A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be
expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published _The
Italian_, Jane Austen had completed her _Northanger Abbey_,
ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that
for the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received £500, and
for _The Italian_ £800; while for the manuscript of _Northanger
Abbey_, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of
£10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who,
it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably
realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency
would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in
fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as
if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs.
Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished
writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and
exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly
romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in
_Northanger Abbey_ is clear evidence that her raillery is
directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such
"horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to
Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures
in the world."
It has sometimes been supposed that the more fantastic titles in
this catalogue were figments of Jane Austen's imagination, but
the identity of each of the seven stories may be established
beyond question. Two of the stories--_The Necromancer of the
Black Forest_, a translation from the German, and _The Castle of
Wolfenbach_, by Mrs. Eliza Parsons (who was also responsible for
_Mysterious Warnings_)--may still be read in _The Romancist and
Novelist's Library_ (1839-1841), a treasure-hoard of forgotten
fiction. _Clermont_ (1798) was published by Mrs. Regina Maria
Roche, the authoress of _The Children of the Abbey_ (1798), a
story almost as famous in its day as _Udolpho_. The author of
_The Midnight Bell_ was one George Walker of Bath, whose record,
like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of
_The Orphan of the Rhine_ (1798) in four volumes, may be found in
Watts' _Bibliotheca Britannica_. _Horrid Mysteries_, perhaps the
least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German
of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will. Jane Austen's attack has no
tinge of bitterness or malice. John Thorpe, who declared all
novels, except _Tom Jones_ and _The Monk_, "the stupidest things
in creation," admitted, when pressed by Catherine, that Mrs.
Radcliffe's were "amusing enough" and "had some fun and nature in
them"; and Henry Tilney, a better judge, owned frankly that he
had "read all her works, and most of them with great pleasure."
From this we may assume that Miss Austen herself was perhaps
conscious of their charm as well as their absurdity.
Sheridan's Lydia Languish (1775) and Colman's Polly Honeycombe
(1777) were both demoralised by the follies of sentimental
fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's _Tender Husband_ (1705),
had been by romances. It was Miss Austen's purpose in creating
Catherine Morland to present a maiden bemused by Gothic romance:
"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would
have supposed her born to be a heroine." In almost every detail
she is a refreshing contrast to the traditional type. Two
long-lived conventions--the fragile mother, who dies at the
heroine's birth, and the tyrannical father--are repudiated at the
very outset; and Catherine is one of a family of seven. We cannot
conceive that Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines even at the age of ten
would "love nothing so well in the world as rolling down the
green slope at the back of the house." Her accomplishments lack
the brilliance and distinction of those of Adela and Julia, but,
"Though she could not write sonnets she brought herself
to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her
throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on
the pianoforte, she could listen to other people's
performances with very little fatigue. Her greatest
deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of
drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her
lover's profile, that she might be detected in the
design. There she fell miserably short of the true
heroic height...Not one started with rapturous wonder
on beholding her...nor was she once called a divinity
by anybody."
She had no lover at the age of seventeen,
"because there was not a lord in the neighbourhood--not
even a baronet. There was not one family among their
acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy
accidentally found at their door--not one whose origin
was unknown."
Nor is Catherine aided in her career by those "improbable
events," so dear to romance, that serve to introduce a hero--a
robber's attack, a tempest, or a carriage accident. With a sly
glance at such dangerous characters as Lady Greystock in _The
Children of the Abbey_ (1798), Miss Austen creates the inert, but
good-natured Mrs. Alien as Catherine's chaperone in Bath:
"It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs.
Alien that the reader may be able to judge in what
manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the
general distress of the work and how she will probably
contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the
desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is
capable, whether by her imprudence, vulgarity or
jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining
her character or turning her out of doors."
Amid all the diversions of the gay and beautiful city of Bath,
Miss Austen does not lose sight entirely of her satirical aim,
though she turns aside for a time. Catherine's confusion of mind
is suggested with exquisite art in a single sentence. As she
drives with John Thorpe she "meditates by turns on broken
promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys
and trapdoors." This prepares us for the delightful scene in
which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine
may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring
embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since
some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the
single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the
ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty
dagger, the cabinet of ebony and gold with its roll of
manuscripts, prove his intimacy with _The Romance of the Forest_,
as well as with _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. The black chest and
the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies,
and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to
decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet
drawer, she accidentally extinguishes her candle:
"A lamp could not have expired with more awful
effect... Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled
the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden
fury, added fresh horror to the moment... Human nature
could support no more ... groping her way to the bed
she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
agony by creeping far beneath the clothes... The storm
still raged... Hour after hour passed away, and the
wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the
clocks in the house before the tempest subsided, and
she, unknowingly, fell fast asleep. She was awakened
the next morning at eight o'clock by the housemaid's
opening her window-shutter. She flew to the mysterious
manuscript, If the evidence of sight might be trusted
she held a washing bill in her hands ... she felt
humbled to the dust."
Even this bitter humiliation does not sweep away the cobwebs of
romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark
suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether
inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey
than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to
dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories
of the _Sicilian Romance_ into weaving a mystery around the fate
of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her
husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for
"glimmering lights," like those in the palace of Mazzini, and
determines to search for "a fragmented journal continued to the
last gasp," like that of Adeline's father in _The Romance of the
Forest_. In this search she encounters Tilney, who has returned
unexpectedly from Woodston. He dissipates once and for all her
nervous fancies, and Catherine decides: "Among the Alps and
Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as
were not spotless as an angel, might have the dispositions of a
fiend. But in England it was not so."
Miss Austen's novel is something more than a mock-romance, and
Catherine is not a mere negative of the traditional heroine, but
a human and attractive girl, whose fortunes we follow with the
deepest interest. At the close, after Catherine's ignominious
journey home, we are back again in the cool world of reality. The
abbey is abandoned, after it has served its purpose in
disciplining the heroine, in favour of the unromantic country
parsonage.
In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen had deftly turned the novels
of Mrs. Radcliffe to comedy; but, even if her parody had been
published in 1798, when we are assured that it was completed, her
satirical treatment was too quiet and subtle, too delicately
mischievous, to have disturbed seriously the popularity of the
novel of terror. We can imagine the Isabella Thorpes and Lydia
Bennets of the day dismissing _Northanger Abbey_ with a yawn as
"an amazing dull book," and returning with renewed zest to more
stimulating and "horrid" stories. Maria Edgeworth too had aimed
her shaft at the sentimental heroine in one of her _Moral
Tales--Angelina or L'Amie Inconnue_ (1801). Miss Sarah Green, in
_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_ (1810) had displayed the
extravagant folly of a clergyman's daughter whose head was turned
by romances. Ridicule of a more blatant and boisterous kind was
needed, and this was supplied by Eaton Stannard Barrett, who, in
1813--five years before _Northanger Abbey_ appeared--published
_The Heroine or The Adventures of Cherubina_. In this farcical
romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an
onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and
blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like
Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his
farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it
was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a
madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring
note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which
Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only
intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in
making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade
more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina
Maria Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798) would take the wind
from the sails of any parodist. In protracting _The Heroine_
almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately
in mimicry of this and a horde of other tedious romances.
Certainly the unfortunate Stuart waits no longer for the
fulfilment of his hopes than Lord Mortimer, the long-suffering
hero of _The Children of the Abbey_, who early in the first
volume demands of Amanda Fitzalan, what he calls an
"éclaircissement," but does not win it until the close of the
fourth. Barrett does not scruple to mention the titles of the
books he derides. The following catalogue will show how widely he
casts his net: _Mysteries of Udolpho, Romance of the Forest,
Children of the Abbey, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Clarissa
Harlowe, Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia, La Nouvelle Heloïse,
Rasselas, The Delicate Distress, Caroline of Lichfield_,[98] _The
Knights of the Swan_,[99] _The Beggar Girl, The Romance of the
Highlands_.[100] Besides these novels, which he actually names,
Barrett alludes indirectly to several others, among them
_Tristram Shandy_ and _Amelia_. From this enumeration it is
evident that Barrett was satirising the heroine, not merely of
the "novel of terror," but of the "sentimental novel" from which
she traced her descent. He organises a masquerade, mindful that
it is always the scene of the heroine's "best adventure," with
Fielding's _Amelia_ and Miss Burney's _Cecilia_ and probably
other novels in view. The precipitate flight of Cherubina,
"dressed in a long-skirted red coat stiff with tarnished lace, a
satin petticoat, satin shoes and no stockings," and with hair
streaming like a meteor, described in Letter XX, is clearly a
cruel mockery of Cecilia's distressful plight in Miss Burney's
novel. Even Scott is not immune from Barrett's barbed arrows, and
Byron is glanced at in the bogus antique language of "Eftsoones."
Barrett, indeed, jeers at the mediaeval revival in its various
manifestations and even at "Romanticism" generally, not merely at
the new school of fiction represented by Mrs. Radcliffe, her
followers and rivals. Not content with reaching his aim, as he
does again and again in _The Heroine_, Barrett, like many another
parodist, sometimes over-reaches it, and sneers at what is not in
itself ridiculous.
Nominally Cherubina is the butt of Barrett's satire, but the
permanent interest of the book lies in the skilful stage-managing
of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at
characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us
by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The
plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown,
mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a
surfeit of romances, perhaps including _The Misanthropic Parent
or The Guarded Secret_ (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real
father--a worthy farmer--to look for more aristocratic parents.
As he is not picturesque enough for a villain, she repudiates him
with scorn: "Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your
countenance? Can you darken the midnight with a scowl? Have you
the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? In a word, are you
a picturesque villain full of plot and horror and magnificent
wickedness? Ah! no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured,
chuckle-headed, old gentleman." In the course of her search she
meets with amazing adventures, which she describes in a series of
letters to her governess. She changes her name to Cherubina de
Willoughby, and journeys to London, where, mistaking Covent
Garden Theatre for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the
protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy. He readily falls in
with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of
tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight. Later, Cherubina
is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her
guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and
poses as her aunt. She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which
recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis's _Monk_, to her supposed
mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title
_Il Castello di Grimgothico_, are inserted, after the manner of
Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the
midst of the heroine's adventures. Cherubina determines to live
in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These
include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of
comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and
Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of
minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the
time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking."
The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where
she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The
incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are
foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend
them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic
castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering
manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed
barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina,
for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations
in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina
visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our
thoughts to _The Sicilian Romance_. In Westminster Abbey she is
disappointed to find "no cowled monks with scapulars"--a phrase
which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni
in _The Italian_. At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan
dress from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and, when furnishing
Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring
"flags stained with the best old blood--feudal, if possible, an
old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet
pall." Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many
novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a
troop of Irish ruffians. Barrett lets nothing escape him.
Rousseau's theories are irreverently travestied. The thunder
rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that
well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled
splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates
superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods;
the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears
"spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding,
flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches
torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of
romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are
exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in
itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar
with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the
booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is
a fascinating pastime.
Miss Austen, with her swift stiletto, and Barrett, with his
brutal bludgeon--to use a metaphor of "terror"--had each
delivered an attack; and in 1818, if we may judge by Peacock's
_Nightmare Abbey_, there is a change of fashion in fiction. How
far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to
determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to
believe in their external appearance," through whose lips Peacock
reviles "that part of the reading public which shuns the solid
food of reason," probably gives the true cause for the waning
popularity of the novel of terror:
"It lived upon ghosts, goblins and skeletons till even
the devil himself ... became too base, common and
popular for its surfeited appetite. The ghosts have
therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into
outer darkness."
The novel of terror has been destroyed not by its enemies but by
its too ardent devotees. The horrid banquet, devoured with
avidity for so many years, has become so highly seasoned that the
jaded palate at last cries out for something different, and,
according to Peacock, finds what it desires in "the vices and
blackest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress
of heroism and disappointed benevolence"--an uncomplimentary
description of the Byronic hero. Yet sensational fiction has
lingered on side by side with other forms of fiction all through
the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural
craving for excitement. It may not be the dominant type, but it
will always exist, and will produce its thrill by ever-varying
devices. Those who scoff may be taken unawares, like the company
in _Nightmare Abbey_. The conversation turned on the subject of
ghosts, and Mr. Larynx related his delightfully compact ghost
story:
"I once saw a ghost myself in my study, which is the
last place any one but a ghost would look for me. I had
not been in it for three months and was going to
consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a
venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in
my armchair, reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a
moment, and so did I, and what it was and what it
wanted, I have never been able to ascertain"
--a quieter, more inoffensive ghost than that described by Defoe
in his _Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions_: "A
grave, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded
gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was
seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers red-hot." Mr. Flosky and
Mr. Hilary have hardly declared their disbelief in ghosts when:
"The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure,
shrouded in white drapery with the semblance of a
bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly
up the apartment. Mr. Flosky was not prepared for this
apparition, and made the best of his way out at the
opposite door. Mr. Hilary and Marionetta followed
screaming. The honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of
his body, first rolled off the sofa and then under it.
Rev. Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much
precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot
of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears
of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his
senses that missing the door he threw up one of the
windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head
and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who
were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by
the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to
land."
In Melincourt Castle a very spacious wing was left free to the
settlement of a colony of ghosts, and the Rev. Mr. Portpipe often
passed the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing
fire, with the same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large
venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of
Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in _Gryll
Grange_ devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, singling
out the works of Charles Brockden Brown for praise, especially
his _Wieland_, "one of the few tales in which the final
explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or
diminish the original effect."
The title _Nightmare Abbey_ in a catalogue would undoubtedly have
caught the eye of Isabella Thorp or her friend Miss Andrews,
searching eagerly for "horrid mysteries," but they would perhaps
have detected the note of mockery in the name. They would,
however, have been completely deceived by the title, _The Mystery
of the Abbey_, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson,
and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival
of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted"
by the proprietors of a distillery; and the spectre, described in
horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red
handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not
a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a
_picaresque_ novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a
hoax.
Belinda Waters, the heroine of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by
nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own
heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of
circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses
wearily aside a half-read volume of _Clarissa_, commended by her
maid, "who had _Clarissa_ for her heart's dear friend."
"Give me," she said, "for I would laugh or cry,
'Scenes from the Life,' and 'Sensibility,'
'Winters at Bath': I would that I had one!
'The Constant Lover,' 'The Discarded Son,'[101]
"'The Rose of Raby,'[102] 'Delmore,' or 'The Nun'[103]--
These promise something, and may please, perhaps,
Like 'Ethelinda'[104] and the dear 'Relapse.'[105]
To these her heart the gentle maid resigned
And such the food that fed the gentle mind."
But even the "delicate distress" of heroines, like Niobe, all
tears, palls at last, and Belinda, having wept her fill, craves
now for "sterner stuff."
"Yet tales of terror are her dear delight,
All in the wintry storm to read at night."
In _The Preceptor Husband_,[106] the pretty wife, whose notions
of botany are delightfully vague, and who, in English history,
light-heartedly confuses the Reformation and the Revolution, has
tastes similar to those of Belinda. Pursued by an instructive
husband, she turns at bay, and tells her priggish preceptor what
kind of books she really enjoys:
"Well, if I must, I will my studies name,
Blame if you please--I know you love to blame--
When all our childish books were set apart,
The first I read was 'Wanderings of the Heart.'[107]
It was a story where was done a deed
So dreadful that alone I feared to read.
The next was 'The Confessions of a Nun'--
'Twas quite a shame such evils should be done.
Nun of--no matter for the creature's name,
For there are girls no nunnery can tame.
Then was the story of the Haunted Hall,
When the huge picture nodded from the wall,
"When the old lord looked up with trembling dread,
And I grew pale and shuddered as I read.
Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs
At Bath and Brighton--they were pretty things!
No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen,
But all was love and flight to Gretna-green.
Perhaps your greater learning may despise
What others like--and there your wisdom lies."
To this attractive catalogue the preceptor husband, no doubt,
listened with the expression of Crabbe's _Old Bachelor_:
"that kind of cool, contemptuous smile
Of witty persons overcharged with bile,"
but she at least succeeds in interrupting his flow of information
for the time being. He retires routed. Crabbe's close
acquaintance with "the flowery pages of sublime distress," with
"vengeful monks who play unpriestly tricks," with banditti
"who, in forest wide
Or cavern vast, indignant virgins hide,"
was, as he confesses, a relic of those unregenerate days, when
"To the heroine's soul-distracting fears
I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]
He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
aid of a talkative housekeeper:
"I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
And when the weary world was sunk to rest
I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!
"Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
And the long passage send a dismal tune,
Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
And the feet falter every step they take.
Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
To find a something which will soon expose
The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
And having thus adventured, thus endured,
Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]
Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
timorous and triumphant creatures
"borrowed and again conveyed,
From book to book, the shadows of a shade."
Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
Gothic fiction:
"But not like them has she been laid
In ruined castle sore dismayed,
Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
Stalked round the room, put out the light
And shook the curtains round the bed.
No cruel uncle kept her land,
No tyrant father forced her hand;
She had no vixen virgin aunt
Without whose aid she could not eat
And yet who poisoned all her meat
With gibe and sneer and taunt."
Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate
sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched
heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he
found pleasure in a robuster school of romance--the adventures of
mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, and Robin Hood, as set
forth and embellished in the chapbooks which cottagers treasured
"on the deal shelf beside the cuckoo-clock."[110] And in his
poem, _Sir Eustace Grey_, he presents with subtle art a mind
tormented by terror.