved some years before,

disagreeably asserted themselves at this piece of good luck, and he

speaks of his affairs in a pessimistic tone. In a letter to Murray

dated August 19:th he says:

_There is not a shilling I have made by Bertram that has not been

expended to pay the debts of a scoundrel for whom I had the misfortune

to go security_, so here I am with scarce a pound in my pocket,

simpering at congratulations on having made my fortune.

Yet, if Maturin had not made his fortune by his first tragedy, he

probably intended to make it by his second, for he took no pains to

undeceive his congratulators. He was, by all accounts, somewhat dazzled

by the bright prospects he imagined to be dawning for him, when he

returned to Dublin as the greatest of its literary celebrities, and he

changed his mode of living accordingly. He was, as appears from his

letters to Murray, under the impression of being born to a line of

society embellished by elegance and refinement, and his recollections

of the easy circumstances in which he had grown up had not vanished

amid the privations of later life. After his arrival from London

Maturin plunged into the delights of society and became a conspicuous

figure in saloons and assemblies; and his unpretending house in York

Street was re-furnished and decorated with a splendour of which a

friend of his who, however, admits that he did not see Maturin’s home

until a later period, when the whole show had disappeared, gives the

following account:[89]

The walls of the parlours were done in panels, with scenes from his

novels, painted by an artist of some eminence; the richest carpets,

ottomans, lustres, and marble tables ornamented the withdrawing-rooms;

the most beautiful papers covered the walls, and the ceilings were

painted to represent clouds, with eagles in the centre, from whose

claws depended brilliant lustres.

In this abode--whether it exactly answered to the above description or

not--was then received what Dublin society had to offer not only in the

way of intellect, but preferably of youth and beauty. What it was that

attracted Maturin in his social intercourse is vividly described by his

biographer:[90]

It is from this period that we may date the commencement of that

folly of which Maturin has been lavishly accused. Whatever might have

been the levities of his conduct before, now they certainly became

more remarkable. His whole port and bearing was that of a man who had

burst from a long sleep into a new state of being; always gay, he

now became luxurious in his habits and manners. He was the first in

the quadrille--the last to depart. The ball-room was his temple of

inspiration and worship. So passionately attached was he to dancing,

that he organized morning quadrille parties, which met alternately

two or three days in the week at the houses of the favourite members

of his _coterie_. He was proud of the gracefulness and elegance of

his dancing; his light figure, and the melancholy and interesting air

that, whether natural or fictitious, he threw into his movements,

gave a peculiar character to his style. He was a perfect bigot in his

attachment to female society; and generally restless and dissatisfied

in the exclusive company of men. I remember meeting him at a large

assembly where there were several beautiful women, and it was with

reluctance he consented to forego the quadrille during the interval of

supper: at supper he was uneasy and impatient although he happened to

be sitting near some very intellectual persons; at last, after a few

songs, which otherwise would have been prolonged, he started up, and

with considerable animation and effect, taking a lady by the hand, led

the way to the dancing-room.

A very characteristic explanation of this gaiety is given by

Mangan,[91] who ascribes it all to misery arising from unappreciated

intellectual superiority. Maturin, he says,

--had no friend--companion--brother; he, and the “lonely Man of

Shiraz” might have shaken hands, and then--parted. He--is his own

dark way--understood many people; but nobody understood him in any

way. -- -- -- -- “Man, being reasonable, must get drunk,” observes

Byron. It is an ugly line; but one that embodies a volume of

philosophy--especially if we read it in juxtaposition with that other

line, by Boileau “Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.”

The world points the finger of scorn at the intellectual intemperate

man--not reflecting--not caring to reflect--that it is his very

superiority to the world that drives him to habits of intemperance.

His nature is “averse from life” --he has an impatience of existence.

Charles Lamb rushed forward, and forced the Gates of Death; and,

actuated by a similar feeling, Maturin trod in his footsteps, though

only trippingly. Lamb found his Lethe in the quart--Maturin sought his

in the quadrille. One drank, the other danced. They were the two kings

of Brentford “smelling at one nosegay,” only each experienced the

sensation of a different odour from the flowers.

Although the view applied by Mangan is too gloomy a one, it contains,

no doubt, a certain amount of truth, and shows a remarkable penetration

of Maturin’s character and situation. In his correspondence of that

time Maturin repeatedly laments just his want of a literary friend or

companion, and the absence of ‘excitement of any description’ that

might inspire him to carry on his poetical occupations. As far as these

were concerned, his spirit found little nourishment in his environs.

Dublin was then rather void of literati, and the people he mixed with

were, for the most part, of the usual, every-day character. Feeling

thus that even the elite did not attain to the intellectual level he

commanded, Maturin turned to the lighter style of social life--with

real pleasure, as it corresponded to one side of his temperament, but

sometimes, it is not unlikely, with a feverish intensity affording

oblivion of the disadvantages under which he laboured, and escape

from the melancholy that also was a constituent part of his mind. His

nervousness might have been increased by doubts as to the duration of

his present mode of existence, and at intervals there naturally came

moments of weariness and _tedium vitae_. In his sermon preached on the

first Sunday of the year 1817 Maturin exclaims:

Yes, disappointment has been, _must_ be, the result of our pursuits

and passions, because they were “of the earth, earthly;” because

of their very nature they were hollow, worthless, and false, and

they communicated that nature to their object--they were unworthy

of the energies of a thinking spirit, unworthy of the dignity of an

immortal soul! -- -- -- What is the result of the chase of these lying

vanities? We are disappointed, either in failing to attain them, and

thus being rendered wretched by the loss of that whose possession

never could have made us happy; or--more mortifying to the illusions

of our pride, by attaining them, and finding their possession to be

emptiness, yea, “worse than nothing, than vanity.”

Sentiments like these implied a general condemnation of the pursuits

Maturin himself was engaged in all his life, and give one more

illustration of the tragic contradiction between his profession and his

inclinations. That the eccentricities of his conduct incurred a great

deal of censure on the part of the more rigorous-minded has already

been hinted; but his placidity of temper and easy, gentlemanly manners

usually disarmed the displeasure of those coming into contact with him,

and he had, upon the whole, no personal enemies. In his own parish he

was universally beloved, and where his well-known figure emerged it

attracted friendly attention, not unmixed with amazement. His outward

appearance used to vary according to his conditions. When he could, he

dressed in the highest fashion; his cash being at a low ebb, he would

be seen walking about in a costume almost ostentatiously shabby. ‘Mr.

Maturin’ says a writer,[92] ‘was tall, slender, but well proportioned,

and on the whole, a good figure, which he took care to display in a

well made black coat, tight buttoned, and some old light-coloured

stocking-web pantaloons, surmounted in winter by a coat of prodigious

dimensions, gracefully thrown on, so as not to obscure the symmetry it

affected to protect.’ The portrait of Maturin, drawn by Brocas, which

appeared in the _New Monthly Magazine or Universal Register_ 1819 and

which is reproduced in the 1892 edition of _Melmoth the Wanderer_,

shows a self-portraying and uncommonly handsome face: the finely

chiselled mouth indicating a tendency towards the gay and luxurious,

while the gaze of the large and melancholy eyes suggests the horrors

his imagination was wont to dwell upon. Those who saw him in his home

were struck by the former quality greatly prevailing over the latter,

as is told by a visitor:[93]

I found him in a large and rather well furnished drawing-room, seated

at a writing-desk; while the table on which the desk rested was heaped

with books and papers, scattered there in a state of most delectable

confusion. He was clad in a sort of loose morning gown, which had

evidently been in use for many years. He was cravatless, and looked

at the moment rather pale and emaciated. At this period he was at the

heyday of his literary popularity, and it struck me that he looked

like one who had been enjoying the good things of life (enjoying them

too freely) the night before. His eldest boy was seated at his right

hand, copying out something from a sadly blotted M. S. Mrs. M. ----,

with her daughter, occupied a place near the window, and, when the

conversation commenced, joined freely in it. I saw before me for the

first time the man of genius, the man whose language and sentiments

had operated on me as a species of witchcraft. I felt an indescribable

awe--my heart throbbed, and my tongue was for the moment bound up;

but the cheerful welcome, the gentle tone, and the brightly animated

look of the poet, soon set me quite at ease, and after a few minutes

conversation I found myself as it were at home. I was struck most

forcibly with the contrast existing in the person and manner of the

author and his writings--the one all passion and gloominess and

horror, the other ease, grace, and sprightliness, approaching even

to levity. He exhibited on this, and on other occasions, when I was

with him, a turn for mimicry, and a vein of humour, for which I was

entirely unprepared.--

It is mentioned in most notes on Maturin that he was in the habit of

placing a wafer on his forehead in his hours of inspiration, to signify

to his family that he was not to be intruded upon. This--and many other

caprices of a similar kind--might have happened once or twice and then

been related at the tea-tables of Dublin as a token of the eccentricity

of their literary curate. The story of the wafer seems to be

contradicted, or at least greatly qualified, by the statements of some

other writers. Carleton[94] says that Maturin had composed the greatest

part of his earlier romances at Marsh’s library in St. Patrick’s Close,

‘on a small plain deal desk, which he removed from place to place

according as it suited his privacy or convenience;’ and an intimate

friend of his has said[95] that he never worked on his two last novels

except in the stillness of night, when there was consequently no fear

of his being disturbed. As for the inventive part of composition, one

writer[96] reports the following utterance of Maturin:

I compose on a long walk; but then the day must neither be too hot,

nor cold: it must be reduced to that medium from which you feel no

inconvenience one way or the other; and then when I am perfectly free

from the city and experience no annoyance from the weather, my mind

becomes lighted by sunshine and I arrange my plan perfectly to my own

satisfaction.

This confidence was made just on one of those long pedestrian

excursions to the county of Wicklow, which Maturin loved to undertake,

especially in autumn, his favourite season. During his rambles he

sometimes would enter into a literary discussion--which he in general

is said to have been rather disinclined to do--and from the occasion

now in question his interlocutor has preserved some of his opinions

about the poets of England. He appears to have been most attracted

by those who presented the least points of contact with his own

production. With Byron he shared a boundless admiration for Pope, and

of the living poets he liked best Crabbe and next to him Hogg. He

was very fond of Moore who had, he said, done what he had wished to

do himself, had he been able; but for the poetry of Byron he had a

strong distaste, the more remarkable as he had often, as in the case

of _Bertram_, been supposed deliberately to imitate the bard of _The

Corsair_ and _Lara_. What Maturin, however, objected to in Byron’s

poems was not the spirit but the style:

I never could finish the perusal of any of his long poems. There is

something in them excessively at variance with my notions of poetry.

He is too fond of the obsolete; but that I do not quarrel with so

much as his system of converting it into a kind of modern antique, by

superadding tinsel to gold. It is a sort of mixed mode, neither old

nor new, but incessantly hovering between both.

Lastly may be quoted what Maturin, according to the same writer, once

pronounced upon Walter Scott whom he, no doubt, loved best of all

authors, ancient or modern:

Yes, he has a most powerful genius; a genius that can adapt itself

to the changes of times and feelings with the most extraordinary

celerity, and with less than the labours of ordinary thought can

reform and remodel the literature of the age. He is the greatest

writer of his day. He writes not for England, but for all mankind;

and he has embraced in his infinite vision all modes and systems of

men and manners. What he does, he does appropriately; not seeking to

display all the varieties of his mind in any one work, but only that

which properly belongs to it: nothing is out of place; all is perfect,

simple, and real; and he possesses the magical talent of explaining a

whole character by a simple word of feeling; and of imparting to the

meanest figure in his picture the interest of a principal.

* * * * *

Among the literary plans Maturin revolved in his mind after the success

of his first play was the publication of a new edition of _Montorio_,

for which romance he still entertained a partiality. Murray, however,

did not venture a republication of it, nor was he favourably disposed

towards a project of Maturin’s to give out a new copy of _Bertram_

from the original manuscript, containing everything that had been

omitted in the representation. Maturin seems, at first, to have taken

it for granted that this revised edition, which he intended to dedicate

to Scott, was to be issued; ‘may I beg to know,’ he writes in the

letter from July 6:th, ‘why the corrected copy has not yet appeared,

I am really disappointed at this, for, exclusive of my restoring many

passages that might possibly give pleasure to the _Readers_ (though

not to the Dramatic spectator) I am most anxious that the preface, and

above all the original dedication (a debt due by gratitude to my first

literary friend Mr. Scott) should be made public.’ The question was

under discussion for some time, but after a rather irascible epistle

from Maturin dated Nov. 19:th, it was referred to no more. Maturin was

already working at a new play, and the publisher prudently determined

to wait how it would turn out before entering into any doubtful

enterprises. In a letter from August 19:th Maturin sanguinely says that

what he has written pleases him better than _Bertram_; but at the same

time it is seen how lonely he felt in what now was to him a provincial

seclusion:

Let me beg of you to write to me. I cannot describe to you the effect

of an English letter on my spirits; it is like the wind to an Aeolian

harp. I cannot produce a note without it. Give me advice, abuse, news,

anything, or nothing (if it were possible that _you_ could write

nothing), but _write_.--

The principal character of the drama on which Maturin was engaged

had been suggested to him, while in London, on behalf of Kean. The

tragedian was anxious to act the part of Lear, but that was rendered

improper by the mental illness of George III; the part he wanted

was, consequently, that of an old man in a state of decrepitude

and insanity, but occupying a somewhat humbler place in society.

The experiment was hazardous in every respect. It was required of

Maturin to produce an imitation of one of the most famous characters

in literature, without one of the principal qualifications for his

greatness. A too close attendance to the desire of the actor laid a

constant restraint upon his imagination, and thereto came some other

inconvenient considerations. Referring to the attacks upon _Bertram_,

Maturin says in his letter last quoted: ‘In my present attempt, I

shall beware of moonlight interviews, and jobs for Doctors Commons;

my Heroines shall form a complete Coro di Vestale, and my Hero shall

be guilty only of murder and such Bagatelles.’ All this boded no

good; and when _Manuel_ was brought out at Drury Lane, early in the

following year, it turned out a decided failure. Kean, finding it but

a poor compensation for _Lear_, soon lost all interest in it, and its

reception on the part of the public was a very cold one. The general

disappointment is described in a letter from Murray to Byron, dated

March 15:th 1817:[97]

Maturin’s new tragedy, ‘Manuel,’ appeared on Saturday last, and I am

sorry to say that the opinion of Mr. Gifford was established by the

impression made on the audience. The first act very fine, the rest

exhibiting a want of judgment not to be endured. It was brought out

with uncommon splendour, and was well acted. Kean’s character as an

old man--a warrior--was new and well sustained, for he had, of course,

selected it, and professed to be--and he acted as if he were--really

pleased with it. But this feeling changed to dislike after the first

night, for he then abused it, and has actually walked through the part

ever since, that is to say, for the other three nights of performance

-- -- -- I met Geo. Lamb on Tuesday, and he complained bitterly of

Kean’s conduct, said that he had ruined the success of the tragedy,

and that in consequence he feared Maturin would receive nothing.

I send you the first act, that you may see the best of it. I have

undertaken to print the tragedy at my own expence, and to give the

poor Author the whole of the profit.

The verdict of Byron, after he had read the play, was equally

unfavourable. ‘It is the absurd work of a clever man,’ he writes to

Murray in a letter from Venice dated June 14:th;[98] ‘as a play, it

is impracticable; as a poem, no great things.’ One admirer, however,

Maturin’s second tragedy was destined to meet: in a subsequent letter

Byron tells[99] that ‘Monk’ Lewis, to whom he had lent it, preferred

it to some extracts from _Lalla Rookh_ which he read at the same time.

For his own part Byron adds: ‘Of Manuel I think, with the exception

of a few capers, it is as heavy a nightmare as was ever bestrode by

indigestion.’ This opinion was, later on, embraced by the author

himself, who says in a letter to Murray from Sept. 27:th:

I am not discouraged by the failure of Manuel; the public were in the

right about it; it is a very bad play; but I was led astray by the

folly of supposing I could adapt myself to the _exclusive_ taste of

an actor in sketching a character for him. I sacrificed everything to

him, and he in return--sacrificed me.

_Manuel_, which was furnished with the longed-for dedication to Walter

Scott, Esq. is, indeed, Maturin’s weakest production, and very little

need be said about it.

* * * * *

Manuel, count of Valdi, is a distinguished Spaniard whose only son,

Alonzo, was born to him in the evening of his life. Alonzo’s birth has

frustrated the expectations of Manuel’s heir and kinsman De Zelos; the

latter, with his children, is plunged into poverty and insignificance,

and publicly slighted by all his former flatterers. He has conceived a

vehement hatred against the innocent cause of his altered conditions,

which feeling, however, is not shared by his children: his daughter

Ximena is the beloved of Alonzo, and his son Torrismond is the lover

of Victoria, the daughter of Manuel. Alonzo has, though still a youth,

completely beaten the Moors in the battle of Tolosa, and the reports

of his victory are, at the opening of the play, spreading through the

city of Cordova. Manuel summons his friends to a feast with which he

wishes to celebrate the return of Alonzo; the family of De Zelos, too,

get an invitation. At the entertainment Manuel awaits his son with

increasing impatience, but Alonzo never makes his appearance. At last

his war-steed is heard galloping into the court-yard, yet he comes

alone with blood upon the saddle and a broken lance trailing from the

stirrup. With something like an inspiration Manuel immediately accuses

De Zelos of having murdered his son. As no traces are found of Alonzo,

De Zelos again becomes the heir to the estates of Valdi, and the

grandees once more vie with each other in fawning upon him and feigning

to disbelieve the accusations of Manuel. They are, however, to meet

in the hall of justice, and though Manuel can produce no proof of his

charge, he passionately maintains it to be true,

--by that whisper of the soul,

which to no ear but mine is audible.

De Zelos is on the point of swearing himself to be innocent, when,

agitated by Manuel’s shrieks of perjury, he claims a combat to

vindicate his honour. Torrismond appears as his father’s champion,

and the cause of Manuel is taken up by a stranger on the condition

that he will be allowed to depart with his vizor closed and his name

unknown. Manuel has long been hovering on the verge of madness, and

when he now sees the stranger defeated, the insanity breaks out in

all its fury.--The last act takes place at one of Manuel’s castles

in the country, whither he is banished on account of his unproved

accusations against De Zelos; he is attended only by his daughter and

two faithful followers. In the meantime Ximena has resolved to seek

refuge in a convent in the same vicinity. Passing by the chapel of the

castle she descends into the vault when she is informed by her guide

that a requiem is just being chanted to the soul of Alonzo. Here she

is shortly afterwards joined by Manuel. His first impulse is to kill

her, but he forbears when she declares that she has loved Alonzo; she

also tells him that Alonzo’s murderer is now within the vault. Manuel

rushes away and Torrismond, who is in pursuit of his sister, makes his

appearance. To him Ximena repeats that she has found, lying on one of

the tombs, the person who has murdered Alonzo; he has even given her

his dagger which is furnished with the name of his employer, but made

her swear that it is not to be examined except before the judges.--At

the same time De Zelos with a large party of friends--also in quest of

Ximena--arrive at the castle. Manuel is hurrying them to the vault when

Torrismond rushes out crying that his father is innocent. As the judges

happen to be of the party he unsheathes the dagger and reads the name

of--his father. De Zelos, in despair, stabs himself, and Manuel, whose

strength is worn out by now, expires in fearful ravings.--

Throughout the four first acts the tragedy is well-nigh deprived of

all dramatic vigour by incessant interruptions of the main plot. That

consists, or ought to consist, in the development of the fate of Manuel

until his madness--like Lear’s--breaks out after an accumulation of

disappointments; but besides there being, in every act, plenty of

dialogue to no purpose, the interest is divided among episodes very

loosely connected with the intrigue. The incidents of the last act are

prepared by such a sub-plot, bearing upon an intention of De Zelos

to marry his daughter to the chief justice; for that reason, it must

be supposed, she leaves her home and sets out for the convent. The

appropriate arrival to the castle, however, of all the personages

required, especially that of De Zelos and his party, makes the whole

act highly improbable and its construction puerile in the extreme.

The madness of Manuel, also, is here quite insupportable, and it is

not to be wondered at that Kean could not endure the role more than

one evening. Of the characters De Zelos is, upon the whole, the most

interesting. He is a kind of villainous Timon of Athens. When his

fortune is gone he sees how his friends turn their backs upon him; he

perfectly comprehends the worthlessness of their conduct--

Ye insects in my heat that basked and buzzed,

And sung your summer-songs of flattery,

But, parting, leave your stings;

yet instead of paying contempt with contempt, he is ready to commit

a horrible crime in order to enable himself to re-enter their

society. His lack of self-command, however, is so exaggerated and his

nervousness so evident, that no one can be in doubt of his guilt, which

is made only too clear by several incidents long before his name is

read on the dagger. On one occasion his intended son-in-law tells him,

much to his agitation, that a Moor has mysteriously whispered to him

that De Zelos is a villain. When the unknown champion of Manuel then

is defeated, he beckons De Zelos to him and, for a moment, discloses

his face, which is black--at the sight of which De Zelos, ‘staggering

with horror,’ falls into the arms of his son. This penitent Moor, whom

De Zelos had hired to slay Alonzo, then appears to have travelled,

wounded, to the ancient family-seat of his victim, thus adding to the

number of people who, as if by appointment, are gathering there to

die. As for the two heroines--who, according to the promise of the

author, do not much occupy themselves with thoughts of love--they are

so negligently treated that it is not quite clear what becomes of them.

When Ximena reveals her discovery to Torrismond, she is said to be

dying, but it is never explained why. Her fate is so obscure that the

unknown writer of the witty epilogue to _Manuel_, after enumerating all

the deaths occurring in the play, ends with the following reference to

her:

Here doth the mourner, sad _Ximena_, lie

In death;--but hold!--one question--Did _she_ die?

What tho’ _she_ fell, and rail’d on life’s restraint,

Women talk thus who only mean to faint.

Well, then, for _her_ we’ll e’en delay our sorrow,

Till critics ascertain _her_ fate to-morrow;

And, if you please, to fix the matter quite,

I’ll meet you here again to-morrow night.

The most depressing quality of _Manuel_, as a production of Maturin’s,

is that its poetry certainly is ‘no great things.’ There is nothing of

the breath of romance which runs through several passages of _Bertram_.

The language is, for the most part, uninspired, and stored with

hackneyed phrases and vulgar exclamations. A description of the battle

of Osma, spoken by Manuel, was greatly admired by Alaric Watts,[100]

but to a modern reader it is hardly enjoyable, as appears from the

following fragment:

Night hung on van and rear: we moved in darkness,

And heavily did count our echoed steps:

As men who marched to death!--Osma, thy field

(When the pale moon broke on the battle’s verge)

Seemed as an ocean, where the Moorish turbans

Toss’d like the white sea-foam! Amid that ocean

We were to plunge and--perish!--

For ev’ry lance we couch’d the Moslem host

Drew twenty scimitars--and, when the cry

“God and St. Jago!” burst from our pale lips,

Seemed as if every Spanish soldier peal’d

His requiem, not his battle-shout!--Oh Sirs!

We stood not then on terms of war,--devices

To give the coward the cold praise of art:--

We fought with life and soul upon the issue,--

With sword (once drawn) whose battle knew no end,--

With hand, that wedded to the faithful hilt,

Knew no divorce but death, and held it _then_

With grasp which death unlocks not!--

Critics took but little notice of _Manuel_. In the Monthly Review[101]

there appeared an article in which the play is unmercifully cut up, and

the circumstance of De Zelos’s dagger, above all, subjected to ridicule:

It is actually to be read in the play of Manuel, and (still more

trying to the faith of our posterity!) it has actually been _proved_

to be there, by representation on the stage, that a murderer by proxy

gives that proxy a dagger, with the name (not of the maker, but) of De

Zelos,--with his own name, marked on it!!!--Parson Adams forgetting

his sermons is nothing to this; no, nor his prototype, who walked

unconsciously into the enemy’s camp.

The absent-mindedness of De Zelos is referred to in the scene where

Ximena tells her brother that she has seen the Moor:

An oath had seal’d his lips--he dar’d not speak it,

But to my hands he gave the very dagger

The villain, in unguarded haste, had giv’n him

To do the deed of blood--_His name is on it!_

A man of De Zelos’s vacillating character _might_, perhaps, be

imagined capable of throwing, in a moment of ‘unguarded haste,’ his

own dagger to the proxy--but the writer is quite right in condemning

the expedient: if the villain of a tragedy is so nervous as to become

ludicrous, the case is irrevocably lost.

* * * * *

Shortly after the performance of _Manuel_, Maturin’s critique on

Sheil’s _Apostate_, referred to before, appeared in the _Quarterly

Review_. The article, probably written in great haste, and endeavouring

to give a survey of the history of drama, from the earliest times, is

not particularly interesting, though it displays extensive reading

and, upon the whole, a correct judgment. Nor was it very welcome to

the editor. Gifford is said[102] to have subjected it to a partial

re-arrangement, thinking it worth preserving on account of a certain

‘wild eloquence.’ The criticism of the _Apostate_, with which the

article ends, is severe but not undeservedly so; the play had been

a great success on the stage with Miss O’Neill in the heroine’s

part,[103] but it belonged to the usual, ephemeral kind of the day.

Maturin’s own career, however, as a successful dramatist, had now come

to an end, and the fame he had so suddenly reaped by his _Bertram_

was not destined to increase in that field. Ambitious plans and

dreams of future golden times were once again replaced by the cares

and duties of ordinary life, and the house in York Street began to be

visited by creditors instead of dancing parties. Yet the effect of

his recent failure upon the spirits of Maturin was, to judge from his

subsequent productions where his genius rose to its highest flights,

tranquillizing rather than disheartening. Experience had taught him the

futility of heeding any prescriptions from outside; in the years to

come he relied solely upon his own instinct and produced those works

for which, in truth, he ought to be remembered.

IV.

1818-1820.

So schwing empor dich, Geist, und verweile jetzt

Beim Tode, jetzt durchdringe die Wolke, die

Den Sonnenstrahl der Auferstehung

Fallen nicht lässt in die offnen Gräber!

Lenau.

The first intelligence that Maturin was contemplating a new novel

is found in his caustic letter to Murray (Nov. 1816) concerning the

non-appearance of the revised edition of _Bertram_: he mentions, in

passing, that he will not have occasion to trouble the publisher about

his prose-work, as he has been ‘honoured by the offer of a Society

of literary Gentlemen in England, to print the work at their own

expense, and to raise a large sum by subscription for the writer.’

The prose-work alluded to was, no doubt, _Women; or, Pour et Contre_,

which appeared in the beginning of 1818. Of the literary gentlemen

nothing further was heard, but the author seems really to have been

laid under some kind of obligation with regard to the publication

of his novel. In September 1817 Maturin states that he is beginning

to finish a novel for Mr. Constable, who has displayed unexampled

liberality in the matter; and on Nov. 17:th he writes, likewise to

Murray: ‘My novel will come out I believe next month. The Countess of

Essex has done me the honour to accept of the dedication and an unknown

friend has remitted a considerable sum to Mr. Constable in aid of the

publication, so that I am in hopes he will have no reason to repent

his liberality to me.’ It was through the influence of Scott that the

Constables had been induced to purchase the copyright of the book, and

it is not improbable that Scott had also played the part of the unknown

friend, though it is surprising that such generosity should have been

requisite in the present case. To Scott, too, the publishers appealed

about a difference that arose between the author and themselves

while the proofs were already going through the press. Maturin had

composed a preface with the object of defending _Bertram_--always his

favourite production--against the attack of Coleridge, which he had

not been quite able to get over. Out of place as a tirade of this

sort unquestionably was here, it became the more objectionable by

delivering a furious counterblast upon certain of Coleridge’s works.

The manuscript being forwarded to Scott, he replied to it with the

following letter[104] which, though unfortunately the only specimen

left of his communications to Maturin, clearly shows the cordial

relations between the master of Abbotsford and his Irish protegé:

26:th February 1818.

Dear Sir--I am going to claim the utmost and best privilege of sincere

friendship and goodwill, that of offering a few words of well-meant

advice; and you may be sure that the occasion seems important to

induce me to venture so far upon your tolerance. It respects the

preface to your work which Constable and Co. have sent to me. It is

as well written as that sort of thing can be; but will you forgive me

if I say--it is too much in the tone of the offence which gave rise

to it to be agreeable either to good taste or to general feeling.

Coleridge’s work has been little read or heard of, and has made no

general impression whatever--certainly no impression unfavourable to

you or your play. In the opinion, therefore, of many, you will be

resenting an injury of which they are unacquainted with the existence.

If I see a man beating another unmercifully, I am apt to condemn him

upon the first blush of the business, and hardly excuse him, though I

may afterwards learn he had ample provocation.

I never let the thing cling to my mind, and always adhered to my

resolution, that if my writings and tenor of life did not confute such

attacks, my words never should.

Let me entreat you to view Coleridge’s violence as a thing to be

contemned, not retaliated,--the opinion of a British public may surely

be set in honest opposition to that of one disappointed and wayward

man. You should also consider, _en bon Chretien_, that Coleridge has

had some room to be spited at the world, and you are, I trust, to

continue to be a favourite with the public--so that you should totally

neglect and despise criticism, however virulent, which arises out of

his bad fortune and your good.

I have only to add, that Messrs Constable and Co. are seriously

alarmed for the effects of the preface upon the public mind as

unfavourable to the work. In this they must be tolerable judges, for

their experience as to popular feeling is very great; and as they have

met your wishes, in all the course of the transaction, perhaps you

will be disposed to give some weight to their opinion upon a point

like this. Upon my own part I can only say, that I have no habits

of friendship, and scarce those of acquaintance with Coleridge--I

have not even read his autobiography--but I consider him as a man of

genius, struggling with bad habits and difficult circumstances.

Besides, your diatribe is not _hujus loci_. We take up a novel for

amusement, and this current of controversy breaks out upon us like a

stream of lava out of the side of a beautiful green hill; men will

say you should have reserved your disputes for reviews or periodical

publications, and they will sympathise less with your anger, because

they will not think the time proper for expressing it. We are bad

judges, bad physicians, and bad divines in our own case; but, above

all, we are seldom able when injured or insulted to judge of the

degree of sympathy which the world will bear in our resentment and our

retaliation. The instant, however, that such degree of sympathy is

exceeded, we hurt ourselves and not our adversary; I am so convinced

of this, and so deeply fixed in the opinion, that besides the

uncomfortable feelings which are generated in the course of literary

debate, a man lowers his estimation in the public eye by engaging

in such controversy, that, since I have been dipped in ink, I have

suffered no personal attacks (and I have been honoured with them

of all descriptions) to provoke me to reply. A man will certainly

be vexed on such occasions, and I have wished to have the knaves

_where the muircock was the bailie_--or, as _you_ would say, _upon

the sod_--but it is, however, entirely upon your account that I take

the liberty of stating an opinion on a subject of such delicacy. I

should wish you to give your excellent talents fair play, and to ride

this race without carrying any superfluous weight; and I am so well

acquainted with my old friend the public, that I could bet a thousand

pounds to a shilling that the preface (if that controversial part is

not cancelled) will greatly prejudice your novel.

I will not ask your forgiveness for the freedom I have used, for I

am sure you will not suspect me of any motives but those which arise

from regard to your talents and person; but I shall be glad to hear

(whether you follow my advice or no) that you are not angry with me

for having volunteered to offer it.

My health is, I think, greatly improved; I have some returns of

my spasmodic affection, but tolerable in degree, and yielding to

medicine. I hope gentle exercise and the air of my hills will set

me up this summer. I trust you will soon be out now. I have delayed

reading the sheets in progress after vol. I that I might enjoy them

when collected.--Ever yours etc--Walter Scott.

Advice thus tactfully conveyed could not easily be resisted, and the

offensive introduction was withdrawn. The short preface which appeared

in print, though also relative to Maturin’s other writings, was to

quite a different purpose; in it Maturin for the first time publicly

owns the authorship of his earlier romances, but only to declare them

devoid of all merit:

When I look over those books now, I am not at all surprised at their

failure; for, independent of their want of _external_ interest, (the

strongest interest that books can have, even in this reading age)

they seem to me to want _reality_, vraisemblance; the characters,

situations, and language, are drawn merely from imagination; my

limited acquaintance with life denied me any other resource. In the

Tale which I now offer to the public, perhaps there may be recognised

some characters which experience will not disown. Some resemblance to

common life may be traced in them. On this I rest for the most part

the interest of the narrative. The paucity of characters and incidents

(the absence of all that constitutes the interest of fictitious

biography in general) excludes the hope of this work possessing any

other interest.

The external incidents in _Women_ are rich and fantastic enough, as

will be seen, nor does its superiority consist in the occurrence of

the characters in ordinary life, but in the manner in which they

are handled, in the penetration which a true poet applies to his

personages, whether imaginary or otherwise. Maturin’s modest plea

for what has later been called realism, is wound up with a passage

perfectly characteristic of his prefaces: humble in appearance, but

making, in its way, a strong appeal to the curiosity of the reader:

If this plain avowal of the want of effect in my former attempts does

not mitigate the severity of critical animadversion, I have one more

plea to offer, which I hope may prove not ineffectual, that it is the

_last time_ I ever shall trespass in _this way_ on the indulgence

of the public. One more attempt I shall make, and then address my

“_valete_” to the audience, with little hope of being able to add,

“_plaudite_.”

* * * * *

The story opens briskly. The hero, whose name is Charles De Courcy, is

travelling up to Dublin from some remote part of Ireland, when, not

far from the capital, the coach breaks down. Most of the passengers

stop at the village where the accident takes place, but Charles,

with the enthusiasm of early youth, continues his way on foot. On

arriving, towards evening, at the outskirts of the town, he is passed

by a carriage of mysterious appearance; a stifled cry issuing from

within seems to indicate that some one is being forcibly carried away.

Charles follows in the same direction and, though he soon loses sight

of the vehicle, unexpectedly lights upon its burden in a cottage which

he enters to make inquiries about his way. He is received by an old

beggar-woman, apparently a maniac, and, notwithstanding her anxiety

to get rid of him, Charles perceives, in an inner room, the form of a

young girl lying immovable, as though in a swoon. Defying the beldam’s

imprecations as well as her active resistance, he seizes the girl and

hurries out of the house. In the darkness he successfully evades the

pursuit of some persons whom he understands to be the agents of the old

woman, and at length reaches the lodge at the gate of Phoenix Park. A

messenger despatched to town for a carriage returns in company with a

gentleman who has accidentally heard him talk about the matter. The

new-comer addresses the girl as his niece and immediately removes her

in the carriage. He also offers a seat to Charles, but makes no further

communication to him about the mystery; the whole adventure dissolves

like a dream. The exertion, however, put forth by Charles on the

occasion, throws him upon a sick-bed where he is faithfully nursed by a

friend called Montgomery, a young man of a Methodist turn of mind. One

evening when Charles is able to walk out again, he attends his friend

to the chapel which the sect is in the habit of frequenting; he goes

there only to kill time, little expecting that he is to meet the girl

whom he rescued from the hands of the maniac. She is greatly agitated

on seeing him, whereupon he is spoken to by an elderly lady who is

with her; though she very unwillingly alludes to the late adventure,

she kindly invites him to visit them in their house, which invitation

Charles accepts with delight, being already very much in love with

the girl. The family of Wentworth appears to consist only of Mr. W.,

a wealthy man retired from business, otherwise a bigot of a rather

unpleasant character, whose sole interest is Calvinistic controversy;

of his wife, also intensely religious, but at the same time a woman

of head and heart; and of the niece, Eva, a timid and delicate being,

who scarcely seems to belong to this world. Charles becomes a constant

visitor at the house, yet the intercourse affords him but little

satisfaction. Calvinism is the only thing between heaven and earth the

Wentworths find worth discussing, and he soon despairs of Eva ever

being capable of any other feeling towards him than ordinary gratitude.

His strength is wasted by passion and disappointment, and he is again

seized with a serious illness. While watching at the bedside of his

delirious friend, Montgomery comes to know of his attachment to Eva.

Montgomery is in the same predicament himself, but after a victorious

struggle with his own aspirations he reveals Charles’s secret to his

guardian--De Courcy has no family, only bright prospects of family

wealth--whom he has thought it advisable to call to town. This

gentleman goes straight to the Wentworths, where his negotiations are

crowned with success: when Charles’s health is restored, he is admitted

into the family as the acknowledged lover of Eva. His relations to

her do not, however, undergo any remarkable change. Eva has scarcely

had courage to confess to her aunt that Charles is not indifferent

to her, and would never dream of showing her love to any one but her

Maker; she is utterly incapable of reciprocating the enthusiastic

passion of De Courcy. Charming as she is, the narrowness of her mind

and occupations cannot but cool his ardour in course of time--nor has

the general atmosphere of the house any attractions to offer to a young

man of the world. Charles has at once been set down by Mr. Wentworth

as a proper object of conversion, and from this topic his conversation

never departs; literature, poetry, and fine arts are not even mentioned

between them. One day then all Dublin--except the evangelical

circles--is excited by the arrival of Madame Dalmatiani, reputed to be

the foremost singer and actress in Europe, who has been induced to give

some performances in the Irish capital. Notwithstanding Wentworth’s

remonstrations, Charles visits the theatre every night when Madame

Dalmatiani--or Zaira, as she is called--is to appear; and it is after

becoming personally acquainted with her, that he begins to disregard

the maxim expressed in the verse which stands as the motto to the book:

’Tis good to be merry and wise,

’Tis good to be honest and true;

’Tis good to be off with the old love

Before you be on with the new.

He is irresistibly drawn to the refined and luxurious home of Zaira,

which indeed forms a striking contrast to the gloomy surroundings he

has lately been used to. His visits to the house of the Methodist

grow less and less frequent, and before long he becomes the most

faithful attendant of Zaira, who, on her part, is by no means unmoved

by his intense adoration. They are constantly together; once, on an

excursion to Wicklow, they encounter the old woman who had arranged

the mysterious abduction of Eva. She addresses them with her usual

impetuosity of language, and seems to show some faint recollection of

having seen Zaira before. In the meantime the infatuation of De Courcy

is made the talk of the town and reaches even Eva in her retirement.

She courageously makes up her mind to accompany some of her few

worldly-minded acquaintances to the theatre, and when she sees the

brilliant apparition of Zaira, she feels that she is lost. Zaira has,

indeed, been informed by Montgomery that Charles is engaged to Eva, and

generously struggles with her own affections; but when she is leaving

Ireland she at the last moment allows him to bear her company. They

are, however, not to marry at once, but set out on a journey, during

which she intends to ‘develop his soul’ with literature and science.

They first proceed to Paris where the Allies are then assembled--the

events of the story occur in 1814--and the great metropolis is gayer

then ever. Here De Courcy for the second time shows a tendency to

forget the maxim quoted above, and an estrangement--involuntary on

the part of Zaira--takes place between the lovers. When Montgomery

appears with the news that Eva is dying, Charles is broken down by

a fit of repentance and returns to Ireland as soon as he is able.

Notwithstanding his despair he is not allowed to see Eva, who is fading

away like a flower, in spite of most careful medical attendance. As

for Zaira, the departure of Charles leaves her in the greatest agony

of mind, cutting off the only tie that binds her to life. She finds

no longer any happiness in the exercise of her talents; philosophy

affords her no consolation, religion has not power to heal her aching

heart. She even contemplates ending her sufferings by suicide, but

lacks the strength. Sick in mind and body she at last betakes herself

to Dublin, where she leads a very quiet life, being chiefly engaged

in works of charity among the poor. In a miserable cottage she one

evening happens to light upon the old beggar-woman who has figured

in the course of the story. She appears to be lying on her death-bed

and has, in her last moments, sufficiently recovered her reason to

recognize her visitor and inform her that she is her mother. The story

of Zaira’s earlier life--she in reality is a native of Ireland--is now

given in one of her own letters to a friend.--She is the illegitimate

daughter of a rich and despotic land-owner who resided in the West of

Ireland and distinguished himself by the irregularities of his private

life. Zaira was the only one of his children he ever took any notice

of; he early observed her uncommon talents and had her instructed in

everything except religion, being himself a convinced atheist. At the

age of fifteen she was secretly married to her Italian music-master;

but when she became a mother the story could no longer be concealed

from her father, who, inconsistently enough, was so incensed at the

‘want of principle’ in his daughter, that he expelled the couple

from his house for ever. The Italian, a heartless rascal, separated

the child from the mother and left it behind them in Ireland. Then

he took his wife to Italy where he compelled her to go on the stage.

Gradually she developed into the greatest artist of her time, though

almost unwittingly, being always closely guarded by her husband, who

reaped all the benefit of her successes. At his death she found herself

in possession of a large property which she had earned but never yet

enjoyed. The first use she made of her newly-gained liberty was to

write to her father and inquire after the fate of her child. The old

man promised to give her the information she wanted, and Zaira hurried

to Dublin; but scarcely had she arrived there when she learned that

her father had suddenly died without leaving any references to the

child. Having thus lost all hope of ever finding her child, she again

left Ireland in company with De Courcy.--Zaira’s mother was, for

some time, the favourite mistress of the mighty man, but then, when

she was overtaken in the act of carrying away Zaira in order to bring

her up in the Catholic religion, he had turned her out of the house.

Subsequently she partially lost her reason, preserving, however, a

passionate devotion to her faith, and the desire of imparting it to her

descendants guided all her actions; Zaira being out of her reach she

turned her attention to Zaira’s child. She led the life of a beggar

more by choice than of necessity, for she had, when occasion arose,

means of hiring people to carry out her schemes: once, in fact, she

was quite on the point of securing the person of her granddaughter

who, after the departure of Zaira, had been committed to the care of a

wealthy couple in Dublin, and educated as their niece under the name

of Eva Wentworth.--Thus Zaira at last becomes acquainted with her

daughter’s circumstances. She hastens to the house of Wentworth, but

arrives just a moment after Eva has closed her eyes in death of which

her mother has been the indirect cause. Shortly afterwards De Courcy

also goes the way of all flesh, while Zaira, when the story ends,

‘still lives,’ though a shadow of her former self.

* * * * *

The reproduction of the bare outlines of the story of _Women_ is an

easy matter compared to that of Maturin’s earlier novels; what Scott

wrote in the _Edinburgh Review_ with reference to the style, is equally

true of the construction of the book: ‘We observe, with pleasure,

that Mr. Maturin has put his genius under better regulation than in

his former publications, and retrenched that luxuriance of language,

and too copious use of ornament, which distinguishes the authors and

orators of Ireland, whose exuberance of imagination sometimes places

them in the predicament of their honest countryman, who complained of

being run away with by his legs.’ Nevertheless it is the form which,

even here, is most subject to criticism. The book can be divided into

two principal parts, the first of which comprises the events happening

before Zaira’s journey to Paris with De Courcy, while the second is

devoted to the analysis of her mental sufferings after her separation

from him; the experiences of De Courcy in the French metropolis, and

the closing scenes in Dublin, are allowed comparatively little space.

The description of the struggles of Zaira clearly is of secondary

importance for the development of the plot, where it thus makes a

hiatus of extraordinary length. The narrative is, besides, now and

then broken by letters and discussions all of which are not kept

within proper bounds. The positive merits, however, of each separate

part of the work, more than atone for any lack of proportion in its

construction.

Of all the scenes in the book, those in the first part dealing with the

Methodist circles of Dublin, unquestionably are the most interesting.

Maturin often said that he was no judge of his own works, but he

was not mistaken in seeing the main virtue of _Women_ in that it

bears ‘some resemblance to common life.’ Formerly, as has been seen,

Maturin’s ideas of his special powers had led him carefully to avoid

the sphere of ‘common life,’ both in his treatment of external incident

and, still more, of emotion; but the fact is that those powers, when

ripened into maturity, were distinguished by a versatility not to be

confined to any special style of fiction. In _Melmoth_ he returned,

with undiminished powers, to the field of pure imagination, against

which the preface to _Women_ denotes but a momentary reaction. It

was not, perhaps, for artistic reasons only that Maturin, in the

present work, described an aspect of common life as led in the rigidly

Calvinistic community; the exposure of the less amiable qualities

of the sect might have been a not unwelcome side-issue for him,

considering the vast difference of his own views from those of the

‘evangelical people,’ at whose instance the peculiarities of Maturin

himself had, no doubt, received much damnation. Yet although there

certainly is an under-current of satire, that satire never has a ring

of personal animosity; on the contrary, it is relieved by a tone of

genuine humour and brightened, above all, by the introduction of the

angelic figure of Eva. The pursuits and occupations going on in the

house of Wentworth, the whole atmosphere of a place where Calvinistic

pamphlets are the only literature that is tolerated, and the only music

ever enjoyed consists of evangelical hymns--all this is reflected in

a manner the very graphicness of which suggests impartiality. The

household bears the stamp of its master, who is incapable of cherishing

more than one idea at a time:

His manners were repulsive, his understanding narrow, and his

principles inflexibly rigid; his mind was rather tenacious than

strong; what little he knew, he knew thoroughly, and what he once

acquired he retained for ever. Early in life he had made a large

fortune with a spotless character, and having retired from business,

found his mind utterly vacant; by the persuasion of his wife, he was

induced to listen to the evangelical preachers, and (as is often

the case with converts either in early youth or in advanced life,)

in a short time he far outwent his preceptors. Calvinism, Calvinism

was every thing with him; his expertness in the five points would

have foiled even their redoutable refuter, Dr. Whitby himself; but

his theology having obtained full possession of his head, seemed so

satisfied with its conquest, that it never ventured to invade his

heart.--

To a character thus formed, the abstinence from the vanities of life

costs no struggle, and implies no victory over himself, for Calvinism

is sufficient to afford him amusement as well as edification; the most

enthusiastic playgoer could not await a first night with more eagerness

than Wentworth looks forward to an occasion upon which a Socinian, a

Catholic, an Arian, and an Arminian Methodist, are to be exposed ‘for

the whole night to the battery of a dozen resolute Calvinists.’ In

the house of Wentworth the community naturally can feel safe from any

disturbing interferences, and it is, in fact, their habitual place of

meeting. Among the daily guests is the greatest orator of the sect, a

Tartuffian figure called Macowen, who appears to have also a private

reason for visiting the family:

He was the son of a poor labourer, the tenant of a wealthy gentleman

in Cork, whose wife was evangelical; she instructed the children of

her husband’s tenants in her own system; her husband gave her no

disturbance; he followed his fox-hounds all day, and damned his wife’s

Methodism over his claret all night. The good lady went her own way,

and discovering in this lad, maugre his fierce red hair and bare broad

feet, evident marks of his being “a growing and a gracious character”

-- -- -- -- She proposed a subscription among her friends to enable

him to enter the university, and be qualified “to minister at the

altar.”

The subscription went on zealously, and young Macowen entered College;

but when once there, _his views_, as they were called, expanded so

rapidly, that no Church Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent,

had the good fortune precisely to suit his sentiments in orthodoxy of

system, or purity of discipline. Thus he moved a splendid and erratick

meteor, shedding his light on the churches as he passed, but defying

them all to calculate his orbit, or ascertain his direction. In the

mean time, it had been suggested to him that many evangelical females,

of large fortune, would not be unwilling to share his fate. This hint,

often repeated and readily believed, threw a most odious suavity into

his manner; his overblown vulgar courtesy was like the flowers of

the poppy, all glare and stench. Under these circumstances, he had

become the intimate of the Wentworth family; and from the moment he

beheld Eva, his feelings were what he could not describe, and would

not account for even to himself, but what he was determined implicitly

to follow. His system took part with his inclinations, and in a short

time he believed it a duty to impress her with the conviction that her

salvation must depend on her being united with him.--

The inmost reason for Mr. Wentworth having suffered so meritorious a

wooer to be outrivalled by the unbelieving De Courcy lies in his still

being enough of a man of business fully to appreciate the considerable

property the latter is heir to. His wife, on the other hand, is really

attached to the preserver of her ‘niece.’ She is a woman remarkable for

intelligence of mind and dignity of character; and though her manner

appears stiff and constrained by the influence of her religion, she is

naturally warm-hearted and loves Eva as if she were her own child.

She cannot, however, do much to enliven the heavy routine fixed by

Wentworth and Macowen, the monotony of which is broken only by scenes

like the following. De Courcy and Montgomery call one morning when the

gentlemen are sitting at the breakfast-table, engaged in an animated

controversy with a new convert:

The muffins had been swallowed wholesale, the eggs scarcely tasted,

(though Macowen was a very good judge of eggs), and the tea drank

scalding hot, in the rage of debate, and still it raged. Mrs.

Wentworth sat at her knitting, at safe distance from the field of

battle, and Eva poured out cup after cup in silence. Macowen had

been pressing the new convert for a test of his faith; for he had

no idea of a man’s having any religion unless he could specify it

under a particular denomination, and signify his creed by a kind of

free-masonic sign, technical and decisive. This the convert refused,

it seems; and as the young men came in, he was bellowing, with a cup

of tea in his hand, which he was spilling in the trepidation of his

rage,--“No, sir--no, sir--never, never. I will neither be Catholic or

Protestant, Arminian or Calvinist.”

“_Don’t put Arminian first_,” said Mr. Wentworth.

He went on.--“Neither Trinitarian or Arian--neither Universalist or

Particularist. No sir.--Sir, I will be a Christian.--Yes, I will be a

Christian, (foaming with passion). I will--I will be a Christian.” And

his voice was actually a roar, and he thumped the table in the fury of

his vociferation and the eagerness of his orthodoxy.--

Against this sombre background stand out the characters of the

principal personages. Eva, the most pathetic among all the figures of

Maturin’s creation, is drawn with a skill almost unparalleled in the

art of representing a character in the purest and most ethereal light

imaginable, without detracting anything from an unswerving fidelity

to nature. She is as real in her goodness as in her timidity and

inexperience. She has all the passive loveliness which can possibly

flourish in such surroundings as hers, and is completely devoid of

every active quality implying any degree of independence of mind.

There is nothing brilliant about her, and the range of her ideas is

certainly narrow. She would not think of doubting the infallibility

of the opinions expressed by Mr. Wentworth or Macowen; but for her

own part she instinctively clings to what there is best and noblest

in her religion; and what little energy she possesses is employed,

not in controversy, but in works of charity among the children of the

poor. She is never severe to any one except herself, and shows firmness

only in a punctual attention to her own religious duties. With these

she unfortunately feels the demands of her temporal bridegroom to be

irreconcilable, and though she suffers greatly under the conflict, she

cannot find her way out of it. Her attachment to De Courcy is true

and deep; but she is, as Scott said, ‘unable to express her passion

otherwise than by dying for it.’ A passion of so unsubstantial a

description would have put to severe trial the patience of most lovers,

let alone that of De Courcy who, at the commencement of the story,

is a young man of seventeen, without any self-denying tendencies.

The inclination of Maturin to represent his heroes and heroines in

their earliest dawn of youth sometimes led to implausibilities, but

not in the present case. De Courcy is the most carefully sketched of

all his male characters, delineated, in fact, with a subtlety and

penetration far in advance of what the fiction of the time usually

attained. His chief characteristics are precocity and weakness;

constitutional weakness, in spite of a splendid external appearance,

and an inconsistency of mind and fickleness of disposition constantly

at war with the good and generous qualities which the author, with

impartial hand, bestows upon him. The interest of a ‘protector’ with

which he regards Eva after their little adventure very soon and very

naturally yields to a deeper feeling which, to begin with, knows of no

pretensions. On the first occasion of his being invited to the house

of Wentworth he is plunged amid an evangelical dinner-party, most

capitally described, where he feels but ill at ease, being the only

‘unenlightened’ person present; the gentlemen are sitting apart, ‘on

their chairs sublime, in thought more elevate, and reason high’ in

terms which he does not even understand--and the ladies are gathered

in the drawing-room talking, for the most part, nothing at all; but

one look from Eva repays him all his weariness and embarrasment:

‘For months after he fed on that look; it came to him like a beam

of light, and he forgot whether it was day or night when it glanced

before his eyes.’ Yet the pleasure of feeding on a look sooner or later

_will_ be exhausted, and a character like his is not formed to bear

disappointments. He is almost broken down both in mind and body when

he suspects that he is indifferent to Eva, and when he has learned

that this is not so, the incompatibility of their views and habits

seems to raise insuperable obstacles between them. Their short hours of

confidence are always interrupted in the same way:

One evening he had succeeded in prevailing on her to listen to “The

Lay of the Last Minstrel;” she was struck by the introduction, and

Charles was proceeding with that increasing confidence which the

increasing interest of a listener gives a reader, when the clock

struck, and she reminded him it was time to go to the evening lecture

at Bethesda Chapel. Charles, with a sigh, threw aside the poem, and

accompanied her. The sermon was eloquent and long, the congregation

profoundly attentive; Charles sate abstracted and listless. As they

returned, the lovely calmness of a vernal night revived the feelings

of Charles; and as Eva leaned on his arm, and sometimes raised her

looks (but with other feelings than his) to the bright blue spangled

sky, that exquisite passage broke involuntarily from his lips, that

ends with, “for lovers love the western star.”

Eva started, started with actual terror; she felt the name or language

of love like a profanation of the moment, and told him that she was

trying to recollect the substance of the sermon she had just heard,

and impress it on her memory. Charles was silent; and silently

accompanied her home, where nothing but the sermon was spoken of, and

every division and subdivision of theological subtlety was run on it

to exhaust the hour that must intervene till the bell was rung for the

servants to attend the family devotions, and a long extempore prayer

from Mr. Wentworth concluded the night.

There is, in the purity and innocence of Eva, something sublime that

often makes Charles himself feel it almost a crime to intrude upon

her with too vehement declarations of a worldly passion. The result

of this is, however, that they never ‘love like lovers,’ and it is

shown with much psychological insight how they gradually glide away

from each other by reason of an unnatural spiritualization of their

mutual relations. Their estrangement is subsequently hastened by the

appearance of Zaira, whose society Charles from the first imprudently

cultivates. In the person of Zaira critics have been wont to see

an expression of the usual ‘extravagance’ of Maturin’s writings.

Yet allowing for some casual exaggeration of her great talents, the

general characterization stands on a very high level. The figure is

not new in Maturin--both Lady Montrevor in _The Wild Irish Boy_ and

Armida Fitzalban in _The Milesian Chief_ are studies of this kind; but

Zaira is depicted with a moderation and veracity infinitely superior

to either. She is none of those distinguished dilettantes that have

acquired their accomplishments conveniently in their leisure hours;

she is a professional artist and has attained her prominence through

hard and unremitting work--work which, as a matter of fact, is the only

way to the pinnacles of art. Her character is naturally noble, and

she is free from all haughtiness and caprice. Under the bitter sorrow

she has sustained, her heart has remained pure and tender, yearning

ever for love which she has never met with. In the isolation she has

suffered during the greater part of her existence, her mind has been

cultivated and her abilities developed at the expense of her experience

in practical affairs; she has become curiously unfamiliar with real

life and displays, on several occasions, a naiveté almost equal to that

of Eva herself. This contrast between her superior intellect and her

incapacity of extricating herself from the difficulties of common life

is presented with an exquisite skill, and to it she owes the tragedy of

her fate. Zaira’s attachment to De Courcy originates, on her part, in a

need of tenderness that has nothing to do with passion. The news of the

loss of her child throws her into a desolation of mind in which she

first receives his enthusiastic admiration with a feeling inspired by

the instinct of self-preservation. She says in a letter to her friend:

How often! oh, how often! gazing on his perfect form, have I wished

that, if it were possible, such had been the child I lost, such were

the child I found! It is impossible, I feel, for the heart long to

be vacant. One image filled mine for many years, and the very length

and intensity of those feelings created a habit of the heart, which

it might have been fatal to my existence, or my reason, not the have

indulged.--

From this, indeed, there is but a short step to love, though she is,

characteristically enough, herself the last to become aware of it.

Knowing that Charles is engaged she tries to persuade herself that what

she feels for him is only friendship which can well be extended to her

rival; and she succeeds in building up a theory in which she, at the

time, firmly believes:

The friendship, which will be the charm of my future existence, will

be purified and ennobled by the certainty that the object of it

is devoted to another, to whom he will shortly be united; and the

security which is enough to satisfy my own heart, I do not hesitate to

offer to the world careless whether it will accept or reject it.

But if the world could ever read a heart, the innocence of mine would

astonish and convert it. At this moment, my whole pile of future

happiness rests on the foundation of theirs--Yes, of _theirs_. To

see two beings, equally amiable, _equally beloved_, enriched by my

fortune--improved by my talents--and elevated by the distinction which

I have not dishonourably attained, would be not only beyond all I

have ever enjoyed, (alas! that has been but little hitherto,) but all

that I have even conceived. I shall feel like the happy genius, who

constructed a palace of gems for the favoured Aladdin and his bride,

and then was seen no more.--

Her correspondent, a Frenchwoman of fashion, at once understands the

situation; and her letters--which are very cleverly written and present

an amusing mixture of frivolity and acute observation--tear down the

theory of Zaira and open her eyes to the state of her own feelings.

Once acknowledged, these feelings, rapidly grow stronger, and the

end, in spite of desperate attempts at bridling her passion, is what

has been told.--Neither does Charles leave Eva without a great deal

of honest and painful struggling against his new infatuation, though

he knows that his strength is not to be relied upon. He is induced

to make a final appeal to Eva in a fine scene--: she is frightened

by a thunderstorm into a swoon when Charles, supporting her, hears

her whisper something about his intention of forsaking her--which she

purposely never alludes to. The situation vividly reminds him of their

first meeting, and his tenderness for her takes hold of him once more:

“Desert you--never, never--May the lightning strike me first!--Forsake

you--never, never--Eva, my beloved--beloved of my soul--Yes, warm

your cold cheek on mine; yes, rest your dear, dear head on my bosom;

do not let its beatings startle you--Yes, twine your lovely fingers

in mine--It is a heart that loves you, yours is prest to; it is a

hand that soon will be yours you clasp--Why do your fingers wander

so wildly among my hair, my love? one ringlet of yours is worth all

that ever--And how often has this hair,” he continued wildly, “been

damp with despair? how often has it been torn in anguish, since I knew

Zaira?”

Eva revived, and her pure feelings acting instinctively, she started

from his arms, and still pale with terror, she tried to falter out an

apology for her terrors.

“No,” said De Courcy, pursuing, and kneeling at her feet, “no, you

must not fly me. This is a decisive moment--a moment that must end

many struggles. Eva, already are you cold, already silent? Is it only

in terror and danger you cling to me? Is it only in the terrible

intervals of paroxysm and insensibility that I am ever doomed to feel

your arms twined round me, to hear your lips utter my name? Already I

see your countenance averted from me, the moment it has the power to

give a conscious look.”

And so it was; for Eva, trembling at the recollection that her arms

had been thrown round him, sat abashed and confounded.

“Eva, I call on you passionately, solemnly. This is the crisis of both

our destinies. Speak--tell me that you love--love me as I wish, as I

demand to be loved. Bind me to you by an irresistible confession--make

me yours for ever. One word, one penetrating word of fire. One word of

the language of the heart. Utter it, and bless me.”

Eva, struggling between her timidity and her passion, tried to comply

with, his wishes. She searched her feelings, for something that might

correspond with his. It was in vain; her pure heart had not one image

that reflected the ardour of his. Her lip knew no language that

could answer him. Distressed and perplexed, she sat with distress

and perplexity increasing, anxious to give him some proof of her

sincerity, but unable to give one that would satisfy him.

“Eva, speak, do you love me?”

“Have I not said so?”

“Oh! when we love, it is so easy to pour out the proofs with an

overflowing sensibility; the heart luxuriates in those proofs of

its being deeply touched; it is oppressed by its own fullness, and

delights to communicate what it cannot bear undivided. If you loved,

Eva, love itself would inspire you with involuntary testimonies; your

very silence would be eloquence, nor would I have to kneel at your

feet for a word in vain.”

“What can I say?” said Eva, his doubts becoming too strong for her

fears; “is passion to be mistrusted, because its power renders, us

speechless?” And trembling at her own temerity in uttering these

words, she became silent.

Was De Courcy satisfied with this declaration? We know not; for it is

certain that there is an exaggerated sensibility, a sensibility that

doubts its own truth, and is better satisfied with words than with

things. It requires to be paid in its own coin, and would rather hear

a florid sentiment than accept of the most perfect sacrifice.

This interview is indeed decisive: it is the last time the passion, of

De Courcy flames up in the presence of Eva. When the hour of Zaira’s

departure draws nigh he renounces ‘all engagements, all ties, and all

objects’--and obtains her permission to accompany her. He has already

sent a note to Eva begging her to forgive him if she can, in answer to

which note he receives a long letter, said by a critic[105] to be ‘for

feeling, for eloquence, for heart-touching resignation, and impassioned

grief, almost unique in the language.’ The writing of this letter is

made easy to her by the presentiment that she will not overlive his

desertion of her; and her resignation is so free from all factitious

generosity and all ostentatious self-sacrifice, that the beatings of a

human heart are, as it were, audible through the lines.--

In connection with Zaira’s stay in Ireland a few glimpses are given

of the higher society of Dublin, which, no doubt, also ‘bear some

resemblance to common life.’ Maturin was, by this time, familiar

with all the circles the town could boast of, and the drawing-room

does not escape a fling of his good-natured satire any more than the

conventicle. De Courcy is introduced to Zaira at a large evening

party, given in her honour by a Lady Longwood, the wife of one of

his guardians. The bustle excited by the presence of Zaira; the idle

expectations of a more substantial refreshment, entertained by ‘mammas

and misses’ who have been talking themselves hungry in her praise;

Lady Longwood moving among her guests canvassing applauses for the

indifferent musical performances of her silly daughters, before the

eyes of the greatest artist in Europe: all is described with a humour

and a vivacity that makes one regret that Maturin so seldom, in his

writings, gave vent to those high spirits by which he was distinguished

in private life. One of the finest chapters in this part of the

book is further the one containing an account of Eva’s visit to the

theatre. She is enough of a woman to feel an irresistible desire of

seeing her famous rival, but would never dare to speak about it to her

foster-parents. Going out, however, she one day accidentally meets Lady

Longwood and her daughters, with whom she is slightly acquainted, and,

summoning up all her courage, accepts their invitation to accompany

them to witness Zaira’s last appearance on the stage. Her confusion

at the theatre where everything is new to her, the overwhelming

impression produced upon her by the brilliant apparition of Zaira, and

her anguish when she observes De Courcy behind the scenes are analysed

with a dramatic force and a marvellous penetration into the innocent

soul-life of Eva. Less interesting, from an artistic point of view,

are the scenes taking place at the house of Zaira, chiefly filled with

literary discussions. A well-sketched personage, however, present on

most of these occasions, is De Courcy’s friend Montgomery: a blunt

and honest character who sees with unselfish grief that his friend is

beginning to neglect Eva, and who tries to bring him back to the way

of duty by the not very chivalrous means of endeavouring to detect and

point out immoral or blameworthy tendencies in the views and principles

of Zaira. To this end he obstinately contradicts her where he can,

and once, weary of hearing Zaira’s taste called ‘classical,’ he makes

a furious attack upon the entire classical literature, falling upon

the ancients ‘with redoutable, repeated blows, slaying them, like

Sampson, by thousands.’ These doubts as to the excellence of one of

the corner-stones of English education roused the wrath of the critics

of _Women_, who, naturally enough, felt irritated at being told that

in their own days Horace would have been hanged and Juvenal stood in

the pillory. The method of ascribing to the author the opinions of his

personages, always applied with vigour in the case of the Rev. Mr.

Maturin, came here, for once, pretty near the truth. It is not only in

_Women_ that he displays a hostility to classical studies; in one of

his sermons he speaks of them with a marked and candid antipathy:

I will say it is the black and crying sin of civilized Europe, to

compel their children to familiarize their young imaginations with

the most brutal crimes, and force their most unripened passions, by

placing them in a hot-bed of unutterable impurity. This we do--this we

have done for centuries--and this we shall answer for in eternity. Let

me propose one plain question to the admirers of the classic writers,

as they are called: If a father finds his son reading such passages as

occur in their books in his own language, would he not fling the vile

pages into the flames, and scarce think those flames too bad for the

author?

As Maturin himself had been, for a long time, occupied in giving

instruction in this same branch of learning, he knew very well that the

copies of the ancients committed into the hands of British school-boys

were carefully pruned of the passages he took such offence at; and his

eccentric inveighings against the classical writers expressed, after

all, his artistic temperament rather than any zeal for morality. His

literary tastes were eminently romantic, notwithstanding his admiration

for Pope. He had accepted the revival of Mediaevalism in all its

phases; his own work began under the auspices of Mrs. Radcliffe and

ended with an imitation of Walter Scott; and his works possess every

quality generally termed romantic. But Maturin’s _Women_ affords, at

the same time, a striking proof of the fact that the romantic writers

could occasionally greatly excel in realism, though the spirit of

classicism was to them foreign and indeed odious.--

The fancy of Zaira to devote a year before her intended marriage to De

Courcy to an ‘intellectual existence’ during which she is to finish

his education, is as consistent with her ideal and theoretical cast

of mind as it is inconsistent with anything like common prudence.

Paris is, moreover, the most unfortunate place she could choose for

the commencement of her task; in the most brilliant society of Europe

not even Zaira can make so unique a figure as in Dublin, and to the

fluctuating mind of De Courcy the gay metropolis has a thousand things

to offer, calculated to attract him more than the conversation of

Zaira. Among these is a person called Eulalie de Touranges--otherwise

unimportant, but just giving him the pleasure of a transitory

flirtation, new to his experience, and irresistible at his age. Thus

the relation between the lovers very soon becomes constrained in a way

appropriately described in a letter of one of Zaira’s friends:

Yesterday I met them at a party at our friend ----’s. The circle was

brilliant, and Zaira was unusually eloquent in literature. At the end

of a striking sentence which had called forth loud applauses from

her auditors, she looked round with a flush of triumph in her lovely

countenance for De Courcy. She saw him engaged, not in conversation,

but in delighted listening attention to the beautiful Eulalie de

Touranges. He was bending over her chair in silence. I marked the

change in her countenance, in her voice; the subsiding of her whole

figure; the gloomy vacancy of disappointment in her expression. Her

hearers did not notice it; they pressed her with some new remarks.

She attempted to answer, but evidently did not understand them;

struggled to recover her composure, and went on, obviously not

knowing of what she was speaking. Music was proposed soon after; and

apparently determined to force De Courcy to feel an interest in what

she was undertaking, she asked him what she should sing. He appeared

not pleased at the publicity which this application gave him, and

returned some slight answer, referring her to her own choice. She sat

down. I could hear her sigh. She turned languidly over the leaves of

her music-book, and sung an air _sotto voce_ with a tone, a look, a

manner unlike--oh, how unlike Zaira! At the close of the air, she

turned her head almost imperceptibly, and saw De Courcy arranging the

men on a chess-board with Mademoiselle de Touranges. The last notes of

the air were nearly unintelligible.--

The episode with Eulalie de Touranges is not the only circumstance

contributing to the alienation between De Courcy and Zaira. The very

basis of their friendship is unnatural. No man, as Maturin simply

remarks, is pleased to be the pupil of a woman, and to be continually

reminded of the superiority of Zaira cannot fail to become irritating

to De Courcy. His _liaison_ to an actress is, moreover, often

misconstrued in a way that is very disagreeable to him; but, weak as

he is, instead of resolutely defending her honour, he only wishes

to get rid of her. Once he is told that Zaira has been married and

even had a child, the fate of whom is entirely unknown. His love to

her being already on the decline, he feels, and not quite without

reason, greatly incensed at her having never mentioned this to him.

The innocent figure of Eva begins to reappear to his mind, and when he

hears from Montgomery that Eva is lying dangerously ill, his sensitive

nature is utterly shocked at the thought of his being the cause of

her death. Nothing can now detain him at Paris. The development of

these incidents is traced with an inner logic that makes De Courcy’s

return to Ireland appear not only natural but inevitable, and forces

the reader at once to accept the argumentation. Scott, indeed, says

in his critique on _Women_ that De Courcy’s desertion of Zaira is

not ‘half so probably motived as his first offence against the code

of constancy;’ but his judgment proceeds, no doubt, from an honest

indignation at a hero so lamentably deficient in what had always been

considered as the principal qualification of one, fidelity in love:

summing up the characteristics of De Courcy, the author of _Waverley_

concludes by wishing him to the devil. Yet De Courcy, although the

‘hero’ of an extensive novel, is meant to be neither admired nor hated,

only understood, and the characterization is executed with a realism

which the time was not quite able to appreciate.--As for Zaira, she

knows nothing of the art of keeping the interest of a lover alive by

occasionally exercising some reserve towards him; it is impossible for

her not to show clearly that he is all she lives for, and this deep

and serious view of their relation would, even in itself, inspire a

kind of awe in the fickle-minded De Courcy. Now the passion of Zaira

is heightened according as that of De Courcy cools down; she is seized

with that eccentric, all-absorbing infatuation which persons of genius

sometimes conceive for objects wholly unworthy of it. Having been kept,

for a time, painfully hovering between hope and despair, she is at last

relieved from all doubts. It happens in rather a hackneyed way: she

gets hold of a bit of paper on which De Courcy has begun to compose

an answer to his guardian who has written to him and implored him to

come back, and Zaira makes out the words: ‘I am weary, sick to the soul

of my present situation; I shall fly from it as soon as possible.’

The lack of originality, however, is easily forgotten in the almost

appalling power with which the sufferings of Zaira are described,

sufferings that gradually deprive her of her talents and her health,

of everything but life. Of pride she has never had much; now she loses

every trace of it. Although aware that she is wearying him, she is

still anxious to appear in his company, and when he actually begins

to shun her, she even follows him in the street, and stealing to his

hotel, at last sees him depart. But for the tender care which some

of her French friends take of her, Zaira would perish; to restore her

to her former vigour, however, is not in human power. She cannot find

peace in any of her old pursuits, nothing can divert her mind from the

calamity that has befallen her. At this time she is thrown into the

society of an atheistic philosopher who, in support of his theories,

endeavours to prove to her that misery is, and must be, the lot of all

intellectual beings. Their conversations on this subject unquestionably

belong to the _longueurs_ of the book; as the adoption of his sceptical

views would not, in her present state of mind, be of any solace to

Zaira, the discourses are unnecessarily protracted, and her escape from

the ‘snares’ of the philosopher does not appear so meritorious as is

probably intended. But all the more impressively are described Zaira’s

attempts at turning to religion, seeking consolation in a living faith.

Her friends have taken her to a beautiful villa in the country, where

she has a singular experience while roaming about in a summer night:

-- -- -- The garden, with its placid regular beauty, tortured her by

its contrast to the agitation of her soul. A gate, at the extremity of

it, opened into a wood; she hurried into the wood, its darkness was

as light unto her, it seemed as a shelter from her own thoughts, and

she fled to it with avidity. Nature, in all its rich and exhaustless

luxuriance, has nothing to the eye or to the soul so delicious as

the mild splendour of moonlight, shed over the darkness of a forest.

There is darkness beneath for the unhappy to muse--there is light

above for the happy to gaze on--and the trembling gleams between

the branches give a strong image of life, chequered indeed with

fitful and precarious lustre, but of which the predominant image is

gloom--diversified, but essential.

Zaira wandered on; the beauty of the night, the mildness of the

climate, precluded all apprehension from her wandering at this late

hour. She found herself in a part of the wood where the thick-mingling

branches excluded all light, but a tremulous and chequered gleam, that

appeared and disappeared among the foliage above, as it was agitated

slightly by the breeze. Suddenly a figure appeared to her in the

darkness; a white figure, as large as life. She started at first, but

a moment after approached it; just where it seemed to stand, the trees

opened a little, and the moonlight fell strongly on it, producing

a remarkable and solemn effect. It was a figure of Christ on the

cross, which had been taken from a ruined church in the neighbourhood,

and placed there by the peasantry. It was of wood, but it was well

executed, and the light that fell on it at once concealed its defects,

and magnified its expression. What an object for a mind in the state

of Zaira’s!--Accident, that had so often presented her with the most

terrible omens, seemed in this to seek to make atonement. The image

of the Saviour of the world hanging on the cross a sacrifice for

mankind, surrounded by darkness, and concentrating and reflecting the

light solely from his own figure, was an intuitive symbol of relief.

She approached it, as she would the presence of a friend. The pale

and dying countenance, the woe-bent head, the outspread arms, seemed

to unite the expression of suffering and protection--singular but

intelligible combination. None can pity but those who have suffered.

“He that suffered, being tempted, is able to succour those that are

tempted.”

As Zaira gazed on this figure, it seemed to live, to speak to her.

Texts of scripture rushed on her heart, as if whispered to it by the

Deity. She appeared to hear these sounds issuing audibly from the

lifeless lips of the figure--“Come unto me, all ye that are weary

and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” She obeyed the call thus

echoed from the bottom of her heart; she prostrated herself before

the cross. Her spirit was bowed down along with her body, as she

exclaimed, “Oh, my God! accept a heart that has wandered, but longs

to return to its Saviour. Purify it, regenerate it, fill it with the

love of you alone. Had it known no other but yours, it had never been

almost broken. Let your Spirit descend on it, and aid me to struggle

with that image, for which all its pulses have beat, which has been

wrapt in its very core. You alone are worthy of that place, which a

mortal has too long usurped. Vindicate it for yourself, and set me

free. Deliver me into the glorious liberty of the children of God,

unconscious of any presence, incapable of admitting any image, but

yours; dead to the world, and absorbed in God alone.”

But though she uttered these words, it seemed as if some inner winding

of her treacherous heart was disclosed to her, where the image of

Charles rested, and defied the power even of heaven to displace him.

It seemed to her as if she dreaded lest her own prayers should be

heard; and that if the Deity had that moment offered to efface that

image for ever from her soul, to make it as the image of one she had

never seen or seen always with indifference, she would have shrunk

from the offer, and implored any other infliction at his hands.--

The religious inspiration Zaira has thus felt for a moment does not

return, although she passes the greater part of the night before the

Crucifix, where she is, in the morning, found insensible. All her

devotional exercises are in vain; for as she cannot find peace in the

spirit of religion, her efforts to embrace its empty forms are also

doomed to fail. She makes some arrangements to enter a convent, but

is deterred from it after a conversation she holds with an old nun, a

resident of the place. The results of an existence that leads to apathy

and stupefaction, that deadens every feeling and makes living automata

of human beings, are displayed in the person of the nun with all the

force expressing Maturin’s innate horror at a life in monotony--and

Zaira abandons her intention with a strong conviction that she could

not buy the salvation of her soul at the price of killing it first.

The convent was, indeed, the usual refuge of fictitious characters in

great distress; in _The Heart of Midlothian_ which appeared in the same

year as _Women_, Lady Staunton--the ‘Zaira’ of that great novel--ends

in a continental convent practising all the vigils and austerities of

the religion, and is then heard of no more. Yet it would have been a

too convenient way of quenching the fire by which Zaira is consumed,

and breaking off the psychological process she is undergoing, to shut

her within the walls of a convent. The author pursues with unfaltering

consistency the restless strivings of her powerful mind after

forgetfulness which she both wishes and dreads. Perceiving that her aim

cannot be reached in solitude, she engages in acts of private charity,

visiting the poor and sick until she is tired out. Satisfaction,

however, is denied her; it is boldly shown that a person, however good

and noble, cannot perforce make herself religious, and that there are

circumstances under which that remedy fails, without any fault of the

patient’s. Weary to the soul, she at last decides to put an end to her

life. In all her vicissitudes, it must be observed, her nature has

remained unchanged, and with the most terrible reality before her eyes

she still lives half in a world of theories. She discusses the subject

of suicide with her friends, and passes some painful nights in reading

accounts of the deaths of Brutus and Cato.[106] Yet at the decisive

moment her reason wanders; dream and reality are blended; magnificent

visions chase each other through her delirious brain, and on recovering

she clearly remembers having seen a white figure whom she imagines to

be the Irish girl, once forsaken for her. This figure continues to

haunt her mind, and as it is something she can concentrate her thoughts

upon, it soon becomes an _idée fixe_ with her. Weak and exhausted as

she is, she travels to Dublin. From a morbid inclination as much as for

philanthropical reasons she keeps on visiting the filthiest streets and

most miserable hovels, in one of which, as has been related, she finds

her wretched mother.--

To this part of the book, above all others, must be applied what Alaric

Watts wrote in 1819: ‘“Women” is a work which, with all its dullness,

its monotony of suffering, and its _horrible anatomy_ of the _moral

frame_, stands alone among modern writings--there is nothing like

it--its profound and philosophic melancholy, its terrible researches

into the deepest abysses of the human heart, and of human feeling--its

daring _drawing the veil_ of the “holy of holies,” while the hand that

draws it trembles at the touch, make it a work unequalled in the list

of English novels.’ This sentence was justified; _Women_ stood alone

among contemporary writings. The tendency pointed out by Watts is one

which, according to a modern writer,[107] indicates the latest phase

in the development of the novel: ‘Yet I think he is but a superficial

student of the literature of recorded time who does not note one

tendency of later work, of later method, of later procedure, of later

life, as compared with earlier work, earlier method, earlier procedure,

and earlier life, which seems to imply an underlying law. -- -- -- This

law of tendency is, in general, that the depiction of the external,

objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of expression of which we

can have records, the consideration of the internal, the subjective,

the spiritual. We go from shapes, and forms, and bulk, and externals,

to the presentation of the life within.’ Now the growth of the ‘novel

of personality’ towards a closer representation of the ‘life within’

does not show any remarkable progress during the second decade of the

century which, on the contrary, is marked by the rapid rise of the

historical novel. It is no wonder that the depth and intensity with

which the inner life is depicted in Maturin’s _Women_, should make a

powerful impression upon thoughtful minds, though on the part of the

larger public the book met with the usual fate of a work in advance of

its time.--

While Zaira is well-nigh breaking down under the inconstancy of De

Courcy, her daughter is, in Dublin, pining away from the same cause.

In the Wentworth family things are going on in the same old style, Eva

only is able to take less and less part in the usual proceedings. The

symptoms of her disease manifest themselves in a general weakness,

alarmingly increasing. Physicians are duly consulted--sea-air is

recommended by one, mountain-air by another. Eva submits to all with

a passive smile; she has not the least doubt that she is hastening

to her grave. Soon, indeed, this becomes evident to the rest of the

family, and Wentworth already plans what evangelical institutions might

be supported by the fortune which will probably fall to him after

Eva’s death, that is, the capital settled on her by her grandfather.

A little incident exposing, in a masterly way, the inmost characters

of the principal members of the circle, is related in connection with

a meeting where Macowen is requested to give a ‘word of prayer.’ This

gentleman, who also has been thwarted in love, deems this a suitable

opportunity of taking his revenge, and exercises his eloquence entirely

at the expense of Eva:

--he implored the mercy of Heaven for a wanderer who had strayed

from the fold; for one “who had forsaken the guide of her youth, and

forgotten the Covenant of her God; who had loved strangers, and after

them would go.” And as he went on, aided by the sympathising murmur of

the audience, his memory supplying him with images, and his passions

with eloquence, there was not a single metaphor in the Old Testament

descriptive of the apostacy of the Jews from their God, that he did

not apply to Eva, who, compelled to kneel out this martyrdom, wished

to sink into the earth to escape it. This cruel holding her up as an

object to a numerous circle, was the most painful trial she had yet

experienced. Wentworth thought it excellent, and expressed much hope

from the strivings of that godly man in her behalf. Mrs. Wentworth

thought very differently; her feelings were so much outraged, she

could hardly remain on her knees; and when her husband soon after

proposed Macowen to be of a party that was to meet at their house,

Mrs. Wentworth strenuously declared, “He should not come into their

city, nor _shoot an arrow_ there.” And Wentworth was not displeased

with her opposition to his wishes, because it was couched in the

language of Isaiah, whom Macowen had taught him to call the fifth

evangelist.

One evening as Eva is sitting in her garden, De Courcy appears before

her; she swoons in his arms and, from that moment, does not leave her

bed. He besieges Mrs. Wentworth with letters and supplications, but

is no more admitted to Eva, whose only wish is to die in peace. It is

not without much exertion of her feeble strength that she succeeds in

repelling the image of her lover from her thoughts and fixing them

on religion alone, yet at length she attains the tranquillity which

Zaira had sought in vain, and her last moments are undisturbed by any

earthly memories. The pitiable state into which De Courcy is reduced

is spoken of in a tone evincing the author’s latent sympathy for him,

but he forbears to give any detailed relation of the end of his hero: a

character like De Courcy is interesting only in hours of happiness and

enthusiasm. And as a crowning touch of the knowledge of the conditions

of human nature displayed in Maturin’s _Women_ must be mentioned the

circumstance that Zaira remains alive. She is strong, having never been

accustomed to self-indulgence. At an age when Eva and Charles knew no

external compulsion, but were free to follow the dictates of their

feelings, Zaira was placed face to face with real life in its sternest

aspect, and the strenuous work into which she was driven, has, while

she has had strength to go through it at all, hardened her vitality so

that death touches her not when it would be most welcome. She lives on

in the painful consciousness of having caused the death of her child,

unknown and unnoticed. The book ends with this melancholy aphorism:

When great talents are combined with calamity, their union forms the

_tenth wave_ of human suffering--grief becomes inexhaustible from the

unhappy fertility of genius, and the serpents that devour us, are

generated out of our own vitals.

* * * * *