A History of English Prose Fiction

by Bayard Tuckerman

This was evident to Miss Clara Reeve, who hoped to attain success in the attempt to unite the romance and the novel by limiting all supernatural occurrences to the verge of probability. It is obvious that the line would be difficult to draw. Miss Reeve drew it at ghosts. In the "Old English Baron," she took a story similar to that of Walpole. She presented to the reader a castle whose real owner had been murdered, and of which the rightful heir, ignorant of his birth, lived as a dependent on the wrongful possessor. The story turned on the revelation of the secret by the ghost of the murdered knight.

"God defend us!" said Edmund; "but I verily believe that the person that owned this armor lies buried under us." Upon this a dismal, hollow groan was heard, as if from underneath. A solemn silence ensued, and marks of fear were visible upon all three; the groan was thrice heard.

To the average mind of the present day Clara Reeve's ghost is not less improbable and incredible than Walpole's gigantic helmet. If the reader is prepared by the poetic nature of a narrative for the influence of the supernatural, he will receive all marvels with equal ease; but if he be not prepared, if his mind be occupied during the greater part of the work with actual and ordinary occurrences, any supernatural event is rejected. Miss Reeve introduced far less of the incredible than her predecessor, but she did not approach Walpole in the adaptation of her scenes to supernatural effects. It requires less imagination to see a figure walk out of a portrait in the gloomy castle of Otranto, than to hear the groan of Miss Reeve's spectre.

The incompatibility of the real and the unreal in the same work is sufficiently shown by the course pursued by the different writers who took part in the romantic revival. Walpole had boldly introduced a skeleton monk, and had crushed one of his characters by a gigantic helmet which fell from the sky. Clara Reeve's sense of congruity was shocked by so strong a contrast between the usual and the extraordinary, and therefore limited herself to a single supernatural effect, which might inspire fear while yet remaining within the bounds of superstitious credulity. The next and greatest contributor to the romantic revival still further modified the methods of her predecessors, and in so modifying them, testified her doubts of their efficacy. Mrs. Radcliffe's plan was not to summon a spectre from his resting-place and to make him move among flesh and blood personages. She simply described the superstitious fears of her heroes and heroines, and sought to make her reader share in them. She excited the imagination by highly wrought scenes of horror, but instead of ascribing those scenes to the intervention of supernatural beings, she showed them to proceed from natural causes. The terror felt, by her fictitious characters and shared by the reader, was not so much inspired by real dangers from without, as by superstitious fear within. The following passage will illustrate Mrs. Radcliffe's method of dealing with the supernatural:

From the disturbed slumber into which she then sunk, she was soon awakened by a noise, which seemed to arise within her chamber; but the silence that prevailed, as she tearfully listened, inclined her to believe that she had been alarmed by such sounds as sometimes occur in dreams, and she laid her head again upon the pillow.

A return of the noise again disturbed her, it seemed to come from that part of the room which communicated with the private staircase, and she instantly remembered the odd circumstance of the door having been fastened during the preceding night by some unknown hand. The late alarming suspicion concerning its communication also occurred to her. Her heart became faint with terror. Half raising herself from the bed, and gently drawing aside the curtain, she looked toward the door of the staircase, but the lamp that burnt on the hearth spread so feeble a light through the apartment, that the remote parts of it were lost in shadow. The noise, however, which she was convinced came from the door, continued. It seemed like that made by the undrawing of rusty bolts, and often ceased, and was then renewed more gently, as if the hand that occasioned it was restrained by a fear of discovery. While Emily kept her eyes fixed on the spot, she saw the door move, and then slowly open, and perceived something enter the room, but the extreme duskiness prevented her perceiving what it was. Almost fainting with terror, she had yet sufficient command over herself to check the shriek that was escaping from her lips, and, letting the curtain drop from her hand, continued to observe in silence the motions of the mysterious figure she saw. It seemed to glide along the remote obscurity of the apartment, then paused, and, as it approached the hearth, she perceived, in the stronger light, what appeared to be a human figure. Certain remembrances now struck upon her heart, and almost subdued the feeble remains of her spirit. She continued, however, to watch the figure, which remained for some time motionless, but then, advancing slowly toward the bed, stood silently at the feet, where the curtains, being a little open, allowed her still to see it; terror, however, had now deprived her of the power of discrimination, as well as that of utterance.[201]

This scene is an excellent example of Mrs. Radcliffe's power of depicting and exciting fear. The loneliness of Emily in the castle, her dread of real dangers inclining her mind to expect the unreal, are shown with an art of which neither Walpole nor Reeve were capable. But, while these writers would have introduced a real spectre as the disturber of Emily's slumber, Mrs. Radcliffe is contented with the terror she has aroused, and hastens to explain its cause.

Having continued there a moment, the form retreated towards the hearth, when it took the lamp, held it up, surveyed the chamber for a few moments, and then again advanced towards the bed. The light at that instant awakening the dog that had slept at Emily's feet, he barked loudly, and, jumping to the floor, flew at the stranger, who struck the animal smartly with a sheathed sword, and springing towards the bed, Emily discovered—Count Morano.

These passages afford evidence of both the strength and the weakness of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. She chose a scene calculated to inspire horror, she subjected to its influence a lonely female, and she then described with blood-curdling minuteness each detail which could enhance the sense of hidden danger which it was her purpose to excite. While the reader follows such portions of her writings, he is carried by the force and picturesqueness of Mrs. Radcliffe's language into a condition of sympathy with the fears of the fictitious personage. But the moment that the scene of horror is past, that the hidden danger is revealed, that, it turns out to be no ghost but only a Count Morano, all Mrs. Radcliffe's power is required to prevent an anti-climax. This weakness is very different from that of Walpole or Reeve. They failed to excite the feeling of superstitious fear. Mrs. Radcliffe excited it, but she destroyed its effect by revealing the inadequacy of its cause. The works of Walpole, Clara Reeve, and particularly of Mrs. Radcliffe, contain very decided merits. They made a school which has found many admirers and has given a vast deal of pleasure. But the school was founded on wrong principles and could not endure. It is impossible for the mind to enjoy the supernatural while it is chained down to every-day life by realistic descriptions of scenes and persons. And it is equally impossible to permanently please by fear-inspiring narratives, when the reader is aware that all the while there is no sufficient cause for the hero's terror.

But what Mrs. Radcliffe attempted, she carried out with a very great skill. She placed the scenes of her narratives in Sicily, in Italy, or the south of France, and made good use of the warm natures and vivid imaginations which are born of southern climates. Every aid which an effective mise en scène could supply to her supernatural effects was most skilfully brought into play. Lonely castles, secret passages, gloomy churches, and monkish superstitions,—all were adapted to the tale of unknown dangers and fearful predicaments which Mrs. Radcliffe had to tell. She kept up with remarkable strength a supernatural tone which insensibly aids the imagination. In her descriptions of scenery, she chose nature in its most awe-inspiring forms, and instilled into the reader's mind the same sense of the insignificance of man, under the influence of which her heroes and heroines so continually remain. We are reminded of Buckle's description of the effect of nature upon human imagination and credulity when we notice the striking manner in which Mrs. Radcliffe moulded the surroundings of her heroes and heroines, and made their minds susceptible to superstitious terror.

From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travellers into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the mountains. They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where only the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the glen—so deep that the thunder of the torrent, which was seen to foam along the bottom was scarcely heard to murmur. Over these crags rose others of stupendous height and fantastic shape; some shooting into cones; others impending far over their base, in huge masses of granite, along whose broken ridges was often lodged a weight of snow, that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound, threatened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. Around on every side, far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of grandeur the long perspective of mountain tops, tinged with ethereal blue, or white with snow; valleys of ice, and forests of gloomy fir. * * * The deep silence of these solitudes was broken only at intervals by the scream of the vultures, seen cowering round some cliff below, or by the cry of the eagle sailing high in the air; except when the travellers listened to the hollow thunder that sometimes muttered at their feet.[202]