Part 4 (1/2)
In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy of horrors.
Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks casually, ”has, written several other plays besides _The Robbers.”_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardingh.e.l.lo_(1787), Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as ”the bowl and dagger department,” where
”Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror, the spectre nun and the charmed moons.h.i.+ne, shall not be wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers, and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and the like suspicious characters will be found in abundance.”[42]
Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_, are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a h.o.a.rding who must at all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he confesses: ”Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture produce.”[44]
One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play, aptly described by Coleridge as a ”peccant thing of Noise, Froth and Impermanence,”[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to those who delight in the pursuit of ”parallel pa.s.sages.” At the age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attache_ to the British emba.s.sy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in 1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.
_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for instance, than Sh.e.l.ley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In _The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill, was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her character during the course of the book, and fails to make her early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a pa.s.sionate soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep: ”The time will come when you will be convinced that my pa.s.sion is pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole weight of my sorrows.” But when the devil appears, he declares to Ambrosio:
”I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not principle, and I seized the fit moment for your seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty spirit a.s.sume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded to the blandishments of Matilda.”
The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is too swift.
Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its very crudity. She writes in red ink to express ”the blushes of her cheek,” when she sends a message of encouragement to the Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable than Lewis's attempts to depict pa.s.sion or describe character.
Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, pa.s.sionate faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short, staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.
A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:
”The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the _Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from _The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe.”
The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's ”borrowings.” It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a sage of reputed sanct.i.ty seduces and slays a maiden brought to him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's _Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated almost beyond recognition.
In fas.h.i.+oning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_, a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.
The ”explained supernatural” plays a less prominent part in _The Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.
Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to incidents in the story of Ambrosio.
The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799, _The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of midnight, who ”uttered noises that wintered the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff.” _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's own heart, declares:
”To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can never act like common men,” and thereupon proceeds to prove by his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise of a n.o.ble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter, Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo, under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double ident.i.ty. He is hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds detail after detail without considering the final effect on the eye:
”Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened every feature; the wind from the unclosed window agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to writhe itself. His eyeb.a.l.l.s glared, his teeth chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark tincture of an African; the expression of his countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a demon.”
Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the ”horrid, horrible, horridest horror.” But in _Konigsmark the Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such stories as this that Peac.o.c.k had in mind when he declared, through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become ”too base and popular” for the surfeited appet.i.te of readers of fiction. Yet, as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: ”If any man wish to amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money.”[51]
Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with irony the triumphs of terror:
”Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard, Who fain would make Parna.s.sus a churchyard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's s.e.xton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds With small grey men--wild yagers and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott; Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please, St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper h.e.l.l!”[52]
Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively sketch of the fas.h.i.+onable reading of the day. It has been insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious, that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, ”none of those light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her hair was papering.” To redeem the reputation of the journal, Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the ”flitting and evanescent productions of the times.” After a laborious inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived at the painful conclusion that ”spirits and patience may be as completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following algebraical calculations.” He condemns the authors of the Gothic romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for their monotony, a deadly sin.
”We strolled through a variety of castles, each of which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as many captains of condottieri, heard various e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of legends as stupid as the main history; examined such suites of deserted apartments as might set up a reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights as would make a respectable illumination.” It was no easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by circulating library readers a hundred years ago, deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as 1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superst.i.tion and Chivalry_:
”It is not one of the least objections against these fas.h.i.+onable fictions that the imagery of them is essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands, clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar etcetera are continually tormenting us.”
Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a ”blue book”
meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Sh.e.l.ley, not a pamphlet filled with statistics, but ”a sixpenny shocker.”[53] The notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six s.h.i.+llings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen, wearing gold c.o.c.kades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring t.i.tles, _The Priory of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found there Mrs. Henrietta Rouviere's romance, (published in the same year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouviere, in her preface,
”flatters herself that, aided by records and doc.u.ments, she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a dim yet not distorted nor discoloured gla.s.s, A Peep at our Ancestors”;