CHAPTER VI: MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS
Does any one now read Mrs. Radcliffe, or am I the only wanderer in herwindy corridors, listening timidly to groans and hollow voices, andshielding the flame of a lamp, which, I fear, will presently flicker out,and leave me in darkness? People know the name of "The Mysteries ofUdolpho;" they know that boys would say to Thackeray, at school, "Oldfellow, draw us Vivaldi in the Inquisition." But have they penetratedinto the chill galleries of the Castle of Udolpho? Have they shudderedfor Vivaldi in face of the sable-clad and masked Inquisition? CertainlyMrs. Radcliffe, within the memory of man, has been extremely popular. Thethick double-columned volume in which I peruse the works of theEnchantress belongs to a public library. It is quite the dirtiest,greasiest, most dog's-eared, and most bescribbled tome in the collection.Many of the books have remained, during the last hundred years, uncut,even to this day, and I have had to apply the paper knife to many anauthor, from Alciphron (1790) to Mr. Max Muller, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill'sedition of Bozzy's "Life of Dr. Johnson." But Mrs. Radcliffe has beenread diligently, and copiously annotated.
This lady was, in a literary sense, and though, like the sire of Evelina,he cast her off, the daughter of Horace Walpole. Just when King Romanceseemed as dead as Queen Anne, Walpole produced that Gothic tale, "TheCastle of Otranto," in 1764. In that very year was born Anne Ward, who,in 1787, married William Radcliffe, Esq., M.A., Oxon. In 1789 shepublished "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne." The scene, she tells us,is laid in "the most romantic part of the Highlands, the north-east coastof Scotland." On castles, anywhere, she doted. Walpole, not Smollett orMiss Burney, inspired her with a passion for these homes of old romance.But the north-east coast of Scotland is hardly part of the Highlands atall, and is far from being very romantic. The period is "the dark ages"in general. Yet the captive Earl, when "the sweet tranquillity ofevening threw an air of tender melancholy over his mind . . . composedthe following sonnet, which (having committed it to paper) he the nextevening dropped upon the terrace. He had the pleasure to observe thatthe paper was taken up by the ladies, who immediately retired into thecastle." These were not the manners of the local Mackays, of theSinclairs, and of "the small but fierce clan of Gunn," in the dark ages.
But this was Mrs. Radcliffe's way. She delighted in descriptions ofscenery, the more romantic the better, and usually drawn entirely fromher inner consciousness. Her heroines write sonnets (which never butonce _are_ sonnets) and other lyrics, on every occasion. With his usualgenerosity Scott praised her landscape and her lyrics, but, indeed, theyare, as Sir Walter said of Mrs. Hemans, "too poetical," and probably theywere skipped, even by her contemporary devotees. "The Castles of Athlinand Dunbayne" frankly do not permit themselves to be read, and it was nottill 1790, with "A Sicilian Romance," that Mrs. Radcliffe "foundherself," and her public. After reading, with breathless haste, through,"A Sicilian Romance," and "The Romance of the Forest," in a single day,it would ill become me to speak lightly of Mrs. Radcliffe. LikeCatherine Morland, I love this lady's tender yet terrific fancy.
Mrs. Radcliffe does not always keep on her highest level, but we mustremember that her last romance, "The Italian," is by far her best. Shehad been feeling her way to this pitch of excellence, and, when she hadattained to it, she published no more. The reason is uncertain. Shebecame a Woman's Rights woman, and wrote "The Female Advocate," not anovel! Scott thinks that she may have been annoyed by her imitators, orby her critics, against whom he defends her in an admirable passage, tobe cited later. Meanwhile let us follow Mrs. Radcliffe in her upwardcourse.
The "Sicilian Romance" appeared in 1790, when the author's age was twenty-six. The book has a treble attraction, for it contains the germ of"Northanger Abbey," and the germ of "Jane Eyre," and--the germ of Byron!Like "Joseph Andrews," "Northanger Abbey" began as a parody (of Mrs.Radcliffe) and developed into a real novel of character. So too Byron'sgloomy scowling adventurers, with their darkling past, are mererepetitions in rhyme of Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni. This is so obviousthat, when discussing Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni, Scott adds, in a note,parallel passages from Byron's "Giaour." Sir Walter did not mean tomock, he merely compared two kindred spirits. "The noble poet" "kept onthe business still," and broke into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott,his descriptions of miscreants borrowed from Mrs. Radcliffe.
"A Sicilian Romance" has its scene in the palace of Ferdinand, fifthMarquis of Mazzini, on the northern coast of Sicily. The time is about1580, but there is nothing in the manners or costume to indicate that, orany other period. Such "local colour" was unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, asto Clara Reeve. In Horace Walpole, however, a character goes so far inthe mediaeval way as to say "by my halidome."
The Marquis Mazzini had one son and two daughters by his first amiableconsort, supposed to be long dead when the story opens. The son is theoriginal of Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey," and in General Tilneydoes Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis of Mazzini. But theMarquis's wife, to be sure, is _not_ dead; like the first Mrs. Rochestershe is concealed about the back premises, and, as in "Jane Eyre," it isher movements, and those of her gaolers, that produce mystery, and makethe reader suppose that "the place is haunted." It is, of course, onlythe mystery and the "machinery" of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronteadapted. These passages in "Jane Eyre" have been censured, but it is noteasy to see how the novel could do without them. Mrs. Radcliffe's taleentirely depends on its machinery. Her wicked Marquis, having secretlyimmured Number One, has now a new and beautiful Number Two, whosecharacter does not bear inspection. This domestic position, as NumberTwo, we know, was declined by the austere virtue of Jane Eyre.
"Phenomena" begin in the first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance,"mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and arevainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. ThisHippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, isadored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia. Jealousy and revenge areclearly indicated. But, in chasing mysterious lights and figures throughmouldering towers, Ferdinand gets into the very undesirable position ofDavid Balfour, when he climbs, in the dark, the broken turret stair inhis uncle's house of Shaws (in "Kidnapped"). Here is a _fourth_ authorindebted to Mrs. Radcliffe: her disciples are Miss Austen, Byron, MissBronte, and Mr. Louis Stevenson! Ferdinand "began the ascent. He hadnot proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had justquitted gave way, and, dragging with them those adjoining, formed a chasmin the staircase that terrified even Ferdinand, who was left tottering onthe suspended half of the steps, in momentary expectation of falling tothe bottom with the stone on which he rested. In the terror which thisoccasioned, he attempted to save himself by catching at a kind of beamwhich suspended over the stairs, when the lamp dropped from his hand, andhe was left in total darkness."
Can anything be more "amazing horrid," above all as there are mysteriousfigures in and about the tower? Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps always fall, orare blown out, in the nick of time, an expedient already used by ClaraReeve in that very mild but once popular ghost story, "The Old EnglishBaron" (1777). All authors have such favourite devices, and I wonder howmany fights Mr. Stanley Weyman's heroes have fought, from the cellar totheir favourite tilting ground, the roof of a strange house!
Ferdinand hung on to the beam for an hour, when the ladies came with alight, and he scrambled back to solid earth. In his next nocturnalresearch, "a sullen groan arose from beneath where he stood," and when hetried to force a door (there are scores of such weird doors in Mrs.Radcliffe) "a groan was repeated, more hollow and dreadful than thefirst. His courage forsook him"--and no wonder! Of course he could notknow that the author of the groans was, in fact, his long-lost mother,immured by his father, the wicked Marquis. We need not follow thenarrative through the darkling crimes and crumbling galleries of thisterrible castle on the north coast of Sicily. Everybody is always"gazing in silent terror," and all the locks are rusty. "A savage anddexterous banditti" play a
prominent part, and the imprisoned Ferdinand"did not hesitate to believe that the moans he heard came from therestless spirit of the murdered della Campo." No working hypothesiscould seem more plausible, but it was erroneous. Mrs. Radcliffe does notdeal in a single avowed ghost. She finally explains away, by normalcauses, everything that she does not forget to explain. At the most, sheindulges herself in a premonitory dream. On this point she is true tocommon sense, without quite adopting the philosophy of David Hume. "I donot say that spirits have appeared," she remarks, "but if severaldiscreet unprejudiced persons were to assure me that they had seen one--Ishould not be bold or proud enough to reply, it is impossible!" But Hume_was_ bold and proud enough: he went further than Mrs. Radcliffe.
Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffe's employment of explanations. He is infavour of "boldly avowing the use of supernatural machinery," or ofleaving the matter in the vague, as in the appearance of the wraith ofthe dying Alice to Ravenswood. But, in Mrs. Radcliffe's day, commonsense was so tyrannical, that the poor lady's romances would have beenexcluded from families, if she had not provided normal explanations ofher groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures. The ghost-huntin the castle finally brings Julia to a door, whose bolts, "strengthenedby desperation, she forced back." There was a middle-aged lady in theroom, who, after steadily gazing on Julia, "suddenly exclaimed, 'Mydaughter!' and fainted away." Julia being about seventeen, and MadameMazzini, her mamma, having been immured for fifteen years, we observe, inthis recognition, the force of the maternal instinct.
The wicked Marquis was poisoned by the partner of his iniquities, whoanon stabbed herself with a poniard. The virtuous Julia marries thechaste Hippolytus, and, says the author, "in reviewing this story, weperceive a singular and striking instance of moral retribution."
We also remark the futility of locking up an inconvenient wife, fabled tobe defunct, in one's own country house. Had Mr. Rochester, in "JaneEyre," studied the "Sicilian Romance," he would have shunned an obsoletesystem, inconvenient at best, and apt, in the long run, to be disastrous.
In the "Romance of the Forest" (1791), Mrs. Radcliffe remained true toMr. Stanley Weyman's favourite period, the end of the sixteenth century.But there are no historical characters or costumes in the story, and allthe persons, as far as language and dress go, might have been alive in1791.
The story runs thus: one de la Motte, who appears to have fallen fromdissipation to swindling, is, on the first page, discovered flying fromParis and the law, with his wife, in a carriage. Lost in the dark on amoor, he follows a light, and enters an old lonely house. He is seizedby ruffians, locked in, and expects to be murdered, which he knows thathe cannot stand, for he is timid by nature. In fact, a ruffian puts apistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, while with the other he dragsalong a beautiful girl of eighteen. "Swear that you will convey thisgirl where I may never see her more," exclaims the bully, and La Motte,with the young lady, is taken back to his carriage. "If you returnwithin an hour you will be welcomed with a brace of bullets," is theruffian's parting threat.
So La Motte, Madame La Motte, and the beautiful girl drive away, LaMotte's one desire being to find a retreat safe from the police of anoffended justice.
Is this not a very original, striking, and affecting situation;provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugitive from justice, in astrange, small, dark, ancient house, is seized, threatened, and presentedwith a young and lovely female stranger. In this opening we recognisethe hand of a master genius. There _must_ be an explanation ofproceedings so highly unconventional, and what can the reason be? Thereader is _empoigne_ in the first page, and eagerly follows the flight ofLa Motte, also of Peter, his coachman, an attached, comic, and familiardomestic. After a few days, the party observe, in the recesses of agloomy forest, the remains of a Gothic abbey. They enter; by the lightof a flickering lamp they penetrate "horrible recesses," discover a roomhandsomely provided with a trapdoor, and determine to reside in adwelling so congenial, though, as La Motte judiciously remarks, "not inall respects strictly Gothic." After a few days, La Motte finds thatsomebody is inquiring for him in the nearest town. He seeks for a hiding-place, and explores the chambers under the trapdoor. Here he finds, in alarge chest--what do you suppose he finds? It was a human skeleton! Yetin this awful vicinity he and his wife, with Adeline (the fair stranger)conceal themselves. The brave Adeline, when footsteps are heard, and afigure is beheld in the upper rooms, accosts the stranger. His keen eyepresently detects the practicable trapdoor, he raises it, and thecowering La Motte recognises in the dreaded visitor--his own son, who hadsought him out of filial affection.
Already Madame La Motte has become jealous of Adeline, especially as herhusband is oddly melancholy, and apt to withdraw into a glade, where hemysteriously disappears into the recesses of a genuine Gothic sepulchre.This, to the watchful eyes of a wife, is proof of faithlessness on thepart of a husband. As the son, Louis, really falls in love with Adeline,Madame La Motte becomes doubly unkind to her, and Adeline now composesquantities of poems to Night, to Sunset, to the Nocturnal Gale, and soon.
In this uncomfortable situation, two strangers arrive in a terrificthunderstorm. One is young, the other is a Marquis. On seeing thisnobleman, "La Motte's limbs trembled, and a ghastly paleness overspreadhis countenance. The Marquis was little less agitated," and was, atfirst, decidedly hostile. La Motte implored forgiveness--for what?--andthe Marquis (who, in fact, owned the Abbey, and had a shooting lodge notfar off) was mollified. They all became rather friendly, and Adelineasked La Motte about the stories of hauntings, and a murder said to havebeen, at some time, committed in the Abbey. La Motte said that theMarquis could have no connection with such fables; still, there _was_ theskeleton.
Meanwhile, Adeline had conceived a flame for Theodore, the young officerwho accompanied his colonel, the Marquis, on their first visit to thefamily. Theodore, who returned her passion, had vaguely warned her of animpending danger, and then had failed to keep tryst with her, oneevening, and had mysteriously disappeared. Then unhappy Adeline dreamedabout a prisoner, a dying man, a coffin, a voice from the coffin, and theappearance within it of the dying man, amidst torrents of blood. Thechamber in which she saw these visions was most vividly represented. Nextday the Marquis came to dinner, and, _though reluctantly_, consented topass the night: Adeline, therefore, was put in a new bedroom. Disturbedby the wind shaking the mouldering tapestry, she found a concealed doorbehind the arras and a suite of rooms, _one of which was the chamber ofher dream_! On the floor lay a rusty dagger! The bedstead, beingtouched, crumbled, and disclosed a small roll of manuscripts. They werenot washing bills, like those discovered by Catherine Morland in"Northanger Abbey." Returning to her own chamber, Adeline heard theMarquis professing to La Motte a passion for herself. Conceive herhorror! Silence then reigned, till all was sudden noise and confusion;the Marquis flying in terror from his room, and insisting on instantdeparture. His emotion was powerfully displayed.
What had occurred? Mrs. Radcliffe does not say, but horror, whethercaused by a conscience ill at ease, or by events of a terrific andsupernatural kind, is plainly indicated. In daylight, the Marquisaudaciously pressed his unholy suit, and even offered marriage, a hollowmockery, for he was well known to be already a married man. The scenesof Adeline's flight, capture, retention in an elegant villa of thelicentious noble, renewed flight, rescue by Theodore, with Theodore'sarrest, and wounding of the tyrannical Marquis, are all of breathlessinterest. Mrs. Radcliffe excels in narratives of romantic escapes, atopic always thrilling when well handled. Adeline herself is carriedback to the Abbey, but La Motte, who had rather not be a villain if hecould avoid it, enables her again to secure her freedom. He is clearlyin the power of the Marquis, and his life has been unscrupulous, but heretains traces of better things. Adeline is now secretly conveyed to apeaceful valley in Savoy, the home of the honest Peter (the coachman),who accompanies her. Here she learns to know and value the family of LaLuc, th
e kindred of her Theodore (by a romantic coincidence), and, in theadorable scenery of Savoy, she throws many a ballad to the Moon.
La Motte, on the discovery of Adeline's flight, was cast into prison bythe revengeful Marquis, for, in fact, soon after settling in the Abbey,it had occurred to La Motte to commence highwayman. His very firstvictim had been the Marquis, and, during his mysterious retreats to atomb in a glade in the forest, he had, in short, been contemplating hisbooty, jewels which he could not convert into ready money. Consequently,when the Marquis first entered the Abbey, La Motte had every reason foralarm, and only pacified the vindictive aristocrat by yielding to hiscruel schemes against the virtue of Adeline.
Happily for La Motte, a witness appeared at his trial, who cast a luridlight on the character of the Marquis. That villain, to be plain, hadmurdered his elder brother (the skeleton of the Abbey), and had beenanxious to murder, it was added, his own natural daughter--that is,Adeline! His hired felons, however, placed her in a convent, and, later(rather than kill her, on which the Marquis insisted), simply thrust herinto the hands of La Motte, who happened to pass by that way, as we sawin the opening of this romance. Thus, in making love to Adeline, hisdaughter, the Marquis was, unconsciously, in an awkward position. Onfurther examination of evidence, however, things proved otherwise.Adeline was _not_ the natural daughter of the Marquis, but his niece, thelegitimate daughter and heiress of his brother (the skeleton of theAbbey). The MS. found by Adeline in the room of the rusty dagger addeddocumentary evidence, for it was a narrative of the sufferings of herfather (later the skeleton), written by him in the Abbey where he wasimprisoned and stabbed, and where his bones were discovered by La Motte.The hasty nocturnal flight of the Marquis from the Abbey is thusaccounted for: he had probably been the victim of a terrifichallucination representing his murdered brother; whether it was veridicalor merely subjective Mrs. Radcliffe does not decide. Rather than facethe outraged justice of his country, the Marquis, after theserevelations, took poison. La Motte was banished; and Adeline, nowmistress of the Abbey, removed the paternal skeleton to "the vault of hisancestors." Theodore and Adeline were united, and virtuously resided ina villa on the beautiful banks of the Lake of Geneva.
Such is the "Romance of the Forest," a fiction in which character issubordinate to plot and incident. There is an attempt at characterdrawing in La Motte, and in his wife; the hero and heroine are notdistinguishable from Julia and Hippolytus. But Mrs. Radcliffe does notaim at psychological niceties, and we must not blame her for withholdingwhat it was no part of her purpose to give. "The Romance of the Forest"was, so far, infinitely the most thrilling of modern English works offiction. "Every reader felt the force," says Scott, "from the sage inhis study, to the family group in middle life," and nobody felt it morethan Scott himself, then a young gentleman of nineteen, who, when askedhow his time was employed, answered, "I read no Civil Law." He did readMrs. Radcliffe, and, in "The Betrothed," followed her example in thestory of the haunted chamber where the heroine faces the spectre attachedto her ancient family.
"The Mysteries of Udolpho," Mrs. Radcliffe's next and most celebratedwork, is not (in the judgment of this reader, at least) her masterpiece.The booksellers paid her what Scott, erroneously, calls "theunprecedented sum of 500 pounds" for the romance, and they must have madea profitable bargain. "The public," says Scott, "rushed upon it with allthe eagerness of curiosity, and rose from it with unsated appetite." Iarise with a thoroughly sated appetite from the "Mysteries of Udolpho."The book, as Sir Walter saw, is "The Romance of the Forest" raised to ahigher power. We have a similar and similarly situated heroine, cruellydetached from her young man, and immured in a howling wilderness of abrigand castle in the Apennines. In place of the Marquis is a miscreanton a larger and more ferocious scale. The usual mysteries of voices,lights, secret passages, and innumerable doors are provided regardless ofeconomy. The great question, which I shall not answer, is, _what did theBlack Veil conceal_? _Not_ "the bones of Laurentina," as CatherineMorland supposed.
Here is Emily's adventure with the veil. "She paused again, and then,with a timid hand, lifted the veil; but instantly let it fall--perceivingthat what it had concealed was no picture, and before she could leave thechamber she dropped senseless on the floor. When she recovered herrecollection, . . . horror occupied her mind." Countless mysteriescoagulate around this veil, and the reader is apt to be disappointed whenthe awful curtain is withdrawn. But he has enjoyed, for several hundredpages, the pleasures of anticipation. A pedantic censor may remark that,while the date of the story is 1580, all the virtuous people live in anidyllic fashion, like creatures of Rousseau, existing solely forlandscape and the affections, writing poetry on Nature, animate andinanimate, including the common Bat, and drawing in water colours. Inthose elegant avocations began, and in these, after an interval ofadventures "amazing horrid," concluded the career of Emily.
Mrs. Radcliffe keeps the many entangled threads of her complex web wellin hand, and incidents which puzzle you at the beginning fall naturallyinto place before the end. The character of the heroine's silly, vain,unkind, and unreasonable aunt is vividly designed (that Emily shouldmistake the corse of a moustached bandit for that of her aunt is anincident hard to defend). Valancourt is not an ordinary spotless hero,but sows his wild oats, and reaps the usual harvest; and Annette is agood sample of the usual _soubrette_. When one has said that thelandscapes and bandits of this romance are worthy of Poussin and SalvatorRosa, from whom they were probably translated into words, not muchremains to be added. Sir Walter, after repeated perusals, considered"Udolpho" "a step beyond Mrs. Radcliffe's former work, high as that hadjustly advanced her." But he admits that "persons of no mean judgment"preferred "The Romance of the Forest." With these amateurs I would beranked. The ingenuity and originality of the "Romance" are greater: ourfriend the skeleton is better than that Thing which was behind the BlackVeil, the escapes of Adeline are more thrilling than the escape of Emily,and the "Romance" is not nearly so long, not nearly so prolix as"Udolpho."
The roof and crown of Mrs. Radcliffe's work is "The Italian" (1797), forwhich she received 800 pounds. {6} The scene is Naples, the date about1764; the topic is the thwarted loves of Vivaldi and Ellena; the villainis the admirable Schedoni, the prototype of Byron's lurid characters.
"The Italian" is an excellent novel. The Prelude, "the dark and vaultedgateway," is not unworthy of Hawthorne, who, I suspect, had studied Mrs.Radcliffe. The theme is more like a theme of this world than usual. Theparents of a young noble might well try to prevent him from marrying anunknown and penniless girl. The Marchese Vivaldi only adopts theordinary paternal measures; the Marchesa, and her confessor thedark-souled Schedoni, go farther--as far as assassination. The casuistryby which Schedoni brings the lady to this pass, while representing her asthe originator of the scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes betweenthe pair show an extraordinary advance on Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier art.The mysterious Monk who counteracts Schedoni remains an unsolved mysteryto me, but of that I do not complain. He is as good as the Dweller inthe Catacombs who haunts Miriam in Hawthorne's "Marble Faun." TheInquisition, its cells, and its tribunals are coloured
"As when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse."
The comic valet, Paulo, who insists on being locked up in the dungeons ofthe Inquisition merely because his master is there, reminds one of SamuelWeller, he is a Neapolitan Samivel. The escapes are Mrs. Radcliffe'smost exciting escapes, and to say that is to say a good deal. Poetry isnot written, or not often, by the heroine. The scene in which Schedonihas his dagger raised to murder Ellena, when he discovers that she is hisdaughter, "is of a new, grand, and powerful character" (Scott), while itis even more satisfactory to learn later that Ellena was _not_ Schedoni'sdaughter after all.
Why Mrs. Radcliffe, having reached such a pitch of success, never againpublished a novel, remains more mysterious than any of her Mysteries.Scott justly remarks that h
er censors attacked her "by showing that shedoes not possess the excellences proper to a style of composition totallydifferent from that which she has attempted." This is the usual way ofreviewers. Tales that fascinated Scott, Fox, and Sheridan, "whichpossess charms for the learned and unlearned, the grave and gay, thegentleman and clown," do not deserve to be dismissed with a sneer bypeople who have never read them. Following Horace Walpole in somedegree, Mrs. Radcliffe paved the way for Scott, Byron, Maturin, Lewis,and Charlotte Bronte, just as Miss Burney filled the gap between Smollettand Miss Austen. Mrs. Radcliffe, in short, kept the Lamp of Romanceburning much more steadily than the lamps which, in her novels, arealways blown out, in the moment of excited apprehension, by the nightwind walking in the dank corridors of haunted abbeys. But mark thecruelty of an intellectual parent! Horace Walpole was Mrs. Radcliffe'sfather in the spirit. Yet, on September 4, 1794, he wrote to LadyOssory: "I have read some of the descriptive verbose tales, of which yourLadyship says I was the patriarch by several mothers" (Miss Reeve andMrs. Radcliffe?). "All I can say for myself is that I do not think myconcubines have produced issue more natural for excluding the aid ofanything marvellous."