When Miss Austen was asked to write a historical romance
"illustrative of the house of Coburg," she airily dismissed the
suggestion, pleading mirthfully:
"I could not sit down seriously to write a serious
romance under any other motive than to save my life,
and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and
never relax into laughing at myself or at other people
I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the
first chapter."[73]
If Godwin had been confronted with the same offer, he would have
settled himself promptly to plot out a scheme, and within a few
months a historical romance on the house of Coburg, accompanied
perchance by a preface setting forth the evils of monarchy, would
have been in the hands of the publisher. Unlike Miss Austen,
Godwin had neither a sense of humour nor a fastidious artistic
conscience to save him from undertaking incongruous tasks. He
seems never even to have suspected the humour of life, and would
have perceived nothing ludicrous in the spectacle of the author
of _Political Justice_ embarking on such a piece of work. Those
disquieting flashes of self-revelation that more imaginative men
catch in the mirror of their own minds and that awaken sometimes
laughter and sometimes tears, never disturbed Godwin's serenity.
He brooded earnestly over his speculations, quietly ignoring
inconvenient facts and never shrinking from absurd conclusions.
In theory he aimed at disorganising the whole of human society,
yet in actual life he was content to live unobtrusively,
publishing harmless books for children; and though he abhorred
the principle of aristocracy, he did not scruple to accept a
sinecure from government through Lord Grey. Notwithstanding his
stolid inconsistency and his deficiency in humour, Godwin is a
figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not
a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader
of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political
rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the
manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable
and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the
futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the
aridity of his style. His _Political Justice_ remains,
nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of
intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's _Mandeville_ in
the same breath with Plato's _Symposium_[74] and the ideas
expressed in _Political Justice_ inspired him to write not merely
_Queen Mab_ but the _Revolt of Islam_ and _Prometheus Unbound_.
Godwin's plea for the freedom of the individual and his belief in
the perfectibility of man through reason had a far-reaching
effect that cannot be readily estimated, but, as his theories
only concern us here in so far as they affect two of his novels,
it is unnecessary to pursue the trail of his influence further.
That the readers of fiction in the last decade of the eighteenth
century eagerly desired the mysterious and the terrible, Mrs.
Radcliffe's widespread popularity proved unmistakably. To satisfy
this craving, Godwin, who was ever on the alert to discover a
subject which promised swift and adequate financial return,
turned to novel-writing, and supplied a tale of mystery, _The
Adventures of Caleb Williams_ (1794), and a supernatural,
historical romance, _St. Leon_ (1799). As he was a political
philosopher by nature and a novelist only by profession, he
artfully inveigled into his romances the theories he wished to
promote. The second title of _Caleb Williams_ is significant.
_Things As They Are_ to Godwin's mind was synonymous with "things
as they ought not to be." He frankly asserts: "_Caleb Williams_
was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition
of my _Political Justice_ left me"[75]--a guileless confession
that may well have deterred many readers who recoil shuddering
from political treatises decked out in the guise of fiction. But
alarm is needless; for, although _Caleb Williams_ attempts to
reveal the oppressions that a poor man may endure under existing
conditions, and the perversion of the character of an aristocrat
through the "poison of chivalry," the story may be enjoyed for
its own sake. We can read it, if we so desire, purely for the
excitement of the plot, and quietly ignore the underlying
theories, just as it is possible to enjoy Spenser's sensuous
imagery without troubling about his allegorical meaning. The
secret of Godwin's power seems to be that he himself was so
completely fascinated by the intricate structure of his story
that he succeeds in absorbing the attention of his readers. He
bestowed infinite pains on the composition of _Caleb Williams_,
and conceived the lofty hope that it "would constitute an epoch
in the mind of every reader."[76] A friend to whom he submitted
two-thirds of his manuscript advised him to throw it into the
fire and so safeguard his reputation. The result of this
criticism on a character less determined or less phlegmatic than
Godwin's would have been a violent reaction from hope to despair.
But Godwin, who seems to have been independent of external
stimulus, was not easily startled from his projects, and plodded
steadily forward until his story was complete. He would have
scorned not to execute what his mind had conceived. Godwin's
businesslike method of planning the story backwards has been
adopted by Conan Doyle and other writers of the detective story.
The deliberate, careful analysis of his mode of procedure, so
characteristic of his mind and temper, is full of interest:
"I bent myself to the conception of a series of
adventures of flight and pursuit: the fugitive in
perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the
worst calamities and the pursuer by his ingenuity and
resources keeping the victim in a state of the most
fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume.
I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and
impressive situation adequate to account for the
impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to
alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable
resolution never to allow him the least interval of
peace and security. This I apprehended could best be
effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of
which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would
thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy
discoverer that he might deprive him of peace,
character and credit, and have him for ever in his
power. This constituted the outline of my second
volume... To account for the fearful events of the
third it was necessary that the pursuer should be
invested with every advantage of fortune, with a
resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle and with
extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my
purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale
be answered without his appearing to have been
originally endowed with a mighty store of amiable
dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to
the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to
have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was
necessary to make him ... the tenant of an atmosphere
of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted
almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were
ample materials for a first volume."[77]
Godwin hoped that an "entire unity of plot" would be the
infallible result of this ingenious method of constructing his
story, and only wrote in a high state of excitement when the
"afflatus" was upon him. So far as we may judge from his
description, he seems to have realised his story first as a
complex psychological situation, not as a series of disconnected
pictures. He thought in abstractions not in visual images, and he
had next to make his abstractions concrete by inventing figures
whose actions should be the result of the mental and moral
conflict he had conceived. Godwin's attitude to his art forms a
striking contrast to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. She has her set of
marionettes, appropriately adorned, ready to move hither and
thither across her picturesque background as soon as she has
deftly manipulated the machinery which is to set them in motion.
Godwin, on the other hand, first constructs his machinery, and
afterwards, with laborious effort, carves the figures who are to
be attached to the wires. He cares little for costume or setting,
but much for the complicated mechanism that controls the destiny
of his characters. The effect of this difference in method is
that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe's plots, but
remember isolated pictures. After reading _Caleb Williams_ we
recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the
psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual
scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.
Godwin's point of view was not that of an artist but of a
scientist, who, after patiently investigating and analysing
mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in
the form of a novel. He spared no pains to make his narrative
arresting and convincing. The story is told by Caleb Williams
himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the passions
and emotions that had stirred him in the past. By this device
Godwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.
Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to
Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle
in England after spending some years in Italy. Collins, the
steward, tells Williams his patron's history. Falkland has always
been renowned for the nobility of his character. In Italy, where
he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided,
by "magnanimity," a duel with her lover. On Falkland's return to
England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his
popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss
Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who
had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to
a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely
intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died
as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of
tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to
denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making
a personal assault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived
the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as
duelling according to the Godwinian principles was "the vilest of
all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of
meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he
was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
chivalry ever to forget the situation"--as Godwin seems to think
a "man of reason" might have done in these circumstances. Tyrrel
was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion
naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a
stain on his character. Two men--a father and son called
Hawkins--whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing
Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime. This is the
state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland's service
and takes up the thread of the narrative. On hearing the story of
the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods
of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to
gratify his overmastering passion of curiosity determines to spy
incessantly until he has solved the problem. One day, after
having heard a groan of anguish, Williams peers through the
half-open door of a closet, and catches sight of Falkland in the
act of opening the lid of a chest. This incident fans his
smouldering curiosity into flame, and he is soon after detected
by his master in an attempt to break open the chest in the
"Bluebeard's chamber." Not without cause, Falkland is furiously
angry, but for some inexplicable reason confesses to the murder,
at the same time expressing his passionate determination at all
costs to preserve his reputation. He is tortured, not by remorse
for his crime, but by the fear of being found out, and seeks to
terrorise Williams into silence by declaring:
"To gratify a foolishly inquisitive humour you have
sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but
can never share my affection. If ever an unguarded word
escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy
or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death or
worse."
From this moment Williams is helpless. Turn where he will, the
toils of Falkland encompass him. Forester, Falkland's
half-brother, tries to persuade Williams to enter his service.
Williams endeavours to flee from his master, who prevents his
escape by accusing him, in the presence of Forester, of stealing
some jewellery and bank-notes which have disappeared in the
confusion arising from an alarm of fire. The plunder has been
placed in Williams' boxes, and the evidence against him is
overwhelming. He is imprisoned, and the sordid horror of his life
in the cells gives Godwin an opportunity of showing "how man
becomes the destroyer of man." He escapes, and is sheltered by a
gang of thieves, whose leader, Raymond, a Godwinian theorist,
listens with eager sympathy to his tale, which he regards as
"only one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness
exercised by the powerful members of the community against those
who are less privileged than themselves." When a reward is
offered for the capture of Williams, the thieves are persuaded
that they must not deliver the lamb to the wolf. After an old
hag, whose animosity he has aroused, has made a bloodthirsty
attack on him with a hatchet, Williams feels obliged to leave
their habitation "abruptly without leave-taking." He then assumes
beggar's attire and an Irish brogue, but is soon compelled to
seek a fresh disguise. In Wales as in London, he comes across
someone who has known Falkland, and is reviled for his treachery
to so noble a master, and cast forth with ignominy. He discovers
that Falkland has hired an unscrupulous villain, Gines, to follow
him from place to place, blackening his reputation. Finally
desperation drives him to accuse Falkland openly, though, after
doing so, he praises the murderer, and loathes himself for his
betrayal:
"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature ... a man worthy of affection
and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of
mankind."
The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:
"Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the
greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it
is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I
am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation
was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that
death and infamy must seize me together."
Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing
relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the
victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a noble
spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human
society:
"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth,
and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to
thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
madness."
At the conclusion of the story, Godwin has not succeeded in
making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures
in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable
principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a
saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has
unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire. But, if the
story does not "rouse men to a sense of the evils of slavery," or
"constitute an epoch in the mind of every reader," it has
compensating merits and may be read with unfailing interest
either as a study of morbid psychology or as a spirited detective
story. Godwin's originality in his dissection of human motive has
hardly yet been sufficiently emphasised, perhaps because he is so
scrupulous in acknowledging literary debts.[78] From Mrs.
Radcliffe, whose _Romance of the Forest_ was published the year
before _Caleb Williams_, he borrowed the mysterious chest, the
nature of whose contents is hinted at but never actually
disclosed; but Godwin was no wizard, and had neither the gift nor
the inclination to conjure with Gothic properties. In leaving
imperfectly explained the incident of the discovery of the heart
in _The Monastery_, Scott shielded himself behind Godwin's Iron
Chest, which gave its name to Colman's drama.[79] Godwin's
peculiar interest was in criminal psychology, and he concentrates
on the dramatic conflict between the murderer and the detective.
An unusual turn is given to the story by the fact that the
criminal is the pursuer instead of the pursued. Godwin intended
later in life to write a romance based on the story of Eugene
Aram, the philosophical murderer; and his careful notes on the
scheme are said to have been utilised by his friend, Bulwer
Lytton, in his novel of that name.[80] _Caleb Williams_ helped to
popularise the criminal in fiction, and _Paul Clifford_, the
story of the chivalrous highwayman, is one of its literary
descendants.
Godwin was a pioneer breaking new ground in fiction; and, as he
was a man of talent rather than of genius, it is idle to expect
perfection of workmanship. The story is full of improbabilities,
but they are described in so matter-of-fact a style that we
"soberly acquiesce." After an hour of Godwin's grave society an
effervescent sense of humour subsides. A mind open to suggestion
is soon infected by his imperturbable seriousness, which
effectually stills "obstinate questionings." Even the brigands
who live with their philanthropic leader are accepted without
demur. After all, Raymond is only Robin Hood turned political
philosopher. The ingenious resources of _Caleb Williams_ when he
strives to elude his pursuer are part of the legitimate
stock-in-trade of the hero of a novel of adventure. He is not as
other men are, and comes through perilous escapades with
miraculous success. It is at first difficult to see why Falkland
does not realise that his plan of ceaselessly harassing his
victim is likely to force Williams to accuse him publicly, but
gradually we begin to regard his mental obliquity as one of the
decrees of fate. Falkland's obtuseness is of the same nature as
that of the sleeper who undertakes a voyage to Australia to
deliver a letter which anywhere but in a dream would have been
dropped in the nearest pillar-box. The obvious solution that
would occur to a waking mind is persistently evasive. The plot of
_Caleb Williams_ hinges on an improbability, but so does that of
_King Lear_; and if it had not been for Falkland's stupidity, the
story would have ended with the first volume. Godwin excels in
the analysis of mental conditions, but fails when he attempts to
transmute passionate feeling into words. We are conscious that he
is a cold-blooded spectator _ab extra_ striving to describe what
he has never felt for himself. It is not even "emotion
recollected in tranquillity." Men of this world, who are carried
away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and
directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from
dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that
Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant:
"Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the
opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed
from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81]
The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which
was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually
concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure
to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections
into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven
impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off
jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His
style is a curious mixture of these two manners.
The aim of _St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century_, is to
show that "boundless wealth, freedom from disease, weakness and
death are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection and
the charities of private life."[82] For four years Godwin had
desired to modify what he had said on the subject of private
affections in _Political Justice_, while he asserted his
conviction of the general truth of his system. Godwin had argued
that private affections resulted in partiality, and therefore
injustice.[83] If a house were on fire, reason would urge a man
to save Fénelon in preference to his valet; but if the rescuer
chanced to be the brother or father of the valet, private feeling
would intervene, unreasonably urging him to save his relative and
abandon Fénelon. Lest he should be regarded as a wrecker of
homes, Godwin wished to show that domestic happiness should not
be despised by the man of reason. Instead of expressing his views
on this subject in a succinct pamphlet, Godwin, elated by the
success of _Caleb Williams_, decided to embody them in the form
of a novel. He at first despaired of finding a theme so rich in
interest as that of his first novel, but ultimately decided that
"by mixing human feelings and passions with incredible situations
he might conciliate the patience even of the severest
judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a
flash Godwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He
makes no pretence that _St. Leon_ grew naturally as a work of
art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he
doggedly accomplished it, the result is dull and laboured.
The plot of _St. Leon_ was suggested by Dr. John Campbell's
_Hermippus Redivivus_,[85] and centres round the theories of the
Rosicrucians. The first volume describes the early life of the
knight St. Leon, his soldiering, his dissipations, and his happy
marriage to Marguerite, whose character is said to have been
modelled on that of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris he is tempted
into extravagance and into playing for high stakes, with the
result that he retires to Switzerland the "prey of poverty and
remorse." Misfortunes pursue him for some time, but he at last
enjoys six peaceful years, at the end of which he is visited by a
mysterious old man, whom he conceals in a summer-house, and whom
he refuses to betray to the Inquisitors in search of him. In
return the old man reveals to him the secret of the elixir vitæ,
and of the philosopher's stone. Marguerite becomes suspicious of
the source of her husband's wealth: "For a soldier you present me
with a projector and a chemist, a cold-blooded mortal raking in
the ashes of a crucible for a selfish and solitary advantage."
His son, Charles, unable to endure the aspersions cast upon his
father's honour during their travels together in Germany, deserts
him. St. Leon is imprisoned because he cannot account for the
death of the stranger and for his own sudden acquisition of
wealth, but contrives his escape by bribing the jailor. He
travels to Italy, but is unable to escape from misfortune.
Suspected of black magic, he becomes an object of hatred to the
inhabitants of the town where he lives. His house is burnt down,
his servant and his favourite dog are killed, and he soon hears
of the death of his unhappy wife. He is imprisoned in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, but escapes, and takes refuge with a
Jew, whom he compels to shelter him, until another dose of the
elixir restores his youthful appearance, and he sets forth again,
this time disguised as a wealthy Spanish cavalier. He visits his
own daughters, representing himself as the executor under their
father's will. He decides to devote himself to the service of
others, and is revered as the saviour of Hungary, until
disaffection, caused by a shortage of food, renders him
unpopular. He makes a friend of Bethlem Gabor, whose wife and
children have been savagely murdered by a band of marauders. St.
Leon, we are told, "found an inexhaustible and indescribable
pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul."
But Gabor soon conceives a bitter hatred against him, and entraps
him in a subterranean vault, where he languishes for many months,
refusing to yield up his secret. At length the castle is
besieged, and Gabor before his death gives St. Leon his liberty.
The leader of the expedition proves to be St. Leon's long-lost
son, Charles, who has assumed the name of De Damville. St. Leon,
without at first revealing his identity, cultivates the
friendship of his son, but Charles, on learning of his dealings
with the supernatural, repudiates his father. Finally the
marriage of his son to Pandora proves to St. Leon that despite
his misfortunes "there is something in this world worth living
for."
The Inquisition scenes of _St. Leon_ were undoubtedly coloured
faintly by those of Lewis's _Monk_ (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's
_Italian_ (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead
of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses
rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the
Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the
philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye
so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to
escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength
to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and
superior being in human form;"[86] but apart from this trait he
is not an impressive figure. The only character who would have
felt perfectly at home in the realm of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk"
Lewis is Bethlem Gabor, who appears for the first time in the
fourth volume of _St. Leon_. He is akin to Schedoni and his
compeers in his love of solitude, his independence of
companionship, and his superhuman aspect, but he is a figure who
inspires awe and pity as well as terror. Beside this personage
the other characters pale into insignificance:
"He was more than six feet in stature ... and he was
built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain
the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like
thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick
and shaggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had
suffered considerable mutilation in the services
through which he had passed ... Bethlem Gabor, though
universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of
a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of
reserve and taciturnity... Seldom did he allow himself
to open his thoughts but when he did, Great God! what
supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud
him... Bethlem Gabor's was a soul that soared to a
sightless distance above the sphere of pity."[87]
The superstitions of bygone ages, which had fired the imagination
of so many writers of romance, left Godwin cold. He was mildly
interested in the supernatural as affording insight into the
"credulity of the human mind," and even compiled a treatise on
_The Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834).[88] But the hints and
suggestions, the gloom, the weird lights and shades which help to
create that romantic atmosphere amid which the alchemist's dream
seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in Godwin's
story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference
of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean
vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly
groans, no phosphorescent lights enhance the horror and mystery
of the scene. Godwin is coolly indifferent to historical
accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of
the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently
disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather
for its position in the history of the novel than for any
intrinsic charm. Godwin was the first to embody in a romance the
ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_,
_Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.
_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work
called _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_,
by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of
the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic
style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated,
and the author finally satirises Godwin bitterly:
"Thinking from my political writings that I was a good
hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.
These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I
had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine
high-sounding periods would assist to make the
unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious
reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]
The parodist takes Godwin almost as seriously as he took himself,
and his attack is needlessly savage. Godwin's political opinions
may account for the brutality of his assailant who doubtless
belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural
in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of
mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and
reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the
Cheshire Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:
"I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from
among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as
distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon
them... It was by degrees that the features showed
themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.
I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as
insensible degrees as those by which it had become
agonisingly clear. After a short time it returned."
Godwin describes a ghost as deliberately and exactly as he would
describe a house, and his delineation causes not the faintest
tremor. Having little imagination himself, he leaves nothing to
the imagination of the reader. In his _Lives of the
Necromancers_, he shows that he is interested in discovering the
origin of a belief in natural magic; but the life stories of the
magicians suggest no romantic pictures to his imagination. In
dealing with the mysterious and the uncanny, Godwin was
attempting something alien to his mind and temper.
In Godwin's _St. Leon_ the elixir of life is quietly bestowed on
the hero in a summer-house in his own garden. The poet, Thomas
Moore, in his romance, _The Epicurean_ (1827), sends forth a
Greek adventurer to seek it in the secret depths of the catacombs
beneath the pyramids of Egypt. He originally intended to tell his
story in verse, but after writing a fragment, _Alciphron_,
abandoned this design and decided to begin again in prose. His
story purports to be a translation of a recently discovered
manuscript buried in the time of Diocletian. Inspired by a dream,
in which an ancient and venerable man bids him seek the Nile if
he wishes to discover the secret of eternal life, Alciphron, a
young Epicurean philosopher of the second century, journeys to
Egypt. At Memphis he falls in love with a beautiful priestess,
Alethe, whom he follows into the catacombs. Bearing a glimmering
lamp, he passes through a gallery, where the eyes of a row of
corpses, buried upright, glare upon him, into a chasm peopled by
pale, phantom-like forms. He braves the terrors of a blazing
grove and of a dark stream haunted by shrieking spectres, and
finds himself whirled round in chaos like a stone shot in a
sling. Having at length passed safely through the initiation of
Fire, Water and Air, he is welcomed into a valley of "unearthly
sadness," with a bleak, dreary lake lit by a "ghostly glimmer of
sunshine." He gazes with awe on the image of the god Osiris, who
presides over the silent kingdom of the dead. Watching within the
temple of Isis, he suddenly sees before him the priestess,
Alethe, who guides him back to the realms of day. At the close of
the story, after Alethe has been martyred for the Christian
faith, Alciphron himself becomes a Christian.
In _The Epicurean_, Moore shows a remarkable power of describing
scenes of gloomy terror, which he throws into relief by
occasional
glimpses of light and splendour. The journey of Alciphron
inevitably challenges comparison with that of _Vathek_, but the
spirit of mockery that animates Beckford's story is wholly
absent. Moore paints a theatrical panorama of effective scenes,
but his figures are mere shadows.
The miseries of an existence, prolonged far beyond the allotted
span, are depicted not only in stories of the elixir of life, but
in the legends centring round the Wandering Jew. Croly's
_Salathiel_ (1829), like Eugene Sue's lengthy romance, _Le Juif
Errant_, won fame in its own day, but is now forgotten. Some of
Croly's descriptions, such as that of the burning trireme, have a
certain dazzling magnificence, but the colouring is often crude
and startling. The figure of the deathless Jew is apt to be lost
amid the mazes of the author's rhetoric. The conception of a man
doomed to wander eternally in expiation of a curse is in itself
an arresting theme likely to attract a romantic writer, but the
record of his adventures may easily become monotonous.
The "novel of terror" has found few more ardent admirers than the
youthful Shelley, who saw in it a way of escape from the harsh
realities and dull routine of ordinary existence. From his
childhood the world of ideas seems to have been at least as real
and familiar to him as the material world. The fabulous beings of
whom he talked to his young sisters--the Great Tortoise in
Warnham Pond, the snake three hundred years old in the garden at
Field Place, the grey-bearded alchemist in his garret[90]--had
probably for him as much meaning and interest as the living
people around him. Urged by a restless desire to evade the
natural and encounter the supernatural, he wandered by night
under the "perilous moonshine," haunted graveyards in the hope of
"high talk with the departed dead," dabbled in chemical
experiments and pored over ancient books of magic. It was to be
expected that an imagination reaching out so eagerly towards the
unknown should find refuge from the uncongenial life of Sion
House School in the soul-stirring region of romance. Transported
by sixpenny "blue books" and the many volumed novels in the
Brentford circulating library, Shelley's imagination fled
joyously to that land of unlikelihood, where the earth yawns with
bandits' caverns inhabited by desperadoes with bloody daggers,
where the air continually resounds with the shrieks and groans of
melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark
and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human
development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to
lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an
ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer
suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging
emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand
for more thrilling incidents, for wilder passions and more
desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of
terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its
inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of
reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and
we may be sure that Shelley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung
spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The
Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause
to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to
life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and
in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance,
with the title _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch
played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige
Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the
Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Shelley's imagination in after
years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus
Unbound_, and _Hellas_. The grim and ghastly legends included in
"Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_
(1801) fascinated Shelley;[92] and the suggestive titles
_Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's
Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor
and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The
Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his
preoccupation with the supernatural. That Shelley's enthusiasm
for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and
hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in
the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.
In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Shelley
invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in
his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:
"The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded
in the form of trees called by the multitude Elm trees.
Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep
yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained
stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the
lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons
and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the
grave, that occasionally may blast your straining
eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction
should yawn beneath your feet.
"Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight,
when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and
inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you
to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex
solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he
thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But
the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=Hell
Devil."[96]
That Shelley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein
shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and
that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling
diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were
probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing
letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish
ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their
composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A
letter to Peacock (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of
child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:
"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any
purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing
a novel."
_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Shelley was still
at Eton, and with the £40 paid for the romance, he is said to
have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is
little more than a _réchauffé_ of previous tales of terror, it
evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted
in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like Godwin,
Shelley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his
novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the
terrormongers. The book to which Shelley was chiefly indebted was
_Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or
"Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.
Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and
_St. Irvyne_ have been investigated in the _Modern Language
Review_ (Jan. 1912), by Mr. A. M. D. Hughes, who gives a complete
analysis of the plot of _Zofloya_, and indicates many parallels
with Shelley's novels. The heroine of _Zofloya_ is clearly a
lineal descendant of Lewis's Matilda, though Victoria di
Loredani, with all her vices, never actually degenerates into a
fiend. Victoria, it need hardly be stated, is nobly born, but she
has been brought up amid frivolous society by a worthless mother,
and: "The wildest passions predominated in her bosom; to gratify
them she possessed an unshrinking, relentless soul that would not
startle at the darkest crime."
Zofloya, who spurs her on, is the Devil himself. The plot is
highly melodramatic, and contains a headlong flight, an
earthquake and several violent deaths. In _Zastrozzi_, Shelley
draws upon the characters and incidents of this story very
freely. His lack of originality is so obvious as to need no
comment. The very names he chooses are borrowed. Julia is the
name of the pensive heroine in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian
Romance_. Matilda carries with it ugly memories of the lady in
Lewis's _Monk_; Verezzi occurs in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
Zastrozzi is formed by prefixing an extra syllable to the name
Strozzi from _Zofloya_. The incidents are those which happen
every day in the realm of terror. The villain, the hero, the
melancholy heroine, and her artful rival, develop no new traits,
but act strictly in accordance with tradition. They never
infringe the rigid code of manners and morals laid down for them
by previous generations. The scenery is invariably appropriate as
a setting to the incidents, and even the weather may be relied on
to act in a thoroughly conventional manner. The characters are
remarkable for their violent emotions and their marvellously
expressive eyes. When Verezzi's senses are "chilled with the
frigorific torpidity of despair," his eyes "roll horribly in
their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other
feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a
fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild
and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is
startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are
fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is
mystifying--Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly
concealed until the end of the story, for reasons known only to
writers of the novel of terror. Shelley's romance, in short, is
no better and perhaps even worse than that of the other disciples
of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.
_St. Irvyne: or the Rosicrucian_ (1811), though it was written by
a "Gentleman of the University of Oxford" and not by a schoolboy,
shows slight advance on _Zastrozzi_ either in matter or manner.
The plot indeed is more bewildering and baffling than that of
_Zastrozzi_. The action of the story is double and alternate, the
scene shifts from place to place, and the characters appear and
disappear in an unaccountable and disconcerting fashion. This
time Godwin's _St. Leon_ has to be added to the list of Shelley's
sources. Ginotti, whose name is stolen from a brigand in
_Zofloya_, is not the devil but one of his sworn henchmen, who
has discovered and tasted the elixir vitae. Like Zofloya, he is
surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery. So that he may himself
die, Ginotti, like the old stranger in _St. Leon_, is anxious to
impart his secret to another. He chooses as his victim,
Wolfstein, a young noble who, like Leonardo in _Zofloya_, has
allied himself with a band of brigands. The bandit, Ginotti, aids
Wolfstein to escape with a beautiful captive maiden, for whom
Shelley adopts the name Megalena from _Zofloya_. While the lovers
are in Genoa, Megalena, discovering Wolfstein with a lady named
Olympia, whose "character has been ruined by a false system of
education," makes him promise to murder her rival. In Olympia's
bedchamber Wolfstein's hand is stayed for a moment by the sight
of her beauty--a picture which recalls the powerful scene in Mrs.
Radcliffe's _Italian_, when Schedoni bends over the sleeping
Ellena. After Olympia's suicide, Megalena and Wolfstein flee
together from Genoa. In the tale of terror, as in the modern
film-play, a flight of some kind is almost indispensable.
Ginotti, whose habit of disappearing and reappearing reminds us
of the ghostly monk in the ruins of Paluzzi, tells his history to
Wolfstein, and, at the destined hour, bestows the prescription
for the elixir, and appoints a meeting in St. Irvyne's abbey,
where Wolfstein stumbles over the corpse of Megalena. Wolfstein
refuses to deny God. Both Ginotti and his victim are blasted by
lightning, amid which the "frightful prince of terror, borne on
the pinions of hell's sulphurous whirlwind," stands before them.
"On a sudden Ginotti's frame, mouldered to a gigantic
skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his
eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions,
Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of hell no
influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti--a
dateless and hopeless eternity of horror."
Interspersed with this somewhat inconsequent story are the
adventures of Eloise, who is first introduced on her return home,
disconsolate, to a ruined abbey. We are given to understand that
the story is to unfold the misfortunes which have led to her
downfall, but she is happily married ere the close. She
accompanies her dying mother on a journey, as Emily in _The
Mysteries of Udolpho_ accompanied her father, and meets a
mysterious stranger, Nempère, at a lonely house, where they take
refuge. Nempère proves to be a less estimable character than
Valancourt, who fell to Emily's lot in similar circumstances. He
sells her to an English noble, Mountfort, at whose house she
meets Fitzeustace, who, like Vivaldi in _The Italian_, overhears
her confession of love for himself. Nempère is killed in a duel
by Mountfort. At the close, Shelley states abruptly that Nempère
is Ginotti, and Eloise is Wolfstein's sister. In springing a
secret upon us suddenly on the last page, Shelley was probably
emulating Lewis's _Bravo of Venice_; but the conclusion, which is
intended to forge a connecting link between the tales, is
unsatisfying. It is not surprising that the publisher, Stockdale,
demanded some further elucidation of the mystery. Ginotti,
apparently, dies twice, and Shelley's letters fail to solve the
problem. He wrote to Stockdale: "Ginotti, as you will see, did
_not_ die by Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that
natural magic, which, when the secret was imparted to the latter,
destroyed him."[97] A few days later he wrote again, evidently in
reply to further questions: "On a re-examination you will
perceive that Mountfort physically did kill Ginotti, which must
appear from the latter's paleness." The truth seems to be that
Shelley was weary of his puppets, and had no desire to extricate
them from the tangle in which they were involved, though he was
impatient to see _St. Irvyne_ in print, and spoke hopefully of
its "selling mechanically to the circulating libraries."
Shelley took advantage of the privilege of writers of romance to
palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at
versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the
various characters, are introduced with the same laborious
artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though
suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to
scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed
be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to
night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman
strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would
dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for
existence. Peacock, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Shelley of
1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and
is troubled with a "passion for reforming the world." "He slept
with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of
venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of
mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.
He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and
secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the
Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He
stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted
past him like familiars."
Although Shelley outgrew his youthful taste for horrors, his
early reading left traces on the imagery and diction of his
poetry. There is an unusual profusion in his vocabulary of such
words as ghosts, shades, charnel, tomb, torture, agony, etc., and
supernatural similes occur readily to his mind. In _Alastor_ he
compares himself to
"an inspired and desperate alchymist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,"
and cries:
"O that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lonely world."
In the _Ode to the West Wind_ his memories of an older and finer
kind of romance suggested the fantastic comparison of the dead
leaves to
"ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,"
and in _Prometheus Unbound_ Panthea sees
"unimaginable shapes
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deeps."
The poem _Ginevra_, which describes an enforced wedding and the
death of the bride at the sight of her real lover, may well have
been inspired by reading the romances of terror, where such
events are an everyday occurrence. The gruesome descriptions in
_The Revolt of Islam_, the decay of the garden in _The Sensitive
Plant_, the tortures of Prometheus, all show how Shelley strove
to work on the instinctive emotion of fear. In _The Cenci_ he
touches the profoundest depths of human passion, and shows his
power of finding words, terrible in their simple grandeur, for a
soul in agony. In the tragedies of Shakespeare and of his
followers--Ford, Webster and Tourneur--Shelley had heard the true
language of anguish and despair. The futile, frenzied shrieking
of Matilda and her kind is forgotten in the passionate nobility
or fearful calm of the speeches of Beatrice Cenci.