But Beckford remained alone In his devotion to the Orient. Other writers, closer to the Gothic tradition and to European life in general, were content to follow more faithfully in the lead of Walpole. Among the countless producers of terror-literature in these times may be mentioned the Utopian economic theorist William Godwin, who followed his famous but non-supernatural "Caleb Williams" (1794) with the intendedly weird "St. Leon" (1799) in which the theme of the elixir of life, as developed by the imaginary secret order of "Roticrucians," is handled with ingeniousness if not with atmospheric convincingness. This element of Rosicrucianism, fostered by a wave of popular magical interest exemplified in the vogue of the charlatan Cagliostro and the publication of Francis Barrett's "The Magus" (1801), a curious and compendius treatise on occult principles and ceremonies, of which a reprint was made as lately as 1896, figures in Bulwer-Lytton and in many late Gothic novels, especially that remote and enfeebled posterity which straggled far down into the nineteenth century and was represented by George W.M. Reynolds' "Faust and the Demon" and "Wagner and the Wehr-Wolf." "Caleb Williams," though non-supernatural, has many authentic touches of terror. It is the tale of a servant persecuted by a master whom he has found guilty of a murder, and displays an invention and skill which have kept it alive in a fashion of this day. It was dramatised as "The Iron Chest," and in that form was almost equally celebrated. Godwin, however, was too much the conscious teacher and prosaic man of thought to create a genuine weird masterpiece.
His daughter, the wife of Shelley, was much more successful; and her inimitable "Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus" (1817) is one of the horror-classics of all time. Composed in competition with her husband, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori in an effort to prove supremacy in horror-making, Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" was the only one of the rival narratives to be brought to an elaborate completion; and criticism has failed to prove that the best parts are due to Shelley rather than to her. The novel, somewhat tinged but scarcely marred by moral didacticism, tells of the artificial human being moulded from charnel fragments by Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student. Created by its designer "in the mad pride of intellectuality," the monster possesses full intelligence but owns a hideously loathsome form. It is rejected by mankind, becomes embittered, and at length begins the successive murder of all whom young Frankenstein loves best, friends and family. It demands that Frankenstein create a wife for it; and when the student finally refuses in horror lest the world be populated with such monsters, it departs with a hideous threat 'to be with him on his wedding night.' Upon that night the bride is strangled, and from that time on Frankenstein hunts down the monster, even into the wastes of the Arctic. In the end, whilst seeking shelter on the ship of the man who tells the story, Frankenstein himself is killed by the shocking object of the search and creation of his presumptous pride. Some of the scenes in "Frankenstein" are unforgettable, as when the newly animated monster enters its creator's room, parts the curtains of his bed, and gazes at him in the yellow moonlight with watery eyes—"if eyes they may be called." Mrs. Shelley wrote other novels, including the fairly notable "Last Man;" but never duplicated the success of her first effort. It has the true touch of cosmic fear, no matter how much the movement may lag in places. Dr. Polidori developed his competing idea as a long short story, "The Vampyre;" in which we behold a suave villain of the true Gothic or Byronic type, and encounter some excellent passages of stark fright, including a terrible nocturnal experience in a shunned Grecian wood.
(Continued next month)
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Tucker
Black Moon by Thomas Ripley is a thrilling, weird book of voodoo worship and adventure that should please any weird fan. The author knows voodoo, and voodoo worshipers, and he most ably presents it in this story.
The story concerns a young man of New York City, who is called to San Cristobal, an island off the coast of Haiti, by a mysteriously worded message, to the effect that the life of his sweetheart depends on his coming. Of course he goes, and is immediately plunged up to his neck in mystery and adventure.
His skirmishes with the voodoo'ers and his eventual discovery that his own is the virgin queen of the voodoo worshipers prove thrilling. He is beset by two villains, so to speak. Both his sweetheart, and her father make several attempts upon his life, after he makes the discovery.
The only criticisms of the book, are two, which even the most casual readers will notice at once. The story, and one of the characters, are altogether too "silvery" and too "cool".