as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of
her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal
vault; he will hear something of her noble birth--her fine
character--her fascinating beauty--her short, innocent, eventful
life--her horrible death. Consider, too, the age and locality in which
she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters
that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim
dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of
her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest
by that of Charlotte herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted
parricide of years agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt
its curse upon the now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence,
still-not-acquitted family; a parricide consequent on passionate love,
differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating
feudal fathers--Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir
a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering
curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter,
followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual
hatred, and the former found in his own park with the broken point of
his son's sword in him, the latter flying the realm: the curse has slept
for a generation; and now two fair daughters are all that remain to the
high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir
descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering
curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story,
whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes,
to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young
Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage,
as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to
his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's
joy the greater, Saville has interest sufficient to meet the old
knight's humour of keeping up the ancient family name, by getting it
added to his own; so that the Beauvoir hatred and parricidal curse seem
likely to be frustrated. But--the first hindrance to their union is poor
sister Margaret's secret and infatuated love for that scheming villain
Rowland, her then too probable seduction, melancholic madness, and
suicide: successively upon this follow the last illnesses and deaths of
the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful ubiquity terrifies
in their very chamber of disease; and as the too likely consequence of
such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite sensibility,
Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage,
gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible
trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all the
secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who thereby
gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that silent
chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride: she,
all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-consciousness;
and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the curse
complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured mind
over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives an
involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the curse,
she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced than ever.
Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe: a
catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, _quite true_.
Fully aware of all that is going on--the preparations for burial, the
misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe--she is placed in
the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his
last long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault
under Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive!
And then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the
church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the
curse: how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault
opened; and the wretch Rowland--partly from curiosity, partly from
malice--determined to be there to see. As they and some church-followers
come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate
plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and
the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, in her
shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair shoulders,
rushes out the maniac Charlotte: in phrensied half-reason she has seized
Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has strangled him,
and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of Saville--who, as
having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and who leaves the
country for ever--little or nothing is more said: and Clopton Hall
remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats.
P.S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in
ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recorded her experiences in
the vault, by writing with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates.
Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth: a
true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long
since extinct: the house, now rebuilt and restyled--the vault--the
picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often
are the ways of Providence! how frequently the innocent suffer for the
guilty!)--the gloomy well--and something extant of the story--remains
still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically,
one should go there, and gain materials on the spot: and nothing could
be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century
costumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions; accessories of the
humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's
own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the
assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned
recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though
justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full
reward.
Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill!
Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the
kingdom!--As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and
unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the
_Buried-alive-one_!--is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that
would pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel,
criminal, and useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In
emptying my head of the notion, I have ministered too much already: but
the sample of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes,
and poisons no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor
beautiful Charlotte! shall not be disturbed by me; thy misfortunes sleep
with thee. Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than
Werter's, so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume
measure, is capable of being fabricated into something of deep,
romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in
such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic
school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned
sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual
passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the
waters, but Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth.
Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a morsel;
be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and spare your
gasconade: the expediency of a sample has been cleverly suggested, and
WE _ego et canis meus_, royal in munificence, do graciously
accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any
rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract
which explains itself--the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will
suppose preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt.
* * * * *
"That bitter speech shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain:
it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to
be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such
conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused
moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than
honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous
world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her--when the cold finger
of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her
altered form--now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting
more scorpion than ever--to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with
having rightfully inherited _a curse_--to be told, in a sort of fiendish
triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's
fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed,
had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin--to know, to hear, yea, from
his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous
youth--of her too free, unsuspicious affection--had calmly been
contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love--here
was misery, here was madness!
"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind
the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret:
his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still
haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered
one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered.
"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine;
her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized;
but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of
trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for
Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of
disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the
heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of
perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister,
suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled
asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay
fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never
was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on
her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started
at their strange wild glare: they glittered with a freezing brilliancy,
and stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad?
She bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation;
her cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse; her
hair, still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down
loose and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls
stood on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to
strike the brain; her eyes were set in a steady horror; slowly, with
dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than
herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering,
fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door: so, like a
ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and
away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for
her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it,
and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence
to him. But, see! she has silently passed by; her hand is on the lock of
the hall-door; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind her,
as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns
upon its hinge, and she, still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither,
oh God!--whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the
old knight's guests at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely
preferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the
dreary white apartment looking on the moat--nay, the haunted room of the
parricide himself--to encountering the dangers and darkness of a
night-return so desperate; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire,
near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the
splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her--but cannot rescue
from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful
creature, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which
way did the maniac turn?--whither in that desolate gloom shall Charlotte
fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's
study, she rushes back in terror to the hall; and then--Help,
help!--torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance
among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by
cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance
about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in
moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who
anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her
knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her
eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and so the live-long
night--that night of doubt, and dread, and dreariness--through bitter
hours of confusion and dismay, they sought poor Margaret--and found her
not!
"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of a
terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour,
and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten
fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with
Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With
the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied
fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds about her face, and
twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the shallow pool might
not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay scarcely half immersed
in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about,
appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and
the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the
hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the
overflowing margin of the pool."
* * * * *
Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not
a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better
educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served
up with higher seasoning as a savoury _ragout_: but you get it in
simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to
sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may
be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding
to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation.
* * * * *
Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal
curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce
as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as
no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known
fear, and no man also--from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan
Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified
Van-Diemanite--can honestly swear himself free from the influence of
some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet
with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected
with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of
in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self,
(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore
induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen
round their chief, throng about the topic of