Chapter I: The Gothic Romance (1)

The real precursor of supernaturalism in modern English literature was the Gothic novel. That odd form might be called a brief in behalf of banished romance, since it voiced a protest against the excess of rationalism and realism in the early eighteenth century. Too great correctness and restraint must always result in proportionate liberty. As the eternal swing of the pendulum of literary history, the ebb and flow of fiction inevitably bring a reaction against any extreme, so it was with the fiction of the period. The mysterious twilights of medievalism invited eyes tired of the noonday glare of Augustan formalism. The natural had become familiar to monotony, hence men craved the supernatural. And so the Gothic novel came into being. _Gothic_ is here used to designate the eighteenth-century novel of terror dealing with medieval materials.

There had been some use of the weird in English fiction before Horace Walpole, but the terror novel proper is generally conceded to begin with his Romantic curiosity, _The Castle of Otranto_. The Gothic novel marks a distinct change in the form of literature in which supernaturalism manifests itself. Heretofore the supernatural elements have appeared in the drama, in the epic, in ballads and other poetry, and in folk-tales, but not noticeably in the novel. Now, however, for a considerable time the ghostly themes are most prominent in lengthy fiction, contrasted with the short story which later is to supersede it as a vehicle for the weird. This vacillation of form is a distinct and interesting aspect of the development of supernaturalism in literature and will be discussed later.

With this change in form comes a corresponding change in the materials of ghostly narration. Poetry in general in all times has freely used the various elements of supernaturalism. The epic has certain distinct themes, such as visits to the lower world, visions of heaven, and conflict between mortal and divine powers, and brings in mythological characters, gods, goddesses, demigods, and the like. Fate is a moving figure in the older dramas, while the liturgical plays introduced devils, angels, and even the Deity as characters in the action. In the classical and Elizabethan drama we see ghosts, witches, magicians, as _dramatis personæ_. Medieval romances, prose as well as metrical and alliterative, _chansons de geste_, _lais_, and so forth, drew considerably on the supernatural for complicating material in various forms, and undoubtedly much of our present element comes from medievalism. Tales of the Celtic Otherworld, of fairy-lore, of magic, so popular in early romance, show a strong revival to-day.

The Gothic novel is more closely related to the drama than to the epic or to such poetry as _The Faerie Queene_ or _Comus_. On the other hand, the later novels and stories, while less influenced by the dramatic tradition, show more of the epic trace than does the Gothic romance. The epic tours through heaven and hell, the lavish use of angels, devils, and even of Deity, the introduction of mythological characters and figures which are not seen in Gothic fiction, appear to a considerable extent in the stories of recent times. In Gothicism we find that the Deity disappears though the devil remains. There are no vampires, so far as I have been able to find, though the were-wolf and the lycanthrope appear, which were absent from the drama (save in _The Duchess of Malfi_). Other elements are seen, such as the beginnings of the scientific supernaturalism which is to become so prominent in later times. The Wandering Jew comes in and the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone achieve importance. Mechanical supernaturalism and the uncanny power given to inanimate objects seem to have their origins here, to be greatly developed further on. Supernaturalism associated with animals, related both to the mythological stories of the past and to the more horrific aspects of later fiction, are noted in the terror romance.

Allegory and symbolism are present in a slight degree, as in _Melmoth_ and Vathek's Hall of Eblis, though not emphasized as in more modern literature. Humor is largely lacking in the Gothic romance, save as the writers furnish it unintentionally. In Gothicism itself we have practically no satire, though Jane Austen and Barrett satirize the terror novel itself in delicious burlesques that laugh it out of court.

=Elements of Gothicism.= In the terror tale the relationship between supernatural effect and Gothic architecture, scenery, and weather is strongly stressed. Everything is ordered to fit the Gothic plan, and the conformity becomes in time conventionally monotonous. Horace Walpole, the father of the terror novel, had a fad for medievalism, and he expressed his enthusiasm in that extraordinary building at Strawberry Hill, courteously called a Gothic castle. From a study of Gothic architecture was but a step to the writing of romance that should reproduce the mysteries of feudal times, for the shadows of ancient, gloomy castles and cloisters suggested the shades of ghost-haunted fiction, of morbid terrors. _The Castle of Otranto_ was the outcome of a dream suggested by the author's thinking about medieval structures.

The Gothic castle itself is represented as possessing all the antique glooms that increase the effect of mystery and awe, and its secret passage-ways, its underground vaults and dungeons, its trap-doors, its mouldy, spectral chapel, form a fit setting for the unearthly visitants that haunt it. A feudal hall is the suitable domicile for ghosts and other supernatural revenants, and the horrific romance throughout shows a close kinship with its architecture. The novels of the class invariably lay their scenes in medieval buildings, a castle, a convent, a monastery, a château or abbey, or an inquisitional prison. The harassed heroine is forever wandering through midnight corridors of Gothic structure. And indeed, the opportunity for unearthly phenomena is much more spacious in the vast piles of antiquity than in our bungalows or apartment-houses.

Mrs. Radcliffe erected many ruinous structures in fiction. Her _Mysteries of Udolpho_ shows a castle, a convent, a château, all Gothic in terror and gloomy secrets, with rooms hung with rotting tapestry, or wainscoted with black larch-wood, with furniture dust-covered and dropping to pieces from age, with palls of black velvet waving in the ghostly winds. In other romances she depicts decaying castles with treacherous stairways leading to mysterious rooms, halls of black marble, and vaults whose great rusty keys groan in the locks. One heroine says:[2] "When I entered the portals of this Gothic structure a chill--surely prophetic--chilled my veins, pressed upon my heart, and scarcely allowed me to breathe."

[2] In _The Romance of the Castle_.

_The Ancient Records of the Abbey of St. Oswyth_[3] says of its setting: "The damp, cold, awe-inspiring hall seemed to conjure up ten thousand superstitious horrors and terrific imaginary apparitions." In Maturin's _Albigenses_ the knights assemble round the great fire in the baronial hall and tell ghost tales while the storm rages outside. In _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ the scene changes often, yet it is always Gothic and terrible,--the monastery with its diabolical punishments, the ancient castle, the ruined abbey by which the wanderer celebrates his marriage at midnight with a dead priest for the celebrant, the madhouse, the inquisition cells, which add gloom and horror to the supernatural incidents and characters. In _Zofloya_,[4] the maiden is imprisoned in an underground cave similar to that boasted by other castles. This novel is significant because of the freedom with which Shelley appropriated its material for his _Zastrozzi_, which likewise has the true Gothic setting. In Shelley's other romance he erects the same structure and has the devil meet his victim by the desolate, dear old Gothic abbey.

[3] By T. J. Horsley-Curties.

[4] By Mrs. Dacre, better known as "Rosa Matilda."

Regina Maria Roche wrote a number of novels built up with crumbling castles, awesome abbeys, and donjon-keeps whose titles show the architectural fiction that dominates them. A list of the names of the Gothic novels will serve to show the general importance laid on antique setting. In fact, the castle, abbey, monastery, château, convent, or inquisition prison occupied such an important place in the story that it seemed the leading character. It dominated the events and was a malignant personality, that laid its spell upon those within its bounds. It shows something of the character that Hawthorne finally gives to his house of seven gables, or the brooding, relentless power of the sea in Synge's drama.[5] The ancient castle becomes not merely haunted itself but is the haunter as well.

[5] _Riders to the Sea._

Not only is architecture made subservient to the needs of Gothic fiction, but the scenery likewise is adapted to fit it. Before Mrs. Radcliffe wrote her stories interlarded with nature descriptions, scant notice had been paid to scenery in the novel. But she set the style for morose landscapes as Walpole had for glooming castles, and the succeeding romances of the _genre_ combined both features. Mrs. Radcliffe was not at all hampered by the fact that she had never laid eyes on the scenes she so vividly pictures. She painted the dread scenery of awesome mountains and forests, beetling crags and dizzy abysses with fluent and fervent adjectives, and her successors imitated her in sketching nature with dark impressionism.

The scenery in general in the Gothic novel is always subjectively represented. Nature in itself and of itself is not the important thing. What the writer seeks to do is by descriptions of the outer world to emphasize the mental states of man, to reflect the moods of the characters, and to show a fitting background for their crimes and unearthly experiences. There is little of the light of day, of the cheerfulness of ordinary nature, but only the scenes and phenomena that are in harmony with the glooms of crimes and sufferings.

Like the scenery, the weather in the Gothic novel is always subjectively treated. There is ever an artistic harmony between man's moods and the atmospheric conditions. The play of lightning, supernatural thunders, roaring tempests announce the approach and operations of the devil, and ghosts walk to the accompaniment of presaging tempests. In _The Albigenses_ the winds are diabolically possessed and laugh fiendishly instead of moaning as they do as seneschals in most romances of terror. The storms usually take place at midnight, and there is rarely a peaceful night in Gothic fiction. The stroke of twelve generally witnesses some uproar of nature as some appearance of restless spirit. Whenever the heroines in Mrs. Radcliffe's tales start on their midnight ramble through subterranean passages and halls of horror, the barometer becomes agitated. And another[6] says: "The storm, that at that moment was tremendous, could not equal that tempest which passed in the thoughts of the unhappy captive."

[6] St. Oswyth.

In _Zofloya_ Victoria's meetings in the forest with the Moor, who is really the devil in disguise, are accompanied by supernatural manifestations of nature. The weather is ordered to suit the dark, unholy plots they make, and they plan murders against a background of black clouds, hellish thunder, and lurid lightning. When at last the Moor announces himself as the devil and hurls Victoria from the mountain top, a sympathetic storm arises and a flood sweeps her body into the river. This scene is accusingly like the one in the last chapter of Lewis's _Monk_, where the devil throws Ambrosio from the cliff to the river's brink.

Instantly a violent storm arose; the winds in fury rent up rocks
and forests; the sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with
fire; the rain fell in torrents; it swelled the stream, the waves
over-flowed their banks; they reached the spot where Ambrosio lay,
and, when they abated, carried with them into the river the corse
of the despairing monk.

No Gothic writer shows more power of harmonizing the tempests of the soul with the outer storms than does Charles Robert Maturin.[7] As Melmoth, doomed to dreadful life till he can find some tortured soul willing to exchange destinies with him, traverses the earth in his search, the preternatural aspects of weather both reflect and mock his despair. As the young nephew alone at midnight after his uncle's death reads the fated manuscript, "cloud after cloud comes sweeping on like the dark banners of an approaching host whose march is for destruction." Other references may illustrate the motif. "Clouds go portentously off like ships of war ... to return with added strength and fury." "The dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advance slowly seem like the shrouds of specters of departed greatness. Peals of thunder sounded, every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart."

[7] In _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ and _The Albigenses_.

In general, in the Gothic novel there is a decided and definite attempt to use the terrible forces of nature to reflect the dark passions of man, with added suggestiveness where supernatural agencies are at work in the events. This becomes a distinct convention, used with varying effectiveness. Nowhere in the fiction of the period is there the power such as Shakespeare reveals, as where Lear wanders on the heath in the pitiless clutch of the storm, with a more tragic tempest in his soul. Yet, although the idea of the inter-relation of the passions of man and nature is not original with the Gothicists, and though they show little of the inevitability of genius, they add greatly to their supernatural effect by this method. Later fiction is less barometric as less architectural than the Gothic.

=The Origin of Individual Gothic Tales.= The psychological origin of the individual Gothic romances is interesting to note. Supernaturalism was probably more generally believed in then than now, and people were more given to the telling of ghost stories and all the folk-tales of terror than at the present time. One reason for this may be that they had more leisure; and their great open fires were more conducive to the retailing of romances of shudders than our unsocial steam radiators. The eighteenth century seemed frankly to enjoy the pleasures of fear, and the rise of the Gothic novel gave rein to this natural love for the uncanny and the gruesome.

Dreams played an important part in the inspiration of the tales of terror. The initial romance was, as the author tells us, the result of an architectural nightmare. Walpole says in a letter:

Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this romance? I
waked one morning from a dream, of which all that I could recall
was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural
dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that at
the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand
in armor. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without
knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work
grew on my hands.

Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ was likewise born of a dream. "Monk" Lewis had interested Byron, Polidori, and the Shelleys in supernatural tales so much so that after a fireside recital of German terror stories Byron proposed that each member of the group should write a ghostly romance to be compared with the compositions of the others. The results were negligible save _Frankenstein_, and it is said that Byron was much annoyed that a mere girl should excel him. At first Mrs. Shelley was unable to hit upon a plot, but one evening after hearing a discussion of Erasmus Darwin's attempts to create life by laboratory experiments, she had an idea in a half waking dream. She says:

I saw--with shut eyes but acute mental vision--I saw the pale
student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put
together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,
and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of
life.... The artist sleeps but he is awakened; and behold, the
horrid thing stands at his bedside, looking on him with watery,
yellow yet speculative eyes!

And from this she wrote her story of the man-monster.

The relation of dreams to the uncanny tale is interesting. Dreams and visions, revelatory of the past and prophetic of the future, played an important part in the drama (as they are now widely used in motion-picture scenarios) and the Gothic novel continues the tradition. It would be impossible to discover in how many instances the authors were subconsciously influenced in their choice of material by dreams. The presaging dreams and visions attributed to supernatural agency appear frequently in Gothic fiction. The close relation between dreams and second sight in the terror novel might form an interesting by-path for investigation. Dream-supernaturalism becomes even more prominent in later fiction and contributes passages of extraordinary power of which De Quincey's _Dream-Fugue_ may be mentioned as an example.

The germinal idea for _Melmoth, the Wanderer_ was contained in a paragraph from one of the author's own sermons, which suggested a theme for the story of a doomed, fate-pursued soul.

At this moment is there one of us present, however we may have
departed from the Lord, disobeyed His will, and disregarded His
word--is there one of us who would, at this moment, accept all that
man could bestow or earth could afford, to resign the hope of his
salvation? No, there is not one--not such a fool on earth were the
enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer!

True, the theme of such devil-pact had appeared in folk-tales and in the drama previously, notably in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, but Maturin here gives the idea a dramatic twist and psychologic poignancy by making a human being the one to seek to buy another's soul to save his own. A mortal, cursed with physical immortality, ceaselessly harried across the world by the hounds of fate, forever forced by an irresistible urge to make his impitiable offer to tormented souls, and always meeting a tragic refusal, offers dramatic possibilities of a high order and Maturin's story has a dreadful power.

Clara Reeve's avowed purpose in writing _The Old English Baron_ was to produce a ghost story that should be more probable and realistic than Walpole's. She stated that her book was the literary offspring of the earlier romance, though Walpole disclaimed the paternity. She deplored the violence of the supernatural machinery that tended to defeat its own impressiveness and wished to avoid that danger in her work, though she announced: "We can conceive and allow for the appearance of a ghost." Her prim recipe for Romantic fiction required, "a certain degree of the marvelous to excite the attention; enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the pathetic to engage the heart in its behalf." But her ingredients did not mix well and the result was rather indigestible though devoured by hungry readers of her time.

Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, that energetic manipulator of Gothic enginery, wrote because she had time that was wasting on her hands,--which may be an explanation for other and later literary attempts. Her journalist husband was away till late at night, so while sitting up for him she wrote frightful stories to keep herself from being scared. During that waiting loneliness she doubtless experienced all those nervous terrors that she describes as being undergone by her palpitating maidens, whose emotional anguish is suffered in midnight wanderings through subterranean passages and ghosted apartments. There is one report that she went mad from over-much brooding on mormo, but that is generally discredited.

Matthew Gregory Lewis was impelled to write _The Monk_ by reading the romances of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, together with Schiller's _Robbers_, which triple influence is discernible in his lurid tale. He defended the indecency of his book by asserting that he took the plot from a story in _The Guardian_,[8] ingeniously intimating that plagiarized immorality is less reprehensible than original material. Shelley, in his turn, was so strongly impressed by Lewis's _Monk_, and Mrs. Dacre's _Zofloya_ in writing his _Zastrozzi_, and by William Godwin's _St. Leon_ in his _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, that the adaptation amounts to actual plagiarism. Even the titles show imitation. In writing to Godwin, Shelley said he was "in a state of intellectual sickness" when he wrote these stories, and no one who is familiar with the productions will contradict him in the matter.

[8] "The History of Santon Barsis," _The Guardian_, Number 148.

The influence of the crude scientific thought and investigation of the eighteenth century is apparent in the Gothic novels. _Frankenstein_, as we have seen, was the outcome of a Romantic, Darwinian dream, and novels by Godwin, Shelley, and Maturin deal with the theme of the elixir of life. William Beckford's _Vathek_ has to do with alchemy, sorcery, and other phases of supernatural science. Zofloya, Mrs. Dacre's diabolical Moor, performs experiments in hypnotism, telepathy, sorcery, and satanic chemistry. And so in a number of the imitative and less known novels of the _genre_ science plays a part in furnishing the material. There is much interest in the study of the relation of science to the literature of supernaturalism in the various periods and the discoveries of modern times as furnishing plot material. The Gothic contribution to this form of ghostly fiction is significant, though slight in comparison with later developments.

=The Gothic Ghosts.= The Ghost is the real hero or heroine of the Gothic novel. The merely human characters become for the reader colorless and dull the moment a specter glides up and indicates a willingness to relate the story of his life. The continuing popularity of the shade in literature may be due to the fact that humanity finds fear one of the most pleasurable of emotions and truly enjoys vicarious horrors, or it may be due to a childish delight in the sensational. At all events, the ghost haunts the pages of terror fiction, and the trail of the supernatural is over them all. In addition to its association with ancient superstitions, survivals of animistic ideas in primitive culture, we may see the classical and Elizabethan influence in the Gothic specter. The prologue-ghost, naturally, is not needed in fiction, but the revenge-ghost is as prominent as ever. The ghost as a dramatic personage, his talkativeness, his share in the action, reflect the dramatic tradition, with a strong Senecan touch. The Gothic phantoms have not the power of Shakespeare's apparitions, nothing approaching the psychologic subtlety of _Hamlet_ or _Julius Cæsar_ or the horrific suggestiveness of _Macbeth_, yet they are related to them and are not altogether poor. Though imitative of the dramatic ghosts they have certain characteristics peculiar to themselves and are greatly worth consideration in a study of literary supernaturalism.

There are several clearly marked classes of ghosts in Gothicism. There is the real ghost that anybody can pin faith to; there is the imagined apparition that is only a figment of hysterical fear or of a guilty conscience; and there is the deliberate hoax specter. There are ghosts that come only when called,--sometimes the castle dungeons have to be paged for retiring shades; others appear of their own free will. Some have a local habitation and a name and haunt only their own proper premises, while others have the wanderlust. There are innocent spirits returning to reveal the circumstances of their violent demise and to ask Christian burial; we meet guilty souls sent back to do penance for their sins in the place of their commission; and there are revenge ghosts of multiple variety. There are specters that yield to prayers and strong-minded shades that resist exorcism. It is difficult to classify them, for the lines cross inextricably.

The genealogical founder of the family of Gothic ghosts is the giant apparition in _The Castle of Otranto_. He heralds his coming by an enormous helmet, a hundred times larger than life size, which crashes into the hall, and a sword which requires a hundred men to bear it in. The ghost himself appears in sections. We first see a Brobdignagian foot and leg, with no body, then a few chapters later an enormous hand to match. In the last scene he assembles his parts, after the fashion of an automobile demonstration, supplies the limbs that are lacking and stands forth as an imposing and portentous shade. After receiving Alfonso's specter--Alfonso will be remembered as the famous statue afflicted with the nose-bleed--he "is wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory." That seems singular, considering the weighty material of which he and his armor are made. There is another interesting specter in the castle, the monk who is seen kneeling in prayer in the gloomy chapel and who, "turning slowly round discovers to Frederick the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton wrapped in a hermit's cowl."

Clara Reeve's young peasant in _The Old English Baron_, the unrecognized heir to the estate, who is spending a night in the haunted apartment, sees two apparitions, one a woman and the other a gentleman in armor though not of such appalling size as the revenant in _Otranto_. The two announce themselves as his long-lost parents and vanish after he is estated and suitably wed. Mrs. Radcliffe[9] introduces the shade of a murdered knight, a chatty personage who haunts a baronial hall full of men, and at another time engages in a tournament, slaying his opponent.

[9] In _Gaston de Blondeville_.

Mrs. Bonhote[10] shows us a migratory ghost of whom the old servant complains in vexation:

Only think, Miss, of a ghost that should be at home minding its
own business at the Baron's own castle, taking the trouble to
follow him here on special business it has to communicate! However,
travelling three or four hundred miles is nothing to a ghost that
can, as I have heard, go at the rate of a thousand miles a minute
on land or sea.

In this romance the baron goes to visit the vault and has curdling experiences.

[10] In _Bungay Castle_.

"A deep groan issues from the coffin and a voice exclaims, 'You hurt me! Forbear or you will crush my bones to powder!'" He knocks the coffin in pieces, whereupon the vocal bones demand decent burial and his departure from the castle. Later the baron sees the ghost of his first wife, who objects to his making a third matrimonial venture, though she has apparently conceded the second. In the same story a young woman's spook pursues one Thomas, almost stamping on his heels, and finally vanishing like a sky-rocket, leaving an odor of brimstone behind. A specter rises from a well in _The History of Jack Smith, or the Castle of Saint Donats_,[11] and shakes its hoary head at a group of men who fire pistols at it.

[11] By Charles Lucas, Baltimore.

_The Castle of Caithness_[12] shows a murdered father indicating his wounds to his son and demanding vengeance. An armored revenge ghost appears in _Count Roderick's Castle_, or _Gothic Times_, an anonymous Philadelphia novel, telling his son the manner of his murder, and scaring the king, who has killed him, to madness. The revenge ghosts in the Gothic do not cry "Vindicta!" as frequently as in the early drama, but they are as relentless in their hate. In _Ancient Records_, or _The Abbey of St. Oswyth_,[13] the spirit of a nun who has been wronged and buried alive by the wicked baron returns with silent, tormenting reproach. She stands beside him at midnight, with her dead infant on her breast.

Suddenly the eyes of the specter become animated. Oh!--then what
flashes of appalling anger dart from their hollow orbits on the
horror-stricken Vortimer! Three dreadful shrieks ring pealing
through the chamber now filled with a blaze of sulphurous light.
The specter suddenly becomes invisible and the baron falls
senseless on his couch.

Scant wonder! In the same story Rosaline, the distressed heroine, is about to wed against her will, when a specter appears and forbids the bans. Again, Gondemar has a dagger at her throat with wicked intent, when a spook "lifts up his hollow, sunken countenance and beckons with angry gestures for his departure." Gondemar departs!

[12] By F. H. P.

[13] By T. J. Horsley-Curties.

Another revenge ghost creates excitement in _The Accusing Spirit_. A murdered marquis appears repeatedly to interested parties and demands punishment on his brother who has slain him. Another inconsiderate specter in the same volume wakes a man from his sleep, and beckoning him to follow, leads him to a subterranean vault, stamps his foot on a certain stone, shows a ghastly wound in his throat and vanishes. On investigation, searchers find a corpse in a winding-sheet beneath the indicated spot. Another accusing spirit appears in the same story--that of Benedicta, a recreant nun, who glides as a headless and mutilated figure through the cloisters and hovers over the convent bed where she "breathed out her guilty soul." The young heroine who has taken temporary refuge in the convent and has to share the cell with this disturbing room-mate, is informed by an old nun that, "Those damned spirits who for mysterious purposes receive permission to wander over the earth can possess no power to injure us but that which they may derive from the weakness of our imagination." Nevertheless, the nervous girl insists on changing her room! Another famous cloistered ghost, one of the pioneer female apparitions of note, is the Bleeding Nun in Lewis's _The Monk_, that hall of Gothic horrors. He provides an understudy for her, who impersonates the nun in times of emergency, providing complicating confusion for the other characters and for the reader.

Ghosts begin to crowd upon each others' heels in later Gothic novels. No romance is so poor as not to have a retinue of specters, or at least, a ghost-of-all-work. Emboldened by their success as individuals, spooks appear in groups and mobs. William Beckford in his _Vathek_ presents two thousand specters in one assembly. Beckford was no niggard! In Maturin's _The Albigenses_, de Montfort, passing alone through a dark forest, meets the phantoms of countless victims of his religious persecution. Men, women, young maidens, babes at the breast, all move toward him with unspeakable reproach, with "clattering bones, eyeless sockets, bare and grinning jaws." Aside from Dante the most impressive description of unhappy spirits in a large number is given in _Vathek_ in that immortal picture of the Hall of Eblis. Beckford shows here a concourse of doomed souls, each with his hand forever pressed above his burning heart, each carrying his own hell within him, having lost heaven's most precious boon, the soul's hope! In the Hall of Eblis there are the still living corpses, "the fleshless forms of the pre-adamite kings, who still possess enough life to be conscious of their deplorable condition; they regard one another with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless above his heart." The prophet Soliman is there, from whose livid lips come tragic words of his sin and punishment. Through his breast, transparent as glass, the beholder can see his heart enveloped in flames.

In James Hogg's _The Wool-Gatherer_, a man of very evil life is haunted by the wraiths of those he has wronged. As he lies on his death-bed, not only he, but those around him as well, hear the pleading voices of women, the pitiful cries of babes around his bed, though nothing is visible. We have here a suggestion of the invisible supernaturalism that becomes so frequent and effective a motif in later fiction. After the man is dead, the supernatural sounds become so dreadful that "the corpse sits up in the bed, pawls wi' its hands and stares round wi' its dead face!" When the watchers leave the room for a few moments, the body mysteriously disappears and is never found. A somewhat similar instance occurs in one of Ambrose Bierce's modern stories of dead bodies.

There is some attempt to exorcise restless spirits in a number of Gothic novels. On various occasions the priests come forth with bell, book, and candle to pronounce anathema against the troublesome visitants. In one story a monk crosses his legs to scare away the specter, but forgets and presently tumbles over. In another,[14] the priest peremptorily bids the ghosts depart and breaks the news firmly to them that they cannot return for a thousand years. But one bogle, whether of feeble understanding or strong will, comes in to break up the ceremonies of incantation, and scares the priest into hysterics.

[14] _The Spirit of Turrettville._

The imagined ghost appears in many of the Gothic tales, whose writers lack the courage of their supernaturalism. Mrs. Radcliffe, for instance, loves to build up a tissue of ghostly horrors, yet explains them away on natural grounds after the reader fancies he sees a spirit around every corner.

The ghosts that are deliberately got up for the purposes of deception form an interesting feature of Gothic methods. The reasons behind the spectral impersonations are various, to frighten criminals into restitution after confession, to further crime, or merely to enliven the otherwise lagging story. In _The Spirit of Turrettville_ two youths follow the sounds of plaintive music till, in a deserted, spookish apartment, they see a woman playing at an old harp. As they draw near, they see only skeleton hands on the keys and the apparition turns toward them "a grinning, mouldering skull." She waves her hands with haughty rebuke for their intrusion and "stalks" out of the oratory. She gives further performances, however, singing a song composed for the occasion. But the reader, after such thrills, resents finding out later that she is the living wife, attempting to frighten the villain into confession.

In _The Accusing Spirit_ a bogus spook is constructed by means of phosphorus, aided by a strong resemblance between two men, to accuse an innocent man of murder. The apparition dramatically makes his charge, but is unmasked just in time to save the victim's life. A tall, cadaverous young man makes up for a ghost in an anonymous novel,[15] while a mysterious woman in a black veil attends a midnight funeral in the castle, then unaccountably disappears.

[15] In _Ariel, or the Invisible Monitor_.

In _Melmoth_ the monks persecute a despised brother by impersonating spirits in his cell. They cover the walls with images of fiends, over which they smear phosphorus, and burn sulphur to assist the deception. They utter mocking cries as of demons, seeking to drive him mad. In Lewis's _Monk_ there is a false Bleeding Nun as well as the _bona fide_ specter. In other Gothic novels there are various spectral frauds cleverly planned, and then revealed, but their explanation does not altogether dispel the uncanny impression they make.

The ghost that stays at home in a definite place, haunting its own demesne, is a familiar figure in the fiction of the period. Every castle has its haunted tower or dungeon or apartment with its shade that walks by night. Several appear carrying candles or lamps to light them through the blackness of architectural labyrinths. Several evince a fondness for bells and herald their coming by rings. In one romance,[16] the ghost takes the form of a white cow. (Doubtless many ghosts in real life have had a similar origin.) In another,[17] a specter in armor appears to terrify his murderer, and supernatural lightning aids in his revenge.

[16] _The Spirit of the Castle._

[17] _Ethelwina, or the House of Fitz-Auburne_, by T. J.
Horsley-Curties.

It would be impossible to designate all the ghosts in Gothic fiction for there is wholesale haunting. They appear in the plot to warn, to comfort or command, and seem to have very human characteristics on the whole. Yet they are not so definitely personated, not so individual and realistic as the spirits in later fiction, though they do achieve some creepy effects. It is not their brute force that impresses us. We are less moved by the armored knight and the titanic adversary in Otranto than by the phantoms in the Hall of Eblis. The vindictive ghosts, mouldy from the vault, are less appalling than the bodiless voices of wronged women and children that haunt the death-bed and bring a corpse back to dreadful life. The specters with flamboyant personality, that oppress us with their egotistic clamor, may be soon forgotten, but the ghostly suggestiveness of other spirits has a haunting power that is inescapable. Some of the Gothic ghosts have a strange vitality,--and, after all, where would be the phantoms of to-day but for their early services?

=Witches and Warlocks.= While not at all equal in importance to the ghosts, witches and warlocks add to the excitement in Gothic fiction. There is but little change from the witch of dramatic tradition, for we have both the real and the reputed witch in the terror novel, the genuine antique hag who has powers given her from the devil, and the beautiful young girl who is wrongly suspected of an unholy alliance with the dark spirits.

In _Melmoth_, there is an old woman doctor who has uncanny ability. She tells fortunes, gives spells against the evil eye and produces weird results "by spells and such dandy as is beyond our element." She turns the mystic yarn to be dropped into the pit, on the brink of which stands "the shivering inquirer into futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question 'Who holds?' is to be uttered by the voice of a demon or lover." In _The Albigenses_ three Weird Sisters appear that are not altogether poor imitations of Shakespeare's own. Matilda in _The Monk_ possesses dæmonic power of enchantment and in the subterranean passages of the monastery she works her unhallowed arts. The hag Carathis, in _Vathek_, is a witch of rare skill, who concocts her magic potions and by supernatural means forces all things to her will. There are several witches and warlocks in James Hogg's _The Hunt of Eildon_, who work much mischief but at last are captured and convicted. They have the choice of being burned alive or being baptized, but with wild cries they struggle against the holy water and face the flames.

In Hogg's _Brownie of Bodbeck_, Marion Linton believes her own daughter is a witch and thinks she should be given the trial by fire or water. There is an innocent young reputed witch in _The Hunt of Eildon_, who is sentenced to death for her art.

=The Devil.= The devil incarnate is one of the familiar figures in the terror novel. Here, as in the case of the ghost, we see the influence of the dramatic rather than of the epic tradition. He is akin to Calderon's wonder-working magician and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus rather than to the satanic creations of Dante and Milton. He is not a dread, awe-inspiring figure either physically or as a personality, though he does assume terrifying, almost epic proportions in the closing scenes of _The Monk_ and _Zofloya_. Neither is he as human, as appealing to our sympathies as the lonely, misjudged, misunderstood devils in later fiction. We neither love nor greatly fear the Gothic demon. Yet he does appear in interesting variants and deserves our study.

In Hogg's _Hunt of Eildon_ the devil comes in as a strange old man who yet seems curiously familiar to the king and to everyone who sees him, though no one can remember just when he knew him. There is a clever psychologic suggestiveness here, which perhaps inspired a similar idea in a recent play, _The Eternal Magdalen_. Later he is recognized and holy water thrown on him.

The whole form and visage of the creature was changed in a moment
to that of a furious fiend. He uttered a yell that made all the
abbey shake to its foundations and forthwith darted away into the
air, wrapt in flames. As he ascended, he waved his right hand and
shook his fiery locks at his inquisitors.

There is nothing dubious about his personality here, certainly!

Satan appears dramatically in _The Monk_ as well. His first visits are made in the form of attractive youth. Ambrosio, who has been led into sin by the dæmonic agent, Matilda, is awaiting death in the Inquisition cell, when she comes to see him to urge that he win release by selling his soul to the devil. But the repentant monk refuses her advice, so she departs in a temper of blue flame. Then he has a more dread visitant,--Lucifer himself, described as follows:

His blasted limbs still bore the marks of the Almighty's thunders;
a swarthy darkness spread itself over his gigantic form; his hands
and feet were armed with long talons.... Over his huge shoulders
waved two enormous sable wings; and his hair was supplied by living
snakes which twined themselves with frightful hissings. In one hand
he held a roll of parchment, and in the other an iron pen. Still
the lightnings flashed around him and the thunder bursts seemed to
announce the dissolution of nature.

Ambrosio is overawed into selling his soul and signs the compact with his blood, as per convention.

The devil doesn't keep to his agreement to release him, however, for Lewis tells us that taking his victim to the top of a mountain and "darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him from the rock. The caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks. The demon continued to soar aloft till, reaching a dreadful height, he released the sufferer. Headlong fell the monk." He plunges to the river's brink, after which a storm is evoked by the devil and his body swept away in the flood.

A similar dæmonic manifestation occurs in _Zofloya_. Victoria has been induced to bind herself to the Evil One, who has appeared as a Moorish servant of impressive personality and special powers. He grants her wishes hostile to her enemies, holding many conferences with her in the dark forest where he is heralded by flute-like sounds. He appears sometimes like a flame, sometimes like a lightning flash. He comes with the swiftness of the wind and tells her that her thoughts summoned him. At last, he announces himself as Satan, and assumes his own hideous form of gigantism.

Behold me as I am, no longer that which I appeared to be, but the
sworn enemy of all created nature, by men called Satan. Yes, it was
I that under semblance of the Moor appeared to thee.

As he spoke, he grasped more firmly the neck of Victoria, with one
push he whirled her headlong down the dreadful abyss!--as she fell
his loud dæmonic laugh, his yells of triumph echoed in her ears;
and a mangled corpse she fell, she was received into the foaming
waters below.

The devil is seen in _Vathek_ as a preternaturally ugly old man with strange powers. James Hogg has rather a penchant for the demon, for he uses him in The _Wool-Gatherer_, and in _Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, which is a story of religious superstition, of the use of diablerie and witchcraft, introducing a satanic tempter. On the whole, the appearances of the devil in Gothic fiction lack impressiveness, are weak in psychologic subtlety, and have not the force either of the epic or of the dramatic representations. Nor have they the human appeal that the incarnations of the devil in later fiction make to our sympathies.

In addition to the unholy powers possessed by the devil and given by him to his agents, the witches, warlocks and magicians, we see in Gothic fiction other aspects of dæmonology, such as that associated with animals and with inanimate objects. Supernaturalism in the horror novel is by no means confined to human beings, but extends to beasts as well. Animals are supposed to be peculiarly sensitive to ghostly impressions, more so than men, and the appearance of a specter is often first announced by the extreme terror of some household pet, or other animal. Gothic dogs have very keen noses for ghosts and howl lugubriously when an apparition approaches. Ravens are represented as showing the presence of evil powers, somewhat as the Southern darkey believes that the jay-bird is the ally of the devil and spends every Friday in torment. And one does not forget the snaky coiffure that writhed around the demon's head in _The Monk_.

Maturin's _Albigenses_ introduces the story of a gruesome loup-garou, or werewolf, which figures extensively in folk-tales. In this case the husband of a beautiful young woman is a werewolf who during his savage metamorphosis tears her to pieces then disappears to return no more. This is suggestive--with a less satisfactory ending--of Marie de France's charming little _lai_, _Le Bisclavret_. Professor Kittridge has shown the frequency of the werewolf motif in medieval story, by the variants he brings together in his _Arthur and Gorlogon_. In _The Albigenses_ a lycanthrope also is described, a hideous human being that fancies himself a mad wolf.

There is much use of animal supernaturalism in James Hogg's romances. In one,[18] Sandy is saved from going over a precipice by the warning of a hare that immediately after vanishes, having left no tracks in the snow. In another,[19] the two white beagles that the king uses in hunting are in reality maidens bound by enchantment, who are forced to slay human beings then transform them into deer for the king and his company to eat. The other dogs are aware of the unnatural state of affairs, while the men are too stupid to realize it. The clownish Croudy is changed into a hog, which brings amusing and almost tragic complications into his life. His old dog knows him and follows him pathetically, and a drove of cows go off in a stampede at his approach, for they, too, sense the supernatural spell. Croudy is put on the block to be killed for pork, when the fairy changes him back suddenly to the consternation of the butcher. But Croudy does not behave well after his transformation, so he is changed into a cat with endless life. He may resume mortal shape one night in the year and relate his feline experiences.

[18] _The Wool-Gatherer._

[19] _The Hunt of Eildon._

In the same story the king of Scotland is proposing a toast when his favorite dog dashes the cup from his hand. This is repeated several times, till the king learns that the drink is poisoned, and the dog has thus by supernatural knowledge saved his life. An innocent young girl, sentenced to death for witchcraft because a fairy has taken her form and worked enchantment, and her lover are transformed into white birds that fly out of the prison the night before the execution and live eternally on the shores of a far lake.

The ghostly power extends to inanimate objects as well as to human beings and animals. Armor and costumes seem to have a material immortality of their own, for it is quite common to recognize spectral visitants by their garments or accouterments. Armor clanks audibly in the terror scenes. In _The Castle of Otranto_, the giant ghost sends his immense helmet crashing into the hall to shatter the would-be-bridegroom and the hopes of his father. The head-gear has power of voluntary motion and moves around with agility, saves the heroine from danger by waving its plumes at the villain and generally adds excitement to the scenes. Later a titanic sword leaps into place of itself, after having been borne to the entrance by a hundred men fainting under the weight of it, while a statue of Alfonso sheds three drops of blood from its nose and a portrait turns round in its frame and strolls out into the open.

Pictures in general take a lively part in horrific fiction. The portrait of a murdered man in _The Spirit of the Castle_ picks itself up from the lumber heap where it has been thrown, cleans itself and hangs itself back on the wall, while[20] a portrait in a deserted chamber wags its head at a servant who is making the bed. The portrait of Melmoth is endowed with supernatural power, for its eyes follow the beholder with awful meaning, and as the nephew in desperation tears it from its frame and burns it, the picture writhes in the flames, ironically, and mocks him. This might be compared with Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ and with other later stories.

[20] In _The Spirit of Turrettville_.

The statue of Alfonso in Walpole's _Castle_ moves from its place with no visible means of support, and[21] a great effigy of black marble is said to "march all round and come back into its place again with a great groan." In _St. Oswyth_ the soil of the abbey grounds obtained by gross injustice is haunted by the ghost of the wronged nun who inflicts a curse upon it, rendering it "spell-blighted, unprolific, and impossible to till." The key to the room in the old house in which Melmoth's diabolic portrait is kept, turns in its lock with a sound like the cry of the dead.

[21] In _Ariel_.

Gothic romance contains magic mirrors wherein one can see any person he wishes no matter how distant he may be, and watch his movements after the fashion of a private moving-picture show,--such as that used by Ambrosio.[22] There are enchanted wands with power to transform men to beasts or _vice versa_, as in _The Hunt of Eildon_. There are crystal balls that reveal not only what is going on in distant parts, but show the future as well.[23] The same volume describes magic swords that bear changing hieroglyphics to be read only by enchantment and other uncanny objects. These will serve to illustrate the preternatural powers possessed by inanimate objects in the terror literature. In some instances the motif is used with effectiveness, definitely heightening the impression of the weird in a way that human supernaturalism could not accomplish. We do not see here the mechanistic supernaturalism, which is to become important in later tales, and the effects here are crude, yet of interest in themselves and as suggesting later uses of the idea.

[22] In _The Monk_.

[23] As in _Vathek_.

Dæmonology manifests itself in the supernatural science in the Gothic novels as well as in the characterization of the devil and his confreres. We have diabolical chemistry besides alchemy, astrology, hypnotism, ventriloquism, search for the philosopher's stone, infernal biology, and the other scientific twists of supernaturalism. In _Vathek_, where we have a regular array of ghostliness, we see a magic potion that instantly cures any disease however deadly,--the progenitor of the modern patent medicine. There is an Indian magician who writes his messages on the high heavens themselves. Vathek's mother is an industrious alchemist strangling an assembly of prominent citizens in order to use their cadavers in her laboratory, where she stews them up with serpent's oil, mummies, and skulls, concocting therefrom a powerful potion. Vathek has an uncurbed curiosity that leads him into various experiments, to peer into the secrets of astrology, alchemy, sorcery, and kindred sciences. He uses a magic drink that gives the semblance of death, like that used later in _The Monk_, as earlier, of course, in _Romeo and Juliet_, and elsewhere.

The Moor in _Zofloya_ is well versed in dæmonic science. He tells of chemical experiments where he forces everyone to do his will or die. By his potions he can change hate into love or love into hate, and can give a drug which produces semi-insanity. Under the influence of this a man weds a dæmonic temptress thinking her the woman he loves, then commits suicide when he wakes to the truth. This reminds us of Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu stories of diabolic hypodermics that produce insanity.

In _Ankerwich Castle_ a woman lying at the point of death is miraculously cured by a drug whose prescription the author neglects to state. In the same story a child is branded in a peculiar fashion. A new-born babe whose birth must remain secret yet who must be recognizable in emergency, is marked on its side with letters burnt in with a strange chemical, which will remain invisible till rubbed with a certain liquid. Matilda in _The Monk_ dabbles in satanic chemistry and compounds evil potions in her subterranean experiments.

Mary Shelley uses the idea of supernatural biology in her story of the man-monster, _Frankenstein_, the story of the young scientist who after morbid study and experiment, constructs a human frame of supernatural size and hideous grotesqueness and gives it life. But the thing created appalls its creator by its dreadful visage, its more than human size, its look of less than human intelligence, and the student flees in horror from the sight of it. Mrs. Shelley describes the emotions of the lonely, tragic thing thrust suddenly into a world that ever recoils shuddering from it. She reveals the slow hate distilled in its heart because of the harsh treatment it meets, till at last it takes diabolic revenge, not only on the man who has created it but on all held dear by him. The struggles that rend his soul between hate and remorse are impressive. The wretched being weeps in an agony of grief as it stands over the body of Frankenstein whom it has harried to death, then goes away to its own doom. The last sight of it, as the first, is effective, as, in tragic solitude, towering on the ice-floe, it moves toward the desolate North to its death.