Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (350 page)

Those, who seek to create a species of supernatural interest by the first of these processes, find abundant materials adapted to their use in the noblest parts of our own intellectual history. There are doubtful phenomena within the experience of all reflecting minds, which may scarcely be referred to their mere mortal nature, and which sometimes force on the coldest sceptic a conviction, that he is “fearfully” as well as “wonderfully made.” Golden dreams hover over our cradle, and shadows thicken round the natural descent of the aged into the grave. Few there are, who, in childhood, have not experienced some strange visitings of serious thought, gently agitating the soul like the wind “that bloweth where it listeth,” suggesting to it holy fancies, and awakening its first sympathy with a world of sorrow and of tears. Who has not felt, or believed that he has felt, a sure presentiment of approaching evil? Who, at some trivial occurrence, “striking the electric chord by which we are darkly bound,” has not been startled by the sudden revival of old images and feelings, long buried in the depth of years, which stalk before him like the spectres of departed companions? Who has not shrunk from the fascination of guilty thoughts, as from “supernatural soliciting?” Where is the man so basely moulded, that he does not remember moments of inspiration, when statelier images than his common intellect can embody, hopes and assurances brighter than his constitutional temperament, may recal, and higher faculties within himself than he has ever been able to use, have stood revealed to him like mountain-tops at the utmost reach of vision, touched by a gleam of the morning sun? And who, in the melancholy calm of the mind, sadly looking into its depths, has not perceived the gigantic wrecks of a nobler nature, as the fortunate voyager on some crystal lake has discerned, or fancied he discerned, the wave-worn towers of a forgotten city far in the deep waters? There are magic threads in the web of life, which a writer of romance has only to bring out and to touch with appropriate hues of fancy. From the secret places of the soul are “voices more solemn than from old superstitions, to which he may bid us hearken. In his works, prophecies may be fulfilled; presentiments justified; the history of manhood may answer to the dreams of the nursery; and he may leave his readers to assert if they can, “These have their causes; they are natural.” Let him only give due effect to the problem, and he may safely trust their hearts to supply the answer!

The other mode of exciting terror requires, perhaps, greater delicacy and skill, as the author purposes to influence the mind directly from without, instead of leaving it, after receiving a certain clue, to its own workings. In this style, up to the point where Mrs. Radcliffe chooses pause and explain, she has no rival. She knows the string of feeling shé must touch, and exactly proportions her means to her design. She invariably succeeds not by the quantity but the quality of her terrors. Instead of exhibiting a succession of magnificent” glooms, which only darken the imagination, she whispers some mysterious suggestion to the soul, and exhibits only just enough of her picture to prolong the throbbings she has excited. In nothing is her supremacy so clearly shown, as in the wise and daring economy, with which she has employed the instruments of fear. A low groan issuing from distant vaults; a voice heard among an assembly from an unknown speaker; a little track of blood seen by the uncertain light of a lamp on a castle staircase; a wild strain of music floating over moonlight woods; as introduced by her, affect the mind more deeply than terrible incantations, or accumulated butcheries. “Pluck out the heart of her mystery!” — tell, at once, the secret, the lightest hint of which appals — verify the worst apprehensions of the reader; and what would be the reality in common hands? Y ou can suspect nothing more than a cruel murder perpetrated many years ago by an unprincipled monk, or an avowed robber! Why should we suffer all the stings of curiosity on such an issue? Human life is not held so precious, murder is not so strange and rare an occurrence, that we should be greatly agitated by the question whether, two centuries ago, a bandit destroyed one of his captives; but the skill of the writer, applying itself justly to the pulses of terror in our intellectual being, gives tragic interest to the inquiry, makes the rusted dagger terrible, and the spot of blood sublime. This faculty is the more remarkable, as it is employed to raise a single crime into importance; while others of equal dye are casually alluded to, and dismissed, as deeds of little note, and make no impression on the reader. Assassins who murder for hire, commonly excite no feeling in romance, except as mere instruments, like the weapons they use; but, when Mrs. Radcliffe chooses to single out one of these from the mass, though undistinguished by peculiar characteristics, she rivets our attention to Spalatro, as by an irresistible spell; forces us to watch every movement of his haggard countenance, and makes the low sound of his stealthy footsteps sink into the soul. Her faculty, therefore, which has been represented as melo-dramatic, is akin to the very essence of tragic power, which is felt not merely in the greatness of the actions, or sorrows, which it exhibits, but in its nice application to the inmost sources of terror and of pity.

It is extraordinary, that a writer thus gifted should, in all her works intended for publication, studiously resolve the circumstances, by which she has excited superstitious apprehensions, into mere physical causes. She seems to have acted on a notion, that some established canon of romance obliged her to reject real supernatural agency; for it is impossible to believe she would have adopted this harassing expedient if she had felt at liberty to obey the promptings of her own genius. So absolute was her respect for every species of authority, that it is probable she would rather have sacrificed all her productions, than have transgressed any arbitrary law of taste, or criticism. It is equally obvious, that there is no valid ground of objection to the use of the supernatural, in works of fiction, and that it is absolutely essential to the perfection of that kind of romance, which she invented. To the imagination it is not only possible, but congenial, when introduced with art, and employed for high and solemn purposes. Grant only the possibility of its truth, which “the fair and innocent” are half disposed to believe, and there is nothing extravagant in the whole machinery, by which it works. But discard it altogether, and introduce, in its stead, a variety of startling phenomena, which are resolved at last into petty deceptions and gross improbabilities, and you at once disappoint the fancy, and shock the understanding of the reader. In the first case, the reason is not offended, because it is not consulted; in the last, it is expressly appealed to with the certainty of an unfavourable decision. Besides it is clear that all the feelings created up to the moment of explanation, and which it has been the very object of the author to awaken, have obeyed the influence of these very principles, which at last she chooses to disown. If the minds to whom the work is addressed were so constituted as to reject the idea of supernatural agency, they would be entirely unmoved by the circumstances arranged to produce the impression of its existence; and “ The Mysteries of Udolpho” would have fallen still-born from the press! Why then should the author turn traitor to her own “so potent art?” Why, having wrought on the fears of her readers till she sways them at her will, must she turn round and tell them they have been awed and excited by a succession of mockeries? Such impotent conclusions injure the romances as works of art, and jar on the nerves of the reader, which are tuned for grand wonders, not paltry discoveries. This very error, however, which injures the effect of Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, especially on a second perusal, sets off, in the strongest light, the wizard power of her genius. Even when she has dissolved mystery after mystery, and abjured spell after spell, the impression survives, and the reader is still eager to attend again, and be again deluded. After the voices heard in the chambers of Udolpho have been shown to be the wanton trick of a prisoner, we still revert to the remaining prodigies with anxious curiosity, and are prepared to give implicit credence to new wonders at Chateau le Blanc. In the romance of Gaston de Blondeviile, Mrs. Radcliffe, not intending to publish, gratified herself by the introduction of a true spectre; and, without anticipating the opinion of the public on that work, we may venture to express a belief, that the manner, in which the supernatural agency is conducted, will deepen the general regret, that she did not employ it in her longer and more elaborate productions. —

I. — Mrs. Radcliffe’s faculties of describing and picturing scenes and appropriate figures was of the highest order. Her accurate observation of inanimate nature, prompted by an intense love of all its varieties, supplied the materials for those richly coloured representations, which her genius presented. Without this perception of the true, the liveliest fancy will only produce a chaos of beautiful images, like the remembered fragments of a gorgeous dream. How singularly capable Mrs. Radcliffe was of painting the external world, in its naked grandeur, her published tour among the English Lakes, and, perhaps still more, the notes made on her journeys for her own amusement, abundantly prove. In the first, the boldness and simplicity of her strokes, conveying the clear images to the eye of the mind, with scarcely any incrustation of sentiment, or perplexing dazzle of fancy, distinguish her from almost all other descriptive tourists. Still the great charm of simplicity was hardly so complete, as in her unstudied notices of scenery; because in writing for the press, it is scarcely possible to avoid altogether the temptation of high so unding and ambiguous expressions, which always impede the distant presentiment of material forms. To this difficulty, she thus adverts in her account of Ulswater. “It is difficult to spread varied picture s of such scenes before the imagination. A repetition of the same images of rock, wood, and water, and the same epithets of grand, vast, and sublime, which necessarily occur, must appear tautologous, though their archetypes in nature, ever varying in outline or arrangement, exhibit new visions to the eye, and produce new shades of effect on the mind.” In the journals, as no idea of authorship interposed to give restraint to her style, there is entire fidelity and truth. She seems the very chronicler and secretary of nature; makes us feel the freshness of the air; and listen to the gentlest sounds. Not only does she keep each scene distinct from ail others, however similar in general character; but discriminates its shifting aspects with the most delicate exactness. No aerial tint of a fleecy cloud is too evanescent to be imaged in her transparent style. Perhaps no writer in prose, or verse, has been so happy in describing the varied effects of light in winged words. It is true, that there is not equal discrimination in the views of natural scenery, which she presents in her romances. In them she writes of places, which she has not visited; and, like a true lover, invests absent nature with imaginary loveliness. She looks at the grandeurs and beauties of création through a soft and tender medium, in which its graces are heightened, but some of its delicate varieties are lost. Still it is nature that we see, though touched with the hues of romance, and which could only be thus presented by one who had known, and studied its simple charms.

In the estimate of Mrs. Radcliffe’s pictorial powers, we must include her persons as well as her scenes. It must be admitted that, with scarcely an exception, they are figures rather than characters. No writer ever produced so powerful an effect, without the aid of sympathy. Her machinery acts directly on her readers, and makes them tremble and weep, not for others, but for themselves. Adeline, Emily, Vivaldi, and Ellena, are nothing to us, except as fîlling up the scene; but it is we ourselves, who discover the manuscript in the deserted abbey; we, who are prisoners in the castle of Udolpho; we, who are inmates of Spalatro’s cottage; we, who stand before the secret tribunal of the Inquisition, and even there are startled by the mysterious voice deepening its horrors. The whole is prodigious painting, so entire as to surround us with illusion; so cunningly arranged as to harrow up the soul; and the presence of a real person would spoil its completeness. As figures, all the persons are adapted with peculiar skill to the scenes in which they appear; — the more, as they are part of one entire conception. Schedoni is the most individual and fearful; but through all the earlier parts of the romance, he stalks like a being not of this world; and works out his purposes by that which, for the time at least, we feel to be superhuman agency. But when, after glaring out upon us so long as a present demon; or felt, when unseen, as directing the whole by his awful energies; he is brought within the range of human emotion by the discovery of his supposed daughter, and an anxiety for her safety and marriage; the spell is broken. We feel the incongruity; as if a spectre should weep. To develope character was not within the scope of Mrs. Radcliffe’s plan, nor compatible with her style. At one touch of human pathos the enchantment would have been dissolved, as spells are broken by a holy word, or as the ghost of Protesilaus vanished before the earthly passion of his enamoured widow.

As the absence of discriminated feeling and character was necessary to the completeness of the effect Mrs. Radcliffe sought to produce, so she was rather assisted by manners peculiarly straight-laced and timorous. A deep vein of sentiment would have suggested thoughts and emotions inconsistent with that “wise passiveness,” in which the mind should listen to the soft murmur of her “most musical, most melancholy” spells. A moral paradox could not co-exist with a haunted tower in the mind of her readers. The exceeding coldness and prudence of her heroines do not abstract them from the scenes of loveliness and terror through which we desire to follow them. If her scrupulous sense of propriety had not restrained her comic powers, Mrs. Radcliffe would probably have displayed considerable talent for the humorous. But her talkative servants are all very guarded in their loquacity; and even Annette, quaintly and pleasantly depicted, fairly belongs to the scene. Her old-fashioned primness of thought, which with her was a part of conscience, with all its cumbrous accompaniments, serves at once to render definite, and to set off, her fanciful creations. Romance, as exhibited by her, “tricked in antique ruff and bonnet,” has yet eyes of youth; and the beauty is not diminished by the folds of the brocade, or the stiffness of the damask stomacher.