Chapter V (2)

Interesting as are Annibal’s letters to his brother, Ippolito pays them but little attention, being wholly absorbed by business of his own. He has run across a stranger who exercises a mysterious, irresistible ascendancy over his mind. This stranger, otherwise father Schemoli, introduces himself to Ippolito in a manner calculated to excite, by degrees, his interest and curiosity; speaking, at first, but little at a time and then disappearing. Ippolito is usually called to meet him by letters which he finds in his room, none of his servants being able to explain how they get there. Soon it is generally observed that Ippolito is in the habit of spending his nights at some unknown place whence he always returns with a pale and haggard appearance; and when at times he takes part in his former amusements, he does so with the wild despair of one who wishes to escape his own thoughts. His young page, Cyprian, who takes tender care of him, endeavours, by every means, to keep him at home; sometimes he reads a diary to him, partly in verse and partly in prose, written by a nun and dedicated to some one she is hopelessly attached to. The gentle influence of Cyprian, however, is no match for the miraculous power of Schemoli. When midnight arrives, Ippolito departs. Once he has invited a company of friends to his house, but at the usual hour a gigantic figure, with his face concealed in a mask, appears among them, beckoning to Ippolito, who submissively follows him. Their destination is a subterranean vault, whither Ippolito is always conducted blindfold, and the purpose of these excursions is to impress upon him that he is ordered, by fate, to commit an extraordinary deed. Just as in the case of Annibal, the monk enjoins upon Ippolito that he himself labours under the same fate, and that his is no voluntary service; and the credulous mind of Ippolito soon proves susceptible to the imposture. One night he is informed that ‘the hour is come.’ He is again conducted to the vaults where he is received by several figures fantastically attired; after a multitude of mysterious rites and ceremonies he is shown, by a pantomimic display, that he is destined to commit a murder against his will, and also who is to be his victim. Like Annibal he is seized with violent indignation, but the serenity of Schemoli remains unperturbed. In great despair Ippolito leaves Naples at the very time Annibal arrives there from Muralto.

Ippolito roams about in the neighbourhood of Naples, without any definite object in view. His journey, however, soon becomes very painful. It appears that rumour has travelled ahead of him and spread news of his magical pursuits and his supposed alliance with the devil. Everywhere he is received with maledictions and threatened with the Inquisition; and, worst of all, he seems to be followed by the dreaded figure of his persecutor. Once he passes a night in a large, deserted building, where strange voices and footsteps induce him to descend into a subterranean locality of vast dimensions. There he is joined by Schemoli, who reminds him of the uselessness of trying to avoid his fate. He then leaves Ippolito to wander about in darkness, until he discerns two figures advancing before him in the dim light of a lantern. One of them is Schemoli, and the other a monk who carries the lifeless form of a young female. After a while the former is seen to depart, and the monk, with apparent hesitation, prepares to plunge a dagger into the breast of the lady; frightened by Ippolito he releases her and makes his escape. Ippolito seizes the lady and, following the course taken by the monk, emerges at last into the garden of a cloister. In fresh air the lady revives and learns with joy the name of her preserver. She informs him that she has been forcibly separated from his brother Annibal, and implores him to save her. There is a river flowing through the garden; seeing a boat Ippolito springs into it, but before he has time to assist her to follow him, the river is disturbed by an earthquake, and the boat is borne along with great rapidity. After a perilous course Ippolito gets safely ashore, and his ramblings begin again. Yet the suspicions entertained against him are gaining strength every moment, and at last he is imprisoned by the members of the Inquisition. He is repeatedly examined, but nothing worse happens to him so far as the Holy Office is concerned. Schemoli, however, regularly visits him in his cell. Ippolito’s power of resistance has nearly vanished, when he is once more released by another earthquake, which rends asunder the prison-tower of the Inquisition. With the few surviving inhabitants of the town he embarks for Sicily, but the bark is wrecked and Ippolito drifts ashore where he is received by Schemoli. Now he passively yields to the will of his persecutor, who conducts him first to Naples and then to the castle of Muralto.--

Annibal, not finding his brother at Naples, betakes himself to Puzzoli, to seek protection with a relative of his mother, a distinguished ecclesiastic, who lives at enmity with his father. On his way he arrives at a small town by a river which, just then, threatens the inhabitants with an inundation; the nuns of an Ursuline convent are arranging a solemn procession to induce the saint to prevent the impending calamity. In that procession Annibal detects the original of the picture which he still cherishes as his dearest treasure. In ecstasies he rushes to the lady, beginning to address her--to the strong resentment of the nuns--when the flood suddenly comes on with terrible force. Annibal is separated from the object of his rapture, but, in the general confusion at last finds her and succeeds in saving her from the water. She is taken back to the convent, but Annibal contrives clandestinely to meet her. It appears that she is a novice called Ildefonsa, and is forced to take the veil much against her inclinations. Annibal now writes to his relative to request him to interfere on behalf of Ildefonsa. His effort is crowned with success in so far as a letter really arrives from the bishop of the diocese, ordering the removal of Ildefonsa from the convent; but shortly before this Annibal has seen the well-known figure of Schemoli glide past him, and from that moment he is plunged into desperate gloom which nothing is able to dispel. Nor is he mistaken in his forebodings of evil. The messenger bringing the bishop’s letter is sent back with the intelligence that Ildefonsa is dead. Assisted by his faithful Filippo, however, Annibal finds out that this is not the case; accordingly, at the funeral procession, he steps forward accusing the abbess of having arranged a mock funeral, after immuring Ildefonsa in the dungeons of the convent. The abbess allows him to remove the pall, and, to his astonishment, he sees the lifeless form of Ildefonsa. The indignation of the public is now directed against Annibal; he is even imprisoned on account of his extraordinary conduct. Ildefonsa, however, who is not dead but only rendered insensible by a strong opiate, is conveyed to the vaults where Ippolito accidentally saves her from the hands of her enemies. The earthquake which separates Ildefonsa from Ippolito, reunites her with Annibal, whose prison is crushed to pieces. After some time spent in close retirement they venture to set out for Puzzoli. Their guide proves to be bribed by Schemoli, and they are attacked by his attendants, whereupon Annibal is severely wounded. When he comes to his senses he finds himself in the power of his persecutor. By this time he is also a broken man, and bereft of all further power of resistance he consents to all the propositions of Schemoli. He only expresses a wish that there might be another human being in the same condition as himself--and Schemoli has no reason to conceal that there is one: his brother Ippolito. Annibal follows Schemoli to Muralto, where he unexpectedly finds Ildefonsa lying on her death-bed. He has no opportunity, however, to inquire into her fate, for the fatal night draws on apace. That same night the count Montorio is, more than ever, beset by pangs of conscience. He dare not be left alone for a moment, although his wife is quite unable to soothe him. At last he summons the confessor to give him absolution, and now, for the first time, confesses to him that he has tried to palliate his crime by rearing the children of his unhappy brother as his own: Ippolito and Annibal are the sons of his brother Orazio.... The confessor rushes out to the youths, but is powerless to utter one articulate sound. Nor would it be of any avail; in a trance-like condition they enter the count’s apartment, and their swords meet in his body.--

At the moment of the young men’s arrest, Orazio surrenders himself to justice, protesting that he alone is guilty. He asks permission to compose a written account of what has happened, and in this he reveals his identity, relates the story of his early misfortunes, and explains the method adopted by him to carry out his vengeance, which is fatally visited upon himself, his own children becoming murderers at his instigation.--As for Ildefonsa, she is the unacknowledged daughter of Erminia and Verdoni, and the very picture of her mother. Montorio destines her for a convent to get rid of her; when she is brought to the castle by Schemoli’s attendants, we are told that Montorio, ‘on beholding her, felt a long extinguished passion for her mother revive. To gratify a romantic illusion of posthumous passion she was arrayed in fantastic splendour by the count, and to appease fear and jealousy, was poisoned by his wife.’--Ippolito is, in his prison, visited by his former page, who turns out to be a woman called Rosolia di Valozzi. After seeing him once, in the days of his splendour, an irresistible passion had made her quit her convent and enter his service; the diary she used to read to him referred to herself and her attachment to Ippolito. Now her health is undermined, and she expires shortly after her secret is revealed.

Ippolito and Annibal are finally released, but banished from the country for ever. Orazio is condemned to death; but at the last interview with his sons he bursts ‘one of the larger vessels’ and dies, rejoicing that ‘the last of the Montorios has not perished on a scaffold.’

In a short introduction to _Montorio_ it is narrated how two young officers enter the French service at the siege of Barcelona 1697, and distinguish themselves as much by their reckless intrepidity as by their melancholy aloofness from their comrades. When the city is taken both of them perish; and an Italian officer, who is the only person acquainted with their history, relates all that follows.--

* * * * *

It would not be possible to give an account of all the windings of this intricate production, which is said[31] to contain ‘sufficient sparkle and movement for half a dozen ordinary romances.’ An extract from another critic[32] likewise goes to show--besides the fact that _Montorio_ had its admirers--that it is not such a very easy matter to trace even the bare outlines of Maturin’s first story:

In the “House (sic) of Montorio” there is a vast exuberance of all the impulses of humanity,--the young passions, fantasies and aspirations, dancing and eddying like the waters of a gushing fountain, and sparkling in the coloured light of romance. Plot, sentiment, character, and description, in an abundance that seems to mock the anxious effort of ordinary genius, and to perplex the youthful author with his own riches, mark the entire of this extraordinary production.

Yet all these riches, unfortunately, rest on an unsubstantial foundation. The Radcliffe style of composition requires, in fact, the prudence and moderation practised by its originator, in order to preserve anything like an artistic balance. It follows from the very nature of a story of this kind, that the more the scope of action is enlarged, the more unsatisfactory is the inevitable explanation, and the greater the disappointment felt at the implausibility of the solution. In _Montorio_ the disproportion between cause and effect is nothing less than prodigious; and such elements as would actually be grand and imposing in the plan itself, are, in the course of execution, sadly affected by the air of charlatanism inseparable from a plot constructed in the Radcliffe manner. It would be different, and far more satisfactory, if the brothers were, for instance, represented as acting under a kind of hypnotic influence. As it is, the scheme of Orazio is, essentially, carried out by means of talking sheer nonsense to two full-grown people; and facilitated by accidents and singular coincidences which are as incredible as would be the appearance of all the legions of the supernatural world. The wonderful talents of Orazio, above all his capacity of swiftly covering great distances, become almost unnecessary, considering the never-ending maze of secret passages and subterranean recesses at his disposal; there are no two apartments, far or near, unconnected by these means of escape, if need be, and the strangest thing of all is that Orazio, after an absence of twenty years, still is the only person perfectly acquainted with them, wherever they are. For him there is no more difficulty in smuggling letters to Ippolito’s room at Naples, than in suddenly turning up in the prison-cell of the Inquisition. Among other extraordinary circumstances contributing to the success of Orazio’s enterprise, the occurrence of two earthquakes with the same issue, the liberation of a person from his prison by crushing its walls, is the most unfortunate. This repetition of an event which, even if introduced singly, makes unusual claims upon the reader’s credulity, seriously cools his excitement even at the first perusal. As for any recurrent enjoyment, it has very appropriately been pointed out by Scott,[33] that a composer of Radcliffe romances cannot expect his productions to be relished twice or oftener. When everything mysterious and suggestive is carefully explained, there is nothing left to excite curiosity or keep the mind in suspense a second time, as is often the case with powerfully told supernatural incidents which receive no explanation whatever. It is almost intolerable to re-read _Montorio_, from beginning to end, in spite of the many impressive passages it contains. However, as it is unavoidable in a story constructed in accordance with the principles of _Montorio_, that the elaborate fabric collapses at the final revelation of the ‘truth’ and the placing side by side of causes and effects, it must still be considered as a success in its kind if this does not happen too soon; and in _Montorio_ the reader is, until the explanation of Orazio, really kept believing that the incidents related are of a preternatural character. Hence the ‘passion of supernatural fear,’ though capable of being inspired only once, is as genuine as that which any Gothic story is likely to create. As far as the purely terrific element is concerned, it has justly been observed[34] that ‘_Montorio_ surpasses all the excellences of Ann Radcliffe and Godwin combined.’ An atmosphere of intense suspense is brought about by the parallel development of two actions, always broken off at the most interesting point, and the vigour, vivacity, and youthful freshness of the style also leaves far behind all that which had been produced, up to 1807, within the Gothic Romance.

Of the two actions the adventures going on at Muralto form the happier one, the tricks of Orazio being, in this instance, far more probable. In the gloomy surroundings where the very air is filled with surmises of some mysterious and horrible secret, it is not unnatural that Orazio should succeed in appealing to the superstitious tendencies of the melancholy-minded Annibal, nor is it astonishing that he is thoroughly acquainted with all the localities of his own castle. The fearful expectations with which Annibal looks forward to his nightly excursions, are cleverly transferred to the reader:

The hour is approaching--a few moments more, and the castle bell will toll. The hour that I have longed for, I almost begin now to wish more distant. I almost dread to hear the steps of Michelo.... Hark! the bell tolls--the old turret seems to rock its echo; and the silence that succeeds, how deep, how stilly!--would I could hear an owl scream across me! Ha! ’twas the lightning that gleamed across me. I will go to the casement; the roar of the elements will be welcome at such a moment as this.... The night is dark and unruly--the wind bursts in strong and fitful blasts against the casement. The clouds are hurried along in scattering masses. There is a murmur from the forests below, that in a lighter hour I could trust fancy to listen to; but, in my present mood, I dare not follow her wanderings. Would my old guide were come! I feel that any state of fear is supportable, accompanied by the sight or sound of a human being.... Was that shriek fancy?--again, again--impossible! Hark! there is a tumult in the castle--lights and voices beneath the turret.... What is it they tell me?

Every night some new discovery is made, ingeniously calculated to increase his curiosity, and the marvellous occurrences become more and more startling, until the climax is reached in the night-scene where Orazio suddenly drags the old servant after him into the vault, and there addresses him ‘in the hollow voice of death.’ The mind of his victim being thus sufficiently prepared for his purpose, Orazio rouses the count, and Annibal is conveyed to his lonely prison. The tale which Orazio here unfolds to him is one of the boldest flights of ‘terrific’ imagination: a description of the abode of unblessed spirits, where he has been condemned to linger before entering the ancient body kept unconsumed amid magical flames--in which shape his doom then is involved into Annibal’s. A comparison of this fantasia to the mummery by which Ippolito is informed of his fate is of interest as a proof of the injustice Maturin did to his own talents in applying them to the Radcliffe style of composition. With Ippolito the means resorted to are as follows. Orazio takes into his service a number of professional impostors who, in the subterranean vaults into which Ippolito is conducted, act the part of beings of another world. Masks, modelled in wax, are procured of Ippolito and the count, so that, in the figure which suggests to him the idea of a murderer, Ippolito recognizes himself. Then he is induced to plunge his poniard into the breast of another waxen figure whose face, when disclosed, reveals the features of his father. Now all this, when subsequently explained, appears extremely cheap; but even the account of the performance itself has none of the unearthly power of the tale told to Annibal. That tale is the only passage in the book in which Maturin gives rein to his imagination and which has the enduring merit of being subjected to no trivial explanation, certain to destroy every impression. The reader is also much more disposed to accept as a fact that Annibal believes what is only told to him, than that Ippolito is convinced of what he is made actually to experience. The plot laid at Muralto is, moreover, interspersed with scenes powerful in effect, relating to the state of the conscience-stricken count Montorio. That he has committed some formidable offence is clear from the very first, though it is, of course, merely mentioned allusively. The characters of the count and his wife--who are never haunted but by their own thoughts--are those most vividly depicted. Montorio is totally broken down by fear and repentance, and clings anxiously to the offices of religion; his nights are passed in raving under the pressure of hideous dreams, represented with great zest and spirit. The countess, on the other hand, is as strong as he is weak, and outwardly as calm and proud as he is restless and dejected. Without uttering a complaint she undergoes a penance of her own invention, wearing a sharp iron belt around her waist. This contrast between her self-restraint and his cowardly despair is, upon the whole, skilfully effected. Otherwise characterization, in _Montorio_, yields place to adventure, for under the exceptional circumstances in which the principal personages find themselves, they act by necessity rather than by choice. Yet the difference said to exist between Ippolito and Annibal also clearly asserts itself when their wanderings begin. Annibal, who has the deeper mind of the two, is fully persuaded that his persecutor is a preternatural being; and thus, though he is apparently more composed, his calmness is more dangerous than the impetuosity of Ippolito, and he is far nearer to surrendering himself. Ippolito does not debate whether the powers by which he is beset be human or superhuman; following his first impulse he goes on to treat them with ‘sallies of rage and convulsions of resistance.’ From this difference in their characters, by which their subsequent adventures are fixed, it follows that those of Annibal are, even henceforth, more satisfactory from an artistic point of view. His encounters with Orazio are simple and natural, there being no further need of any extraordinary tricks for his bewilderment. The draught emptied by the confessor at Muralto he firmly believes to be poison, while it is only a strong opiate, from the effects of which Orazio easily recovers. Consequently it is sufficient for Annibal to see Orazio glide past him in the garden of the convent, in order to disperse the last shadow of doubt as to his superhuman character; and when he again falls into the hands of Orazio after being separated from Ildefonsa, he could not reasonably be expected to offer any further resistance. Ippolito, on the other hand, before his strength is exhausted, continues to be hurried through subterranean passages without end and marvellous experiences defying all natural explanation of any kind.

* * * * *

The productions of the Gothic Romance, owing to its limited range and peculiar character, naturally present obvious similarities among themselves. The fundamental principle of them all is an appeal to the same source of emotion;--from their very appellation we may deduce a common background to most of them, and the motifs with which the ‘terrific’ imagination loves to occupy itself are always less remarkable for variety than for suitability to imitation, according to the special genius of each successive writer. In _Montorio_ there is as ample proof of Maturin’s indebtedness to his predecessors within the school of terror, as of his unquestionable originality. The idea of a supernatural imposture of intricate apparatus and vast dimensions Maturin might have received from _Der Geisterseher_ (1789) of Schiller, of which a translation was much read and relished at that time in England. In Schiller’s story a mysterious Armenian possesses the same surprising familiarity with other people’s concerns, and the same exaggerated facility of appearing when and where he chooses, as Orazio. There is also a Sicilian necromancer, a ghost-seer by profession, who gives a minute description of the tricks he and his compeers are in the habit of practising while trading upon people’s credulity, which affords a parallel to the performances of the hirelings employed by Orazio at Naples. Complications like these are, at all events, foreign to the novels of Mrs Radcliffe, of which especially _The Italian_ (1797) is often called to mind by _Montorio_. In this romance the principal plotter and schemer is a monk called Schedoni, and he, as regards external appearance at least, is distinctly a precursor of Orazio, _alias_ father Schemoli.[35] They have the same large, gaunt figure, hollow voice and unearthly appearance in general, and both enjoy a reputation of uncommon sanctity, very little deserved by either. However, Schedoni has, in his former life, been a villain of an ordinary kind, who possesses none of the grandeur of spirit by which Orazio is distinguished, nor are his machinations pursued on a scale at all comparable to that invented by Maturin’s hero. The simpler adventures of Annibal, on the other hand, are typically Radcliffeian: in _The Italian_, too, mysterious footsteps allure inquisitive young men to dangerous places, ghastly voices disturb the stillness of ruinous chapels, and nocturnal flights are undertaken through sombre forests. Yet this is not the only point of contact between the two romances. A general characteristic shared by Gothic stories with very few exceptions, was the placing of the scene in the Mediterranean countries, in this case in the South of Italy. Besides the romantic charm those regions always suggest to a northern imagination, they possessed the special merit of admitting the introduction of the Inquisition with all its horrors, and affording an opportunity of penetrating the walls of a convent. To Maturin, with his strong anti-catholic tendencies, the theme of ecclesiastical cruelty was doubly welcome, and in his treatment of the subject there is always a tone of genuine indignation, distinct from all aims of a literary character. The absolute power of the Holy Office and the abuses of monastical authority were, in a forcible manner, illustrated already in Lewis’s _Monk_, nor were these attractions withstood by Mrs Radcliffe. The passages in _The Italian_, relative to the prison of the Inquisition at Rome, are among the greatest triumphs of her method of arousing the reader’s anxiety only to be soothed again. The hero is several times brought to the utmost point of being submitted to torture; at one time he is already fastened to the rack, but the procedure is always suspended. The examinations of other less fortunate prisoners are suggested only by feeble groans and expressive allusions, still by these scanty means a most gruesome atmosphere is created. Maturin, in _Montorio_, follows _The Italian_ in so far as bodily torture is not resorted to--it would, indeed, be very much out of place, the plan of Orazio tending to subdue Ippolito by working upon his mental faculties. Maturin even, contrary to Mrs Radcliffe, represents the chief inquisitor as a man of some humanity; but at the same time he takes care to give a powerful picture of the demoralizing influence a superstitious religion exercises upon the people. The report of Ippolito’s heretical inclinations spreads like wild-fire, and wherever he arrives he is viewed with hatred and abhorrence. In vain he approaches man or woman; all refuse to listen to his protestations, to which the sole answers are curses and maledictions. Here, evidently, a literary impulse outside the actual school of terror asserts itself. Ippolito’s situation is as desperate and as passionately depicted as Caleb’s in Godwin’s _Caleb Williams_ (1794), when he is accused of robbery by Falkland and appearances are strongly against him; he is regarded as the ‘opprobrium of the human species’ and is allowed no opportunity to defend himself, nobody deigning to lend an ear to his demonstrations. Caleb and Ippolito are both, at last, driven to seek the mercy of an old man of mild and venerable aspect, and both, alike, are sadly disappointed. In Godwin the old man calls the unfortunate youth ‘a monster with whom the earth groans,’ and deplores that he has ever seen him or uttered a single word to him; in Maturin he laments at having lived too long being thus forced to behold Ippolito, and declares that his grey hairs are defiled by the appeal Ippolito makes to them. This pathetic description of the involuntary isolation of a man among his fellow-beings, this heart-rending agony of his upon seeing the ties broken that unite him to his species, is born of the spirit of a time in which feeling was raised to the seat of honour. A strong sense of loneliness, of some sort or other, is an essential feature of the romantic literature of the period, and will often be seen to recur in Maturin’s writings. Here, under the influence of Godwin, it is expressed in its most painful aspect. _Caleb Williams_ is a protest against the ‘despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man;’ while Godwin directs his attacks against wrongs in the existing state of social institutions, Maturin traces the source of evil in misapplied religious ideas. The result, however, is the same, and Caleb might well have uttered the words in which Ippolito sums up the state he is reduced to:

Then I am outlawed of nature. I am divested of the rights of being. Every ear is deaf, and every heart is iron to me. Wherever I tread the sole of my foot dries the streams of humanity.--

An incident, in _Montorio_, of monastic oppression, is represented by the episode of Ildefonsa. A young lady held in a convent against her will was a special favourite with the novelists of terror; the episode in question is, no doubt, suggested by the history of Agnes de Medina in _The Monk_. For the liberation of Agnes, also, an appeal is made to high ecclesiastical authorities, whereupon the tyrannical abbess compels her to swallow an opiate which plunges her into a death-like state, arranges a mock funeral and has Agnes conveyed to the hideous dungeons of the convent. In _The Italian_, too, the heroine is placed in a convent where she feels but ill at ease under the government of an unkind prioress; however, she succeeds in escaping with her lover. Mention is also made of a stone chamber ‘within the deepest recesses of the convent’ where disobedient nuns have sometimes been confined--but thither the gentle authoress forbears to conduct her readers.

Yet another episode in _Montorio_ is inspired by ‘the powerful and wicked romance of the Monk,’ which was, in Maturin’s opinion,[36] ‘the most extraordinary production’ of the time of its appearance. It has been told that Annibal’s servant, Filippo, incurs the displeasure of the count for assisting at the investigations of his master, and is sent away from Muralto. His guide conducts him into a large house where they are expected by a party of bandits. Filippo is ushered into a room on the upper floor and there finds out that he is to be despatched during the night, yet effects a hair-breadth escape by a passage below the apartment. The episode, though of considerable length, is completely detached from the main plot and introduced solely for the sake of delineating Filippo’s sensations when threatened with horrible and immediate death. Lewis relates, with the same laudable purpose, how Don Raymond and some other travellers pass a night at the house of a man who turns out to be the leader of a gang of robbers, and how they, too, succeed in eluding the danger. Differently as the adventures are made up, still one conspicuous detail in _Montorio_ comes very near direct plagiarism. In the first as well as in the second story the victim is made aware of his danger by the hostess of the house, who, though of a surly aspect, appears to disapprove of the impending proceedings. The robber’s wife, in a whisper, warns Don Raymond to look at the sheets of his bed, which are stained with blood; Filippo is called by the hag who manages the household of the bandits, to examine a particular corner of his room which he, also, finds to be blood-stained. Otherwise the episode in _Montorio_ is certainly much more exciting than the one in _The Monk_.

Aside from these instances of immediate influence from some of the most admired productions of the Gothic Romance, _Montorio_ exhibits many minor traits characteristic of the school in general. Among these is the committing, either consciously or unconsciously, of great wrongs against near relations. The happiness of Orazio is destroyed by his brother, and Orazio himself unwittingly ruins the life of his sons. Of secondary characters, both attendants of Annibal at Muralto are very typical of a genuine Gothic story: the old and decrepit domestic who, in a provokingly imperfect way, attempts to satisfy the curiosity of the hero, and the young and ready-witted fellow, who stoutly follows him in his breakneck adventures. Yet in one vital point _Montorio_ occupies an almost exceptional place within the Gothic Romance, namely, with regard to the highly tragical issue of all its incidents. In spite of its blood-curdling qualities, the novel of terror by no means excludes a happy end for the hero and the heroine; the reader may be made to wander about in charnel-houses for ever so long, but finally he is led to a nuptial chamber as infallibly as in other stories that have boasted of a wide and merited popularity. This rule was, rashly enough, disregarded by Maturin; when Helene Richter[37] says that ‘alle Schauerromane haben ein glückliches Ende, und würde es auch an den Haaren herbeigezogen,’ she evidently forgets _Montorio_. Maturin adhered faithfully to the programme he had fixed for his romance--to found it upon the passion of the supernatural fear alone, not troubling himself about the traditional compensation for the horrors. There is, in fact, no heroine in the book; it was not without cause that _Montorio_, as Maturin states in the preface to his next work, was pronounced to be ‘deficient in female interest.’ Ildefonsa is there to fill but a short episode, and is, moreover, discovered to be Annibal’s sister. As a type she is modelled according to the innocent and persecuted young ladies in Mrs Radcliffe’s stories, being in no wise remarkable among the female characters Maturin has depicted. Still less likely is Rosolia to satisfy the demands for a heroine. Matters never develop to an understanding between her and Ippolito; her sex is not even revealed before it would be too late to invent a happy solution. Rosolia is introduced into the story, in the development of which she takes no part, merely in order to intersperse it with her lyrical effusions. A character like this is not uncommon in the Gothic Romance. It may be mentioned that Don Raymond, in _The Monk_, also has a page who composes ballads which he, like Rosolia, subjects to the benevolent judgment of his master. The diary Rosolia presents to Ippolito is rather unsubstantial in matter, but some of the prose passages are exquisitely graceful and truly Maturineian in style.--

There is, however, within the compass of _Montorio_, one complete and consummate story where female interest is also attended to. Orazio’s account of his early misfortunes--immediately preceding the disheartening explanation of the details of his revenge--admittedly contains the best parts of the book.[38] The progress of the violent action is admirably concentrated, and the rapidity and poignancy of the style is powerfully indicative of the anguish felt by the writer. The character of Orazio, before he becomes the superhuman being known as father Schemoli, is illustrated with a few vigorous strokes. The motif itself--a tragedy ensuing from the groundless suspicions of a jealous husband--is not original. Mangan[39] points out that the idea had been utilized by Edward Young in _The Revenge_ (1721), though, he adds, ‘Maturin has contrived to invest it with a new and overpowering interest.’ In Young’s tragedy the revenge is taken by a Moor called Zanga upon his master, a distinguished Spaniard, who has wronged him. Zanga helps him first to marry the lady he loves, and then ingeniously awakens his jealousy by means of forged letters and pictures deposited in suitable places. The lady, upon finding herself suspected, commits suicide, and her husband, when undeceived, follows her example. The plot of Orazio’s narrative certainly bears similarity to _The Revenge_, and it is not impossible that Maturin may have received an impulse from Young, although it seems somewhat far-fetched to refer to this comparatively little known play, as long as _Othello_ remains the great prototype of a tragedy of his kind. In this respect, at least, Maturin shows originality, that he allows Orazio to remain alive and only after a long interval be informed of his fatal mistake. Fantastic as is Orazio’s situation on the islet, it required unusual imaginative power to treat it so as to render it credible; however, Maturin was equal to the task. Here are to be found the most splendid proofs of his prose-style--compared to which the metrical pieces scattered through the work are of very great inferiority--showing to what degree of excellence it was capable of rising even at that early period. It is most pathetically described how the innocent victims of Orazio’s rashness are never out of his mind--how they seem to threaten him when nightly tempests are roaring around him and how, at moments of fortuitous tranquillity, he endeavours to imagine them in a state of glory:

The dreams of the night are easily dissolved, and strange shapes are sometimes seen to shimmer through the twilight of a cavern; but I have met them at noon on the bare sunny shore. I have seen them on the distant wave when its bed was smooth and bright as jasper; the curtained mist that hung on mole and breaker, and mingled with the sheeted spanglings of the surf floated back from them, did not throw a fringe of its shadowy mantling on their forms. I could not be deceived. Sometimes the light was glorious beyond imagination. Towards sunset I would sometimes see a small white cloud, and watch its approach; it would fix on a point of the rock that rose beside my cave; as twilight thickened it would unfold, its centre disclosing a floating throne of pearl, and its skirts expanding into wings of iris and aurelia that upbore it. By moonlight the pomp grew richer, and the vision became exceeding glorious. Myriads of lucent shapes were visible in that unclouded shower of light which fell from the moon on the summit of the rock; myriads swam on its opal waves, wafted in a fine web of filmy radiancy, canopied with a lily’s cup, and inebriate with liquid light. Among them sat the shadows of the lovers, sparkling with spheral light, and throned in the majesty of vision, but pale with the traces of mortality. There sat the lovers in sad and shadowy state together; so greatly unfortunate, so fatal, passing fond. Sometimes when stretched on my cold, lone bed, I have heard her voice warbling on the wind touches of sweet, sad music, such as I have heard her sing when she thought herself alone and unheard. I have risen and followed it, and heard it floating on the waters; I listened, and would have given worlds to weep. On a sudden the sounds would change to the most mournful and wailing cries, and Erminia, pale and convulsed as I saw her last, would pass before me, pointing to a gory shape that the waves would throw at my feet. Then they would plunge together into the waters, and where far off the moon shed a wan and cloudy light on the mid wave, I would see their visages rise dim and sad, and hear their cry die along the waste of waters.--

There are, in the prefaces to Maturin’s both second and third work, hints that his first romance had been subjected to unfavourable criticism on the part of the reviewers. In the leading periodicals of the time, however, no such are to be found. The only article upon the book, that of Scott in the _Quarterly Review_, did not appear until three years after the publication of _Montorio_. It is not quite so panegyrical as maintained by some of Maturin’s biographers, although the conspicuous talent of the rising novelist is readily admitted. Severely condemning the Radcliffe manner as little better than humbug, the reviewer speaks of Mr. Murphy’s adherence to it with disapproval and regret:

-- -- -- Amid these flat imitations of the Castle of Udolpho we lighted unexpectedly upon the work which is the subject of the present article, and, in defiance of the very bad taste in which it is composed, we found ourselves insensibly involved in the perusal, and at times impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the author. We have at no time more earnestly desired to extend our voice to a bewildered traveller, than towards this young man, whose taste is so inferior to his powers of imagination and expression, that we never saw a more remarkable instance of genius degraded by the labour in which it is employed. -- -- -- He possesses a strong and vigorous fancy, with great command of language. He has indeed regulated his incidents upon those of others, and therefore added to the imperfections which we have pointed out, the want of originality. But his feeling and conception of character are his own, and from these we judge of his powers. In truth we rose from his strange chaotic novel romance as from a confused and feverish dream, unrefreshed, and unamused, yet strongly impressed by many of the ideas which had been so vaguely and wildly presented to our imagination.

This article was to become of the greatest consequence to Maturin’s literary career, and will be returned to further on.

* * * * *

The _Family of Montorio_ brought to its author nothing more substantial than fame in his nearest environs, for, notwithstanding the pseudonym, it was universally attributed to Maturin.[40] His income thus remained as scanty as ever, whilst his family kept on increasing; his son William Basil, afterwards a well-known member of the Irish Church, was born in July 1807. Nonetheless Maturin resolved to try his luck once more and produced, in 1808, a romance titled _The Wild Irish Boy_. This time his task was executed under circumstances peculiarly embarrassing; harassed by clamouring duties in every direction, Maturin was often forced to ‘borrow from the hours of night to complete his story.’[41] The book was intended, more directly than most of his productions, to bring in some remuneration and by every means to attract the attention of the reading public. Its very title was chosen with a view to exciting curiosity, suggesting a counterpart to Lady Morgan’s (then Miss Owenson’s) story of _The Wild Irish Girl_, which had appeared the previous year and proved an eminent success. Another attempt in the same direction was a lengthy dedication to Lord Moira[42]--written in very bad taste and containing the hopeful assurance that the work in hand would now determine whether the author possesses talent or no; for, if he does, the book cannot fail to secure his lordship’s notice. At the same time Maturin was fully aware that his talent was here by no means displayed to its advantage. _Montorio_ was written in a spirit which he felt to be his special power; _The Wild Irish Boy_ was calculated to please all--except the author himself. That the audience appealed to was not the most cultivated part of the public is rather candidly alluded to in the preface. Maturin states that his head is full of his country, but that he can perforce not give vent to his thoughts, being compelled to resort to other material, better relished by the public:

The fashionable materials for novel-writing I know to be, a lounge in Bond-street, a phaeton-tour in the Park, a masquerade with appropriate scenery, and a birth-day or birth-night, with dresses and decorations, accurately copied from the newspapers.

He who writes with an hope of being read, must write something like this. I say must, because this species of writing, not exacting a sacrifice of principles, but of taste, the public have reasonably a right to dictate in. He who would prostitute his morals, is a monster, he who sacrifices his inclinations and habits of writing, is--an author.

At the same time, it is desirable to look forward to the time, when independence, acquired without any sacrifice of integrity, will enable a man to consult only himself in the choice and mode of his subject. He who is capable of writing a good novel, ought to feel that he was born for a higher purpose than writing novels.

From the last sentence it has, naturally enough, been inferred that Maturin entertained but a mean opinion of novel-writing. Yet his prefaces cannot be taken literally. The tone of apology which, more or less, pervades nearly all of them, is much akin to the passing humility following close upon the heels of intoxication; and as prefaces are always composed after the conclusion of the respective works, these were written in moments of weariness attendant upon great mental exertion and extravagant sallies of imagination. Maturin was not lacking in literary ambition, nor did his poetical vein ever flow more richly than during his short period of, not exactly independence, but something like tolerable circumstances. His unfavourable judgment of novel-writing, in the present case, was probably due to the fact that he was not himself pleased with _The Wild Irish Boy_.

This, of course, is no excuse for the book, which indeed shows inferior work to a degree truly astonishing. Were it not for certain episodes where genuine power is displayed, and for the fact that the book was entirely a work of imagination, without any hidden aims of personal import--it would not fall very short of that species of composition, the producers of which Maturin once characterized[43] as ‘infamous and ephemeral scribblers, who pander for the public lust after anecdote that vilify the great, debase the illustrious, and expose the unfortunate, under the titles of a Winter, a Month, or six Weeks at the metropolis or some place of public resort.’ _The Wild Irish Boy_ is brimful of august personages, lords and ladies, represented in a most unfavourable light, distorted and exaggerated by the feverish imagination of one who knew nothing of his subject. The fashionable world is condemned as sinful and utterly demoralizing, high life consists but of high vices, described and investigated from every side; while the kind of pure, old-fashioned, religious, home-like existence that is recommended as its contrast, is not found interesting enough to be illustrated otherwise than by very imperfect glimpses. Extravagant as the tone is, it becomes perfectly absurd when the moralist comes into conflict with the patriot. The author appears to have feared that the feelings of the public whose taste he is trying to gratify, might be offended by too much abuse of the British aristocracy--the pride of the nation!--and occasionally the tendency bursts into quite an opposite direction. The young fool of a hero--whose autobiography the book represents--has been painting the whole lot in the blackest of dyes, indulging in the grossest of dissipations and capable of the most contemptible baseness; yet once, seeing them all collected at a royal birth-day, he hits upon comparing them to the ‘courtiers’ of Napoleon--whom he has never beheld--with the result that he is ‘elated with confidence, with exultation, with pride,’ and feels satisfied that the English upper ten yet ‘loved their king, and worshipped their God,’ and, with many vices, ‘yet were the first on earth in national virtues.’ The sense of national superiority in the English public is flattered by a sweeping condemnation of everything foreign--it is clear that the glorification of _Ireland_ must consequently be rather loose and rhapsodical--; especially are all Frenchmen and -women represented as monsters of malignity and immorality, and Voltaire and Rousseau mentioned with Puritan abhorrence. It was in vogue at that time to introduce into a ‘fashionable’ novel discussions about the leading writers of the day, and this duty is also carefully fulfilled. These passages are to be considered among the most interesting in the book, although they have no bearing upon the story proper. Among wicked writers who corrupt both taste and morals are Goethe (_Werther_), Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Miss Edgeworth, on the other hand, is enthusiastically lauded as the author of _Belinda_. It is curious to see Maturin here defy the mental parents of his own production, and make ineffectual efforts to free himself from that which has, even in the present work, too strong a hold upon him: without Rousseau and _Werther_ the opening chapters of _The Wild Irish Boy_, containing a series of letters from a young lady attached to the hero in a thoroughly romantic fashion, would never have been written; whereas there is not a single page for which Miss Edgeworth would have been willing to take the responsibility. As for Godwin, he was of all the writers of the age the one who exercised the strongest influence upon Maturin’s work.--The purity of the manners and descriptions of Southey is gratefully admitted, while the literary qualities of his epics are subjected to vigorous criticism, very uncommon at the time, but agreed to by the judgment of posterity. The _Anacreon_ of Moore, as might be expected, does not escape censure. The following passage is an example of the nonsensical style which prevails in the book; it is uttered by a boy of eighteen, who has just been cured of a desperate passion for his own mother-in-law:

I speak of him (Moore) with real sorrow: he might have done much, he has done nothing, but what I hope he will yet wish undone. -- -- -- for the attempt to communicate what he must have felt the injuries of himself, for the attempt to add seduction to pleasure, and teach impurity a new system of sentimental logic, to add an impulse to the lapse of vitious feeling, and modulate the _death dance_ of vice with the harmony of a lyre strung by heaven; for this--there is, there can be no excuse, even at the bar of literature; and if he carries the cause to an higher court, I doubt still more tremblingly his acquittal there.--

But the story, involved as it is, remains to be told. The book opens with a letter to one Miss Elmaide St. Clair from an old maiden aunt, who, possessing some knowledge of her niece’s character and the pernicious tendencies of the age, warns her against false sensibility and fancies too romantic. Then follow the letters of Elmaide herself, who at once informs her correspondent (not the aunt) that the admonitory epistle was received too late: she is already, and irrevocably, in the fetters of a romantic attachment to the hero, a young man, almost a boy, whose wild and dissipated habits the whole of Dublin is talking of. She is fully persuaded of the hopelessness of her case, understanding that he suffers himself to be led into such a mode of life in order to forget an unfortunate love-story of his own, the subject of which is a woman living at present somewhere in Western Ireland. That woman is widely celebrated for

fashionable folly and vice, without an equal or rival, till her reign was extended over subjects of a second generation, whose beauty triumphed over nature, and whose wit is unimpaired by time, whose sons have entered into public life, whose daughters have married, whose grand children form a numerous family already, and whose beauty is still as distant from decline as from competition.

The retirement of Lady Montrevor--such is her name--has taken place under extraordinary circumstances. Her husband, a statesman of much influence, has illegally held the title and fortunes of the earldom of Westhampton for thirty years; at last the legitimate heir, long pursued and oppressed by the usurper, has made his appearance and laid claim to his own. To the usurper naught else remained but the title of Montrevor and his Irish estates, whither his lady, who was wholly ignorant of the story, has accompanied him. Here the hero of the tale has met her and subsequently become fatally infatuated; he has then been sent to Dublin in the company of a relation who introduces to him that class of pleasure which now forms the torture of Miss St. Clair. Her correspondence ends with the intelligence that he has unexpectedly set out for the West.

Now the hero, whose name is Ormsby Bethel, rises to speak. It appears that he has returned to the neighbourhood of Dublin and lives somewhere on the coast. Miss St. Clair, happening to move near the place, hits upon the expedient of leaving anonymous letters addressed to him, in a recess amongst the rocks where he is in the habit of strolling. In these she requests him to tell her all about his life. He complies and places letters for her in the same recess.

This is mentioned in letters from the parties concerned, but at this point the story itself commences: an autobiography of the hero, written to an un-named friend, which he begins by the narrative he has written to Miss St. Clair.