As the novel of terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to
those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a
crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is
replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl
grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody
and more dangerous, his victims no longer sigh plaintively, but
give utterance to piercing shrieks and despairing yells; tearful
Amandas are unceremoniously thrust into the background by
vindictive Matildas, whose passions rage in all their primitive
savagery; the fearful ghost "fresh courage takes," and stands
forth audaciously in the light of day; the very devil stalks
shamelessly abroad in manifold disguises. We are caught up from
first to last in the very tempest, torrent and whirlwind of
passion. When the novel of terror thus throws restraint to the
winds, outrageously o'ersteps the modesty of nature and indulges
in a farrago of frightfulness, it begins to defeat its own
purposes and to fail in its object of freezing the blood. The
limit of human endurance has been reached--and passed. Emphasis
and exaggeration have done their worst. Battle, murder, and
sudden death--even spectres and fiends--can appal no more. If the
old thrill is to be evoked again, the application of more
ingenious methods is needed.
Such novels as Maturin's _Family of Montorio_, though "full of
sound and fury," fail piteously to vibrate the chords of terror,
which had trembled beneath Mrs. Radcliffe's gentle fingers. The
instrument, smitten forcibly, repeatedly, desperately, resounds
not with the answering note expected, but with an ugly, metallic
jangle. _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's extraordinary
masterpiece, was to prove--as late as 1820--that there were
chords in the orchestra of horror as yet unsounded; but in 1816,
when Mary Shelley and her companions set themselves to compose
supernatural stories, it was wise to dispense with the shrieking
chorus of malevolent abbesses, diabolical monks, intriguing
marquises, Wandering Jews or bleeding spectres, who had been so
grievously overworked in previous performances. Dr. Polidori's
skull-headed lady, Byron's vampire-gentleman, Mrs. Shelley's
man-created monster--a grotesque and gruesome trio--had at least
the attraction of novelty. It is indeed remarkable that so young
and inexperienced a writer as Mary Shelley, who was only nineteen
when she wrote _Frankenstein_, should betray so slight a
dependence on her predecessors. It is evident from the records of
her reading that the novel of terror in all its guises was
familiar to her. She had beheld the majestic horror of the halls
of Eblis; she had threaded her way through Mrs. Radcliffe's
artfully constructed Gothic castles; she had braved the terrors
of the German Ritter-, Räuber- und Schauer-Romane; she had
assisted, fearful, at Lewis's midnight diablerie; she had
patiently unravelled the "mystery" novels of Godwin and of
Charles Brockden Brown.[117] Yet, despite this intimate knowledge
of the terrible and supernatural in fiction, Mrs. Shelley's theme
and her way of handling it are completely her own. In an "acute
mental vision," as real as the visions of Blake and of Shelley,
she beheld her monster and the "pale student of unhallowed arts"
who had created him, and then set herself to reproduce the thrill
of horror inspired by her waking dream. _Frankenstein_ has,
indeed, been compared to Godwin's _St. Leon_, but the resemblance
is so vague and superficial, and _Frankenstein_ so immeasurably
superior, that Mrs. Shelley's debt to her father is negligible.
St. Leon accepts the gift of immortality, Frankenstein creates a
new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
feverish apprehension.
The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
themselves the terrors of his presence. The story deserves a
happier fate, for, if it be read in the spirit of willing
surrender that a theme so impossible demands, it has still power
momentarily "to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle
the blood and to quicken the beatings of the heart." The record
of the composition of _Frankenstein_ has been so often reiterated
that it is probably better known than the tale itself. In the
summer of 1816--when the Shelleys were the neighbours of Byron
near Lake Geneva--Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori,
after reading some volumes of ghost stories[118] and discussing
the supernatural and its manifestations, each agreed to write a
ghost story. It has been asserted that an interest in spectres
was stimulated by a visit from "Monk" Lewis, but we have evidence
that Mrs. Shelley was already writing her story in June,[119] and
that Lewis did not arrive at the Villa Diodati till August
14th.[120] The conversation with him about ghosts took place four
days later. Shelley's story, based on the experiences of his
early youth, was never completed. Byron's fragment formed the
basis of Dr. Polidori's _Vampyre_. Dr. Polidori states that his
supernatural novel, _Ernestus Berchtold_, was begun at this time;
but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring
in Polidori's story, is disappointingly absent. It was an
argument between Byron and Shelley about Erasmus Darwin's
theories that brought before Mary Shelley's sleepless eyes the
vision of the monster miraculously infused by its creator with
the spark of life. _Frankenstein_ was begun immediately,
completed in May, 1817, and published in 1818.
Mrs. Shelley has been censured for setting her tale in a clumsy
framework, but she tells us in her preface that she began with
the words: "It was on a dreary night of November." This sentence
now stands at the opening of Chapter IV., where the plot begins
to grip our imagination; and it seems not unfair to assume that
the introductory letters and the first four chapters, which
contain a tedious and largely unnecessary account of
Frankenstein's early life, were written in deference to Shelley's
plea that the idea should be developed at greater length, and did
not form part of her original plan. The uninteresting student,
Robert Walton, to whom Frankenstein, discovered dying among
icebergs, tells his story, is obviously an afterthought. If Mrs.
Shelley had abandoned the awkward contrivance of putting the
narrative into the form of a dying man's confession, reported
verbatim in a series of letters, and had opened her story, as she
apparently intended, at the point where Frankenstein, after weary
years of research, succeeds in creating a living being, her novel
would have gained in force and intensity. From that moment it
holds us fascinated. It is true that the tension relaxes from
time to time, that the monster's strange education and the
Godwinian precepts that fall so incongruously from his lips tend
to excite our mirth, but, though we are mildly amused, we are no
longer merely bored. Even the protracted descriptions of domestic
life assume a new and deeper meaning, for the shadow of the
monster broods over them. One by one those whom Frankenstein
loves fall victims to the malice of the being he has endowed with
life. Unceasingly and unrelentingly the loathsome creature dogs
our imagination, more awful when he lurks unseen than when he
stands actually before us. With hideous malignity he slays
Frankenstein's young brother, and by a fiendish device causes
Justine, an innocent girl, to be executed for the crime. Yet ere
long our sympathy, which has hitherto been entirely with
Frankenstein, is unexpectedly diverted to the monster who, it
would seem, is wicked only because he is eternally divorced from
human society. Amid the magnificent scenery of the Valley of
Chamounix he appears before his creator, and tells the story of
his wretched life, pleading: "Everywhere I see bliss from which I
alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery
made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
He describes how his physical ugliness repels human beings, who
fail to realise his benevolent intentions. A father snatches from
his arms the child he has rescued from death; the virtuous
family, whom he admires and would fain serve, flee affrighted
from his presence. To educate the monster, so that his thoughts
and emotions may become articulate, and, incidentally, to
accentuate his isolation from society, Mrs. Shelley inserts a
complicated story about an Arabian girl, Sofie, whose lover
teaches her to read from Plutarch's _Lives_, Volney's _Ruins of
Empire, The Sorrows of Werther_, and _Paradise Lost_. The monster
overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but,
as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows
Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would
cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge?
"The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst
forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or
in enjoyment. I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me." And
later, near the close of the book: "The fallen angel becomes a
malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends
and associates in his desolation; I am alone," His fate reminds
us of that of _Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude_, who:
"Over the world wanders for ever
Lone as incarnate death."
After the long and moving recital of his woes, even the obdurate
Frankenstein cannot resist the justice of his demand for a
partner like himself. Yet when the student recoils with horror
from his half-accomplished task and sees the creature maliciously
peering through the window, our hatred leaps to life once more
and burns fiercely as the monster adds to his crimes the murder
of Clerval, Frankenstein's dearest friend, and of Elizabeth on
her wedding night. We follow with shuddering anticipation the
long pursuit of the monster, expectant of a last, fearful
encounter which shall decide the fate of the demon and his maker.
Amid the region of eternal ice, Frankenstein catches sight of
him; but fails to reach him. At last, beside the body of his last
victim--Frankenstein himself--the creature is filled with remorse
at the "frightful catalogue" of his sins, and makes a final bid
for our sympathy in the farewell speech to Walton, before
climbing on an ice-raft to be "borne away by the waves and lost
in darkness and distance."
Like _Alastor_, _Frankenstein_ was a plea for human sympathy, and
was, according to Shelley's preface, intended "to exhibit the
amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence of universal
virtue." The monster has the perception and desire of goodness,
but, by the circumstances of his abnormal existence, is delivered
over to evil. It is this dual nature that prevents him from being
a mere automaton. The monster indeed is far more real than the
shadowy beings whom he pursues. Frankenstein is less an
individual than a type, and only interests us through the
emotions which his conflict with the monster arouses. Clerval,
Elizabeth and Frankenstein's relatives are passive sufferers
whose psychology does not concern us. Mrs. Shelley rightly
lavishes her skill on the central figure of the book, and
succeeds, as effectually as Frankenstein himself, in infusing
into him the spark of life. Mrs. Shelley's aim is to "awaken
thrilling horror," and, incidentally, to "exhibit the excellence
of domestic virtue," and for her purpose the demon is of
paramount importance. The involved, complex plot of a novel
seemed to pass beyond Mrs. Shelley's control. A short tale she
could handle successfully, and Shelley was unwise in inciting her
to expand _Frankenstein_ into a long narrative. So long as she is
completely carried away by her subject Mrs. Shelley writes
clearly, but when she pauses to regard the progress of her story
dispassionately, she seems to be overwhelmed by the wealth of her
resources and to have no power of selecting the relevant details.
The laborious introductory letters, the meticulous record of
Frankenstein's education, the story of Felix and Sofie, the
description of the tour through England before the creation of
the second monster is attempted, are all connected with the main
theme by very frail links and serve to distract our attention in
an irritating fashion from what really interests us. In the novel
of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a
novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror,
delays are merely dangerous. By resting her terrors on a
pseudo-scientific basis and by placing her story in a definite
locality, Mrs. Shelley waives her right to an entire suspension
of disbelief. If it be reduced to its lowest terms, the plot of
Frankenstein, with its bewildering confusion of the prosaic and
the fantastic, sounds as crude, disjointed and inconsequent as
that of a nightmare. Mrs. Shelley's timid hesitation between
imagination and reality, her attempt to reconcile incompatible
things and to place a creature who belongs to no earthly land in
familiar surroundings, prevents _Frankenstein_ from being a
wholly satisfactory and alarming novel of terror. She loves the
fantastic, but she also fears it. She is weighted down by
commonsense, and so flutters instead of soaring, unwilling to
trust herself far from the material world. But the fact that she
was able to vivify her grotesque skeleton of a plot with some
degree of success is no mean tribute to her gifts. The energy and
vigour of her style, her complete and serious absorption in her
subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in
the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in
her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and
blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like
"ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of
using their simpler Saxon equivalents. Stirred by the excitement
of the events she describes, she can write forcibly in simple,
direct language. She often frames short, hurried sentences such
as a man would naturally utter when breathless with terror or
with recollections of terror. The final impression that
_Frankenstein_ leaves with us is not easy to define, because the
book is so uneven in quality. It is obviously the shapeless work
of an immature writer who has had no experience in evolving a
plot. Sometimes it is genuinely moving and impressive, but it
continually falls abruptly and ludicrously short of its aim. Yet
when all its faults have been laid bare, the fact remains that
few readers would abandon the story half-way through. Mrs.
Shelley is so thoroughly engrossed in her theme that she impels
her readers onward, even though they may think but meanly of her
story as a work of art.
Mrs. Shelley's second novel, _Valperga, or the Life and
Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca_, published in 1823,
was a work on which she bestowed much care and labour, but the
result proves that she writes best when the urgency of her
imagination leaves her no leisure either to display her learning
or adorn her style. She herself calls _Valperga_ a "child of
mighty slow growth," and Shelley adds that it was "raked out of
fifty old books." Mrs. Shelley, always an industrious student,
made a conscientious survey of original sources before fashioning
her story of mediaeval Italy, and she is hampered by the
exuberance of her knowledge. The novel is not a romance of
terror; but Castruccio, though his character is sketched from
authentic documents, seems towards the end of the story to
resemble the picturesque villain who numbered among his ancestry
Milton's Satan. He has "a majestic figure and a countenance
beautiful but sad, and tarnished by the expression of pride that
animated it." Beatrice, the gifted prophetess who falls deep in
love with Castruccio, ends her days in the dungeons of the
Inquisition. Mrs. Shelley's aim, however, is not to arouse fear,
but to trace the gradual deterioration of Castruccio's character
from an open-hearted youth to a crafty tyrant. The blunt remarks
of Godwin, who revised the manuscript, are not unjust, but fall
with an ill grace from the pen of the author of _St. Leon_: "It
appears in reading, that the first rule you prescribed was: 'I
will let it be long.' It contains the quantity of four volumes of
_Waverley_. No hard blow was ever hit with a woodsaw."[121]
In _The Last Man_, which appeared in 1825, Mrs. Shelley attempted
a stupendous theme, no less then a picture of the devastation of
the human race by plague and pestilence. She casts her
imagination forward into the twenty-first century, when the last
king of England has abdicated the throne and a republic is
established. Very wisely, she narrows the interest by
concentrating on the pathetic fate of a group of friends who are
among the last survivors, and the story becomes an idealised
record of her own sufferings. The description of the loneliness
of the bereft has a personal note, and reminds us of her journal,
where she expresses the sorrow of being herself the last
survivor, and of feeling like a "cloud from which the light of
sunset has passed."[122] Raymond, who dies in an attempt to place
the standard of Greece in Stamboul, is a portrait of Byron; and
Adrian, the late king's son, who finally becomes Protector, is
clearly modelled on Shelley. Yet in spite of these personal
reminiscences, their characters lack distinctness. Idris, Clara
and Perdita are faintly etched, but Evadne, the Greek artist, who
cherishes a passion for Raymond, and dies fighting against the
Turks, has more colour and body than the other women, though she
is somewhat theatrical. Mrs. Shelley conveys emotion more
faithfully than character, and the overwrought sensibilities and
dark forebodings of the diminished party of survivors who leave
England to distract their minds by foreign travel are artfully
suggested. The leaping, gesticulating figure, whom their jaded
nerves and morbid fancy transform into a phantom, is a delirious
ballet-dancer; and the Black Spectre, mistaken for Death
Incarnate, proves only to be a plague-stricken noble, who lurks
near the party for the sake of human society. These "reasonable"
solutions of the apparently supernatural remind us of Mrs.
Radcliffe's method, and Mrs. Shelley shows keen psychological
insight in her delineation of the state of mind which readily
conjures up imaginary terrors. When Lionel Verney is left alone
in the universe, her power seems to flag, and instead of the
final crescendo of horror, which we expect at the end of the
book, we are left with an ineffective picture of the last man in
Rome in 2005 deciding to explore the countries he has not yet
viewed. As he wanders amid the ruins he recalls not only "the
buried Cæsars," but also the monk in _The Italian_, of whom he
had read in childhood--a striking proof of Mrs. Shelley's faith
in the permanence of Mrs. Radcliffe's fame.
Though the style of _The Last Man_ is often tediously prolix and
is disfigured by patches of florid rhetoric and by inappropriate
similes scattered broadcast, occasional passages of wonderful
beauty recall Shelley's imagery; and, in conveying the pathos of
loneliness, personal feeling lends nobility and eloquence to her
style. With so ambitious a subject, it was natural that she
should only partially succeed in carrying her readers with her.
Though there are oases, the story is a somewhat tedious and
dreary stretch of narrative that can only be traversed with
considerable effort.
Mrs. Shelley's later works--_Perkin Warbeck_ (1830), a historical
novel; _Lodore_ (1835), which describes the early life of Shelley
and Harriet; _Falkner_ (1837), which was influenced by _Caleb
Williams_--do not belong to the history of the novel of terror;
but some of her short tales, contributed to periodicals and
collected in 1891, have gruesome and supernatural themes. _A Tale
of the Passions, or the Death of Despina_[123] a story based on
the struggles of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, contains a
perfect specimen of the traditional villain of the novel of
terror:
"Every feature of his countenance spoke of the struggle
of passions and the terrible egotism of one who would
sacrifice himself to the establishment of his will: his
black eyebrows were scattered, his grey eyes deep-set
and scowling, his look at once stern and haggard. A
smile seemed never to have disturbed the settled scorn
which his lips expressed; his high forehead was marked
by a thousand contradictory lines."
This terrific personage spends the last years of his life in
orthodox fashion as an austere saint in a monastery.
_The Mortal Immortal_, a variation on the theme of _St. Leon_, is
the record of a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, who drank half of the
elixir his master had compounded in the belief that it was a
potion to destroy love. It is written on his three hundred and
twenty-third birthday. _Transformation_, like _Frankenstein_,
dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject
is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in
that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of
treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the
love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short
stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her
novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the
books on which she expended great labour.
The literary history of Byron's fragmentary novel and of
Polidori's short story, _The Vampyre_, is somewhat tangled, but
the solution is to be found in the diary of Dr. John William
Polidori, edited and elucidated by William Michael Rossetti. The
day after that on which Polidori states that all the competitors,
except himself, had begun their stories, he records the simple
fact: "Began my ghost-story after tea." He gives no hint as to
the subject of his tale, but Mrs. Shelley tells us that Polidori
had some idea of a "skull-headed lady, who was so punished for
looking through a key-hole, and who was finally buried in the
tomb of the Capulets." In the introduction to _Ernestus
Berchtold, or the Modern OEdipus_, he states definitely:
"The tale here presented to the public is one I began
at Coligny, when _Frankenstein_ was planned, and when a
noble author, having determined to descend from his
lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror,
and wrote the fragment published at the end of
Mazeppa."
As no skull-headed lady appears in _Ernestus Berchtold_, it is
probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the
party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took
shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and
possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually
adopted in _Ernestus Berchtold_, a rambling, leisurely account of
the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves
to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant
spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is
bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not
divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have
waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. _Ernestus
Berchtold_ is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all.
The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with
the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in
because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as
indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:
"Many readers will think that the same moral and the
same colouring might have been given to characters
acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe
it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that
does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."
The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely
enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency"
into the background, because "a tale that rests upon
improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so
decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is
remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend
successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story
was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely
accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based
his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have
been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two
friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who,
like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a
prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his
death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw
a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "dead,
grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to
penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward
workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
the thirst of a vampyre."
Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
verge of the unspeakable.
Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
whom centres a story of absorbing interest.
De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the
Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty
Years' War. In _The Household Wreck_, published in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying
a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often
more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, _The
Avenger_, published in the same year, describes a series of
bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but
which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge
dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of _Popular
Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, published in 1823,
De Quincey translated _Der Freischütz_ from the German of J.A.
Apel, under the title of _The Fatal Marksman_. By means of
ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one
of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge,
she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed
straight, but goes askew. In _The Dice_, another short story from
the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a
bargain with the devil.
De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into
unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in
themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the
widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is
noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere,
have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the
supernatural.
So late as 1834--more than a decade after the appearance of
_Melmoth_--Harrison Ainsworth, whose imagination was steeped in
terror, sought once more to revive the "feeble and fluttering
pulses of old Romance." Among his earliest experiments were tales
obviously fashioned in the Gothic manner. His Imperishable One,
the hero of a tale first published in the _European Magazine_ for
1822, bemoans the burden of immortality in the listless tones of
Godwin's St. Leon, and is tempted by the fallen angel in the
self-same guise in which he appeared to Lewis's notorious monk.
In _The Test of Affection_ (_European Magazine_, 1822) a wealthy
man avails himself of Mrs. Radcliffe's supernatural trickery to
test the loyalty of his friends, whom he succeeds in alarming by
noises and a skeleton apparition. In _Arliss's Pocket Magazine_
(1822) there appeared _The Spectre Bride_; and in the _European
Magazine_ (1823) Ainsworth attempted a theme that would have
attracted Poe in _The Half Hangit_. _The Boeotian_ for 1824
contained _A Tale of Mystery_, and the _Literary Souvenir_ for
1825 _The Fortress of Saguntum_, a story in the style of Lewis.
Ainsworth's first novel, _Rookwood_ (1834), was inspired by a
visit to Cuckfield Place, an old manor house which had reminded
Shelley of "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe":
"Wishing to describe somewhat minutely the trim
gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted
groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of
an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved
to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs.
Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old
manorial residence and an old English highwayman for
the Italian marchise, the castle and the brigand of
that great mistress of romance... The attempt has
succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectation. Romance,
if I am not mistaken, is destined shortly to undergo an
important change. Modified by the German and French
writers--Hoffmann, Tieck, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas,
Balzac and Paul Lacroix--the structure commenced in our
land by Horace Walpole, 'Monk' Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe
and Maturin, but, left imperfect and inharmonious,
requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its
approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful
architect to its entire renovation and perfection."
In _Rookwood_, Ainsworth disdains Mrs. Radcliffe's reasonable
elucidations of the supernatural, and introduces spectres whose
existence it would be impossible to deny. Once, however, a
supposed ghost becomes substantial, and proves to be none other
than a human being called Jack Palmer. The sexton, Luke Bradley,
_alias_ Alan Rookwood, has inherited two of the Wanderer's
traits--the fear-impelling eyes of intolerable lustre, and the
habit of indulging in wild, screaming laughter on the most
inauspicious occasions.
Gothic properties are scattered with indiscriminate
extravagance--skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles,
sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of _Rookwood_ is too
complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our
attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to
strike home. The only part of the book which holds us enthralled
is the famous description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Here we
forget Ainsworth's slip-shod style in the excitement of the
chase. In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs.
Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror
and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in
words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of
Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in _Crichton_, the historical
scenes of horror in _The Tower of London_, the masque of the
Dance of Death in _Old St. Paul's_, the appearance of Herne the
Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in _Windsor Castle_, the
terrible orgies of _The Lancashire Witches_, are described with
more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the
school of terror. In _Auriol_, which was first published in
_Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1844-5) under the title _Revelations of
London_, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the
_New Monthly_, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled
once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599)
describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his
great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, who
involves Auriol in wildly fantastic and frightful adventures. The
book closes in Dr. Lamb's laboratory; the intervening scenes are
but dream imagery. Phiz's sketch of the Ruined House is the most
lasting memory left by the book.
Captain Marryat, whose mind was well stored with sailors' yarns,
retells in _The Phantom Ship_ (1839) the old legend of the Flying
Dutchman. At one time the doomed vessel is an unsubstantial
vision, which can pass clean through the Utrecht; at another she
is a real craft, whose deck can be boarded by mortal men. The
one-eyed pilot, Schriften, with his malignant hatred of the hero,
Philip, is a terrifying figure. The story is embroidered by the
invention of a wife of Arab extraction, who is constantly
attempting to recall the half-forgotten magical arts which her
mother had practised. Marryat makes an opportunity in the history
of Krantz, the second mate of the _Vrou Katerina_, to introduce
the Scandinavian legend of the werewolf, which is related with
grisly detail.
The novel of terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty
of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with
erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to
rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man
of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has
tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer
was an imposing figure in the history of nineteenth century
fiction. Throughout his life, in spite of political and social
distractions and of matrimonial disaster, he continued to engage
with unwearying industry in literary work. He was not a man of
genius in whom the creative impulse found its own expression, but
a versatile and accomplished gentleman who could direct his
talents into any channel he pleased. Essays, translations,
verses, plays, novels flowed from his pen in rapid succession,
and he won his meed of applause and fame, as well as his share of
execration and derision, in his own lifetime. Quick to discern
the popular taste of the hour, and eager to gratify it, Lytton,
with the resourceful agility of a lightning impersonator, turns
in his novels from Wertherism to dandyism, from criminal
psychology to fairy folk-lore, from historical romance to
domestic romance, from pseudo-philosophic occultism to
pseudo-scientific fantasy. He ranges at will in the past, the
present or the future, consorting indifferently with impalpable
wraiths, Vrilya or mysterious Sages. It is to his credit that
this unusual gift of adaptability does not result in
incompetency. Though he attempts a variety of manners, it must in
justice be acknowledged that he does most of them well. He
constructs his plots with laborious art, and pays a deliberate,
if sometimes misguided, attention to style. When he fails, it is
less from lack of effort than from over-elaboration and excess of
zeal.
Bulwer Lytton's predilection for the supernatural was neither a
theatrical pose nor a passing folly excited by the fashionable
craze for psychical research, but a genuine and enduring
interest, inherited, it may be, from his ancestor, the learned,
eccentric savant, Dr. Bulwer, who studied the Black Art and
dabbled in astrology and palmistry. He was a member of the
society of Rosicrucians, and, to quote the words of his grandson,
"he certainly did not study magic for the sake of writing about
it, still less did he write about it, without having studied it,
merely for the sake of making his readers' flesh creep." From his
early years Lytton seems to have been keenly interested in
supernatural manifestations. He was inspired by the deserted
rooms at the end of a long gallery in Knebworth House to set down
the story of the ghost, Jenny Spinner, who was said to haunt
them; and the concealed chamber in _The Haunted and the Haunters_
may have been a revived memory of the trap-door down which Lytton
as a boy had "peeped with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses
of hellhole." In _Glenallan_,[126] an early fragment, we find
promising material for a tale of mystery--a villain with a
"strange and sinister expression," a boy who, like the youthful
Shelley, steals forth by night to graveyards, hoping to attain to
fearful secrets, and an aged servant, a living chronicle of
horrors, who relates the doings of an Irish wizard, Morshed
Tyrone, of such awful power that the spirits of the earth, air
and ocean ministered to him. In _Godolphin_ (1833) there is an
astrologer with the furrowed brow and awful eye, so common among
the people of terror, and a strangely gifted girl, Lucilla, who
turns soothsayer. But when Bulwer Lytton attempts a supernatural
romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and
soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than
horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
the crater of Vesuvius.
The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
Dweller of the Threshold:
"Whose form of giant mould
No mortal eye can fixed behold,"
Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
feels sympathy with human beings.
Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.
The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Zanoni_, may have
gleaned stray hints from the novel of terror; but the spirit and
intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton
expressly declares that his _Zanoni_ is not an allegory, he
confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to
assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse
subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice
that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that
Lytton first conceived his theories and then created personages
to illustrate them. His characters have no power to act of their
own volition or to do unexpected things, but must move along the
lines laid down for them.
In _The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain_,
which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1859, Bulwer Lytton
lays aside the sin of over-elaboration and ornamentation that so
easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable
horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the
accurate description of the position of the house in a street off
the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the
matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage
of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony,
all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie
child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands,
the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly
outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with
ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned
man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth
the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer.
Haunted by loathly presences, the watcher experiences a sensation
of almost intolerable horror, but saves himself at the worst by
opposing his will to that of the haunters. He rightly surmises
that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from
a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His
interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from
the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile
essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found
in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the
horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the
miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power to
prolong his life for two centuries, and to preserve a curse in a
magical vessel. He is actually interviewed by the watcher, to
whom he unfolds his remarkable history, and whom he mesmerises
into silence on the subject of his experiences in the haunted
house for a space of three months.
Lytton realises that it is not only what is told but what is left
unsaid that requires consideration in a ghost story. His
reticence and the entire absence of any note of mockery or doubt
secure the "willing suspension of disbelief" necessary to the
appreciation of the apparently supernatural.
In _A Strange Story_, which, at Dickens's invitation, appeared in
_All the Year Round_ (1861-2), Bulwer Lytton further elaborates
his theories of mesmerism and willpower. He explains his purpose
in the Preface:
"When the reader lays down this strange story, perhaps
he will detect, through all the haze of Romance, the
outlines of these images suggested to his reason:
Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such
as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the
image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its
inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and
destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity
and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation
before it settles at last into the simple faith which
unites the philosopher and the infant. And thirdly, the
image of the erring but pure-thoughted Visionary,
seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from
mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom
and reason is lost in the space between earth and the
stars."
These three conceptions are embodied in Margrave, who has renewed
his life far beyond the limits allotted to man; a young doctor,
Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the
spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies
the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the
story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to
wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately
tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the
wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose,
there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go
forward.
In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been
gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost
unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native
vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya
and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest,
old-fashioned spectre.