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Dorothy Scarborough
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Title: The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction
Author: Dorothy Scarborough
Release Date: October 26, 2014 [EBook #47204]
Language: English
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The
Supernatural in Modern
English Fiction
By
Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.
Instructor in English in Extension, Columbia University
[Illustration: Logo]
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
To
GEORGE AND ANNE SCARBOROUGH
PREFACE
The subject of the supernatural in modern English fiction has been
found difficult to deal with because of its wealth of material. While
there has been no previous book on the topic, and none related to it,
save Mr. C. E. Whitmore's work on _The Supernatural in Tragedy_, the
mass of fiction itself introducing ghostly or psychic motifs is simply
enormous. It is manifestly impossible to discuss, or even to mention,
all of it. Even in my bibliography which numbers over three thousand
titles, I have made no effort to list all the available examples of
the type. The bibliography, which I at first intended to publish in
connection with this volume, is far too voluminous to be included here,
so will probably be brought out later by itself.
It would have been impossible for me to prosecute the research work
or to write the book save for the assistance generously given by many
persons. I am indebted to the various officials of the libraries of
Columbia University and of New York City, particularly to Miss Isadore
Mudge, Reference Librarian of Columbia, and to the authorities of
the New York Society Library for permission to use their priceless
out-of-print novels in the Kennedy Collection. My interest in English
fiction was increased during my attendance on some courses in the
history of the English novel, given by Dr. A. J. Carlyle, in Oxford
University, England, several years ago. I have received helpful
bibliographical suggestions from Professor Blanche Colton Williams,
Dr. Dorothy Brewster, Professor Nelson Glenn McCrea, Professor John
Cunliffe, and Dean Talcott Williams, of Columbia, and Professor G. L.
Kittredge, of Harvard. Professors William P. Trent, George Philip
Krapp, and Ernest Hunter Wright very kindly read the book in manuscript
and gave valuable advice concerning it, Professor Wright going over
the material with me in detail. But my chief debt of gratitude is to
Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, Head of the Department of English and
Comparative Literature in Columbia, whose stimulating criticism and
kindly encouragement have made the book possible. To all of these--and
others--who have aided me, I am deeply grateful, and I only wish that
the published volume were more worthy of their assistance.
D. S.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
April, 1917.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER
I.--THE GOTHIC ROMANCE 6
II.--LATER INFLUENCES 54
III.--MODERN GHOSTS 81
IV.--THE DEVIL AND HIS ALLIES 130
V.--SUPERNATURAL LIFE 174
VI.--THE SUPERNATURAL IN FOLK-TALES 242
VII.--SUPERNATURAL SCIENCE 251
VIII.--CONCLUSION 281
The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction
INTRODUCTION
The supernatural is an ever-present force in literature. It colors our
poetry, shapes our epics and dramas, and fashions our prose till we are
so wonted to it that we lose sense of its wonder and magic. If all the
elements of the unearthly were removed from our books, how shrunken in
value would seem the residue, how forlorn our feelings! Lafcadio Hearn
in the recently published volume, _Interpretations of Literature_, says:
There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old
or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of
the supernatural. In English literature I believe there is no
exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare,
and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the
consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do
not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great
philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great
art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It
touches something within us that relates to infinity.[1]
[1] The word _ghostly_ is used here in its earlier sense
signifying spiritual.
This continuing presence of the weird in literature shows the popular
demand for it and must have some basis in human psychosis. The night
side of the soul attracts us all. The spirit feeds on mystery. It
lives not by fact alone but by the unknowable, and there is no highest
mystery without the supernatural. Man loves the frozen touch of fear,
and realizes pure terror only when touched by the unmortal. The hint
of spectral sounds or presences quickens the imagination as no other
suggestion can do, and no human shapes of fear can awe the soul as
those from beyond the grave. Man's varying moods create heaven, hell,
and faery wonder-lands for him, and people them with strange beings.
Man loves the supernatural elements in literature perhaps because they
dignify him by giving his existence a feeling of infinity otherwise
denied. They grant him a sense of being the center of powers more than
earthly, of conflicts supermortal. His own material life may be however
circumscribed and trivial yet he can loose his fancy and escape the
petty tragedies of his days by flight beyond the stars. He can widen
the tents of his mortal life, create a universe for his companionship,
and marshal the forces of demons and unknown gods for his commands. To
his narrow rut he can join the unspaced firmament; to his trivial hours
add eternity; to his finite, infinity. He is so greedy of power, and
has so piteously little that he must look for his larger life in dreams
and in the literature of the supernatural.
But, whatever be the reasons, there has been a continuity of the
ghostly in literature, with certain rise and fall of interest. There is
in modern English fiction, as likewise in poetry and the drama, a great
extent of the supernatural, with wide diversity of elements. Beginning
with the Gothic romance, that curious architectural excrescence that
yet has had enormous influence on our novel, the supernatural is found
in every period and in every form of fiction. The unearthly beings meet
us in all guises, and answer our every mood, whether it be serious or
awed, satiric or humoresque.
Literature, always a little ahead of life, has formed our beliefs
for us, made us free with spirits, and given us entrance to immortal
countries. The sense of the unearthly is ever with us, even in the
most commonplace situations,--and there is nothing so natural to
us as the supernatural. Our imagination, colored by our reading,
reveals and transforms the world we live in. We are aware of unbodied
emotions about us, of discarnate moods that mock or invite us. We go
a-ghosting now in public places, and a specter may glide up to give us
an _apologia pro vita sua_ any day in Grand Central or on Main Street
of Our-Town. We chat with fetches across the garden fence and pass the
time of day with demons by way of the dumb-waiter. That gray-furred
creature that glooms suddenly before us in the winter street is not a
chauffeur, but a were-wolf questing for his prey. Yon whirring thing in
the far blue is not an aeroplane but a hippogriff that will presently
alight on the pavement beside us with thundering golden hoofs to bear
us away to distant lovely lands where we shall be untroubled by the
price of butter or the articles lost in last week's wash. That sedate
middle-aged ferry that transports us from Staten Island is a magic
Sending Boat if only we knew its potent runes! The old woman with
the too-pink cheeks and glittering eye, that presses August bargains
upon us with the argument that they will be in style for early fall
wear, is a witch wishful to lure away our souls. We may pass at will
by the guardian of the narrow gate and traverse the regions of the
Under-world. True, the materialist may argue that the actual is more
marvelous than the imagined, that the aeroplane is more a thing of
wonder than was the hippogriff, that the ferry is really the enchanted
boat, after all, and that Dante would write a new _Inferno_ if he could
see the subway at the rush hour, but that is another issue.
We might have more psychal experiences than we do if we would only
keep our eyes open, but most of us do have more than we admit to the
neighbors. We have an early-Victorian reticence concerning ghostly
things as if it were scandalous to be associated with them. But that
is all wrong. We should be proud of being singled out for spectral
confidences and should report our ghost-guests to the society columns
of the newspaper. It is hoped that this discussion of comparative
ghost-lore may help to establish a better sense of values.
In this book I deal with ghosts and devils by and large, in an
impressionistic way. I don't know much about them; I have no learned
theories of causation. I only love them. I only marvel at their
infinite variety and am touched by their humanity, their likeness to
mortals. I am fond of them all, even the dejected, dog-eared ghosts
that look as if they were wraiths of poor relations left out in the
rain all night, or devils whose own mothers wouldn't care for them. It
gives me no holier-than-thou feeling of horror to sit beside a vampire
in the subway, no panic to hear a banshee shut up in a hurdy-gurdy box.
I give a cordial how-do-you-do when a dragon glides up and puts his paw
in mine, and in every stray dog I recognize a Gladsome Beast. Like us
mortals, they all need sympathy, none more so than the poor wizards and
bogles that are on their own, as the Scotch say.
While discussing the nineteenth century as a whole, I have devoted
more attention to the fiction of the supernatural in the last thirty
years or so, because there has been much more of it in that time than
before. There is now more interest in the occult, more literature
produced dealing with psychal powers than ever before in our history.
It is apparent in poetry, in the drama, the novel, and the short
story. I have not attempted, even in my bibliography, to include all
the fiction of the type, since that would be manifestly impossible.
I have, however, mentioned specimens of the various forms, and have
listed the more important examples. The treatment here is meant to
be suggestive rather than exhaustive and seeks to show that there is
a genuine revival of wonder in our time, with certain changes in the
characterization of supernatural beings. It includes not only the
themes that are strictly supernatural, but also those which, formerly
considered unearthly, carry on the traditions of the magical. Much of
our material of the weird has been rationalized, yet without losing
its effect of wonder for us in fact or in fiction. If now we study a
science where once men believed blindly in a Black Art, is the result
really less mysterious?
CHAPTER I
The Gothic Romance
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.
In the characterization of this being, as in the unusual conception,
Mrs. Shelley has introduced something poignantly new in fiction. It
was a startling theme for the mind of a young girl, as were _Vathek_
and _The Monk_ for youths of twenty years, and only the abnormal
psychological conditions she went through could have produced it. There
is more curdling awfulness in Frankenstein's monster than in the museum
of armored ghosts, Bleeding Nuns, and accompanying horrors of the early
Gothic novels. The employment of the Frankenstein motif in a play
produced recently in New York,[24] illustrates anew the vitality of the
idea.
[24] _The Last Laugh._
The search for the philosopher's stone appears in various novels of
the period. _St. Leon_, by William Godwin, relates the story of a man
who knew how to produce unlimited gold by a secret formula given him
by a mysterious stranger who dies in his home. Shelley[25] brings
in this power incidentally with the gift of endless life. There is
an awe-inspiring use of ventriloquism in Charles Brockden Brown's
novel, _Wieland_, while _Arthur Mervyn_ gives a study in somnambulism.
_Zofloya_ suggests hypnotism or mesmerism by saying that Victoria's
thought summoned the Moor to her,--that they could have brought him
had he been "at the further extremity of this terrestrial globe." This
seems a faint foreshadowing of Ibsen's idea in The _Master Builder_.
These may illustrate the use of science in Gothicism.
[25] In _St. Irvyne_.
The elixir of life is brewed in divers Gothic novels. Dramatic and
intense as are the psychological experiences connected with the
discovery of the magic potion, the effects of the success are more
poignant still. The thought that endless mortality, life that may not
be laid down, becomes a burden intolerable has appeared in fiction
since Swift's account of the Struldbrugs, and perhaps before. Godwin's
_St. Leon_ is a story of the secret of perpetual life. The tiresome
Godwinistic hero is visited by a decrepit old man who wishes to tell
him on a pledge of incommunicability what will give him the power of
endless life and boundless wealth. The impoverished nobleman accepts
with consequences less enjoyable than he has anticipated.
Shelley's hectic romance,[26] whose idea, as Shelley admitted to
Stockdale, came from Godwin's book, uses the same theme. The young
student with burning eyes, who has discovered the elixir of life, may
be compared with Mary Shelley's later picture of Frankenstein. Events
are rather confused here, as the villain falls dead in the presence of
the devil but comes to life again as another character later in the
story,--Shelley informing us of their identity but not troubling to
explain it.
[26] _St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian._
The most impressive instance of the theme of fleshly immortality in
the early novels is found in _Melmoth_. Here the mysterious wanderer
possesses the power of endless life, but not the right to lay it down
when existence becomes a burden. Melmoth can win the boon of death
only if he can find another mortal willing to change destinies with
him at the price of his soul. He traverses the world in his search and
offers the exchange to persons in direst need and suffering the extreme
torments, offering to give them wealth as well as life eternal. Yet no
man nor woman will buy life at the price of the soul.
=Aids to Gothic Effect.= Certain themes appear recurringly as first
aids to terror fiction. Some of them are found equally in later
literature while others belong more particularly to the Gothic. An
interesting aspect of the supernatural visitants is gigantism, or
the superhuman size which they assume. In _The Castle of Otranto_,
the sensational ghost is of enormous size, and his accouterments are
colossal. In the last scene he is astounding:
A clap of thunder shook the castle to its foundations; the earth
rocked and the clank of more than mortal armor was heard behind....
The walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a
mighty force, and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense
magnitude, appeared in the center of the ruins. "Behold the true
heir of Alfonso!" said the vision.
This reminds one of an incident in F. Marion Crawford's _Mr. Isaacs_,
where the Indian magician expands to awful size, miraculously draws
down a mist and wraps it round him as a cloak. Zofloya is frequently
spoken of as immense, and it is said that "common objects seem to
sink in his presence." In the last scene the wicked Victoria sees
the Moor change from a handsome youth to a fierce gigantic figure. A
diabolic apparition eight or nine feet high pursues a monk,[27] and the
knight[28] engages in combat with a dæmonic giant who slays him. The
devil in _The Monk_ is represented as being of enormous stature, and
much of the horror excited by the man-monster that Frankenstein created
arises from the creature's superhuman size. In most cases gigantism
connotes evil power and rouses a supernatural awe in the beholder. The
giant is an Oriental figure and appears in _Vathek_, along with genii,
dwarfs, and kindred personages, but the Gothic giant has more diabolism
than the mere Oriental original. He seems to fade out from fiction,
appearing only occasionally in later stories, while he has practically
no place in the drama, owing doubtless to the difficulties of stage
presentation.
[27] In _The Spirit of the Castle_.
[28] In _The Spirit of Turrettville_.
* * * * *
Insanity as contributing to the effect of supernaturalism affords many
gruesome studies in psychiatry. Madness seems a special curse of the
gods or torment from the devil and various instances of its use occur
in Gothic fiction. The devil in _Zofloya_, at Victoria's request, gives
Henrique an enchanted drug which renders him temporarily insane,
during which time he marries Victoria, imagining her to be Lilla whom
he loves. When he awakes to the realization of what he has done, real
madness drives him to suicide. In _The Castle of Caithness_ the wicked
misanthrope goes mad from remorse. He imagines that the different
ones he has murdered are hurling him into the pit of hell, until, in
a maniac frenzy, he dashes his brains out against the prison walls.
In _Ethelwina_ the father who has sold his daughter to dishonor flies
shrieking in madness through the corridors of the dungeon to escape the
sight of his child's accusing specter. Poor Nanny in Hogg's _Brownie of
Bodbeck_ is described as having "a beam of wild delight in her eye, the
joy of madness." She sings wild, unearthly songs and talks deliriously
of incomprehensible things, of devilish struggles.
Melmoth uses the idea with special effectiveness. The insanity of the
young husband whose bride is mysteriously slain on their wedding day
by the supernatural power accompanying Melmoth, may be compared with
the madness of the wife in Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_. Maturin
also shows us a scene in a mad-house, where a sane man, Stanton, is
confined, whom Melmoth visits to offer exchange of destinies. Melmoth
taunts him cruelly with his hopeless situation and prophecies that he,
too, will go mad from despair. We hear Stanton's wild cry, echoed by a
hundred yells like those of demons, but the others are stilled when the
mad mother begins her lamentation,--the mother who has lost husband,
home, children, reason, all, in the great London fire. At her appalling
shrieks all other voices are hushed. Another impressive figure in the
mad-house is the preacher who thinks himself a demon and alternately
prays and blasphemes the Lord.
Charles Brockden Brown rivals Maturin in his terrible use of insanity
for supernatural effect. The demented murderer in _Edgar Huntley_
gives an impression of mystery and awe that is unusual, while _Wieland_
with its religious mania produced by diabolic ventriloquism is even
more impressive. Brown knew the effect of mystery and dread on the
human mind and by slow, cumulative suggestion he makes us feel a
creeping awe that the unwieldy machinery of pure Gothicism never could
achieve. In studies of the morbid mentality he has few equals. For
psychologic subtlety, for haunting horror, what is a crashing helmet
or a dismembered ghost compared with Brown's Wieland? What are the
rackings of monkish vindictiveness when set against the agonies of an
unbalanced mind turned in upon itself? What exterior torture could
so appeal to our sympathies as Wieland's despair, when, racked with
religious mania, he feels the overwhelming conviction that the voice of
God--which is but the fiendish trick of a ventriloquist--is calling him
to murder his wife and children as a sacrifice to Deity? Such a tragedy
of dethroned reason is intolerably powerful; the dark labyrinths of
insanity, the gloom-haunted passages of the human mind, are more
terrible to traverse than the midnight windings of Gothic dungeons. We
feel that here is a man who is real, who is human, and suffering the
extremity of anguish.
Perhaps the most hideous aspect of insanity in the terror novel is
that of the lycanthrope in _The Albigenses_. The tragic wolf-man
imagines himself to be a mad wolf and cowers in his lair, glaring with
gleaming, awful eyes at all who approach him, gnawing at a human head
snatched from the graveyard. There are various other uses of insanity
in the novel of the period, but these will serve to illustrate. The
relation between insanity and the supernatural has been marked in later
literature.
* * * * *
The use of portents is a distinct characteristic of the horror romance.
Calamity is generally preceded by some sign of the supernatural
influence at work, some presentment of dread. Crime and catastrophe
are forefelt by premonition of woe and accompaniment of horror. In
_The Accusing Spirit_ supernatural thunder heralds the discovery of
the corpse in its winding-sheet, and the monk says, "Yes, some dread
discovery is at hand. These phenomena are miraculous; when the common
laws of nature are violated, the awful portents are not sent in vain."
In _The Romance of the Castle_, an anonymous story, a woman hears the
clock strike two and announces that she will be dead at three.
This night an awful messenger sent from that dread tribunal from
whose power there is no appeal, by signs terrific foretold my fate
approached--foretold my final moment. "Catherine, behold!" was all
that issued from the specter's lips, but in its hand it held a
scroll which fixed my irrevocable doom, in letters which fascinated
while they appalled my sight.
She keeps her appointment promptly. Her experience might be compared
with the vision which revealed his date of death to Amos Judd in James
Mitchell's novel of that name, and to the foreknowledge in George
Eliot's _The Lifted Veil_.
In _The Spirit of the Castle_,[29] the ghost of the old marquis knocks
three times on the door preceding the arrival of the heir, and a black
raven flies away as he enters. At the approach of the true heir to the
estate from which he has been kept by fraud in _The Old English Baron_,
the doors of the ancient castle fly open, upon which the servants cry,
"The doors open of themselves to receive their master!" When Walpole's
usurping Manfred sees the plumage on the miraculous casque shaken
in concert with the brazen trumpet, he exclaims, "What mean these
portents? If I have offended----" At this point the plumes are shaken
still more strenuously, and the helmet is equally agitated when the
great sword leaps in. Manfred cries to the apparition, "If thou art a
true knight, thou wilt scorn to employ sorcery to carry thy power. If
these omens be from heaven or hell, Manfred trusts to righteousness to
protect his cause." But the omens bring bad luck to Manfred.
[29] By W. C. Proby.
There is much use of portent in _Melmoth_. The specter of the Wanderer
appearing just before the old man's death predicts the spiritual doom
of the dying. As the old uncle is almost breathing his last, he cries
out, "What the devil brings you here?" at which the servants cross
themselves and cry, "The devil in his mouth!" Melmoth, the Wanderer,
is a walking portent of evil, for the priest is unable to pray in his
presence, the communion bread turns viperous when he is there and
the priest falls dead in the attempt to exorcise the fiendish power.
Mysterious strains of music sound as heralds of disaster in several
Gothic novels, as[30] where the inexplicable strains are heard only by
the bride and groom preceding the strange tragedy that befalls them.
[30] In _Melmoth_.
At the approach of a supernatural visitant in the terror novel the fire
always burns blue,--where there is a fire, and the great hearth usually
affords ample opportunity for such portentous blaze. The thermometer
itself tends to take a downward path when a ghost draws near. The
three drops of blood shed from the statue's nose in _Otranto_, while
ridiculed by the critics, are meant simply as a portent of evil. Prof.
William Lyon Phelps points out[31] that the idea did not originate
with Walpole, but was familiar as a superstition regarding premonition
of ill, as referred to in Dryden's _Amboyna_, IV., 1. This instance
may be compared with the much more skillfully handled omens in later
drama, as Maeterlinck's and Ibsen's, particularly in _The Emperor and
Galilean_. Various other portents of ill appear in Gothic fiction.[32]
[31] In his _Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement_, p.
108.
[32] Eliza Heywood's romance, _Lasselia: or, the Self-Abandoned_,
shows a similar portent, as Dr. George Frisbee Whicher notes in
his _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Heywood_.
Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, in his _Tragedy_, in speaking
of the plays of the Restoration dramatist John Banks (p. 273),
says: "Even the portents are reduced to a peculiar decorum:--
"Last night no sooner was I laid to rest
Than just three drops of blood fell from my nose!"
These three drops of blood probably have a much more extended
history in romance and the drama, which it would be interesting
to trace out.
The symbols of dread and the ghostly are used to good effect in
the terror romance. The cumulative effects of supernatural awe
are carefully built up by the use of gruesome accompaniments and
suggestions. The triple veil of night, desolation, and silence usually
hangs over the haunter and the haunted, predisposing to an uncanny
psychosis. The Gothic ghost does not love the garish day, and the
terror castle, gloomy even under the brightest sun, is of unimaginable
darkness at night. Certain houses add especially to the impression of
fear. At crucial moments the stroke of twelve or one o'clock is sure
to be sounded appallingly by some abbey bell or castle clock or other
rusty horologue. In addition to its services as time-keeper, the bell
has a predisposition to toll.
Melancholy birds fly freely through these medieval tales, their dark
wings adding to the general gloom. The principal specimens in the
Gothic aviary are the common owl, the screech or "screeching" owl, the
bat and the raven, while the flock is increased by anonymous "birds of
prey," "night birds," "gloomy birds" and so forth. In _St. Oswyth_,
as the murderer steals at midnight through the corridor toward his
helpless victim, "the ill-boding bird of night that sat screeching on
the battlement of the prison tower, whose harsh, discordant notes were
echoed by the hoarse croaking of the ominous raven" terrifies but does
not deter the villain.
The "moping, melancholy screech owl" is one of the prominent personages
in _The Accusing Spirit_, emphasizing the moments of special suspense,
as in _St. Oswyth_ as the wicked baron lies quaking in remorse for
having caused a nun to be buried alive, the condemning cry of the
doleful birds increases his mental anguish. Similar instances, with
or without special nomenclature, occur in countless Gothic novels.
Much use is also made of the dark ivy in its clambering over medieval
architecture, shutting out the light and adding to the general gloom.
The effect of horror is increased frequently by the location of the
scenes in vaults and graveyards with all their gruesome accessories,
and skulls are used as mural ornaments elsewhere, or as library
appointments by persons of morbid temperament. Enough skeletons are
exhumed to furnish as large a pile of bones as may be seen in certain
antique churches in Italy and Mexico.
* * * * *
The element of mystery and mystification is another family feature of
the novel of suspense. There is no proper thrill without the suspense
attained by supernatural mystery. Even the novels that in the end
carefully explain away all the ghostly phenomena on a natural basis
strive with care to build up plots which shall contain astounding
discoveries. Mrs. Radcliffe and Regina Maria Roche are noted in this
respect. They have not the courage of their ghosts as such but, after
they have thrilled the reader to the desired extent, they tear down the
fabric of mystification that they have constructed and meticulously
explain everything.
The black veil constitutes a favorite method of suspense with Mrs.
Radcliffe. On various occasions Emily pales and quivers before a dark
velvet pall uncannily swaying in the midnight wind, and on one such
ramble she draws aside the curtain and finds a hideous corpse, putrid
and dropping to decay, lying on a couch behind the pall. Many chapters
further on she learns that this is a wax figure made to serve as
penance for an ancient sinner. Again she shivers in front of the inky
curtain, watching its fold move unaccountably, when a repulsive face
peers out at her. She shrieks and flees, thinking she has seen a ghost,
but discovers later that it is _only_ one of a company of bandits that
have taken up their secret abode in the house. Black veils are in
fashion in all of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances and she drapes them very
effectively, while the arras waves likewise in other tales as well.
Mysterious manuscripts are another means of mystification. Mrs.
Radcliffe's novels also abound in such scripts. In _The Romance of
the Forest_ Adeline discovers a decaying paper which reads, "Oh, ye,
whoever ye are, that chance or misfortune may direct to this spot, to
you I speak, to you reveal the story of my wrongs and ask you to avenge
them." This injunction to avenge wrongs is a frequent assignment,
though rather much to ask in most cases. _The Spirit of the Castle_ has
its dusty document that starts off: "Already my hand brandishes the
dagger that shall close my eyes forever. (Mysterious manuscripts are
not strong on grammar and make slight attempt to avoid mixed figures.)
I will expire by the side of the clay-cold corpse of my Antoinette." In
_St. Oswyth_ the paper says, "Beneath the deep foundations of the ruin
the recorded mystery of the house of Oswyth lies buried from all mortal
discovery." But the most impressive manuscript is the one in _Melmoth_
that records the wanderings of the agonized fate-harried man and those
whose tortures he witnesses. A codicil to the old uncle's will advises
his nephew against reading the document, but of course he does read
it, since what are mouldy manuscripts in Gothic novels for, but to be
deciphered by the hero or heroine?
Reference to dread secrets occur otherwise than in written form. In one
favored tale,[33] we are told of "a mystery whose elucidation I now
have a presentiment would fill me with horror!" In another,[34] Vincent
on his death-bed speaks of "a horrid secret which labors at my breast,"
and the Abate speaks to the marquis of "a secret which shall make
your blood run cold!" In _St. Oswyth_ we hear that "an impenetrable
cloud of cureless sorrow hung over Sir Alfred and there was a dreadful
mystery in his life destiny, unknown, as it should seem, to any one,
and which he was unwilling should be questioned." The dungeoned
prisoner in _Bungay Castle_ cries, "Were I at liberty to speak I could
a tale unfold would tempt you to curse the world and even detest those
claims which bind man to man. You would be ready to forego the ties of
nature and shun society. Time must, it will develop the whole of this
mystery!" And so on.
[33] Regina Maria Roche's _Clermont_.
[34] _A Sicilian Romance_, by Mrs. Radcliffe.
Inexplicable music forms one of the commonest elements of mystification
in these romances. Its constant recurrence suggests that there
must have been victrolas in medieval times. The music is chiefly
instrumental, sometimes on a harp, sometimes on a violin, though
occasionally it is vocal. Mrs. Radcliffe and Regina Maria Roche
accompany the heroine's musings at all hours with doleful strains
suspected to be of supernatural performance. The appearance of the
devil masquerading as the Moor[35] is heralded by flute-like sounds,
and in _The Spirit of Turrettville_ the specter plays on the harp and
sings. The recurrence of the theme is so constant that it acquires the
monotony of a tantalizing refrain.
[35] In _Zofloya_.
Groans and wails of unexplained origin also aid in building up
suspense. In fact, a chorus of lugubriousness arises so that the Gothic
pages groan as they are turned. Mysterious disappearances likewise
increase the tension. Lights appear and vanish with alarming volition,
doors open and close with no visible human assistance, and various
other supernatural phenomena aid in Gothic mystery and mystification.
* * * * *
Although the ghosts and devils occupy the center of interest in the
horrific romance, the human characters must not be lightly passed over.
There are terror temperaments as well as Gothic castles, tempests, and
scenes. The interfering father or other relative, brutal in threats
and breathing forth slaughter, comes in frequently to oppress the
hero or heroine into a loathed marriage. The hero is of Radcliffian
gloom, a person of vague past and saturnine temper, admired and
imitated by Byron. Sir Walter Raleigh,[36] says, "The man that Byron
tried to be was the invention of Mrs. Radcliffe." The officials of
the Inquisition and the dominant figures in convents and monasteries
show fiendish cruelty toward helpless inmates, gloating in Gothic
diabolism over their tortures. There are no restful human shades of
gray, only unrelieved black and white characters. The Romantic heroine
is a peculiar creature, much given to swooning and weeping, yet always
impeccably clad in no matter what nocturnal emergency she is surprised.
She tumbles into verse and sketching on slight provocation, but her
worst vice is that of curiosity. In her search for supernatural horrors
she wanders at midnight through apartments where she does not belong,
breaks open boxes, desks, and secret hiding-places to read whatever
letters or manuscripts she can lay her hands on, behaving generally
like the yellow journalist of fiction.
[36] In _The English Novel_, p. 228.
The pages of the Gothic novel are smeared with gore and turn with
ghostly flutter. The conversation is like nothing on land or sea or
in the waters under the earth, for the tadpoles talk like Johnsonian
whales and the reader grows restless under Godwinistic disquisitions.
The authors are almost totally lacking in a sense of humor, yet the
Gothic novel, taken as a whole, is one of the best specimens of
unconscious humor known to English literature.
=Conclusion.= Perhaps the most valuable contribution that the Gothic
school made to English literature is Jane Austen's inimitable satire
of it, _Northanger Abbey_. Though written as her first novel and sold
in 1797, it did not appear till after her death, in 1818. Its purpose
is to ridicule the Romanticists and the book in itself would justify
the terroristic school, but she was ahead of her times, so the editor
feared to publish it. In the meantime she wrote her other satires on
society and won immortality for her work which might never have been
begun save for her satiety of medieval romances. The title of the story
itself is imitative, and the well-known materials are all present,
yet how differently employed! The setting is a Gothic abbey tempered
to modern comfort; the interfering father is not vicious, merely
ill-natured; the pursuing, repulsive lover is not a villain, only a
silly bore. The heroine has no beauty, nor does she topple into sonnets
nor snatch a pencil to sketch the scene, for we are told that she has
no accomplishments. Yet she goes through palpitating adventures mostly
modelled on Mrs. Radcliffe's incidents. She is hampered in not being
supplied with a lover who is the unrecognized heir to vast estates,
since all the young men in the county are properly provided with
parents.
The delicious persiflage in which Jane Austen hits off the fiction of
the day may be illustrated by a bit of conversation between two young
girls.
"My dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all
the morning? Have you gone on with _Udolpho_?"
"Yes; I have been reading it ever since I woke, and I have got to
the black veil."
"Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh, I would not tell you what is
behind that black veil for the world! Are you not wild to know?"
"Oh, yes, quite! What can it be? But do not tell me--I would not be
told on any account. I know it must be a skeleton; I am sure it is
Laurentina's skeleton. Oh, I am delighted with the book! I should
like to spend my whole life reading it, I assure you. If it had not
been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for the world."
"Dear creature! How much obliged I am to you; and when you have
finished _Udolpho_, we will read _The Italian_ together; and I have
made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you."
"Have you, indeed? How glad I am! What are they all?"
"I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my
pocket-book: _Castle of Wolfenbach_, _Clermont_, _Mysterious
Warnings_, _Necromancer of the Black Forest_, _Midnight Bell,
Orphan of the Rhine_, and _Horrid Mysteries_. These will last us
some time."
"Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid? Are you sure they are
all horrid?"
"Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss
Andrews--a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the
world--has read every one of them!"
Mr. George Saintsbury[37] expresses himself as sceptical of this list
as a catalogue of actual romances, stating that he has never read one
of them and should like some other authority than Miss Andrews for
their existence. He is mistaken in his doubt, however, since during
the progress of this investigation four out of the eight have been
identified as to authorship, and doubtless the others are lurking in
some antique library. _Clermont_ is by Maria Regina Roche; _Mysterious
Warnings_ by Mrs. Parsons, in London, 1796; _Midnight Bell_ by Francis
Latham; and _Horrid Mysteries_ by Marquis Grosse, London, 1796.
[37] In his introduction to his pocket volume of _Tales of
Mystery_.
Jane Austen's stupid bore, John Thorpe, and Mr. Tilney, the impeccable,
pedantic hero, add their comment to Gothic fiction, one saying with a
yawn that there hasn't been a decent novel since _Tom Jones_, except
_The Monk_, and the other that he read _Udolpho_ in two days with his
hair standing on end all the time.
But the real cleverness of the work consists in the burlesque of Gothic
experiences that Catherine, because of the excited condition of her
mind induced by excess of romantic fiction, goes through with on her
visit to Northanger Abbey. She explores secret wings in a search for
horrors, only to find sunny rooms, with no imprisoned wife, not a
single maniac, and never skeleton of tortured nun. Mr. Tilney's ironic
jests satirize all the elements of Gothic romance. Opening a black
chest at midnight, she finds a yellowed manuscript, but just as she is
about to read it her candle flickers out. In the morning sunshine she
finds that it is an old laundry list. The only result of her suspicious
explorings is that she is caught in such prowlings by the young man
whose esteem she wishes to win. He sarcastically assures her that his
father is not a wife-murderer, that his mother is not immured in a
dungeon, but died of a bilious attack. These delicately tipped shafts
of ridicule riddle the armor of medievalism and give it at the same
time a permanency of interest because of Jane Austen's treatment of
it. The Gothic novel will be remembered, if for nothing else, for her
parody of it.
But Miss Austen is not the only satirist of the _genre_. In _The
Heroine_, Eaton Stannard Barrett gives an amusing burlesque of it.
It is interesting to note in this connection that while _Northanger
Abbey_ was written and sold in 1797 it was not published till 1818, and
Barrett's book, while written later, was published in 1813.
In the introduction, an epistle, supposed to be endited by one
Cherubina, says:
MOON, May 1, 1813.
Know that the moment that a mortal manuscript is written in a
legible hand and the word End or Finis attached thereto, whatever
characters happen to be sketched therein acquire the quality
of creating a soul or spirit which takes flight and ascends
immediately through the regions of the air till it arrives at the
moon, where it is embodied and becomes a living creature, the
precise counterpart of the literary prototype.
Know farther that all the towns, villages, rivers, hills, and
valleys of the moon also owe their origin to the descriptions which
writers give of the landscapes of the earth.
By means of a book, _The Heroine_, I became a living inhabitant
of the moon. I met with the Radclyffian and Rochian heroines, and
others, but they tossed their heads and told me pertly that I was a
slur on the sisterhood, and some went so far as to say that I had a
design on their lives.
Cherry, an unsophisticated country girl, becomes Cherubina after
reading romantic tales. She decides that she is an heiress kept in
unwarranted seclusion, and tells her father that he cannot possibly be
her father since he is "a fat, funny farmer." She rummages in his desk
for private papers, discovering a torn scrap that she interprets to her
desires. She flies, leaving a note to tell the fleshy agriculturist
that she is gone "to wander over the convex earth in search of her
parents," with what comic experiences one may imagine. There is
much discussion of the Gothic heroine, particularly those from Mrs.
Radcliffe's and Regina Maria Roche's pages. The girl sprinkles her
letters with verse. She passes through storms, explores deserted
houses, and comes to what she thinks is her ancestral castle in London,
but is told that it is Covent Garden Theatre. She decides that she is
Nell Gwynne's niece and goes to that amiable person to demand all her
property. She pokes around in the cellar to find her captive mother,
and discovers an enormously fat woman playing with frogs, who drunkenly
insists that she is her mother. Leaving that place in disgust she takes
possession of somebody else's castle and orders it furnished in Gothic
style, according to romance. She has the fat farmer shut up in the
madhouse.
The book is very amusing, and a more pronounced parody on Gothicism
than _Northanger Abbey_ because the whole story turns round that
theme,--but, of course, it is not of so great literary value. It seems
strange, however, that it is so little known. It burlesques every
feature of terror fiction, the high-flown language, the excited oaths,
the feudal furniture, the medieval architecture, the Gothic weather,
the supernatural tempers, the spectral apparitions--one of which is
so muscular that he struggles with the heroine as she locks him in a
closet, after throwing rapee into his face, which makes him sputter in
a mortal fashion. Cherubina finds a blade bone of mutton in some Gothic
garbage and takes it for a bone of an ancestor. Radcliffian adjectives
reel across the pages and the whole plays up in a delightful parody the
ludicrous weaknesses and excesses of the terror fiction.
Likewise the Anti-Jacobin parodies the Gothic ghost and there is
considerable satire directed at the whole Gothic _genre_ in Thomas Love
Peacock's novel _Nightmare Abbey_.
In general, Gothicism had a tonic effect on English literature, and
influenced the continental fiction to no small degree. By giving an
interest and excitement gained from ghostly themes to fiction, the
terror writers made romance popular as it had never been before and
immensely extended the range of its readers. The novel has never lost
the hold on popular fancy that the Gothic ghost gave to it. This
interest has increased through the various aspects of Romanticism
since then and in every period has found some form of supernaturalism
on which to feed. True, the machinery of Gothicism creaks audibly
at times, some of the specters move too mechanically, and there
is a general air of unreality that detracts from the effect. The
supernaturalism often lacks the naturalness which is necessary. Yet
it is not fair to apply to these early efforts the same standards
by which we judge the novels of to-day. While their range is narrow
they do achieve certain impressive effects. Though the class became
conventionalized to an absurd degree and the later examples are
laughable, while a host of imitations made the type ridiculous, the
Gothic novel has an undeniable force.
Besides the bringing of supernaturalism definitely into fiction, which
is a distinct gain, we find other benefits as well. In Gothicism,
if we examine closely, we find the beginnings of many forms of
supernaturalism that are crude here, but that are to develop into
special power in later novels and short stories. The terror novel
excites our ridicule in some respects, yet, like other things that
arouse a certain measure of laughter, it has great value. It seems a
far cry from the perambulating statue in _Otranto_ to Lord Dunsany's
jade gods that move with measured, stony steps to wreak a terrible
vengeance on mortals who have defied them, but the connection may be
clearly enough seen. The dreadful experiments by which Frankenstein's
monster is created are close akin to the revolting vivisections of
Wells's Dr. Moreau, or the operations described by Arthur Machen
whereby human beings lose their souls and become diabolized, given
over utterly to unspeakable evil. The psychic elements in _Zofloya_
are crudely conceived, yet suggestive of the psychic horrors of the
work of Blackwood, Barry Pain, and Theodore Dreiser, for example. The
animal supernaturalism only lightly touched on in Gothic novels is to
be elaborated in the stories of ghostly beasts like those by Edith
Wharton, Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, and others. In fact, the greater
number of the forms of the supernatural found in later fiction and
the drama are discoverable, in germ at least, in Gothic romance. The
work of this period gave a tremendous impetus to the uncanny elements
of romanticism and the effect has been seen in the fiction and drama
and poetry since that time. Its influence on the drama of its day
may be seen in Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ and Lewis's _Castle
Specter_. Thomas Lovell Beddoe's extraordinary tragedy, _Death's Jest
Book_, while largely Elizabethan in materials and method, is closely
related to the Gothic as well. It would be impossible to understand or
appreciate the supernatural in the nineteenth-century literature and
that of our own day without a knowledge of the Gothic to which most of
it goes back. Like most beginnings, Gothicism is crude in its earlier
forms, and conventional in the flood of imitations that followed the
successful attempts. But it is really vital and most of the ghostly
fiction since that time has lineally descended from it rather than from
the supernaturalism of the epic or of the drama.
CHAPTER II
Later Influences
The Gothic period marked a change in the vehicle of supernaturalism. In
ancient times the ghostly had been expressed in the epic or the drama,
in medievalism in the romances, metrical and prose, as in Elizabethan
literature the drama was the specific form. But Gothicism brought it
over frankly into the novel, which was a new thing. That is noteworthy,
since supernaturalism seems more closely related to poetry than to
prose; and as the early dramas were for the most part poetic, it did
not require such a stretch of the imagination to give credence to
the unearthly. The ballad, the epic, the drama, had made the ghostly
seem credible. But prose fiction is so much more materialistic that
at first thought supernaturalism seems antagonistic to it. That this
is not really the case is evidenced from the fact that fiction since
the terror times has retained the elements of awe then introduced, has
developed, and has greatly added to them.
With the dying out of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothic
novel and the turning of Romanticism into various new channels, we
might expect to see the disappearance of the ghostly element, since
it had been overworked in terrorism. It is true that the prevailing
type of fiction for the succeeding period was realism, but with a
large admixture of the supernormal or supernatural. The supernatural
machinery had become so well established in prose fiction that even
realists were moved by it, some using the motifs with bantering
apology--even Dickens and Thackeray, some with rationalistic
explanation, but practically all using it. Man must and will have the
supernatural in his fiction. The very elements that one might suppose
would counteract it,--modern thought, invention, science,--serve as
feeders to its force. In the inexplicable alchemy of literature almost
everything turns to the unearthly in some form or other.
We have seen the various sources from which the Gothic novel drew
its plots, its motifs for ghostly effect. The supernatural fiction
following it still had the same sources on which to draw, and in
addition had various other influences and veins of literary inspiration
not open to Gothicism. Modern science, with the new miracles of its
laboratories, proved suggestive of countless plots; the new study of
folk-lore and the scholarly investigations in that field unearthed an
unguessed wealth of supernatural material; Psychical Research societies
with their patient and sympathetic records of the forces of the unseen;
modern Spiritualism with its attempts to link this world to the next;
the wizardry of dreams studied scientifically,--all suggested new
themes, novel complications, hitherto unknown elements continuing the
supernatural in fiction.
With the extension of general reading, and the greater range of
translations from other languages, the writers of England and America
were affected by new influences with respect to their use of the
supernatural. Their work became less insular, wider in its range of
subject-matter and of technical methods, and in our fiction we find the
effect of certain definite outside forces.
The overlapping influences of the Romantic movement in England and
America, France and Germany, form an interesting but intricate study.
It is difficult to point out marked points of contact, though the
general effect may be evident, for literary influences are usually very
elusive. It is easy to cry, "Lo, here! lo, there!" with reference to
the effect of certain writers on their contemporaries or successors,
but it is not always easy to put the finger on anything very tangible.
And even so, that would not explain literature. If one could point with
absolute certainty to the source for every one of Shakespeare's plots,
would that explain his art? Poe wrote an elaborate essay to analyze
his processes of composition for _The Raven_, but the poem remains as
enigmatic as ever.
As German Romanticism had been considerably affected by the Gothic
novel in England, it in turn showed an influence on later English and
American ghostly fiction. Scott was much interested in the German
literature treating of evil magic, apparitions, castles in ruins, and
so forth, and one critic says of him that his dealings with subjects
of this kind are midway between Meinhold and Tieck. He was fascinated
with the German ballads of the supernatural, especially Burger's
ghostly _Lenore_, which he translated among others. De Quincey likewise
was a student of German literature, though he was not so accurate in
his scholarship as Scott. His horror tale, _The Avengers_, as well as
_Klosterheim_, has a German setting and tone.
There has been some discussion over the question of Hawthorne's
relation to German Romanticism. Poe made the charge that Hawthorne drew
his ideas and style from Ludwig Tieck, saying in a criticism:
The fact is, he is not original in any sense. Those who speak of
him as original mean nothing more than that he differs in his
manner or tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of
their acquaintance--their acquaintance not extending to the German
Tieck, whose manner in _some_ of his works is absolutely identical
with that _habitual_ to Hawthorne.... The critic (unacquainted with
Tieck) who reads a single tale by Hawthorne may be justified in
thinking him original.
Various critics have discussed this matter with no very definite
conclusions. It should be remembered that Poe was a famous
plagiary-hunter, hence his comments may be discounted. Yet Poe knew
German, it is thought, and in his writings often referred to German
literature, while Hawthorne, according to his journal, read it with
difficulty and spoke of his struggles with a volume of Tieck.
Hawthorne and Tieck do show certain similarities, as in the use of
the dream element, the employment of the allegory as a medium for
teaching moral truths, and the choice of the legend as a literary
form. Both use somewhat the same dreamy supernaturalism, yet in style
as in subject-matter Hawthorne is much the superior and improved
whatever he may have borrowed from Tieck. Hawthorne's vague mystery,
cloudy symbolism, and deep spiritualism are individual in their effect
and give to his supernaturalism an unearthly charm scarcely found
elsewhere. Hawthorne's theme in _The Marble Faun_, of the attaining to
a soul by human suffering, is akin to the idea in Fouqué's _Undine_.
There the supernaturalism is franker, while that of Hawthorne's novel
is more evasive and delicate, yet the same suggestion is present in
each case. Lowell in his _Fable for Critics_ speaks of Hawthorne as "a
John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck."
There are still more striking similarities to be pointed out between
the work of Poe and that of E. T. A. Hoffmann. As Hawthorne was, to a
slight extent, at least, affected by German legends and wonder tales,
Poe was influenced by Hoffmann's horror stories. Poe has been called
a Germanic dreamer, and various German and English critics mention
the debt that he owes to Hoffmann. Mr. Palmer Cobb[38] brings out some
interesting facts in connection with the two romanticists. He says:
The verification of Poe's indebtedness to German is to be sought in
the similarity of the treatment of the same motives in the work of
both authors. The most convincing evidence is furnished by the way
in which Poe has combined the themes of mesmerism, metempsychosis,
dual existence, the dream element, and so forth, in exact agreement
with the grouping employed by Hoffmann. Notable examples of this
are the employment of the idea of double existence in conjunction
with the struggle of good and evil forces in the soul of the
individual, and the combination of mesmerism and metempsychosis as
leading motives in one and the same story.
[38] _The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on Edgar Allan Poe._
Mr. Cobb points out in detail the similarities between Poe's stories
of dual personality and the German use of the theme as found in
Fouqué, Novalis, and Hoffmann, particularly the last. Hoffmann's
exaggerated use of this idea is to be explained on the ground that
he was obsessed by the thought that his double was haunting him,
and he, like Maupassant under similar conditions of mind, wrote of
supernaturalism associated with madness. Hoffmann uses the theme of
double personality.[39] In Poe's _William Wilson_ the other self is the
embodiment of good, a sort of incarnate conscience, as in Stevenson's
Markheim, while Hoffmann's _Elixiere_ represents the evil. Poe has here
reversed the idea. In Hoffmann's _Magnetiseur_ we find the treatment
of hypnotism and metempsychosis and the dream-supernaturalism in the
same combination that Poe uses.[40] Hoffmann[41] and Poe[42] relate the
story of a supernatural portrait, where the wife-model dies as the
sacrifice to the painting.
[39] In the _Doppelgänger_, _Kater Murr_, and _Elixiere des
Teufels_.
[40] In his _Tale of the Ragged Mountains_.
[41] In _Die Jesuit-kirche in G._
[42] In _The Oval Portrait_.
Both Hoffmann and Poe use the grotesquerie of supernaturalism, the
fantastic element of horror that adds to the effect of the ghostly.
Even the generic titles are almost identical.[43] But in spite of
these similarities in theme and in grouping, there is no basis for a
charge that Poe owes a stylistic debt to Hoffmann. In his manner he
is original and individual. He uses his themes with much greater art,
with more dramatic and powerful effect than his German contemporary.
Though he employs fewer of the crude machineries of the supernatural,
his ghostly tales are more unearthly than Hoffmann's. His horrors have
a more awful effect because he is an incomparably greater artist. He
knows the economy of thrills as few have done. His is the genius of
compression, of suggestion. His dream elements, for instance, though
Hoffmann uses the dream to as great extent as Poe--are more poignant,
more unbearable.
[43] Compare Poe's definition of his type as phantasy pieces
with Hoffmann's title Phantasie Stücke.
The cult of horror in German literature, as evidenced in the work of
Hoffmann, Kleist, Tieck, Arnim, Fouqué, Chamisso, had an influence
on English and American literature of supernaturalism in general.
The grotesque diablerie, the use of dream elements, magnetism,
metempsychosis, ghosts, the elixir of life--which theme appears to have
a literary elixir of life--are reflected to a certain degree in the
English ghostly tales of the generation following the Gothic romance.
A French influence is likewise manifest in the later English fiction.
The Gothic novel had made itself felt in France as well as in
Germany, a proof of which is the fact that Balzac was so impressed by
Maturin's novel that he wrote a sequel to it.[44] The interrelations
of the English, French, and German supernatural literature are
nowhere better illustrated than in the work of Balzac. He admits
Hoffmann's inspiration of his _Elixir of Life_, that horrible story
of reanimation, where the head is restored to life and youth but the
body remains that of an old man, dead and decaying, from which the
head tears itself loose in the church and bites the abbot to the
brain, shrieking out, "Idiot, tell me now if there is a God!" Balzac's
influence over Bulwer-Lytton is seen in such stories as _The Haunters
and the Haunted_, _or the House and the Brain_, and _A Strange Story_,
in each of which the theme of supernaturally continued life is used.
Balzac's _Magic Skin_ is a symbolic story of supernaturalism that
suggests Hawthorne's allegoric symbolism and may have influenced it
in part. It is a new application of the old theme, used often in
the drama as in Gothic romance, of the pledge of a soul for earthly
gratification. A magic skin gives the man his heart's desires, yet
each granted wish makes the talisman shrink perceptibly, with an
inexorable decrease. This theme, symbolic of the truth of life, is such
a spiritual idea used allegorically as Hawthorne chose frequently and
doubtless influenced Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_. Balzac's
_Unknown Masterpiece_ is another example of his supernaturalism that
has had its suggestive effect on English ghostly fictions.
[44] _Melmoth Réconcilié._
Guy de Maupassant has doubtless influenced English tales of horror
more than any foreign writer since Hoffmann. As a stylist he
exercised a definite and strong influence over the short-story form,
condensing it, making it more economical, more like a fatal bullet
that goes straight to the mark, and putting into a few hundred words
a story of supernatural horror relentless in its effect. O. Henry's
delicately perfect ghost story, _The Furnished Room_, is reminiscent
of Maupassant's technique as seen in _The Ghost_. And surely F. Marion
Crawford's _Screaming Skull_ and Ambrose Bierce's _Middle Toe of the
Right Foot_ are from the same body as Maupassant's _Hand_. What a
terrible corpus it must be! There is the same gruesome mystery, the
same implacable horror in each story of a mutilated ghost.
Maupassant's stories of madness, akin to Poe's analyses of mental
decay, of the slow corruption of the brain, are among his most dreadful
triumphs of style, and have influenced various English stories of
insanity. In Maupassant's own tottering reason we find the tragic
explanation of his constant return to this type of story. Such tales as
_Mad_, where a husband goes insane from doubt of his wife; _Madness_,
where a man has a weird power over human beings, animals, and even
inanimate objects, making them do his will, so that he is terrified
of his own self, of what his horrible hands may do mechanically;
_Cocotte_, where the drowned dog, following its master a hundred miles
down the river, drives him insane; _The Tress_, a curdling story of the
relation between insanity and the supernatural, so that one is unable
to say which is cause and which effect, illustrate Maupassant's unusual
association between madness and uncanny fiction. Who but Maupassant
could make a story of ghastly hideousness out of a parrot that swears?
As Maupassant was influenced by Poe, in both subject matter and
technique, so he has affected the English writers since his time in
both plot material and treatment of the supernatural. And as his _La
Horla_ strongly reflects FitzJames O'Brien's _What Was It? A Mystery_
that anticipated it by a number of years, so it left its inevitable
impress on Bierce's _The Damned Thing_ and succeeding stories of
supernatural invisibility. A recent story by Katherine Fullerton
Gerould, _Louquier's Third Act_, seems clearly to indicate the De
Maupassant influence, reflecting the method and motifs of _La Horla_
and _The Coward_. Maupassant's tales have a peculiar horror possessed
by few, partly because of his undoubted genius and partly the result of
his increasing madness.
Other French writers have also influenced the uncanny story in English.
Théophile Gautier has undoubtedly inspired various tales, such as _The
Mummy's Foot_, by Jessie Adelaide Weston, which is the match, though
not in beauty or form, to his little masterpiece of that title. A.
Conan Doyle's _Lot No. 249_, a horrible story of a reanimated mummy,
bears an unquestionable resemblance to Gautier's _The Romance of
the Mummy_ as well as _The Mummy's Foot_, though Poe's _A Word with
a Mummy_, a fantastic story emphasizing the science of miraculous
embalming of living persons so that they would wake to life after
thousands of years, preceded it. Something of the same theme is also
used by F. Marion Crawford,[45] where the bodies in the old studio
awake to menacing life. This motif illustrates the prevalence of the
Oriental material in recent English fiction. Gautier's _La Morte
Amoureuse_ has exercised suggestive power over later tales, such as
Crawford's vampire story,[46] though it is significant to recall that
Poe's _Berenice_ preceded Gautier's story by a year, and the latter
must have known Poe's work.
[45] In _Khaled_.
[46] _For the Blood Is the Life._
The fiction of Erckmann-Chatrian appears to have suggested various
English stories. _The Owl's Ear_ obviously inspired another,[47]
both being records of supernatural acoustics the latter dealing with
spiritual sounds. _The Invisible Eye_, a fearsome story of hypnotism,
has an evident parental claim on Algernon Blackwood's story,[48] though
the latter is psychically more gruesome. _The Waters of Death_, an
account of a loathsome, enchanted crab, suggests H. G. Wells's story of
the plant vampire.[49]
[47] _The Spider's Eye_, by Lucretia P. Hale.
[48] _With Intent to Steal._
[49] _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid._
Likewise Anatole France's _Putois_, the narrative of the man who
came to have an actual existence because someone spoke of him as an
imaginary person, is associated with the drolleries of supernaturalism,
such as are used by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in the story of an imagined
person, _Miss Mehitabel's Son_, and by Frank R. Stockton.[50] Anatole
France has several delicately wrought idylls of the supernatural, as
_The Mass of Shadows_, where the ghosts of those who have sinned for
love may meet once a year to be reunited with their loved ones, and
in the church, with clasped hands, celebrate the spectral mass, or
such tender miracles as _The Juggler of Notre Dame_, where the juggler
throws his balls before the altar as an act of worship and is rewarded
by a sight of the Virgin, or _Scholasticus_, a symbolic story much
like one written years earlier by Thomas Bailey Aldrich,[51] where a
plant miraculously springs from the heart of a dead woman. _Amycus and
Celestine_, the story of the faun and the hermit, of whom he tells
us that "the hermit is a faun borne down by the years" is suggestive
of the wonderful little stories of Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany, while
startlingly original in most respects, seems a bit influenced by
Anatole France. His _When the Gods Slept_ seems reminiscent of _The
Isle of the Penguins_. In France's satire the gods change penguins into
men whose souls will be lost, because the priest has baptized them by
mistake, while in Dunsany's story the baboons pray to the Yogis, who
promise to make them men in return for their devotion.
And the baboons arose from worshipping, smoother about the face
and a little shorter in the arms, and went away and hid themselves
in clothing and herded with men. And men could not discern what
they were for their bodies were bodies of men though their souls
were still the souls of beasts and the worship went to the Yogis,
spirits of ill.
[50] In _The Transferred Ghost_ and _The Spectral Mortgage_.
[51] _Père Antoine's Date Palm._
Maeterlinck, influenced by his fellow-Belgian, Charles Van Lerberghe,
whose _Flaireurs_ appeared before Maeterlinck's plays of the uncanny
and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness, has strongly affected
ghostly literature since his rise to recognition. In his plays we
find an atmospheric supernaturalism. The settings are of earth, yet
with an unearthly strangeness, with no impression of realism, of the
familiar, the known. In Maeterlinck's plays we never breathe the air of
actuality, never feel the footing of solid earth, as we always do in
Shakespeare, even in the presence of ghosts or witches. Shakespeare's
visitants are ghostly enough, certainly, but the scenes in which they
appear are real, are normal, while in the Belgian's work there is
a fluidic supernaturalism that transforms everything to unreality.
We feel the grip of fate, as in the ancient Greek tragedies, the
inescapable calamity that approaches with swift, silent pace. Yet
Maeterlinck's is essentially static drama. There is very little action,
among the human beings, at least, for Fate is the active agent. In
_The Blind_, _The Intruder_, and _Interior_ the elements are much the
same, the effects wrought out with the same unearthly manner. But in
_Joyzelle_, which shows a certain similarity to _Midsummer Night's
Dream_ and _The Tempest_, we have a different type of supernaturalism,
the use of enchantment, of fairy magic that comes to a close happily.
In the dream-drama[52] there is a mixture of realism and poetic
symbolism, the use of the dream as a vehicle for the supernormal,
and many aspects of the weird combined in a fairy play of exquisite
symbolism.
[52] _The Blue Bird._
The influence of Maeterlinck is apparent in the work of English
writers, particularly of the Celtic school. W. B. Yeats's fairy play,
_The Land of Heart's Desire_, with its pathetic beauty, _Countess
Cathleen_, his tragedy of the countess who sells her soul to the devil
that her people may be freed from his power, as well as his stories,
show the traces of Maeterlinck's methods. William Sharp, in his
sketches and his brief plays in the volume called _Vistas_, reflects
the Belgian's technique slightly, though with his own individual
power. Sharp's other literary self, Fiona McLeod, likewise shows
his influence, as does Synge in his _Riders to the Sea_, and Gordon
Bottomley in his _Crier by Night_, that eerie tragedy of an unseen
power. Maeterlinck's supernaturalism seems to suggest the poetry of
Coleridge, with its elusive, intangible ghostliness. The effect of
naïveté observable in Coleridge's work is in Maeterlinck produced
by a child-like simplicity of style, a monosyllabic dialogue, and a
monotonous, unreasoning repetition that is at once real and unreal.
The dramatist has brought over from the poet the same suggestive use
of portents and symbols for prefiguring death or disaster that lurks
just outside. The ghostliness is subtle, rather than evident, the drama
static rather than dynamic.
Ibsen, also, has strongly influenced the supernatural in both our
drama and our fiction. His own work has a certain kinship with that of
Hawthorne, showing a like symbolism and mysticism, a like transfusion
of the unreal with the natural, so that one scarcely knows just how
far he means our acceptance of the unearthly to extend. He leaves it
in some cases an open question, while in others he frankly introduces
the supernatural. The child's vision of the dead heroes riding to
Valhalla, with his own mother who has killed herself, leading them,[53]
the ghost that tries to make an unholy pact with the king,[54] the
apparition and the supernatural voice crying out "He is the God of
Love!"[55] illustrate Ibsen's earlier methods. The curious, almost
inexplicable _Peer Gynt_, with its mixture of folk-lore and symbolism,
its ironic laughter and satiric seriousness, seems to have had a
suggestive influence on other works, such as _Countess Eve_,[56] where
the personification of temptation in the form of committed sin reflects
Ibsen's idea of Peer Gynt's imaginary children. The uncanny power of
unspoken thought, the haunting force of ideas rather than the crude
visible phantasms of the dead, as in the telepathy, or hypnotism,
or what you will, in _The Master Builder_, the evasive, intangible
haunting of the living by the dead as in _Rosmersholm_, the strange
powers at work as in _The Lady from the Sea_, have had effect on the
numerous psychic dramas and stories in English. The symbolic mysticism
in _Emperor and Galilean_, showing the spirits of Cain and of Judas,
with their sad ignorance of life's riddles, the vision of Christ in
person, with His unceasing power over men's souls, foreshadowed the
plays and stories bringing in the personality of Christ, as _The
Servant in the House_, and _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_.
[53] In _The Vikings of Helgeland_.
[54] In _The Pretenders_.
[55] In _Brand_.
[56] By J. H. Shorthouse.
Modern Italian literature, as represented by Fogazzaro and D'Annunzio,
introduces the ghostly in fiction and in the drama, and has had its
effect on our literature. Fogazzaro's novels are essentially realistic
in pattern, yet he uses the supernatural in them, as in miraculous
visions,[57] and metempsychosis and madness associated with the
supernatural.[58] D'Annunzio's handling of the unearthly is more
repulsive, more psychically gruesome, as the malignant power of the
ancient curse in _La Città Morta_, where the undying evil in an old
tomb causes such revolting horror in the action of the play. This has
a counterpart in a story,[59] by Josephine Daskam Bacon, where a
packet of letters from two evil lovers lie buried in a hearth and by
their subtle influence corrupt the soul of every woman who occupies the
room. D'Annunzio uses the witch motive powerfully,[60] madness that
borders on the supernatural,[61] and the idea of evil magic exorcised
by melting an image of wax to cause an enemy's death[62] which suggests
Rossetti's poem using that incident, the unforgettable _Sister Helen_.
[57] In _The Sinner_ and _The Saint_.
[58] In _The Woman_.
[59] _The Unburied._
[60] In _The Daughter of Jorio_.
[61] In _Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera_.
[62] In _Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_.
Likewise a new force in the work of the Russian school has affected our
fiction of the ghostly in recent years. Russian literature is a new
field of thought for English people, since it is only of late years
that translations have been easily accessible, and, because of the
extreme difficulty of the language, very few outsiders read Russian.
As German Romanticism began to have its definite power over English
supernatural fiction in the early part of the nineteenth century by the
extension of interest in and study of German literature, and the more
frequent translation of German works, so in this generation Russian
literature has been introduced to English people and is having its
influence.
A primitive, still savage race like the Russians naturally shows a
special fondness for the supernatural. Despite the fact that literature
is written for the higher classes, a large peasant body, illiterate
and superstitious, will influence the national fiction. In the Russian
works best known to us there is a large element of the uncanny, of a
type in some respects different from that of any other country. Like
the Russian national character, it is harsh, brutal, violent, yet
sentimental. One singular thing to be noted about it is the peculiar
combination of supernaturalism with absolute realism. The revolting
yet dreadfully effective realism of the Russian literature is never
more impressive than in its union with ghostly horror, which makes the
impossible appear indubitable. In Gogol's _The Cloak_, for instance,
the fidelity to homely details of life, the descriptions of pinching
poverty, of tragic hopes that waited so long for fulfillment, are
painful in themselves and give verisimilitude to the element of the
unearthly that follows. You feel that a poor Russian clerk who had
stinted himself from necessity all his life _would_ come back from the
dead to claim his stolen property and demand redress. The supernatural
gains a new power, a more tremendous thrill when set off against the
every-dayness of sordid life. We find something of the same effect in
the stories of Algernon Blackwood and Ambrose Bierce and F. Marion
Crawford.
Tolstoi's symbolic story of _Ivan the Fool_ is an impressive utterance
of his views of life, expressed by the allegory of man's folly and
wisdom and the schemes of devils.
Turgeniev's pronounced strain of the unearthly has had its influence
on English fiction. He uses the dream elements to a marked degree, as
in _The Song of Love Triumphant_, a story of Oriental magic employed
through dreams and music, and _The Dream_, an account of a son's
revelatory visions of his unknown father. The dream element has
been used considerably in our late fiction, some of which seems to
reflect Turgeniev. Another motive that he uses effectively is that
of suggested vampirism,[63] and of psychical vampirism,[64] where a
young man is "set upon" by the spirit of a dead woman he has scarcely
known, till he dies under the torment. This seems to have affected
such stories as that of psychical vampirism in _The Vampire_, by
Reginald Hodder. We find in much of Turgeniev's prose the symbolic,
mystical supernaturalism besides his use of dreams, visions, and a
distinct Oriental element. In _Knock! Knock! Knock!_ the treatment
of whose spiritualism reminds one somewhat of Browning's,[65] in
its initial skepticism and later hesitation, the final effect of
which is to impress one with a sense of supernaturalism working
extraordinarily through natural means, so that it is more powerful than
the mere conventional ghostly could be, we see what may have been the
inspiration for certain spiritualistic novels and stories in English.
The same tone is felt in Hamlin Garland's treatment of the subject,
for instance. The mystical romanticism of Turgeniev is less brutally
Russian than that of most of his compeers.
[63] As in _Phantoms_.
[64] As in _Clara Militch_.
[65] In _Sludge, the Medium_.
Like Maupassant and Hoffman and Poe, the Russian writers use to
a considerable extent the association between insanity and the
supernatural to heighten the effect of both. They may have been
influenced in this by Poe's studies of madness, as by Maupassant's,
and they appear to have an influence over certain present-day writers.
It would be difficult to say which is the stronger influence in the
treatment of abnormal persons, Maupassant or the Russian writers.
One wonders what type of mania obsesses certain of the Russian
fictionists of to-day, for surely they cannot be normal persons.
Examples of such fiction are: Alexander Pushkin's story of mocking
madness resulting from a passion for cards, whose ghostly motif has a
sardonic diabolism,[66] Tchekhoff's story of abnormal horror,[67] a
racking account of insanity,[68] and _The Black Monk_, a weird story of
insanity brought on by the vision of a supernatural being, a replicated
mirage of a black monk a thousand years old. But it is in the work of
Leonidas Andreyev that we get the ultimate anguish of madness. _The
Red Laugh_, an analysis of the madness of war, of the insanity of
nations as of individuals, seems to envelop the world in a sheet of
flame. Its horrors go beyond words and the brain reels in reading.
There are in English a number of stories of insanity associated with
the supernatural which may have been influenced by the Russian method,
though Ambrose Bierce's studies in the abnormality of soldier life
preceded Andreyev by years. F. Marion Crawford's _The Dead Smile_ and
various stories of Arthur Machen have a Russian horror, and other
instances might be mentioned.
[66] _The Queen of Spades._
[67] _Sleepyhead._
[68] _Ward No. 6._
The Russian fiction with its impersonality of pessimism, its racial
gloom, its terrible sordid realism forming a basis for awesome
supernaturalism, is of a type foreign to our thought, yet, as is not
infrequently the case, the radically different has a strange appeal,
and the effect of it on our stories of horror is undoubted. English and
American readers are greatly interested in Russian literature just now
and find a peculiar relish in its terrors, though the harsher elements
are somewhat softened in transference to our language.
Other fields of thought have been opened to us within this generation
by the widening of our knowledge of the literature of other European
countries. Books are much more freely translated now than formerly
and no person need be ignorant of the fiction of other lands. From
the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Chinese, Japanese, and other tongues
we are receiving stories of supernaturalism that give us new ideas,
new points of view. The greater ease of travel, the opportunity to
study once-distant lands and literatures have been reflected in our
fiction. Some one should write a monograph on the literary influence of
Cook's tours! Our later work has a strong touch of the Oriental,--not
an entirely new thing, since we find it in Beckford's _Vathek_ and
the pre-Gothic tales of John Hawkesworth,--but more noticeable now.
Examples are Stevenson's _New Arabian Nights_, _Bottle Imp_, and
others, F. Marion Crawford's _Khaled_ and _Mr. Isaacs_, Blackwood's
stories of Elementals, George Meredith's fantasy, _The Shaving of
Shagpat_, though many others might be named. The Oriental fiction
permits the use of magic, sorcery, and various elements that seem out
of place in ordinary fiction. The popularity of Kipling's tales of
Indian native life and character illustrates our fondness for this
aspect of supernaturalism.
Apart from the foreign influences that affect it we notice a certain
change in the materials and methods of ghostly fiction in English. New
elements had entered into Gothic tales as an advance over the earlier
forms, yet conventions had grown up so that even such evasive and
elusive personalities as ghosts were hidebound by precedent. While
the decline of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothic novel in
no sense put an end to the supernatural in English fiction, it did
mark a difference in manner. The Gothic ghosts were more elementary
in their nature, more superficial, than those of later times. Life
was, in the days of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, more local because
of the limitations of travel and communication, it being considered
astounding in Gothic times that a ghost could travel a thousand miles
with ease while mortals moved snail-like. Scientific investigation was
crude compared with the present and had not greatly touched fiction.
Scientific folk-lore investigations were as unknown as societies of
psychical research, hence neither had aided in the writing of ghostly
fiction.
The mass of ghostly stuff which has appeared in English since the
Gothic period, and which will be classified and discussed under
different motifs in succeeding chapters, shows many of the same
characteristics of the earlier, yet exhibits also a decided development
over primitive, classical and Gothic forms. The modern supernaturalism
is more complex, more psychological than the terroristic, perhaps
because nowadays man is more intellectual, his thought-processes more
subtle. Humanity still wants ghosts, as ever, but they must be more
cleverly presented to be convincing. The ghostly thrill is as ardently
desired by the reading public, as eagerly striven for by the writers
as ever, though it is more difficult of achievement now than formerly.
Yet when it is attained it is more poignant and lasting in its effects
because more subtle in its art. The apparition that eludes analysis
haunts the memory more than do the comparatively simple forms of the
past. Compare, for instance, the spirits evoked by Henry James and
Katherine Fullerton Gerould with the crude clap-trap of cloistered
spooks and armored knights of Gothic times. How cheap and melodramatic
the earlier attempts seem!
The present-day ghost is at once less terrible and more terrible than
those of the past. There is not so much a sense of physical fear now,
as of psychic horror. The pallid specters that glide through antique
castles are ineffectual compared with the maleficent psychic invasions
of modernity. On the other hand, the recent ghostly story frequently
shows a strong sense of humor unknown in Gothicism, and only suggested
in earlier forms, as in the elder Pliny's statement that ghosts would
not visit a person afflicted with freckles, which shows at least a
germinal joviality in classical spooks.
One feature that distinguishes the uncanny tales of to-day from the
Gothic is their greater range of material. The early terror story had
its source in popular superstition, classical literature, medieval
legends, or the Elizabethan drama, while in the century that has
elapsed since the decay of the Gothic novel as such, new fields of
thought have been opened up, and new sources for ghostly plots have
been discovered which the writers of modern stories are quick to
utilize. Present-day science with its wonderful development has
provided countless plots for supernatural stories. Comparative study
of folk-lore, with the activities of the numerous associations, has
brought to light fascinating material. Modern Spiritualism, with its
seances, its mediumistic experiments, has inspired many novels and
stories. The Psychical Research Society, with branches in various parts
of the world and its earnest advocates and serious investigations, has
collected suggestive stuff for many ghostly stories. The different
sources for plot material and mechanics for awesome effect, added
to these from which the terror novel drew its inspiration, have
incalculably enriched the supernatural fiction and widened the limits
far beyond the restrictions of the conventionalized Gothic.
Science has furnished themes for many modern stories of the
supernatural. Modern science itself, under normal conditions, seems
like necromancer's magic, so its incursion into thrilling fiction
is but natural. Every aspect of research and discovery has had its
exponent in fictive form, and the skill with which the material is
handled constitutes one point of difference between the present ghostly
stories and the crude scientific supernaturalism of the early novels.
The influence of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and other scientists of the
last century did much to quicken fiction as well as thought, and the
effects can be traced in the work of various authors.
The widespread interest in folk-lore in recent years has had an
appreciable influence on the stories of the supernatural. While the
methods of investigation followed by the serious students of folk-lore
are scientific and the results are tabulated in an analytic rather than
a literary style, yet the effect is helpful to fiction. Comparative
studies in folk-lore, by the bringing together of a mass of material
from diverse sources, establishes the fact of the universal acceptance
of supernaturalism in some form. Ethnic superstitions vary, yet there
is enough similarity between the ideas held by tribes and races so
widely separated as to discredit any basis of imitation or conscious
influence between them, to be of great interest to scientists. No
tribe, however low in the social scale, has been found that has no
belief in powers beyond the mortal.
Folk-lore associations are multiplying and the students of literature
and anthropology are joining forces in the effort to discover and
classify the variant superstitions and legends of the past and of the
races and tribes still in their childhood. Such activities are bringing
to light a fascinating wealth of material from which the writers of
ghostly tales may find countless plots. Such studies show how close
akin the world is after all. A large number of books relating stories
of brownies, bogles, fairies, banshees, wraiths, hobgoblins, witches,
vampires, ghouls, and other superhuman personages have appeared. I
am not including in this list the fairy stories that are written for
juvenile consumption, but merely the folk-loristic or literary versions
for adults.
The most marked instance of the influence of folk-lore in supplying
subject matter for literature is shown in the recent Celtic revival.
The supernatural elements in the folk-tales of Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales have been widely used in fiction, poetry, and the drama.
In this connection one is reminded of Collins's _Ode on the Popular
Superstitions of the Highlands Considered as the Subject for Poetry_.
The Irish National School, with W. B. Yeats, John Synge, and Lady
Gregory as leaders, have made the folk-tales of Ireland live in
literature and the ghostly thrill of the old legends comes down to us
undiminished. Lord Dunsany's work is particularly brilliant, going back
to ancient times and re-creating the mythologic beings for us, making
us friendly with the gods, the centaurs, the giants, and divers other
long-forgotten characters. Kipling has made the lore of the Indian
towns and jungles live for us, as Joel Chandler Harris has immortalized
the legends of the southern negro. Thomas A. Janvier in his tales of
old Mexico calls back the ghosts of Spanish conquerors and Aztec men
and women, repeopling the ancient streets with courtly specters. The
fondness for folk-loristic fiction is one of the marked aspects of
Romanticism at the present time.
The activities of the Society for Psychical Research have had decided
effect in stimulating ghostly stories. When so many intelligent persons
turn their attention to finding and classifying supernatural phenomena
the currents of thought thus set up will naturally influence fiction.
Nowadays every interest known to man is reflected in literature. The
proceedings of the association have been so widely advertised and so
open to the public that persons who would not otherwise give thought
to the supernatural have considered the matter. Such thinkers as W. T.
Stead and Sir Oliver Lodge, to mention only two, would inevitably
influence others. In this connection it is interesting to note the
recent claims by Stead's daughter that her father has communicated
with the living, and Lodge's book, just published, _Raymond, or Life
and Death_, that gives proof of what he considers incontrovertible
messages from his son killed in battle. The collection of thousands of
affirmative answers to the question as to whether one had ever felt a
ghostly presence not to be explained on natural grounds brought out a
mass of material that might serve for plot-making. Haunted houses have
been catalogued and the census of specters taken.
The investigations in modern Spiritualism have done much to affect
ghostly literature. The terrors of the later apparitions are not
physical, but psychical, and probably the stories of the future will
be more and more allied to Spiritualism. Hamlin Garland, John Corbin,
William Dean Howells, Algernon Blackwood, Arnold Bennett, and others
have written novels and stories of this material, though scarcely the
fringe of the garment of possibilities has yet been touched. If one
but grant the hypothesis of Spiritualism, what vistas open up for the
novelist! What thrilling complications might come from the skillful
manipulation of astrals alone,--as aids in establishing alibis, for
instance! Even the limitations that at present bind ghost stories
would be abolished and the effects of the dramatic employment of
spiritualistic faith would be highly sensational. If the will be all
powerful, then not only tables but mountains may be moved. The laws
of physics would be as nothing in the presence of such powers. A
lovelorn youth bent on attaining the object of his desires could, by
merely willing it so, sink ocean liners, demolish skyscrapers, call
up tempests, and rival German secret agents in his havoc. Intensely
dramatic psychological material might be produced by the conflict
resulting from the double or multiple personalities in one's own
nature, according to spiritualistic ideas. There might be complicated
crossings in love, wherein one would be jealous of his alter ego, and
conflicting ambitions of exciting character. The struggle necessary for
the model story might be intensely dramatic though altogether internal,
between one's own selves. One finds himself so much more interesting in
the light of such research than one has ever dreamed. The distinctions
between materializations and astralizations, etherealizations and plain
apparitions might furnish good plot structure. The personality of the
"sensitives" alone would be fascinating material and the cosmic clashes
of will possible under these conceived conditions suggest thrilling
stories.
Dreams constitute another definite source for ghostly plots in modern
literature. While this was true to a certain extent in the Gothic
novel, it is still more so in later fiction. Lafcadio Hearn[69]
advances the theory that all the best plots for ghost stories in any
language come from dreams. He advises the person who would write
supernatural thrillers to study the phases of his own dream life.
It would appear that all one needs to do is to look into his own
nightmares and write. Hearn says: "All the great effects produced
by poets and story writers and even by religious teachers, in the
treatment of the supernatural fear or mystery, have been obtained
directly or indirectly from dreams." Though one may not literally
accept the whole of that statement, one must feel that the relation
between dreams and supernatural impressions is strikingly close. The
feeling of supernatural presence comes almost always at night when
one is or has been asleep. The guilty man, awaking from sleep, thinks
that he sees the specters of those he has wronged--because his dreams
have embodied them for him. The lover beholds the spirit of his dead
love, because in dreams his soul has gone in search of her. Very young
children are unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, as is
the case of savages of a low order, believing in the actuality of what
they experience in dreams. And who can say that our dream life is
altogether baseless and unreal?
[69] In his _Interpretations of Literature_.
The different nightmare sensations, acute and vivid as they are, can be
analyzed to find parallelisms between them and the ghostly plots. For
example, take the sensation, common in nightmares, of feeling yourself
falling from immeasurable height. The same thrill of suspense is
communicated by the climax in Lewis's and Mrs. Dacre's Gothic novels,
where the devil takes guilty mortals to the mountain top and hurls
them down, down. The horrible potentialities of shadows suggested
frequently in dreams is illustrated by Mary Wilkins Freeman's story
where the accusing spirit comes back as a haunting shadow on the wall,
rather than as an ordinary ghost, tormenting the living brother till
_his_ shadow also appears, a portent of his death.[70] The awful grip
of causeless horror, of nameless fear which assails one so often in
nightmares is represented in _The Red Room_,[71] where black Fear, the
Power of Darkness, haunts the room rather than any personal spirit. It
is disembodied horror itself. Wilkie Collins illustrates the presaging
vision of approaching disaster in _The Dream Woman_. The nightmare
horror of supernaturalism is nowhere better shown than in Maupassant's
_La Horla_ where the sleeper wakes with a sense of leaden weight upon
his breast, and knows that night after night some dreadful presence
is shut in with him, invisible yet crushing the life out of him and
driving him mad.
[70] _The Shadows on the Wall._
[71] By H. G. Wells.
The nightmare motifs are present to a remarkable degree in
Bulwer-Lytton's _The Haunted and the Haunters, or the House and
the Brain_. There we have the gigantism of the menacing Thing, the
supernatural power given to inanimate objects, the ghostly chill, the
darkness, and the intolerable oppression of a nameless evil thing
beside one. Vampirism might easily be an outcome of dreams, since
based on a physical sensation of pricking at the throat, combined with
debility caused by weakness, which could be attributed to loss of blood
from the ravages of vampires. F. Marion Crawford's story, _For the
Blood Is the Life_, is more closely related to dreams than most of the
type, though probably Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ is the most horrible.
The curious side of supernaturalism as related to dreams is illustrated
by _The Dream Gown of the Japanese Ambassador_,[72] and the more
beautiful by Simeon Solomon's _Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_. Mary
Wilkins Freeman has a remarkable short story, _The Hall Bedroom_,
which is one of the best illustrations of the use of dream imagery
and impressions. Here the effects are alluring and beautiful, with
the horror kept in the background, but perhaps the more effective
because of the artistic restraint. Odors, sights, sounds, feelings,
are all raised to an intensity of sensuous, slumbrous enjoyment,
all subliminated above the mortal. The description of the river in
the picture, on which the young man floats away to dreamy death,
similar to the Japanese story referred to by Hearn, helps to give the
impression of infinity that comes only in dreams. Algernon Blackwood in
numerous stories not only uses the elements of dreams and nightmares
but explicitly calls attention to the fact. Dream supernaturalism is
employed in Barry Pain's stories, in Arthur Machen's volume,[73] and in
many others. Freud's theory of dreams as the invariable result of past
experiences or unconscious desires has not been stressed in fiction,
though doubtless it will have its inning presently. A. Conan Doyle's
_The Secret of Goresthorpe Grange_ is an amusing story of the relation
of definite wishes and dreams of the ghostly.
[72] By Brander Matthews.
[73] _The Hill of Dreams._
These are some of the sources from which the later writers of occultism
have drawn their plots. They represent a distinct advance over the
Gothic and earlier supernaturalism in materials, for the modern story
has gained the new elements without loss of the old. The ghostly
fiction of to-day has access to the animistic or classical or medieval
themes, yet has the unlimited province of present thought to furnish
additional inspiration. There never was a time when thinking along
general lines was more spontaneously reflected in fiction than now,
and supernatural literature claims all regions for its own. Like every
other phase of man's thought, ghostly fiction shows the increasing
complexity of form and matter, the wealth of added material and
abounding richness of style, the fine subtleties that only modernity
can give.
CHAPTER III
MODERN GHOSTS
The ghost is the most enduring figure in supernatural fiction. He
is absolutely indestructible. He glides from the freshly-cut pages
of magazines and books bearing the date of the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and seventeen as from the parchment rolls of ancient
manuscripts. He appears as unapologetically at home in twentieth
century fiction as in classical mythology, Christian hagiology,
medieval legend, or Gothic romance. He changes with the styles in
fiction but he never goes out of fashion. He is the really permanent
citizen of this earth, for mortals, at best, are but transients. Even
the athlete and the Methusaleh must in the end give up the flesh,
but the wraith goes on forever. In form, too, he wears well. Ghostly
substance of materialization, ethereal and vaporous as it appears
to be, is yet of an astonishing toughness. It seems to possess an
obstinate vitality akin to that attributed to the boll weevil in a
negro ballad, that went on undaunted by heat or cold, rain or drought,
time or tide. The ghost, like death, has all seasons for its own and
there is no closed season for spooks. It is much the case now as ever
that all the world loves a ghost, yet we like to take our ghosts
vicariously, preferably in fiction. We'd rather see than be one.
One point of difference between the ghostly fiction of the past and
of the present is in the matter of length. The Gothic novel was
often a three- or four-decker affair in whose perusal the reader aged
perceptibly before the ghost succeeded or was foiled in his haunting
designs. There was obviously much more leisure on the part of spooks as
well as mortals then than now. Consequently the ghost story of to-day
is told in short-story form for the most part. Poe knew better than
anybody before him what was necessary for the proper economy of thrills
when he gave his dictum concerning the desirable length for a story,
which rule applies more to the ghostly tale than to any other type, for
surely there is needed the unity of impression, the definiteness of
effect which only continuity in reading gives. The ghostly narrative
that is too long loses in impressiveness, whether it is altogether
supernatural or mixed with other elements. In either case, it is less
successful than the shorter, more poignant treatment possible in the
compressed form. The tabloid ghost can communicate more thrills than
the one in diluted narration.
The apparitions in later English fiction fall naturally into several
distinct classes with reference to the reality of their appearance.
There are the mistaken apparitions, there are the purely subjective
specters, evoked by the psychic state of the percipients, and there are
the objective ghosts, independent of the mental state of the witnesses,
appearing to persons who are not mentally prepared to see them.
The mistaken ghost is an old form, for most of Mrs. Radcliffe's
interesting apparitions belong to this class and others of the Gothic
writers used subterfuge to cheat the reader. In the early romance
there was frequently deliberate deception for a definite purpose, the
ghosts with the histrionic temperament using a make-up of phosphorus,
bones, and other contrivances to create the impression of unearthly
visitation. Recent fiction is more cleverly managed than that. Rarely
now does one find a story where the ghost-seer is deliberately imposed
upon, for in most modern cases the mistake occurs by accident or
misapprehension on the part of the percipient, for which nobody and
nothing but his own agitation is responsible. Yet there are occasional
hoax ghosts even yet, for example, _The Ghost of Miser Brimpson_,[74]
where a specter is rigged up as the scheme of a clever girl to win over
an obdurate lover, and _The Spectre Bridegroom_, which is a well-known
example of the pseudo-spook whose object is matrimony. _His Unquiet
Ghost_[75] is a delightful story of a fake burial to evade the revenue
officials. Watt, the "corp," says: "I was a powerful onchancy, onquiet
ghost. I even did my courtin' whilst in my reg'lar line o' business
a'harntin' a graveyard!" His sweetheart sobs out her confession of love
to "his pore ghost," an avowal she has denied the living man. Examples
of the apparitions that unwittingly deceive mortals are found in _The
Ghost at Point of Rock_,[76] where the young telegraph operator, alone
at night on a prairie, sees a beautiful girl who enters and announces
that she is dead,--how is he to know that she is in a somnambulistic
stupor, and has wandered from a train? Another is[77] a story where the
young man falls in love with what he thinks is a wraith of the water
luring him to his death, but learns that she is a perfectly proper
damsel whose family he knows. _The Night Call_[78] is less simple than
these, a problematic story that leaves one wondering as to just what is
meant.[79]
[74] By Eden Phillpotts.
[75] By Charles Egbert Craddock.
[76] By F. H. Spearman.
[77] _By the Waters of Paradise_, by F. Marion Crawford.
[78] By Henry Van Dyke.
[79] As Dr. Blanche Williams points out in her discussion of
the short story.
The subjective ghosts are legion in modern fiction. They are those
evoked by the mental state of the percipients so that they become
realities to those beholding them. The mind rendered morbid by grief
or remorse is readily prepared to see the spirits of the dead return
in love or with reproach. The apparitions in animistic beliefs, as in
classical stories and Gothic romance, were usually subjective, born
of brooding love or remorse or fear of retribution, appearing to the
persons who had cause to expect them and coming usually at night when
the beholders would be alone and given over to melancholy thought or
else to troubled sleep. Shakespeare's ghosts were in large measure
subjective, "selective apparitions." When Brutus asked the specter what
he was, the awful answer came, "Thy evil genius, Brutus!" Macbeth saw
the witches who embodied for him his own secret ambitions, and he alone
saw the ghost of Banquo, because he had the weight of murder on his
heart.
The subjective ghost story is difficult to write, as the effect must
be subtly managed yet inescapably impressive. If done well it is
admirable, and there are some writers who, to use Henry James's words
concerning his own work, are "more interested in situations obscure and
subject to interpretation than the gross rattle of the foreground." The
reader, as well as the writer, must put himself in the mental attitude
of acceptance of the supernatural else the effect is lacking, for the
ghostly thrill is incommunicable to those beyond the pale of at least
temporary credulity.
Kipling's _They_ is an extraordinary ghost story of suggestion rather
than of bald fact. It is like crushing the wings of a butterfly to
analyze it, but it represents the story of a man whose love for his own
dead child enabled him to see the spirits of other little children,
because he loved. As the blind woman told him, only those who were
spiritually prepared could see them, for "you must bear or lose!"
before glimpsing them. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's _Miss Mehitabel's Son_
is a humorously pathetic account of the subjective spirit of a child
that was never born. Algernon Blackwood's ghosts are to a great extent
subjective. As John Silence, the psychic doctor, says to the shuddering
man who has had a racking experience: "Your deeply introspective mood
had already reconstructed the past so intensely that you were _en
rapport_ at once with any forces of those past days that chanced to
be still lingering. And they swept you up all unresistingly." In _The
Shell of Sense_,[80] the woman who is about to accept her dead sister's
husband feels such a sense of disloyalty that she sees the sister's
spirit reproaching her. Her conscience has prepared her for the vision.
Juliet Wilbur Tompkins shows us the spirit of a mother returning to
comfort the daughter who has in life misunderstood and neglected her,
but now, realizing the truth, is grieving her heart out for her.[81]
Ambrose Bierce tells of a prisoner who murders his jailer to escape,
but is arrested and brought back by the spirit of the dead man.[82] Any
number of instances might be given of ghosts appearing to those who are
mentally prepared to be receptive to supernatural visions, but these
will serve to illustrate the type.
[80] By Olivia Howard Dunbar.
[81] _They That Mourn._
[82] _An Arrest._
Objective ghosts are likewise very numerous in modern fiction. The
objective spirits are those that, while they may be subjective on the
part of the persons chiefly concerned, to begin with, are yet visible
to others as well, appearing not only to those mentally prepared
to see them but to others not thinking of such manifestations and
even sceptical of their possibility. The objective ghosts have more
definite visibility, more reality than the purely subjective spirits.
They are more impressive as haunters. There is a plausibility, a
corporeality about the later apparitions that shows their advance over
the diaphanous phantoms of the past. Ghosts that eat and drink, play
cards, dance, duel, and do anything they wish, that are so lifelike in
their materialization that they would deceive even a medium, are more
terrifying than the helpless specters of early times that could only
give orders for the living to carry out. The modern ghost has lost none
of his mortal powers but has gained additional supermortal abilities,
which gives him an unsportsmanlike advantage over the mere human being
he may take issue with.
Henry James's _The Turn of the Screw_ is a remarkable example of
the objective ghost story. It is one of the best ghostly stories
in English, because more philosophical, showing more knowledge of
the psychology not only of the adult but of the child, not only of
the human being but of the ghost, than most fiction of the type.
Peter Quint and Miss Jessel with their diabolical conspiracy of evil
against the two children are so real that they are seen not only by
the children they hound but by the unsuspecting governess as well.
She is able to describe them so accurately that those who knew them
in life--as she did not at all--recognize them instantly. In _The
Four-fifteen Express_,[83] John Derringer's ghost is seen by a man that
does not know he is dead, and who has not been thinking of him at all.
The ghost reveals incontrovertible proof of his presence, even leaving
his cigar-case behind him,--which raises the question as to whether
ghosts smoke in the hereafter in more ways than one. The ghastly
incident in Emily Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_ where the agonized
ghost comes to the window, gashing its wrist on the broken pane, is
strikingly objectified, for she comes to a person who never knew her
and is not thinking of any supernatural manifestation. _Shadows on the
Wall_,[84] that story of surpassing power of suggestion, is objective
in its method, for not only the man who has wronged his dead mother
sees his spirit returning, not in the ordinary way but as an accusing
shadow on the wall, but the sisters see it as well.
[83] By Amelia B. Edwards.
[84] By Mary Wilkins Freeman.
In _John Inglesant_,[85] the spirit of Lord Strafford is seen by the
young lad in the vestibule as well as by the king whose conscience
burns for having left him to die undefended. Frank R. Stockton's
transferred ghost is an objective apparition, for surely the guest in
the upper chamber was not expecting to see the shade of a living man
perch itself on the foot of his bed at midnight. The horrible specter
in _The Messenger_,[86] is seen by various persons at different times,
some of whom are totally unprepared for such exhibition. And many
similar instances might be given.
[85] By J. H. Shorthouse.
[86] By Robert W. Chambers.
Whether ghosts be mistaken, subjective or objective, their appearance
has always elicited considerable interest on the part of humanity.
Their substance of materialization, their bearing, dress, and general
demeanor are matters of definite concern to those who expect shortly
to become ghosts themselves. In some instances the modern ghost
sticks pretty closely to the animistic idea of spirit material, which
was that the shade was a sort of vapory projection of the body,
intangible, impalpable, yet easily recognized with reference to
previous personality. Chaucer describes some one as being "nat pale as
a forpyned goost," which illustrates the conception in his day, and the
Gothic specimen was usually a pallid specter, though Walpole furnished
one robust haunter of gigantic muscle. Yet for the most part the Gothic
ghosts were misty wraiths, through which the sword could plunge without
resistance. They were fragile and helpless as an eighteenth-century
heroine when it came to a real emergency, and were useful chiefly for
frightening the guilty and consoling the innocent. In some stories of
the present we have a similar materialization. The spirit woman in
Kipling's _Phantom Rickshaw_ is so ethereal that the horse and its
rider plunge through her without resistance, and Dickens's Mr. Marley
is of such vapory substance that Scrooge can see clear through him
to count the coat-tail buttons at his back. In a recent story, _The
Substitute_,[87] the spirit is said to evade her friend like a mist.
[87] By Georgia Wood Pangborn.
The Gothic ghost frequently walked forth as a skeleton, clad in nothing
but his bones and a lurid scowl. Skeletons still perambulate among us,
as in _The Messenger_, where the stripped-off mask shows a hideous
skull.
The skeleton burst from out the rotting robes and collapsed on the
ground before us. From between the staring ribs and the grinning
teeth spurted a torrent of black blood, showering the shrinking
grasses, and then the thing shuddered and fell over into the black
ooze of the bog.
The ghost of Zuleika[88] is described as "a skeleton woman robed in the
ragged remains of a black mantle. Near this crumbling earth body there
lay the spirit of Zuleika attached to it by a fine thread of magnetic
ether. Like the earthly body it was wrapped in a robe of black of which
it seemed the counterpart." Elliott O'Donnell has a story of a mummy
that in a soldier's tent at night sobs, breathes, moves, sits up, and
with ghastly fingers unfolds its cere-cloth wrappings, appearing to him
as the counterpart of his long-dead mother, looking at him with the
eyes he had worshiped in his boyhood.
I fell on my knees before her and kissed--what? Not the feet of my
mother but those of the long-buried dead! Sick with repulsion and
fear I looked up and there bending over me and peering into my eyes
was the face, the fleshless, mouldering face of the foul corpse!
[88] In _Ahrinziman_, by Anita Silvani.
But on the whole, though skeletons do appear in later fiction, the
rattle of bones is not heard as often as in Gothic times.
Ghostly apparitions are more varied in form than in early times. The
modern ghost does not require a whole skeleton for his purposes, but he
can take a single bone and put the hardiest to flight with it. It is
a dreadful thing to realize that a ghost can come in sections, which
indefinitely multiplies its powers of haunting. F. Marion Crawford has
a story of a diabolical skull, one of the most rabid revenge ghosts on
record. A man has murdered his wife by pouring melted lead into her
ear while she slept, in accordance with a suggestion from a casually
told story of a guest. The dead woman's skull--the husband cut the
head off for fear people would hear the lead rattle, and buried it in
the garden--comes back to haunt the husband, with that deadly rattle
of the lump of lead inside. The teeth bite him, the skull rolls up a
hill to follow him, and finally kills him, then sets in to haunt the
visitor who told the suggestive story.[89] Elsewhere as well Crawford
shows us skulls that have uncanny powers of motion and emotion. In
Wilkie Collins's _Haunted Hotel_ the specter is seen as a bodiless head
floating near the ceiling of the room where the man was murdered and
his body concealed. Thackeray[90] describes a ghost with its head on
its lap, and of course every one will remember the headless horseman
with his head carried on the pommel of his saddle that frightened poor
Ichabod Crane out of his wits.
[89] _The Screaming Skull._
[90] In _A Notch on the Axe_.
We get a rabble of headless apparitions in _Brissot's Ghost_, one
of the Anti-Jacobin parodies (ridiculing Richard Glover's ballad of
Hosier's Ghost):
Sudden up the staircase sounding
Hideous yells and shrieks were heard;
Then, each guest with fear confounding,
A grim train of ghosts appeared;
Each a head in anguish gasping
(Himself a trunk deformed with gore)
In his hand, terrific clasping,
Stalked across the wine-stained floor.
In Bulwer-Lytton's _The Haunters and the Haunted_ a woman's hand
without a body rises up to clutch the ancient letters, then withdraws,
while in his _Strange Story_ the supernatural manifestation comes as
a vast Eye seen in the distance, moving nearer and nearer, "seeming
to move from the ground at a height of some lofty giant." Then other
Eyes appear. "Those Eyes! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions! And
that tramp of numberless feet! _they_ are not seen, but the hollows of
the earth echo to their tread!" The supernatural phenomena in Ambrose
Bierce's stories have an individual horror. In _A Vine on the House_ he
shows a hideous revenge ghost manifested in a peculiar form. A couple
of men take refuge in a deserted house and note a strange vine covering
the porch that shakes unaccountably and violently. In mystification
they dig it up, to find the roots in the form of a woman's body,
lacking one foot, as had been the case with the woman who had lived
there and whose husband had killed her secretly and buried her beside
the porch.
The revenge ghost in modern fiction frequently manifests itself in this
form, mutilated or dismembered, each disfigurement of the mortal body
showing itself in a relentless immortality and adding to the horror
of the haunting. There seems to be no seat of ghostly mind or soul,
for the body can perform its function of haunting in whole or in part,
unaided by the head or heart, like a section of a snake that has life
apart from the main body. And this idea of detached part of the form
acting as a determined agent for revenge adds a new horror to fiction.
I haven't as yet found an instance of a woman's heart, bleeding and
broken, coming up all by itself to haunt the deserting lover, but
perhaps such stories will be written soon. And think what terrors would
await the careless physician or surgeon if each outraged organ or
dismembered limb came back to seek vengeance on him!
Ghosts of modern fiction are more convincing in their reality than the
specters of early times. They are stronger, more vital; there seems
to be a strengthening of ghostly tissue, a stiffening of supernatural
muscle in these days. Ghosts are more healthy, more active, more alive
than they used to be. There is now as before a strong resemblance to
the personality before death, the same immortality of looks that is
discouraging to the prospects of homely persons who have hoped to
be more handsome in a future state. Fiction gives no basis for such
hope. Peculiarities of appearance are carried over with distressing
faithfulness to detail, each freckle, each wrinkle, each gray
hair showing with the clearness of a photographic proof. Note the
lifelikeness of the governess's description of Peter Quint in _The Turn
of the Screw_.
He has red hair, very red, very close-curling, and a pale face,
long in shape, with straight, good features and little queer
whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are somehow
darker and particularly arched as if they might move a good deal.
His eyes are sharp, strange, awful. His mouth is wide, his lips
thin.
This seems an unspectral description, for red hair is not wraith-like,
yet a red-headed ghost that lifted its eyebrows unnaturally would be
alarming. She says of him: "He was absolutely, on this occasion, a
living, dangerous, detestable presence."
Each minor disfigurement is retained, as the loss of the tooth in
Crawford's screaming skull, the missing toe in Bierce's _Middle Toe of
the Right Foot_, the lacking foot in the ghostly vine, and so forth.
Nothing is neglected to make identification absolute in present tales
of horror. The spirits described by Bram Stoker have red, voluptuous
lips and pink cheeks, and the spirit of Sir Oliver's mother, in De
Morgan's _An Affair of Dishonor_, that comes to meet him as he passes
her mausoleum on his way to the shameful duel, limps as in life, so
that he recognizes her, though the cloaked and hooded figure has its
face turned from him. Jessie Adelaide Middleton shows us one ghost with
half a face.
Ghostly apparel constitutes an interesting feature of supernaturalism
in literature. There seem to be as definite conventions concerning
spectral clothes as regarding the garb of the living fashionables. It
is more difficult to understand the immortality of clothes than of
humanity, for bodily tissue even of ghosts might quite conceivably
renew itself, but not so with the ghostly garments. Of what stuff are
ghost-clothes made? And why do they never wear out?
In olden times when people wore clothes of less radical styles than
now and fewer of them, masculine spirits were in part identified by
their familiar armor. Armor is so material and heavy that it seems
incongruous to the ghostly function, yet shields and accouterments were
necessary accompaniments of every knightly spook. He must be ever ready
to tilt with rival ghost. The Gothic phantoms were well panoplied and
one remembers particularly the giant armor in Walpole's novel. Nowadays
the law forbids the carrying of weapons, which restriction seems to
have been extended to ghostdom as well. Specters are thus placed at a
disadvantage, for one would scarcely expect to see even the wraith of a
Texas cow-boy toting a pistol.
Specters usually appear in the garments in which the beholder saw them
last in life. Styles seem petrified at death so that old-time ghosts
now look like figures from the movies or guests at a masquerade ball.
One other point to be noted is that women phantoms are frequently seen
in black or in white. White seems reminiscent of the shroud, as well as
of youth and innocence, so is appropriate, while black connotes gloom,
so is suitable, yet the really favored color is gray. Most of the
specters this season are dressed in gray. I scarcely know why this is
affected by shades, yet the fact remains that many wraiths both men and
women are thus attired. Gray is the tone that witches of modern tastes
choose also, whereas their ancient forbears went in black and red.
Modern ghosts are at a disadvantage in the matter of clothes compared
with the earlier ones, since the styles now change so quickly and so
decidedly that a ghost is hopelessly _passé_ before he has time to
materialize at all in most instances.
Examples of ghostly garments in later fiction evidence their variety.
Katherine Fullerton Gerould[91] shows us three ghosts, one of a woman
in a blue dress, one of a rattlesnake, and one of a Zulu warrior
wearing only a loin-cloth, a nose-ring, and a scowl. (We do not
often see the nude in ghosts, perhaps because they have a shade of
modesty.) _Co-operative Ghosts_[92] depicts a man clad in the wraith
of a tweed suit, mid-Victorian, "with those familiar Matthew Arnold
side-whiskers." In addition to Mr. Morley's coat-tail buttons which
we glanced through him to see, we observe that he wears ghostly
spectacles, a pig-tail, tights and boots, and a prim waist-coat. In
Kipling's _They_ we see the glint of a small boy's blue blouse, while
another Kipling youngster, a war-ghost,[93] struts around in his
comical first trousers which he would not be robbed of even by the
German soldiers that murdered him. Other children in the same story
are said to have on "disgracefully dirty clothes." I do not recall any
soilure on Gothic garments, save spectral blood-stains and the mold
of graves. Neither did I discover any child wraith in Gothicism save
the pitiful spirits of baby victims in _The Albigenses_ and the baby
wraiths in Hogg's _The Wool-gatherer_. The Englishman driven mad by
the apparition of the woman he has wronged in Kipling's story[94] is
described by him as "wearing the dress in which I saw her last alive;
she carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand and the same
card-case in her left." (A woman eight months dead with a card-case!)
Blackwood shows us a ghost in purple knee-breeches and velvet coat;
in _The Gray Guest_[95] the returning Napoleon wears a long military
cloak of gray and military boots, while Crawford has one dreadful ghost
coming back to wreak revenge in wet oil-skins. The eccentric spook in
Josephine Daskam Bacon's _The Heritage_ is dressed in brown and sits
stolidly and silently on the side of the bed with its back turned.
Think of being haunted by an unbudging brown back! No wonder it drove
the young husband to spend his wedding night huddled on the stairs. We
have instances of a ghost in a red vest, a relentless revenge spirit
that hounds from ocean to ocean his murderer and the betrayer of his
daughter, and another of a ghost in a red shirt. There is on the whole
as much variety and appropriateness of costume in modern ghost fiction
as in Broadway melodrama.
[91] In _On the Stairs_.
[92] By F. Converse.
[93] In _Swept and Garnished_.
[94] _Phantom Rickshaw._
[95] By Laurence Clarke.
Another point of difference between the specters of to-day and those
of the past is in the extension of their avenues of approach to us.
Ghostly appeal to the senses is more varied now than in earlier times.
The classical as well as the Gothic ghosts appealed in general only to
the sight and hearing, as well as, of course, to the sixth sense that
realizes the presence of a supernatural being. Ghosts were seen and
heard and were content with that. But nowadays more points of contact
are open to them and they haunt us through the touch, the smell, as
well as sight and hearing. The taste as a medium of impression has
not yet been exploited by fiction writers though doubtless it will be
worked out soon. There is a folk-tale of the Skibos that wolves eat
ghosts and find them very appetizing and the devil in Poe's _Bon Bon_
says he eats the spirits of mortals. One might imagine what haunting
dyspepsia could result if an ill-tempered spook were devoured against
his will. It is conceivable, too, that gastronomic ghosts might haunt
cannibals; and who knows that the dark brown taste in the mouths of
riotous livers is not some specter striving to express itself through
that medium instead of being _merely_ riotous livers?
The appeal of ghosts to the sight has already been discussed so
need not be mentioned here. But the element of invisibility enters
in as a new and very terrible form of supernatural manifestation
in later fiction. In spite of the general visibility, some of the
most horrible tales turn on the fact that the haunter is unseen.
H. G. Wells's _Invisible Man_ is a human being, not a ghost; yet the
story has a curdling power that few straight ghost stories possess.
Maupassant's _La Horla_ is a nightmare story of an invisible being
that is terrific in its effect. The victim knows that an unseen
yet definite and determined something is shut in his room with him
night after night, eating, drinking, reading, sitting on his chest,
driving him mad. Ambrose Bierce's _The Damned Thing_ is a gruesome
story of invisibility, of a something that is abroad with unearthly
power of evil, whose movements can be measured by the bending of the
grasses, which shuts off the light from other objects as it passes,
which struggles with the dogs and with men, till it finally kills
and horribly mangles the man who has been studying it, but is never
seen. Another[96] has for its central figure a being that violently
attacks men and is overpowered and tied only by abnormal strength,
that struggles on the bed, showing its imprint on the mattress, that
is imprisoned in a plaster cast to have its mold taken, that is heard
breathing loudly till it dies of starvation, yet is absolutely never
visible. Blackwood's Fire Elemental may be seen moving along only by
the bending of the grass beneath it and by the trail it leaves behind,
for though it is audible yet it is never seen. As a brave man said of
it, "I am not afraid of anything that I can _see_!" so these stories
of supernatural invisibility have a chilling horror more intense than
that of most ghostly tales. The element of invisibility of unmistakably
present spirits is shown in other stories.
[96] _What Was It? A Mystery_, by Fitz-James O'Brien.
One tender story of an invisible ghost is told in _In No Strange
Land_,[97] of a man killed suddenly in a wreck while on his way home
to the birthday dinner his wife is preparing for him. He does not know
that he has been hurt; but while his dead body lies mangled under the
wreckage his spirit hurries home. He swears whimsically under his
breath at some interruption and thinks with joy of the happy little
group he will meet. But when he enters his home he cannot make them see
or hear him. They are vaguely aware of some strange influence, are awed
by it, and the little son with the poet's heart whispers that he hears
something, but that is all. The man stands by, impotently stretching
out his arms to them till he hears the messenger tell them that he is
dead.
[97] By Katherine Butler.
Ghosts are variable with respect to sounds as well as appearance. The
early ghosts were for the most part silent, yet could talk on occasion,
and classical apparitions were sometimes vocal and sometimes silent.
The Gothic ghost sometimes had an impediment in his speech while at
other times he could converse fluently. The Gothic specter, real as
well as faked, frequently lifted voice in song and brought terror to
the guilty bosom by such strains. Yet when he spoke he was usually
brief in utterance. Perhaps the reason for that lay in the lack of
surety on the part of the writers as to the proper ghostly diction.
Gothic authors were not overstrong on technique and they may have
hesitated to let their specters be too fluent lest they be guilty of
dialectic errors. It would seem incongruous for even an illiterate
ghost to murder the king's English, which presents a difficulty in the
matter of realism, so perchance the writers dodged the issue by giving
their ghosts brevity of speech, or in some cases by letting them look
volumes of threats but utter no word. This may explain the reason for
the non-speaking ghosts in classical and Elizabethan drama. There is
a similar variation in the later fiction, for many of the ghosts are
eloquently silent, while other phantoms are terrifyingly fluent. All
this goes to prove the freedom of the modern ghost for he does what he
takes a notion to do. The invisible ghosts are as a rule voiceless as
well.
The Gothic romance was fond of mysterious music as an accompaniment of
supernatural visitation, but ghostly music is less common than it used
to be. Yet it does come at times, as in _A Far-away Melody_,[98] where
two spinster sisters living alone hear heavenly music as portent of
their death. Ghostly song is heard in another case,[99] where a woman's
spirit comes back to sing in a duet at her funeral, and Crawford's
ghost[100] constantly whistles a tune he had been fond of during
life. In _Co-operative Ghosts_ the wraith of the young girl who in
Cromwellian times betrayed her father's cause to save her lover's life
sings sadly,
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more!"
[98] By Mary Wilkins Freeman.
[99] _Two Voices._
[100] In _Man Overboard_.
In Crawford's _A Doll's Ghost_, that peculiar example of preternatural
fiction, not a children's story as one might think, nor yet humorous,
the mechanical voice of the doll and the click of its tiny pattering
feet occur as strange sounds. Lord Strafford[101] walks with a firm,
audible tread on his way to appall the king, and in Blackwood's _Empty
House_ the ghosts move with sounds of heavy, rushing feet, followed
by a noise of scuffling and smothered screams as the ancient murder
is re-enacted, then the thud of a body thrown down the stairs,--after
which is a terrible silence. The awful effect of a sudden silence
after supernatural sounds is nowhere shown more tensely than in _The
Monkey's Paw_,[102] that story of superlative power of suggestion. When
the ghostly visitant knocks loudly at the outer door, we feel the same
thrill of chilling awe as in the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, and
more, for the two who hear are sure that this is a presence come back
from the dead. Then when the last magic wish has been breathed, utter
silence comes, a silence more dreadful in its import than the clamor
has been.
[101] In _John Inglesant_.
[102] By W. W. Jacobs.
New sounds are introduced in modern ghostly tales, such as the peculiar
hissing that is a manifestation of the presence of the ancient
spirit[103] followed by the crackling and crashing of the enchanted
flames. In Blackwood's _Keeping His Promise_ the heavy, stertorous
breathing of the invisible Thing is heard, and the creaking of the
bed weighted down by the body. Mary Wilkins Freeman brings in ghostly
crying in a story, while Blackwood speaks of his Wendigo as having "a
sort of windy, crying voice, as of something lonely and untamed, wild
and of abominable power." Kipling introduces novel and touching sounds
in his stories of ghostly children. The child-wraiths are gay, yet
sometimes near to tears. He speaks of "the utterly happy chuckle of a
child absorbed in some light mischief," "sudden, squeaking giggles of
childhood," "the rustle of a frock and the patter of feet in the room
beyond," "joyous chuckles of evasion," and so forth. These essentially
childlike and lifelike sounds are deeply pathetic as coming from the
ghosts of little ones that hover, homesick, near the earth they dread
to leave. The little ghost boy in Richard Middleton's story,[104]
manifests himself, invisibly, through the little prancing steps, the
rustling of the leaves through which he runs, and the heart-breaking
imitations of an automobile. Later ghostly fiction introduces few of
the clankings of chains and lugubrious groans that made the Gothic
romance mournful, and the modern specters are less wailful than the
earlier, but more articulate in their expression. There are definite
ghostly sounds that recur in various stories, such as the death-rap
above the bed of the dying, the oft-mentioned mocking laughter in
empty places, the cry of the banshee which is the presage of death not
only of the body but of the soul, as well. On the whole, the sounds
in modern supernatural stories are more varied in their types, more
expressive of separate and individual horror, and with an intensified
power of haunting suggestion than was the case with the earlier forms.
[103] In _A Nemesis of Fire_, by Blackwood.
[104] _The Passing of Edward._
The sense of smell was not noticeably exploited in the ancient or
Gothic ghost stories, though certain folk-tales, as Hawaiian stories
of the lower world, speak of it. The devil was supposed to be in bad
odor, for he was usually accompanied by sulphurous scents, as we notice
in Calderon's drama,[105] and some of the Gothic novels, but that seems
to be about the extent of the matter. But moderns, while not so partial
to brimstone, pay considerable attention to supernatural odors. The
devil has been dry-cleaned, but the evil odors of later fiction are
more objectionable than the fumes of the pit, are more variant, more
individual and distinctive. Odors seem less subjective than sights
or sounds, and are not so conventionalized in ghostly fiction, hence
when they are cleverly evoked they are unusually effective. These
supernatural scents have a very lasting quality too, for they linger on
after the other manifestations of the preternatural are past. In _The
Haunted Hotel_,[106] the ghost manifests itself through the nostrils.
In room number thirteen there is an awful stench for which no one can
account, and which cannot be removed by any disinfectants. Finally
when a woman especially sympathetic to a man mysteriously dead is put
in the room, the ghost appears as a decaying head, floating near the
ceiling and emitting an intolerable odor. _The Upper Berth_[107] tells
of a strange, foul sea odor that infests a certain stateroom and that
no amount of fumigating or airing will remove. As the Thing comes out
of the sea to carry its victim away with it, the man in the lower
berth gets the full force of the unearthly smell. There are definite
foul supernatural odors associated with supernatural animals in recent
ghostly tales, as that "ghost of an unforgettable strange odor, of a
queer, acrid, pungent smell like the odor of lions," which announces
the presence of the awful out-door something called by the Indians, the
Wendigo. In Kipling's story[108] of a man whose soul has been stolen
by Indian magic through the curse of a leper priest and a beast's soul
put in its place,--his companions are sickened by an intolerable stench
as of wild beasts, and when the curse is removed and he comes back to
himself, he sniffs the air and asks what causes "such a horrid doggy
smell in the air."
[105] _El Magico Prodigioso._
[106] By Wilkie Collins.
[107] By F. Marion Crawford.
[108] _The Mark of the Beast._
Sometimes the ghastly presence comes as a whiff of perfume,[109] where
the spirit of the dead woman brings with it flowers in masses, with a
heavenly perfume which lingers after the spirit in visible form has
departed. The subtlest and most delicately haunting story of this type
is O. Henry's,[110] where the loved, dead girl reveals herself to the
man who is desperately hunting the big city over for her, merely as a
whiff of mignonette, the flower she most loved.
[109] As in _Here and There_, by Alice Brown.
[110] _The Furnished Room._
But it is through the sense of touch that the worst form of haunting
comes. Seeing a supernatural visitant is terrible, hearing him is
direful, smelling him is loathsome, but having him touch you is the
climax of horror. This element comes in much in recent stories. The
earlier ghosts seemed to be more reserved, to know their spectral place
better, were not so ready to presume on unwelcome familiarities as
those in later fiction, but spooks have doubtless followed the fashion
of mortals in this easy, relaxed age and have become a shade too free
in their manners. Of course, one remembers the crushing specter in
Otranto castle that flattened the hapless youth out so effectually,
and there are other instances less striking. But as a general thing
the Gothic ghost was content to stand at a distance and hurl curses.
Fortunately for our ancestors' nerves, he did not incline much to the
laying on of hands. Modern ghosts, however, have not been taught to
restrain their impulses and they venture on liberties that Radcliffian
romance would have disapproved of.
_The Damned Thing_ gives an example of muscular supernaturalism, for
the mysterious being kills a dog in a stiff fight, then later slays the
master after a terrible struggle in which the man is disfigured beyond
words to describe. O'Brien shows a terrible being of abnormal power
that is tied only after a tremendous effort, and which fights violently
to free itself. And the Thing in the upper berth had an awesome
strength.
It was something ghostly, horrible, beyond words, and it moved in
my grasp. It was like the body of a man long dead and yet it moved,
and had the strength of ten men living, but I gripped it with all
my might, the slippery, oozy, horrible thing. I wrestled with the
dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and nearly broke my arms; it
wound its corpselike arms around my neck, the living death, and
overpowered me, so that at the last I cried aloud and fell and left
my hold.
As I fell the thing sprang across me and seemed to throw itself
upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was
white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent
blow at the dead being, and then, he, too, fell forward on his face.
The ghostly touch is frequently described, not only in fiction but in
reports of the Psychical Society as well, as being of supernatural
chill or of burning heat. _Afterwards_[111] brings in the icy touch of
the spirit hand. In certain cases the ghost touch leaves a burn or mark
that never goes away.
[111] By Fred C. Smale.
Yet the touch of horror is not the only one introduced in fiction
of the supernatural. There are tender and loving touches as well,
expressing yearning love and a longing to communicate with the living.
What could be more beautiful than the incident in _They_? "I felt
my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a
child. The little brushing kiss fell in the center of my palm--as gift
on which the fingers were _once_ expected to close--a fragment of a
mute code devised very long ago." And in a similar story,[112] the
woman says, "I will swear to my dying day that two little hands stole
and rested--for a moment only--in mine!" Wilkie Collins speaks of his
story, _The Ghost's Touch_, as follows:
The course of this narrative leads the reader on new and strange
ground. It describes the return of a disembodied spirit to
earth--not occurring in the obscurity of midnight but in the
searching light of day; neither seen as a vision nor heard as a
voice--revealing itself to mortal knowledge through the sense that
is least easily self-deceived, the sense that feels.
[112] _A Pair of Hands_, by Quiller-Couch.
The widow feels the clasp of her husband's hands, not only psychically
but physically, and when she asks for a further sign, the ghost kisses
her unmistakably on the lips. Another widow[113] feels her hand clasped
by the hand of her husband who has mysteriously disappeared after
having presumably absconded with trust funds--and knows that he is dead
and seeking to give her some message. His hand gently leads her to the
edge of the cliff where he has fallen over and been killed, so that she
may know the truth. The lover in Poe's _Eleonora_ feels a "spiritual
kiss" from the lips of his beloved. The ghost touch is an impressive
motif of strength in recent fiction and marks an advance over the
earlier forms, showing an access of imaginative power and psychological
analysis.
[113] In _Our Last Walk_, by Hugh Conway.
* * * * *
Another point of contrast between the modern and the older ghosts is
in the greater freedom enjoyed by those of to-day. The ghosts of our
ancestors were weak and helpless creatures in the main and the Gothic
specter was tyrannized over to such an extent that he hardly dared
call his shade his own. The spook of to-day has acquired a latchkey
and asserted his independence. He may have a local habitation but he
isn't obliged to stay there. Now-a-days even the spectral women are
setting up to be feminists and have privileges that would have caused
the Gothic wraiths to swoon with horror. Ghosts are not so sensitive to
the barometer now as they used to be, nor do they have such an active
influence over the weather as did the Gothic phantoms. They do not
need a tempest for their materialization nor a supernatural play of
lightning for their wild threats, and comparatively few storms occur
in later fiction. Yet there is certainly no lessening of the ghostly
thrill in consequence.
Neither are the spirits of to-day limited to any set hours as was the
rule in Gothicism. The tyranny of the dark, the autocratic rule of
twelve or one o'clock as the arbitrary hour for apparitions, has been
removed. Katherine Fullerton Gerould shows an interesting collection
of ghosts that come at eleven o'clock in the morning, Georgia Wood
Pangborn brings one out on the seashore in mid-afternoon, and Kipling
has various ghosts that appear in daylight and in the open air.
Ghosts in modern fiction are not dependent upon a setting of sullen
scenery as in Gothicism, but may choose any surroundings they like.
Since modern household arrangements do not include family vaults as
a general thing, and since cemeteries are inconveniently located,
there is a tendency on the part of haunters to desert such quarters.
Mary Wilkins Freeman and Charles Egbert Craddock each has one ghost
story located in a graveyard, and _The Last Ghost in Harmony_[114]
is set in a burying-ground, but the specter complains loudly of the
unsentimental mind of the town which has lost interest in ghosts, and
leaves in disgust. Likewise the domination of the Gothic castles, those
"ghaist-alluring edifices," has passed away and modern spooks are not
confined to any one locality as in the past. They appear where they
will, in the most prosaic places, in cheap lodging-houses, in hall
bedrooms, in bungalows, in the staterooms of steamers, on tramp ships,
and so forth. Algernon Blackwood has set a number of thrilling ghost
stories out in the open, in the woods, in the desert sand wastes, and
similar places. One effect of such realistic and unspectral setting
is to give a greater verisimilitude to the events described, and the
modern tale bears out Leigh Hunt's suggestion that "a ghost story, to
be a good one, should unite, as much as possible, objects as they are
in life, with a preternatural spirit." Yet here are ghosts that do
haunt certain rooms as relentlessly as ever Gothic specter did.
[114] By N. M. Lloyd.
The modern ghost has power over certain localities rather than mere
houses or apartments. If the house he calls his own is torn down, he
bides his time and haunts the new structure built on the same spot.
Or if no new house goes up, he hangs around and haunts the vacant
lot, which is a more reprehensible procedure than the ordinary habits
of spooks. One story concerns a house so persistently ghosted that
its owner took it down section by section, trying to arrive at the
location of the curse, but to no avail. When the whole building had
been razed and the site plowed over, the ghost undiscouraged haunted
merrily on. Then the owner left in disgust. Algernon Blackwood is
fond of situations where localities are haunted by evil spirits,[115]
where a whole village is inhabited by the ghosts of long-dead witches,
or _Secret Worship_ that relates the experience of a man who wanders
within the limits of a place made horrible by devil-worshipers,
long-dead, but life-like, and inhabiting a house that has been torn
down years before but appears as usual, where they entrap the souls of
the living for their fiendish sacrifice. Another[116] is the record of
a spirit of frightful evil that haunts a house built on the spot where
an older house once stood, whose diabolism lingers on to curse the
living. The spirit that haunts a locality rather than one room or house
has a more malignant power than the more restricted ghost and this adds
a new element of definite supernaturalism to modern fiction. But as
houses are so much less permanent now than formerly, ghosts would be at
a terrible disadvantage if they had to be evicted every time a building
was torn down.
[115] As in _Ancient Sorceries_.
[116] _A Psychic Invasion._
* * * * *
Ghostly psychology is a fascinating study. The development of spectral
personality is one of the evident facts gained from a historical survey
of supernatural fiction. The modern ghost has more individuality,
more distinctiveness, in the main, than his forbears. The ghosts of
medievalism, of ancient superstition, and the drama were for the most
part pallid, colorless beings in character as in materialization.
The ancient ghosts were more mournful than the moderns, since the
state of the dead in early times was by no means enviable. The most
one could hope for then was Hades, while the spirits who hadn't been
buried couldn't find entrance even there but were forced by relentless
spectral police to keep forever moving. The Christian religion
furnishes a more cheerful outlook, so in later manifestations the gloom
is considerably lightened. Yet even so the Gothic ghosts were morbid,
low-minded specters not much happier than the unlucky wights they felt
it their business to haunt. Their woe-begone visages, their clanking
chains, and other accompaniments of woe betokened anything but cheer.
There are some unhappy spirits in recent fiction, but not such a large
proportion as in the past. And there is usually some basis for their
joylessness; they don't have general melancholia with no grounds for
it. The ghost of the dead wife in _Readjustment_[117] is miserable
because she has never understood her husband, either in life or in
death, and she comes back seeking an explanation. Another spectral
woman[118] is wretched because she has the double crime of murder and
suicide on her soul. Poor Marley grieves because he is doomed to see
the opportunities that life has offered him to serve others and that he
has neglected, being forced to see with the clear vision of the other
world the evil results of his own neglect, which is enough to make any
one wretched. A guilty conscience is like the burning heart that each
spirit in the Hall of Eblis bore in his breast. In _The Roll-call of
the Reef_,[119] the troop of drowned soldiers, infantry, and horsemen,
come rising out of the surf to answer to their names. Each man is asked
by name, "How is it with you?" and answers with the deadly sin that
has damned him. In Wilkie Collins's gruesome tale[120] there is one
spirit that is unhappy because his body lies unburied, a recurrence of
a theme frequent in classical stories and Gothic romance, but rare in
later fiction. For the most part the later ghosts are something more
than merely unhappy spirits. They are more positive, more active, more
individualistic, too philosophical to waste time in useless grieving.
[117] By M. H. Austin.
[118] In _The Closed Cabinet_.
[119] By A. T. Quiller-Couch.
[120] _The Queen of Hearts._
Nor are there many simply happy spirits, perhaps because the joyous
souls are likely to seek their paradise and forget about the earth. Yet
there are instances, such as the light-hearted spirits of children in
various stories, that with the resilience of childhood shake off gloom
and are gay; Rosamond,[121] that comes back to tell her friend how
happy the other life is, the peacefully content mother,[122] and others.
[121] In _Here and There_.
[122] In _They That Mourn_.
The ghosts that are actively vicious are the most vivid and numerous
in later fiction. The spirits of evil seem to have a terrible
cumulative force, being far more maleficent than the earlier ones,
and more powerful in carrying out their purposes. Every aspect of
supernaturalism seems to be keyed up to a higher pitch of terror. Evil
seems to have a strangely greater power of immortality over that of
good, judging from the proportion employed in modern fiction. Has evil
so much more strength of will, so much more permanence of power that
it lives on through the years and centuries, while good deeds perish
with the body? It would appear so from fiction. The ghosts of good
actions do not linger round the abode of the living to any noticeable
extent, but evil deeds are deathless. We have many stories of places
and persons haunted by the embodied evil of the past, but few by the
embodied good. The revenge ghosts outnumber the grateful dead by
legions.
Modern specters have a more complex power than the old. They are more
awful in their import, for they haunt not merely the body, but the
soul. The wicked spirits will to work dreadful harm to the soul as
well as the body, and drive the victim to spiritual insanity, seeking
to damn him for the life everlasting, making him, not merely their
victim, but through eternity their co-worker in awful evil. The victim
of the vampire, for instance, who dies as a result of the attack, has
to become in his turn a loathsome vampire to prey on other souls and
bodies. Blackwood's Devil-worshipers seek to kill the soul as well
as the body of their victim. The deathlessness of evil is shown in
Lytton's[123] and in many of Blackwood's stories, as where the psychic
doctor says to a man, "You are now in touch with certain violent
emotions, passions, purposes, still active in this house, that were
produced in the past by some powerful and evil personality that lived
here."
[123] _The Haunters and the Haunted._
Few writers have equaled F. Marion Crawford in the modern ghost story.
His tales have a curdling intensity, a racking horror that set them far
above the ordinary supernatural fiction. They linger in the mind long
after one has tried in vain to forget them, if indeed one ever does
forget their sense of evil power. There is in each of his stories an
individual horror that marks it as distinct from its fellows, a power
chiefly won by delineation of this immortality of evil, as in _The Dead
Smile_, with its description of the hideous smile that pollutes the
lips of the living and of the dead. "Nurse McDonald said that when Sir
Hugh Ockram smiled, he saw the faces of two women in hell, two dead
women he had betrayed." His vicious impulses last after death and from
his grave he reaches out to curse his own children, seeking to drive
them to awful, though unconscious sin.
Henry James has drawn for us two characters of unmitigated evil in
Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, who, he says, are "hovering, prowling,
blighting presences." They are agents on whom is laid the dire duty of
causing the air to reek with evil. He says, "I recognize that they are
not ghosts at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps,
demons. The essence of the matter was the villainy of the motive in the
evoked predatory creature." What he wishes to do in this story is to
express a general sense of spiritual infamy, not specialized, as the
hot breath of the Pit usually confines itself to some one particular
psychical brutality, but as capable of everything, the worst that can
be conceived. How well he has succeeded in his effort, those who know
the story can testify.
Ambrose Bierce's stories are in many instances remarkable examples
of this psychic horror. _The Death of Halpin Frazer_ has a touch of
almost unbearable dreadfulness. Frazer is assaulted by an evil spirit
in a wood at night and choked to death, the spirit inhabiting the dead
body of the man's own mother who has idolized him. His dead mother's
face, transfixed with diabolical hate, is thrust upon him, and the
loved hands that have caressed him strangle him. This is similar to
the situation of an evil spirit occupying the body of a loved dead
mother in _The Mummy's Tale_, by Elliot O'Donnell. Bierce's stories
beat upon the mind like bludgeons and his morbid plots are among the
most dreadful in our literature. One wonders what abnormality of
mind conceives such themes, evolves such situations. If it be true,
as Macaulay suggests, that not only every poet but every person who
appreciates poetry is slightly unbalanced mentally, surely every writer
of such extreme and horrific stories must be abnormal. There is more
than one writer of modern ghostly fiction of whom it might be said that
"his soul is open on the Hell side."
Another temperament found distinctively in the later fiction is the
humorous ghost. He is a recent development, and as might be supposed,
is characteristically American. There were a few burlesque ghosts
in Elizabethan drama, the Ghost of Jack,[124] for instance, and
one colored ghost that would seem to connote mirth, but the really
humorous specter did not come till later. It remained for the Yankee
to evoke the spook with a sense of humor. Ghosts are not essentially
laughable, and to make them comic without coarseness or irreverence
is an achievement. Numerous writers have busied their pens with the
funny spook and now we have ghostly laughter that is mirthful and not
horrisonous as in other types. Specters now laugh with us instead of at
us, and instead of the mocking laughter heard in lonely places we have
"heart-easing mirth." Washington Irving evokes several humorous hoax
ghosts, such as the headless horseman that created excitement in Sleepy
Hollow and the serenading phantom in _The Specter Bridegroom_.
[124] In Peele's _Old Wives Tales_.
Richard Middleton in his _Ghost Ship_ shows some very informal humorous
ghosts. The girls and boys rise from their graves to flirt over their
tombstones on moonlight nights, and the children play with the village
specters as companions, their favorite being the man that sits on the
wellcurbing with his severed head held in his hands. The cottagers
rebuke the spooks overhead when they grow too noisy, and a general
good-fellowship prevails. Into this setting the ghost ship sails one
night, anchoring itself in the middle of a turnip patch, and the
riotous captain demoralizes the men of the village, ghosts and all,
with his rum and his jokes. After a stay of some time, one night in a
storm the villagers look out.
Over our heads, sailing very comfortably through the windy stars,
was the ship that had passed the summer in landlord's field. Her
portholes and her windows were ablaze with lights and there was a
noise of singing and fiddling on her decks.... They do say that
since then the turnips on landlord's field have tasted of rum.
Olive Harper tells[125] of a reporter who is invited by a cordial
spook--who has been a New York social leader--to a spectral banquet
and ball underneath Old Trinity. She satirizes human foibles and
weaknesses, showing ghosts that gossip and gormandize, simper and
swear as they did in life. They learn to play poker, dance, and
kill time as they used to do. Frank R. Stockton has written several
delicious drolleries of supernaturalism, as _The Transferred Ghost_,
where the spook of a living man, the irascible uncle of the charming
Madeline, terrifies the young suitor who lacks courage to propose.
The audacious and ever-present ghost swings his feet from the porch
railing, invisible to the girl as inaudible by her, and breaks in on
the conversation in a most disconcerting way. The young man at last
cries out in desperation, "What are you waiting for? I have nothing
to say to you?" whereat the girl, who has been undoubtedly waiting to
hear the proposal the embarrassed youth was trying to make, thinks he
is speaking to her and departs in high dudgeon. On a later occasion the
specter comes to announce to him that he has got his transfer and may
be somebody else's ghost instead of that of the man who was expected to
die and didn't, when the lover cries out, "I wish to Heaven you were
mine!" And Madeline, melting in a sigh, whispers, "I am yours!" The
sequel to this is also comic.[126]
[125] In _The Sociable Ghost_.
[126] _The Spectral Mortgage._
Brander Matthews has several stories of humorous supernaturalism,
_Rival Ghosts_ being the account of ancestral spooks belonging to
a young bridegroom, and who resent being brought into enforced
companionship by his sudden elevation to a title, since one ghost
must haunt the house and one the heir. The ingenious groom, at last
harassed to invention by the continual squabbling of the ghosts, brings
about a wedding between them. This is the only instance I have found
of a wedding between two specters, though there are various cases on
record of marriage between one living and one spectral personage.
John Kendrick Bangs devotes several volumes to the doings and sayings
of spooks, describing parties in a house-boat on the Styx, where the
shades of the departed great gather together and engage in festivities
and discussions, and showing types of water-ghosts and various kinds
of spooks. The humorous ghost is a more frequent person than one would
suppose without giving some thought to the subject, for many writers
have sharpened their wits on the comic haunt.
As may be seen from the examples mentioned, the ghost has made
perceptible progress in psychology. The modern apparition is much more
complex in personality than the crude early type, and shows much more
variety. The up-to-date spook who has a chance to talk things over
with William James, and knows the labyrinths of the human mind is much
better adapted to inflict psychal terrors than the illiterate specter
of the past. He can evolve mental tortures more subtle and varied than
ever, or he can amuse a downcast mortal by his gambols.
* * * * *
Stories of to-day show a decided advance over the Gothic in the matter
of motives for spectral appearance. There are, it is true, certain
motives in common between them, but the present-day spirit is less
limited, for he has gained the new without loss of the old, if he
wishes to keep the old. The principal impulse that impelled classical
shades to walk the earth was to request burial, since lacking that he
could not enter into the abode of the dead. This appears frequently
also in Gothic romance. It is shown but little in recent fiction,
perhaps because the modern ghost is reconciled to cremation or is
blithely indifferent to what becomes of his body since it no longer
rules him. _The Queen of Hearts_ is one of the few instances of its
use in modern fiction, for it is a vanishing motive for the most part.
Gothic ghosts were also wont to return to show the hiding-place of
treasure, but that, too, is dying out as an incentive to haunting. The
prosaic explanation here may be that now persons put their treasure in
safety deposits, hence there is scant occasion for mystery concerning
its location after death. Gothic spooks came back on occasion to reveal
parentage, for parents, like valuables, were frequently mislaid in
terror romance. This is not so important now, since vital statistics
usually keep such matters duly recorded, yet instances do sometimes
occur.
Ghosts in the terror romance came to make requests, apart from the
petition for burial, which tendency is still observed on the part of
later spooks, though not to the same extent as formerly. The requests
are psychologically interesting, as they usually relate to simple
ties of affection, illustrated by the mother-spirit[127] who asks her
friend to take her children. Gothic spirits came back often to make
revelations concerning the manner of their death, which is not often
the case now, though it does sometimes happen. And Dickens shows us one
ghost returning to influence the jury that is trying a man for murder.
Specters used to appear to forewarn the living against impending
danger, which impulse is rather lacking in later fiction though it
still occurs. The curious element of futurity enters into several
of these ghostly warnings, as in Dickens's _The Signal Man_ where
the apparition presages the man's death, as in Algernon Blackwood's
story[128] is related the incident of a man who saw the two Indians
scalp a white man and drag his body away, at last crying out, "I saw
the body, and _the face was my own_." Warning spirits of futurity are
seen in _On the Stairs_, where each man beholds his own destiny,--one
seeing the spectral snake that afterwards kills him in a hunting
expedition, one the ghost of a Zulu, the savage that almost destroys
him some time afterwards, and the last the ghost of a young woman in a
blue dress, the woman whom he marries and who hounds him to his death.
She presently sees her own fate, too, but what it is the author does
not tell us. One curious incident in the story is the instantaneous
appearance on the stairs of the woman herself and her ghostly double,
one in a white dress, one in the fatal blue. This sort of spectral
warning, this wireless service for the conveyance of bad news and hint
of threatening danger, serves to link the ghost story of the present
with those of the past. The records of the Psychical Society show
hundreds of such instances, and much use is made in fiction of plots
hinging on such motif. Scott's White Lady of Avenel appears as a death
portent, as also the "Bahr-geist" in another novel.
[127] In _The Substitute_.
[128] In _A Haunted Island_.
The revenge ghost looms large in fiction as in the drama. He was
the most important figure in Elizabethan as in classical drama, and
Shakespeare's ghosts are principally of that class. A terrible example
of the type is in Robert Lovell Beddoes' _Death's Jest-Book_, that
extraordinary example of dramatic supernaturalism, where the ghost of
the murdered man comes back embodied from the grave and is an active
character to the end of the play. He is summoned to life through a
hideous mistake, the murderer having asked the magician to call up
the spirit of his dead wife, but the body of his victim having been
secretly buried beside her so that the murderer may have no rest
even in the grave, the awful accusing spirit rises to confront him,
instead of his wife's phantom. The revenge ghost is both objective
and subjective in his manifestation and his impelling motive adds a
touch of frozen horror to his appearance. He appears in various forms,
as dismembered parts of the body--illustrated in the stories above
referred to,--in a horrific invisibility, in a shape of fear visible
only to the guilty, or in a body so objectified as to seem absolutely
real and living to others beside the one haunted. The apparently
casual, idle figure that strolls about the docks and streets in _The
Detective_, seen by different persons and taken for a man interested
only in his own pursuits, is a revenge ghost so relentless that he
hounds his victim from country to country, at last killing him by sheer
force of terror as he sits on his bed at night, leaving the imprint
of his body on the mattress beside the dead man whose face is rigid
with mad horror. He has come back in physical embodiment to avenge
the betrayal of his daughter. Ambrose Bierce shows us many spirits
animated by cold and awful revenge, sometimes visible and sometimes
unseen, as where a soldier killed for striking an officer answers,
"Here!" to the roll-call, just at which moment a mysterious bullet from
nowhere strikes the officer through the heart.[129] Crawford sends
a drowned sailor back in wet oil-skins to slay his twin brother who
has impersonated him to win the girl they both loved. When the two
bodies wash ashore one is a newly dead corpse, the other a skeleton
in oil skins; while the dreadful rattle of the accusing lump of lead
in the wife's skull in another story is a turn of the screw of her
horrid revenge. The revenge ghost in modern fiction is more varied in
forms of manifestation, at times more subtle in suggestion and ghostly
psychology, than the conventionalized type of the drama and remains one
of the most dreadful of the forms of fear.
[129] In _His Two Military Executions_.
In general, the modern stories show a greater intensity of power in
employing the motives that earlier forms had used as well as far
greater range of motivation. The earlier ghosts were limited in their
impulses, and their psychology was comparatively simple. Not so with
the apparitions of to-day. They have a far wider range of motives,
are moved by more complex impulses and mixed motivation in many cases
difficult to analyze.
The Gothic ghost had some conscience about whom he haunted. He had
too much reserve to force himself needlessly upon those that had no
connection with his past. If he knew someone that deserved punishment
for wrong done him or his, he tried to haunt him and let others alone.
The modern ghost is not so considerate. He is actuated in many cases
by sheer evil that wreaks itself upon anyone in range. Death gives
a terrible immortality and access of power to those whose lives have
been particularly evil, and the results are dangerous to society.
Dark discarnate hate manifests itself to those within reach. Algernon
Blackwood would have us believe that all around us are reservoirs of
unspeakable horror and that any moment of weakness on our part may
bring down the hosts of damnation upon us. This is illustrated in
such stories as _With Intent to Steal_, where the spirit of a man who
has hanged himself comes back with hypnotic power forcing others to
take their lives in the same way, or in another,[130] showing power
exerted viciously against human beings in a certain building, or still
another[131] where the witchcraft holds the village in thrall, and
elsewhere. Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, F. Marion Crawford, and Arthur
Machen have written a number of stories bringing out this side of
ghostly psychology, showing the bands of outlawed spirits that prey on
society. There are spectral bandits and bravos that answer the call of
any force hostile to man, or act of their own accord from an impulse of
malicious mischief.
[130] _The Empty House._
[131] _Secret Worship._
The jealous ghost is somewhat common of late, showing that human
emotions are carried over into the life beyond. In various stories we
find the dead wife interfering to prevent a second marriage, or to
make life wretched for the interloper even after the ceremony. But the
most extreme case of jealousy--even exceeding the instance of the man
whose wife and physician conspired to give him an overdose to put him
out of the way and who is frantic to prevent their marriage--is found
in Arnold Bennett's novel, _The Ghost_. Here the spirit of a man who
has madly loved an opera-singer haunts every suitor of hers and either
drives him to abandon his courtship or kills him, till finally the
singer begs the ghost to spare the man she loves, which he sadly does,
and departs. This is reminiscent of one of Marie de France's _lais_.
The varying motives for appearance may be illustrated by reference to
a few ghosts in modern fiction, such as the woman[132] who comes to
drive away a writer's sense of humor,--than which there could be no
greater spiritual brutality,--and set him to writing vile, debased
tragedies. Perhaps she has transferred her attentions to other authors
than the one in the story! Other instances are the little Gray Ghost
in Cornelia A. P. Comer's story by that name, who impels a stranger to
take her child from an orphan asylum and adopt it, much against his
will; the immortal lovers that haunt a woman who has made a marriage
of convenience--which has turned out to be a marriage of inconvenience
for her husband[133]; the talkative spook in Andrew Lang's _In Castle
Perilous_, that discourses learnedly on its own materialization,
speaking in technical terms, pokes fun at Shakespeare for the glow-worm
on a winter night, and the cockcrow in his _Hamlet_, and--but these are
perhaps enough. If one may judge from ghostly fiction, death subtracts
nothing from human emotion but rather adds to it, so that the spectral
impulses are more poignant and intense. The darker passions are
retained with cumulative power, and there is a terrible immortality of
hate, of jealousy and revenge.
[132] In _A Psychic Invasion_.
[133] In _The Long Chamber_.
There is no more impressive revenant than one Coleridge gives in his
_Wanderings of Cain_, the mournful phantom of Abel appearing to Cain
and his little son, Enos. The child says to his father, "I saw a man in
unclean garments and he uttered a sweet voice, full of lamentations."
Cain asks the unhappy spirit, "But didst thou not find favor in the
sight of the Lord thy God?" to which the shape answers, "The Lord is
God of the living only. The dead have another God!"
"Cain ran after the shape and the shape fled shrieking over the
sands, and the sands rose like white mists behind the steps of Cain
but the feet of him that was like Abel disturbed not the sands."
One of the most interesting phases of comparative ghost-lore is the
study of the intricate personality of specters. With respect to dual
personality the late supernatural stories are curiously reminiscent of
the animistic belief that a ghost is a double of the mortal, a vapory
projection of his actual body, to be detached at will during life
and permanently at death. I do not know of any instances of doubles
in classical literature, nor is the idea used in Gothic romance.
Likewise Shakespeare's ghosts are all spirits of persons safely dead.
It remained for the modern writer with his expertness in psychology
and psychiatry to evoke the ghosts of the living persons, the strange
cases of dual personality and of separate personalities supernaturally
merged into one, and those inexplicable ghosts of subliminal memories.
All these forms appear in elusive analysis, in complex suggestiveness,
in modern uncanny stories, and constitute one of the distinct marks of
advance over the earlier types.
The double, a frequent figure in English fiction, bears a resemblance
to the Doppelgänger of German folk-tales. Numerous examples of dual
personality, of one being appearing in two forms, are seen, with
different twists to the idea, yet much alike. It has been suggested
that these stories have their germinal origin in Calderon's play,[134]
where a man is haunted by himself. Poe's _William Wilson_ is a tense
and tragic story of a man pursued by his double, till in desperation
he kills him, only to realize that he has slain his better self, his
conscience. His duplicate cries out, "Henceforward thou art also dead,
dead to the world, to Heaven and to hope! In me thou didst exist and
in my death, see by this thine image, which is thine own, how utterly
thou hast murdered thyself!" Stevenson's _Markheim_ shows in the person
of the stranger the incarnate conscience, an embodiment of a man's
nobler self that leads him through the labyrinth of self-examination
to the knowledge of the soul's truth. The stranger tests the murderer
by offering him a way of escape, by suggesting further crime to him,
by showing him relentlessly what the consequence of each act will be,
till in despair Markheim, realizing that his life is hopelessly weak
and involved, decides to surrender it rather than to sin further.
Step by step the nameless visitor leads him, Markheim shuddering
back from the evil that is suggested, thinking the stranger is a
demonic tempter, till at last the transfigured face shows him to
be the nobler angel. Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ is, of
course, the best-known instance of this sort of dual personality, this
walking forth in physical form of the evil in one's own nature, with
a separate existence of its own. No writer could hope to express this
idea more powerfully than has been done in this chemical allegory,
this biological dissection of the soul. The thrill of suspense, the
seemingly inexplicable mystery, the dramatic tenseness of the closing
scenes make this sermon in story form unforgettable. Kipling has given
a striking story of a man haunted by his own phantom body, in _At the
End of the Passage_. His own figure slipped silently before him as he
went through his lonely house. "When he came in to dinner he found
himself seated at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily.
Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real." The horror
of this haunting specter of himself, this double of his own body and
soul, drives the man to suicide, after which a peculiar twist of
horror is given by the detail at the close, of the discovery by his
comrade, of the man's own photograph imprinted on the dead retina and
reproduced by the camera hours after his death. In Julian Hawthorne's
allegory,[135] the dead man's spirit meets the devil, who is his own
evil self incarnate.
[134] _El Embozado._
[135] _Lovers in Heaven._
Edith Wharton's _Triumph of Night_ reveals a ghost of a living man
standing behind his double's chair, visible to the person opposite
and showing on the ghostly face the evil impulses that the living
countenance cleverly masks. John Kendrick Bangs has his hero say,[136]
"I came face to face with myself, with that other self in which I
recognized, developed to the fullest extent, every bit of my capacity
for an evil life," and Blackwood[137] relates the meeting of a
musician and his ghostly double in an opera hall. Mr. Titbottom,[138]
through the power of his magic spectacles reflecting his image in a
mirror, sees himself as he really is, as he looks to God, and flees
horror-stricken from the sight. This symbolic representation is akin to
the _Prophetic Pictures_ of Hawthorne, where a woman's griefs and marks
of age are shown in her pictured face before they are revealed in her
actual experience, a pictured futurity. The most impressive instance
of this relation between a human being and his portrait is in Oscar
Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_, that strange study of a man's real
nature expressing itself on his painted likeness, while the living face
bears no mark of sin or shame or age, until the tragic revelation at
the end. Edith Wharton[139] also represents a supernatural dualism, the
woman's statue showing on its marble face the changing horror of her
own stricken countenance. _The White Sleep of Auber Hurn_ is a curious
story of a spiritual double, a psychological study of a man who was in
two places at once, seen by various persons who knew him in each case,
being killed in a train wreck many miles away from his room where he
was lying asleep in his bed,--a sleep that knows no waking.[140]
[136] In _Thurlow's Christmas Story_.
[137] In _The Man from the Gods_.
[138] In George William Curtis's _Prue and I_.
[139] In her _Duchess at Prayer_.
[140] Other stories of double personality are _The Ivory Gate_,
by Walter Besant; _The Man with a Shadow_, by George M. Fenn;
_The Jolly Corner_, by Henry James; _The Transferred Ghost_,
by Frank R. Stockton; _On the Stairs_, by Katherine Fullerton
Gerould; _Elixiere des Teufels_, by E. T. A. Hoffmann; _Howe's
Masquerade_, by Hawthorne; _The Recent Carnival of Crime in
Connecticut_, by Mark Twain; _The Queen of Sheba_, by Thomas
Bailey Aldrich; _The Doppelgänger_, by Elizabeth Bisland
Wetmore.
Georg Brandes, in his article, "Romantic Reduplication
and Psychology," in _Main Currents of Nineteenth Century
Literature_, points out the prevalence of this motif in German
fiction. He says: "It finds its first expression in Jean
Paul's _Leibgeber Schappe_, and is to be found in almost all
of Hoffmann's tales, reaching its climax in _Die Elixiere des
Teufels_. It crops up in the writings of all the Romanticists,
in Kleist's _Amphitryon_, in Achim von Arnim's _Die Beiden
Waldemar_, in Chamisso's _Erscheinung_. Brentano treats it
comically in _Die Mehreren Wehmüller_."
Distinct from the expression of one personality in two bodies, the
supernatural merging of two separate personalities into one appears
in recent ghostly fiction. It forms a subtle psychologic study and is
uncannily effective. H. G. Wells's _Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham_
is a peculiar narrative of a transfer of personality as the result of
a mysterious drink, by which an old man takes possession of a young
man's body, leaving the youth to inhabit the worn-out shell of the
dotard. Algernon Blackwood in _The Terror of the Twins_ describes a
supernatural merging of two natures into one by the power of a dead
father's insane curse. The younger son loses his vitality, his mind,
his personality, all of which is supermortally given to his older
brother, while the deprived son dies a drivelling idiot of sheer
inertia and utter absence of vital power. Mary Heaton Vorse[141]
describes a neurotic woman who comes back from the grave to obsess and
possess the interloper in her home, through the immortal force of her
jealousy, making the living woman actually become the reincarnation
of the dead wife. This story naturally suggests Poe's _Ligeia_ which
is the climax of ghostly horror of this motif, with its thesis that
"man doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly save
through the weakness of his own feeble will" expressed in a terrible
crescendo of ghastly horror. Poe's _Morella_ is a similar study of the
supernatural merging of an exterior personality into a living body,
where the dead mother and her child are literally one flesh and one
spirit. Blackwood's _The Return_ is an example of the compact-ghost,
that comes back at the hour of death to reveal himself to his friend
as he long ago promised he would. The dead artist manifests himself
through a sudden and wonderful realization of the beauty of the world
to which the materialistic friend has heretofore been blinded and
indifferent. Feeling this sudden rapturous sweep of beauty through his
soul, the living man knows that his artist friend is dead and that
his spirit has become a part of his own being. In the same manner the
little lonely soul in Granville Barker's wonderful piece of symbolism,
_Souls on Fifth_, enters into the being of the man who has the
understanding heart and continues her existence as a part of him.
[141] In _The Second Wife_.
An essentially modern type of ghost story is that which has its
explanation on the basis of subliminal memories. It seems that all
around us are reservoirs of ancestral memories, records of the vital
thoughts and actions of the long dead, psychical incarnations of
their supreme moments, their striking hours, into which the living
at times stumble and are submerged. Some slight spiritual accident
may bring down upon mortals the poignant suffering and bliss of the
dead in whose personality they are curiously duplicated. These ghosts
of dead selves from the past are different from the doubles that are
projections of the living, or prophetic specters of the future, and
are clearly distinguished. _The Borderland_, by Francis Parsons,
tells of a young army officer who is obsessed by subliminal self,
the ghost of his grandfather. He feels that he _is_ his grandfather,
living another existence, yet he lacks the pluck, the manhood, that
the old pioneer possessed. At a crisis in his military affairs, the
old frontiersman comes visibly forward to give him the courage that is
needed, after which he manifests himself no more. The scene of this
subliminal haunting is a Texas prairie, during a border fight, rather
an unghostly setting yet one which makes the supernatural seem more
actual. Arthur Johnson[142] presents the case of a man who sees the
ghosts of ancestral memory in a vivid form. He sees and hears his own
double wildly accuse his wife--who is the double of his own--betrothed,
after having killed her lover. His hand is wounded and the fingers
leave bloodstains as they snatch at the gray chiffon round his wife's
throat. After a fit of unconsciousness into which he falls is over, the
modern man awakes to find his hand strangely wounded, and on the floor
of the upper room he picks up a scrap of bloodstained gray chiffon!
Blackwood's _Old Clothes_ shows a little girl obsessed by subliminal
memories. She is haunted by terrible experiences in which she says that
she and some of those around her have been concerned. She goes into
convulsions if anything is fastened around her waist, and she cries
out that some cruel man has shut her up in the wall to die and has cut
off Philip's hands so that he cannot save her. Investigations bring
to light the facts that a long-dead ancestress, living in the same
house, had been walled up alive by her husband after he had cut off her
lover's hands before her face. The skeleton is found chained by the
waist inside the ancient wall. Blackwood's _Ancient Sorceries_ depicts
the ghosts of buried life, of a whole village enchanted by the past
and living over again the witchcraft of the long ago. As John Silence,
the psychic doctor, tells of the Englishman who drops casually into the
village and is drawn into the magic:
Vesin was swept into the vortex of forces arising out of the
intense activities of a past life and lived over again a scene in
which he had often played a part centuries ago. For strong actions
set up forces that are so slow to exhaust themselves that they
may be said in a sense never to die. In this case they were not
complete enough to render the illusion perfect, so the little man
was confused between the present and the past.
[142] In _Mr. Eberdeen's House_.
That story of unusual psychical experience, _An Adventure_, by two
Oxford women, can be explained on no other basis than some such theory
as this. The book claims to be a truthful account of a happening
at Versailles, where two English women, teachers and daughters of
clergymen, saw in broad daylight the ghosts of the past, the figures of
Marie Antoinette and her court. The writers offer the explanation that
they stumbled into a sort of pocket of the unhappy queen's memories
and saw the past relived before their eyes because she had felt it so
keenly and vividly long ago. Other instances might be given, but these
are sufficient to illustrate the type. Such stories have a curious
haunting power and are among the most effective narratives. The idea is
modern and illustrates the complexity of later thought as compared with
the simplicity of earlier times.
A comparative study of ghost stories leads one to the conclusion
that the ghost is the most modern of ancients and the most ancient
of moderns. In some respects the present specter is like and in some
unlike the previous forms. Ghosts, whether regarded as conjective or
purely subjective, are closely related to the percipients' thoughts.
Primitive times produced a primitive supernaturalism and the gradual
advance in intellectual development has brought about a heightening and
complexity of the weird story. 'Tis in ourselves that ghosts are thus
and so!
The spook of to-day is of a higher nervous organization than his
forbears. In many instances the latter-day ghost is so distracted by
circumstances that he hardly knows where he's at, as for instance,
the ghost in such case as _The Tryst_, by Alice Brown, where a
man is thought to be drowned and his ghost comes out to comfort
his sweetheart, only to have the drowned man brought back to life
presently; and in _The Woman from Yonder_, by Stephen French Whitman,
where a scientist with impertinent zeal brings life back to the body
of a woman who had bled to death while Hannibal was crossing the Alps
and been buried in a glacier till the glacier spat her out. Now,
what was the status of those ghosts? Was there a ghost if the person
wasn't really dead? But if a woman isn't dead after she has been in an
ice-pack for two thousand years or thereabouts what surety is there for
the standing of any ghost?
The apparitions of to-day have more lines of interest than the ancient
ghosts. The Gothic specter was a one-idea creature, with a single-track
brain. He was not a ghost-of-all-work as are some of the later spooks.
He was a simple-souled being who felt a call to haunt somebody for some
purpose or other, so he just went and did it. The specters of to-day
are more versatile,--they can turn their hand to any kind of haunting
that is desired and show an admirable power of adaptability, though
there are highly developed specialists as well. The psychology of the
primitive ghost and of the Gothic specter was simple. They knew only
the elemental passions of love and hate. Gothic spooks haunted the
villain or villainess to foil them in their wicked designs or punish
them for past misdeeds, or hovered over the hero or heroine to advise,
comfort, and chaperon them. But the modern ghosts are not satisfied
with such sit-by-the-fire jobs as these. They like to keep in the
van of activity and do what mortals do. They run the whole scale of
human motions and emotions and one needs as much handy psychology to
interpret their hauntings as to read George Meredith. They are actuated
by subtle motivations of jealousy, ardent love, tempered friendship,
curiosity, mischief, vindictiveness, revenge, hate, gratitude, and all
other conceivable impulses. The Billy Sunday sort of ghost who wants to
convert the world, the philanthropic spirit who wants to help humanity,
the socialist specter that reads the magazine, the friendly visitor
that sends its hands back to wash the dishes, the little shepherd lad
that returns to tend the sheep, are among the new concepts in fiction
of the supernatural. The ghost of awful malice, to be explained only on
the basis of compound interest of evil stored up for many years, is a
new force.
Though the ghostly narrative has shifted its center of gravity from
the novel to the short story since Gothic times, and many more of the
modern instances are in that form, the supernatural novel has recently
taken on a new lease of life. Honors are almost even between the
English and the American ghost story, as most of the representative
writers on each side turn their pen at some time to write terror
tales. The ghost has never lost his power over the human mind. Judging
from the past, one may say that the popularity of the ghost story
will continue undiminished and will perhaps increase. Certainly there
has been a new influx of stories within later times. What mines of
horror yet remain untouched for writers of the future, it would be
hard to say, yet we do not fear for the exhaustion of the type. On the
contrary, ghosts in fiction are becoming so numerous that one wonders
if the Malthusian theory will not in time affect them. We are too fond
of being fooled by phantoms to surrender them, for "the slow touch of a
frozen finger tracing out the spine" is an awesome joy. For ourselves,
we are content for the present to function on one plane, but we love to
adventure on another plane through spectral substitutes. We may give up
the mortal but we'll not willingly give up the ghost. We love him. We
believe in him. Our attitude towards specters is much like that of the
little black boy that Ellis Parker Butler tells about in _Dey Ain't No
Ghosts_, who sees a terrifying array of "all de sperits in de world,
an' all de ha'nt in de world, an' all de hobgoblins in de world, an'
all spicters in de world, an' all de ghostes in de world," come out to
bring a fearsome message to a frightened pickaninny.
De king ob de ghostes, whut name old Skull-an'-Bones, he place he
hand on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' de hand feel like a wet
rag, an' he say:
"Dey ain'no ghosts!"
An' one ob de hairs on de head ob li'l black Mose turn' white.
An' de monstrous big ha'nt what he name Bloody Bones he lay he hand
on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' he hand feel like a toad-stool
in de cool ob de day, an' he say:
"Dey ain' no ghosts!"
An' anudder one ob de hairs whut on de head ob li'l black Mose
turn' white.
An' a heejus sperit whut he name Moldy Pa'm place he hand on de
head ob li'l black Mose, an' he hand feel like de yunner side ob a
lizard, an' he say:
"Dey ain' no ghosts!"
And so on through the assembly. Small wonder that the terrified
youngster is loath to go up to the loft to bed alone that night and
demurs to the demand.
So he ma she say, "Git erlong wid you! Whut you skeered ob when dey
ain' no ghosts?"
An' li'l black Mose he scrooge an' he twist an' he pucker up he
mouf an' he rub he eyes an' prisintly he say right low:
"I ain' skeered ob de ghosts whut am, ca'se dey ain' no ghosts."
"Den whut _am_ you skeered ob?" ask he ma.
"Nuffin," say de li'l black boy whut he name am Mose, "but I jes'
feel kinder oneasy 'bout de ghosts whut ain't!"
Jes' lack white folks. Jes' lack white folks.
CHAPTER IV
The Devil and His Allies
"Ghosts are few but devils are plenty," said Cotton Mather, but his
saying would need to be inverted to fit present-day English fiction.
Now we have ghosts in abundance but devils are scarce. In fact, they
bid fair to become extinct in our romances, at least in the form that
is easily recognizable. Satan will probably soon be in solution,
identified merely as a state of mind. He has been so Burbanked of
late, with his dæmonic characteristics removed and humanities added
that, save for sporadic reversion to type, the old familiar demon is
almost a vanished form. The modern mind seems to cling with a new
fondness to the ghost but has turned the cold shoulder to the devil,
perhaps because many modernists believe more in the human and less
in the supernatural--and after all, ghosts are human and devils are
not. The demon has disported himself in various forms in literature,
from the scarlet fiend of monkish legend, the nimble imp and titanic
nature-devil of folk-lore to Milton's epic, majestic Satan, and
Goethe's mocking Mephistopheles, passing into allegoric, symbolic, and
satiric figures in later fiction. He has been an impressive character
in the drama, the epic, the novel, in poetry, and the short story. We
have seen him as a loathly, brutish demon in Dante, as a superman,
as an intellectual satirist, and as a human being appealing to our
sympathy. He has gradually lost his epic qualities and become human.
He is not present in literature now to the extent to which he was known
in the past, is not so impressive a figure as heretofore, and at times
when he does appear his personality is so ambiguously set forth that it
requires close literary analysis to prove his presence.
In this chapter the devil will be discussed with reference to his
appearances on earth, while in a later division he will be seen in
his own home. It would be hard to say with certainty when and where
the devil originated, yet he undoubtedly belongs to one of our first
families and is said to have been born theologically in Persia about
the year 900 B.C. He has appeared under various aliases, as Ahriman of
the Zoroastrian system, Pluto in classical mythology, Satan, Beelzebub,
Prince of Darkness, and by many other titles. In his _Address to the
De'il_ Burns invokes him thus:
"Oh, Thou! whatever title suit thee,--
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Cloutie!"
He has manifested himself in fiction under diverse names, as Demon,
Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles, Prince Lucio, The Man in Black, and so
forth, but whatever the name he answers to, he is known in every land
and has with astonishing adaptability made himself at home in every
literature.
The devil has so changed his form and his manner of appearance in later
literature that it is hard to identify him as his ancient self. In
early stories he was heralded by supernatural thunder and lightning
and accompanied by a strong smell of sulphur. He dressed in character
costume, sometimes in red, sometimes in black, but always indubitably
diabolic. He wore horns, a forked tail, and cloven hoofs and was a
generally unprepossessing creature whom anyone could know for a devil.
Now his rôle is not so typical and his garb not so declarative. He
wears an evening suit, a scholar's gown, a parson's robe, a hunting
coat, with equal ease, and it is sometimes difficult to tell the devil
from the hero of a modern story. He has been deodorized and no longer
reeks warningly of the Pit.
The mediæval mind conceived of the devil as a sort of combination
of mythologic satyr and religious dragon. It is interesting to note
how the pagan devil-myths have been engrafted upon the ideas of
Christianity, to fade out very slowly and by degrees. In monkish
legends the devil was an energetic person who would hang round a likely
soul for years, if need be, on the chance of nabbing him. Many monkish
legends have come down to us.
The diabolic element in English folk-lore shows a rich field for study.
The devil here as in the monkish legendry appears as an enemy of souls,
a tireless tempter. He lies in wait for any unwary utterance, and the
least mention of his name, any thoughtless expletive, such as "The
devil take me if--" brings instant response from him to clinch the
bargain. Yet the devil of rustic folk-lore is of a bucolic dullness,
less clever than in any phase of literature, more gullible, more easily
imposed on. English folk-lore, especially the Celtic branches, shows
the devil as very closely related to nature. He was wont to work off
his surplus energy or his wrath by disturbing the landscape, and many
stories of his prankish pique have come down to us. If anything vexed
him he might stamp so hard upon a plain that the print of his cloven
hoof would be imprinted permanently. He was fond of drinking out of
pure springs and leaving them cursed with sulphur, and he sometimes
showed annoyance by biting a section out of a mountain, Devil's Bit
Mountain in Ireland being one of the instances. In general, any
peculiarity of nature might be attributed to the activities of Auld
Hornie.
The devil has always been a pushing, forward sort of person, so he
was not content with being handed round by word of mouth in monkish
legend or rustic folk-lore, but must worm his way into literature in
general. Since then many ink-pots have been emptied upon him besides
the one that Luther hurled against his cloister wall. The devil is seen
frequently in the miracle plays, showing grotesquerie, the beginnings
of that sardonic humor he is to display in more important works later.
In his appearance in literature the devil is largely anthropomorphic.
Man creates the devil in his own image, one who is not merely personal
but racial as well, reflecting his creator. In monkish tradition
an adversary in wait for souls, in rustic folk-lore a rollicking
buffoon with waggish pranks, in miracle plays reflecting the mingled
seriousness and comic elements of popular beliefs, he mirrors his
maker. But it is in the great poems and dramas and stories that we find
the more personal aspects of devil-production, and it is these epic
and dramatic concepts of the devil that have greatly influenced modern
fiction. While the Gothic romance was but lightly touched by the epic
supernaturalism, the literature since that time has reflected it more,
and the Satanic characters of Dante, Milton, Calderon, Marlowe, and
Goethe have cast long shadows over modern fiction. The recent revival
of interest in Dante has doubtless had its effect here.
Burns in his _Address to the De'il_ shows his own kindly heart and
honest though ofttimes misdirected impulses by suggesting that there
is still hope for the devil to repent and trusting that he may do so
yet. Mrs. Browning, in her _Drama of Exile_, likewise shows in Lucifer
some appeal to our sympathies, reflecting the pitying heart of the
writer,--showing a certain kinship to Milton's Satan yet with weakened
intellectual power. She makes Gabriel say to him:
"Angel of the sin,
Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath--
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
A monumental, melancholy gloom,
Seen down all ages whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good."
Byron's devil in _A Vision of Judgment_ is, like Caliban's ideas of
Setebos, "altogether such an one" as Byron conceived himself to be. He
is a terrible figure, whose
"Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved
Eternal wrath on his immortal face."
He shows diabolical sarcasm when he says, "I've kings enough below,
God knows!" And how like Oscar Wilde is the devil he pictures to us
in his symbolic story, _The Fisherman and his Soul_. The prince of
darkness who appears to the young fisherman that wishes to sell his
soul to the devil is "a man dressed in a suit of black velvet cut in
Spanish fashion. His proud face was strangely pale, but his lips were
like a proud red flower. He seemed weary and was leaning back toying in
a listless manner with the pommel of his saddle." When the fisherman
unthoughtedly utters a prayer that baffles the fiend for the time,
the demon mounts his jennet with the silver harness and rides away,
still with the proud, disdainful face, sad with a _blasé_ weariness
unlike the usual alertness of the devil. He has a sort of Blessed
Damozel droop to his figure, and the bored patience of a lone man at an
afternoon tea. Wilde shows us some little mocking red devils in another
of his stories,[143] and _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is a concept of
diabolism.
[143] _A Legend of Sharp._
Scott in _The Talisman_ puts a story of descent from the Evil One in
the mouth of the Saracen, the legend of the spirits of evil who formed
a league with the cruel Zohauk, by which he gained a daily sacrifice of
blood to feed two hideous serpents that had become a part of himself.
One day seven sisters of wonderful beauty are brought, whose loveliness
appeals to the immortals. In the midst of supernatural manifestations
the earth is rent and seven young men appear. The leader says to the
eldest sister:
I am Cothreb, king of the subterranean world. I and my brethren are
of those who, created out of elementary fire, disdained even at the
command of Omnipotence, to do homage to a clod of earth because it
is called man. Thou mayest have heard of us as cruel, unrelenting,
and persecuting. It is false. We are by nature kind and generous,
vengeful only when insulted, cruel only when affronted. We are true
to those that trust us; and we have heard the invocations of thy
father the sage Mithrasp, who wisely worships not only the Origin
of Good, but that which is called the Source of Evil. You and
your sisters are on the eve of death; but let each give to us one
hair from your fair tresses in token of fealty, and we will carry
you many miles to a place of safety where you may bid defiance to
Zohauk and his ministers.
The maidens accept the offer and become the brides of the spirits of
evil.
The devil in Scott's _Wandering Willie's Tale_,[144] also speaks a good
word for himself. When the gudesire meets in the woods the stranger
who sympathizes with his obvious distress, the unknown offers to help
him, saying, "If you will tell me your grief, I am one that, though I
have been sair miscaa'd in the world, am the only hand for helping my
freends." The gudesire tells his woes and says that he would go to the
gates of hell, and farther, to get the receipt due him, upon which the
hospitable stranger conducts him to the place mentioned. The canny
Scot obtains the document, outwits the devil, and wins his way back to
earth unscathed.
[144] In _Red Gauntlet_.
One marked aspect of recent devil-fiction is the tendency to gloze over
his sins and to humanize him. This is shown to a marked degree in Marie
Corelli's sentimental novel, _The Sorrows of Satan_, where she expends
much anxious sympathy over the fiend. To Miss Corelli's agitated
mind Satan is a much maligned martyr who regretfully tempts mortals
and is grieved when they yield to his beguilements. Her perfervid
rhetoric pictures him as a charming prince, handsome, wealthy, yet very
lonesome, who warns persons in advance that he is not what he seems
and that they would do well to avoid him. But the fools rush in crowds
to be damned. According to her theory, the devil is attempting to work
out his own salvation and could do so save for the weakness of man. He
is able to get a notch nearer heaven for every soul that resists his
wiles, though in London circles his progress is backward rather than
forward. How is Lucifer fallen! To be made a hero of by Marie Corelli
must seem to Mephisto life's final indignity! Her characterization of
the fiend shows some reminiscence of a hasty reading of Milton, Goethe,
and the Byronic Cain.
The devil has a human as well as dæmonic spirit in Israel Zangwill's
_They that Walk in Darkness_, where he appears as Satan Maketrig, a
red-haired hunchback, with "gigantic marble brow, cold, keen, steely
eyes, and handsome, clean-shaven lips." He seems a normal human being
in this realistic Ghetto setting, though he bears a nameless sense
of evil about with him. In his presence, or as he passes by, all the
latent evil in men's souls comes to the surface. He lures the rabbi
away from his wife, from God, and from all virtue, yet to see him at
the end turn away again in spirit to the good, spurning the tempter
whom he recognizes at last as dæmonic. There is a human anguish in the
eyes of Satan Maketrig, that shows him to be not altogether diabolic,
and he seems mournful and appealing in his wild loneliness. His nature
is in contrast to that of the fiend in Stanley J. Weyman's _The Man
in Black_. Here his cold, sardonic jesting that causes him to play
with life and death, so lightly, his diabolic cunning, his knowledge
of the human heart and how to torture it, remind us of Iago. The dark
shade extends to the skin as well as to the heart in the man in black
in Stevenson's _Thrawn Janet_, for he exercises a weird power over his
vassal, the old servant, and terrifies even the minister. And _War
Letters from a Living Dead Man_, written by Elsa Parker but said to be
dictated by a correspondent presumably from somewhere in hell, shows us
His Satanic Majesty with grim realism up to date.
The devil appears with mournful, human dignity, yet with superhuman
gigantism in Algernon Blackwood's _Secret Worship_, where the lost
souls enter into a riot of devil-worship, into which they seek to draw
living victims, to damn them body and soul. One victim sees the devil
thus:
At the end of the room where the windows seemed to have disappeared
so that he could see the stars, there rose up into view, far
against the sky, grand and terrible, the outline of a man. A kind
of gray glory enveloped him so that it resembled a steel-cased
statue, immense, imposing, horrific in its distant splendor. The
gray radiance from its mightily broken visage, august and mournful,
beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with the
powers of spiritual evil.
Here, as in many instances elsewhere, the sadness of the diabolic
character is emphasized, a definite human element. The Miltonic
influence seems evident in such cases.
Kipling has a curious dæmonic study in _Bubble Well Road_, a story
of a patch of ground filled with devils and ghosts controlled by an
evil-minded native priest, while in _Haunted Subalterns_ the imps
terrorize young army officers by their malicious mischief.
The allegorical and symbolic studies of diabolism are among the
more impressive creations in later fiction, as in Tolstoi's _Ivan,
the Fool_, where the demons are responsible for the marshaling of
armies, the tyranny of money, and the inverted ideas of the value of
service. The appearance of the devil in later stories is more terrible
and effective in its variance of type and its secret symbolism than
the crude enginery of diabolism in Gothic fiction, as the muscular
fiend[145] that athletically hurls the man and woman from the mountain
top, or the invisible physical strength manifested in _Melmoth, the
Wanderer_. The crude violence of these novels is in keeping with the
fiction of the time, yet modern stories show a distinct advance, as
such instances as J. H. Shorthouse's _Countess Eve_, where the devil
appears differently to each tempted soul, embodying with hideous
wisdom the form of the sin that that particular soul is most liable
to commit. He bears the shape of committed sin, suggesting that evil
is so powerful as to have an independent existence of its own, apart
from the mind that gave it birth, as the devil appears as evil thought
materialized in Fernac Molnar's drama, _The Devil_. Fiona McLeod's
strange Gaelic tale, _The Sin-Eater_ introduces demons symbolically.
The sin-eater is a person that by an ancient formula can remove the
sins from an unburied corpse and let them in turn be swept away from
him by the action of the pure air. But if the sin-eater hates the dead
man, he has the power to fling the transgressions into the sea, to turn
them into demons that pursue and torment the flying soul till Judgment
Day.
[145] In _The Monk_ or _Zofloya_.
One aspect of the recent stories of diabolism is the subtleness by
which the evil is suggested. The reader feels a miasmatic atmosphere
of evil, a smear on the soul, and knows that certain incidents in the
action can be accounted for on no other basis than that of dæmonic
presence, as in Barry Pain's _Moon Madness_, where the princess is
moved by a strange irresistible lure to dance alone night after night
in the heart of the secret labyrinth to mystic music that the white
moon makes. But one night, after she is dizzy and exhausted but
impelled to keep on, she feels a hot hand grasp hers; someone whirls
her madly round and she knows that _she is not dancing alone_! She
is seen no more of men, and searchers find only the prints of her
little dancing slippers in the sand, with the mark of a cloven hoof
beside them. The most revolting instances of suggestive diabolism are
found in Arthur Machen's stories, where supernatural science opens
the way for the devil to enter the human soul, since the biologist
by a cunning operation on the brain removes the moral sense, takes
away the soul, and leaves a being absolutely diabolized. Worse still
is the hideousness of _Seeing the Great God Pan_, where the dæmonic
character is a composite of the loathsome aspects of Pan and the devil,
from which horrible paternity is born a child that embodies all the
unspeakable evil in the world.
In pleasant contrast to dreadful stories are the tales of the amusing
devils that we find frequently. The comic devil is much older than
the comic ghost, as authors showed a levity toward demons long before
they treated the specter with disrespect,--one rather wonders why.
Clownish devils that appeared in the miracle plays prepared the way for
the humorous and satiric treatment of the Elizabethan drama and late
fiction. The liturgical imps were usually funny whether their authors
intended them as such or not, but the devils in fiction are quite
conscious of their own wit, in fact, are rather conceited about it.
Poe shows us several amusing demons who display his curious satiric
humor,--for instance, the old gentleman in _Never Bet the Devil your
Head_. When Toby Dammit makes his rash assertion, he beholds
the figure of a little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect.
Nothing could be more reverend than his whole appearance; for he
not only had on a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly
clean and the collar turned down very neatly over a white cravat,
while his hair was parted in front like a girl's. His hands were
clasped pensively over his stomach, and his two eyes were carefully
rolled up into the top of his head.
This clerical personage who reminds us of the devil in _Peer Gynt_, who
also appears as a parson, claims the better's head and neatly carries
it off. This is a modern version of an incident similar to Chaucer's
_Friar's Tale_, where the devil claimed whatever was offered him in
sincerity. The combination of humor and mystery in Washington Irving's
_The Devil and Tom Walker_ shows the black woodsman in an amusing
though terrifying aspect, as he claims the keeping of the contracts
made with him by Tom and his miserly wife. When Tom goes to search for
his spouse in the woods, he fails to find her.
She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had
been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though the female
scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this
instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have
died game, however, for it is said Tom noticed many prints of
cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handsful of
hair that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse shock
of the black woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience.
He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the fierce signs of
clapper-clawing. "Egad!" he said to himself, "Old Scratch must have
had a tough time of it!"
The devil amuses himself in various ways, as is seen by the antics of
the mysterious stranger in Poe's _The Devil in the Belfry_, who comes
curvetting into the old Dutch village with his audacious and sinister
face and curious costume, to upset the sacred time of the place. The
visitant in _Bon Bon_ is likewise queer as to dress and habits. He
wears garments in the style of a century before, having a queue but
no shirt, a cravat with an ecclesiastic suggestion, also a stylus
and black book. His facial expression is such as would have struck
Uriah Heap dumb with envy, and the hint of hoofs and a forked tail is
cleverly given though not obtruded. The most remarkable feature of his
appearance, however, is that he has no eyes, simply a dead level of
flesh. He declares that he eats souls and prefers to buy them alive to
insure freshness. He has a taste for philosophers, when they are not
too tough.
The satiric devil, like the satiric ghost, is seen in modern fiction.
Eugene Field has a story of a demon who seems sympathetic, weeping
large, gummy tears at hearing a mortal's woes, and signing the
conventional contract on a piece of asbestos paper. He agrees to do
everything the man wishes, for a certain term of years, in return for
which he is to get the soul. If the devil forfeits the contract, he
loses not only that victim but the souls of two thousand already in his
clutches. The man shrewdly demands trying things of him, but the demon
is game, building and endowing churches, carrying on philanthropic and
reform work without complaint, but balking when the man asks him to
close the saloons on Sunday. Rather than do that, he releases the two
thousand and one souls and flies away twitching his tail in wrath.[146]
[146] _Daniel and the Devil._
The most recent, as perhaps the most striking, instance of the satiric
devil is in Mark Twain's posthumous novel, _The Mysterious Stranger_. A
youth, charming, courtly, and handsome appears in a medieval village,
confessing to two boys that he is Satan, though not the original of
that name, but his nephew and namesake. He insists that he is an
unfallen angel, since his uncle is the only member of his family that
has sinned. Satan reads the thoughts of mortals, kindles fire in his
pipe by breathing on it, supplies money and other desirable things by
mere suggestion, is invisible when he wills it so, and is generally
a gifted being. This perennial boy--only sixteen thousand years
old--makes a charming companion. He says to Marget that his papa is in
shattered health and has no property to speak of,--in fact, none of any
earthly value,--but he has an uncle in business down in the tropics,
who is very well off, and has a monopoly, and it is from this uncle
that he drew his support. Marget expresses the hope that her uncle and
his would meet some day, and Satan says he hoped so, too. "May be they
will," says Marget. "Does your uncle travel much?"
"Oh, yes, he goes all about,--he has business everywhere."
The book is full of this oblique humor, satirizing earth, heaven, and
hell. The stranger by his comments on theological creeds satirizes
religion, and Satan is an intended parody of God. He sneers at man's
"mongrel moral sense," which tells him the distinction between good and
evil, insisting that he should have no choice, that the right to choose
makes him inevitably choose the wrong. He makes little figures out of
clay and gives them life, only to destroy them with casual ruthlessness
a little later and send them to hell. In answer to the old servant's
faith in God, when she says that He will care for her and her mistress,
since "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His Knowledge,"
he sneers, "But it falls, just the same! What's the good of seeing it
fall?" He is a new diabolic figure, yet showing the composite traits of
the old, the dæmonic wisdom and sarcasm, the superhuman magnetism to
draw men to him, and the human qualities of geniality, sympathy, and
boyish charm.
One of the most significant and frequent motifs of the diabolic in
literature is that of the barter of the human soul for the devil's
gift of some earthly boon, long life or wealth or power, or wisdom,
or gratification of the senses. It is a theme of unusual power,--what
could be greater than the struggle over one's own immortal soul?--and
well might the great minds of the world engage themselves with it.
Yet that theme is but little apparent in later stories. We have no
such character in recent literature that can compare with Marlowe's
Dr. Faustus or Goethe's Mephistopheles or Calderon's wonder-working
magician. Hawthorne's Septimius Felton makes a bargain with the devil
to secure the elixir of life, there is a legend in Hardy's _Tess of the
D' Urbervilles_ of a man that sold himself to the minister of evil,
and the incident occurs in various stories of witchcraft, yet with
waning power and less frequence. The most significant recent use of it
is in W. B. Yeats's drama.[147] This is a drama of Ireland, where the
peasants have been driven by famine to barter their souls to the devil
to buy their children food, but their Countess sells her own soul to
the demon that they may save theirs. This vicarious sacrifice adds a
new poignancy to the situation and Yeats has treated it with power.
This is the only recent appearance of the devil on the stage for he
has practically disappeared from English drama, where he was once so
prominent. The demon was a familiar and leading figure on the miracle
and Elizabethan stage, but, like the ghost, he shows more vitality now
in fiction. The devil is an older figure in English drama than is the
ghost, but he seems to have played out.
[147] _Countess Cathleen._
The analysis and representation of the devil as a character in
literature have covered a great range, from the bestiality of Dante's
Demon in the _Inferno_ to Milton's mighty angel in ruins, with all
sorts of variations between, from the sneering cynicism of Goethe's
Mephisto to the pinchbeck diabolism of Marie Corelli's sorrowful Satan,
and the merry humor and blasphemous satire of Mark Twain's mysterious
stranger. We note an especial influence of Goethe's Mephistopheles
in the satiric studies of the demon, an echo of his diabolic climax
when in answer to Faust's outcry over Margaret's downfall and death,
he says, "_She is not the first_!" One hears echoing through all
literature Man Friday's unanswerable question, "Why not God kill
debbil?" The uses of evil in God's eternal scheme, the soul's free
choice yet pitiful weakness, are sounded again and again. The great
diabolic figures, in their essential humanity, their intellectual
dignity, their sad introspection, their pitiless testing of the human
soul to its predestined fall, are terrible allegorical images of the
evil in man himself, or concepts of social sins, as in _Ivan, the
Fool_. The devils of the great writers, reflecting the time, the racial
characteristics, the personal natures of their creators, are deeply
symbolic. Each man creates the devil that he can understand, that
represents him, for, as Amiel says, we can comprehend nothing of which
we have not the beginnings in ourselves. As each man sees a different
Hamlet, so each one has his own devil, or _is_ his own devil. This is
illustrated by the figure in Julian Hawthorne's _Lovers in Heaven_,
where the dead man's spirit meets the devil in the after life,--who is
his own image, his dæmonic double. Some have one great fiend, while
others keep packs of little, snarling imps of darkness. A study of
comparative diabolics is illuminating and might be useful to us all.
=The Wizard and the Witch.= The demon has his earthly partners in evil
members of the firm of Devil and Company. Certain persons that have
made a pact with him are given a share in his power, and a portion of
his dark mantle falls upon them. The sorcerer and the witch are ancient
figures in literature, and like others of the supernatural kingdom,
notably the devil, they have their origin in the East, the cuneiform
writings of the Chaldeans showing belief in witchcraft. And the Witch
of Endor, summoning the spirit of Samuel to confront Saul, is a very
real figure in the Old Testament. The Greeks believed in witches, as
did the Romans. Meroe, a witch, is described in the _Metamorphoses_ of
Lucius Appuleius, from whom perhaps the witch Meroe in Peele's _Old
Wives' Tale_ gets her name and character. In classical times witches
were thought to have power to turn men into beasts, tigers, monkeys, or
asses--some persons still believe that women have that power and might
give authenticated instances.
The sorcerer, or wizard, or warlock, or magician, as he is variously
called, was a more common figure in early literature than in later,
perhaps because, as in so many other cases, his profession has suffered
a feminine invasion. The Anglo-Saxon word _wicca_, meaning "witch," is
masculine, which may or may not mean that witchcraft was a manly art in
those days, and the most famous medieval enchanter, Merlin, was a man,
it should be noted. The sorcerer of primitive times has been gradually
reduced in power, changing through the astrologer and alchemist of
medieval and Gothic romance into the bacteriologist and biologist of
recent fiction, where he works other wonders. In general, warlocks
and wizards, while frequent enough in early literature and in modern
folk-tales, have become less numerous in later fiction. Scott[148]
has a medical magician with supernatural power of healing by means of
an amulet, which, put to the nostrils of a person practically dead,
revives him at once, but which loses its efficacy if given in exchange
for money. Hawthorne has an old Indian sachem with wizard power,[149]
who has concocted the elixir of life. We see the passing of the ancient
sorcerer into the scientific wonder-worker in such fiction as Sax
Rohmer's Fu-Manchu stories that depict a Chinese terror, or in H. G.
Wells's supernatural investigators in his various stories of science.
The magician is not really dead in fiction but has passed over into
another form, for the most part.
[148] In _The Talisman_.
[149] In his _Septimius Felton_.
We still have the hoodoo man of colored persuasion, and the redskin
medicine-man, together with Oriental sorcerers from Kipling and
others. Examples are: _In the House of Suddoo_, by Kipling, where the
wonder-worker unites a canny knowledge of the telephone and telegraph
along with his unholy art; _Red Debts_, by Lumley Deakin, where the
Indian magician exacts a terrible penalty for the wrong done him, and
where his diabolic appearance to claim his victim leaves one in doubt
as to whether he has not sent his chief in his place; _The Monkey's
Paw_, by W. W. Jacobs, a curdling story of a magic curse given by an
Oriental sorcerer, by which the paw of a dead monkey grants three
wishes that have a dreadful boomerang power; _Black Magic_, by Jessie
Adelaide Weston,--who claims that all her supernatural stories are
strictly true--the narrative of an old Indian sorcerer that changes
himself into a hair mat and is shot for his pains. He has obtained
power over the house by being given a hair from the mat by the
uninitiated mistress. Hair, you must know, has great power of evil in
the hands of witches and sorcerers, as in the case of the evil ones in
_The Talisman_, who received their thrall over the maidens by one hair
from each head. F. Marion Crawford's _Khaled_ is a story of magic art.
Khaled is one of the genii converted by reading the Koran, who wishes
to be a mortal man with a soul. He is given the right to do so if he
can win the love of a certain woman. Hence he is born into the world,
like Adam, a full-grown man, to be magically clothed and equipped, by
the transformation of leaves and twigs into garments and armor, and the
changing of a locust into an Arabian steed. After many supernatural
adventures, he receives his soul from an angel. The soul, at first a
crescent flame,
immediately took shape and became the brighter image of Khaled
himself. And when he had looked at it fixedly for a few
minutes--the vision of himself had disappeared and before he was
aware it had entered his own body and taken up its life with him.
This is a parallel to the cases of ghostly doubles discussed in the
previous chapter.
The magician shows a disposition to adapt himself to contemporary
conditions and to change his personality with the times. Not so the
witch. She is a permanent figure. She has appeared in the various
forms of literature, in Elizabethan drama, in Gothic romance, in
modern poetry, the novel and the short story, and is very much alive
to-day. We have witches young and old. We have the fake witch, like the
hoax ghost; the imputed witch and the genuine article. We have witch
stories melodramatic, romantic, tragic, comic, and satiric, showing
the influence of the great creations of past literature with modern
adaptations and additions. English poetry is full of witchery, perhaps
largely the result of the Celtic influence on our literature. The
poetic type of witchcraft is brought out in such poems as Coleridge's
_Christabel_, where the beauty and suggestiveness veil the sense of
unearthly evil; or in Shelley's _Witch of Atlas_, where the woman
appears as a symbol of alluring loveliness possessing none of the
hideous aspects seen in other weird women. The water enchantress in
Shelley's fragment of an unfinished drama might be mentioned as another
example while Keats's _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ has a magical charm
all her own. Christina Rossetti's _Goblin Market_ shows a peculiar
aspect of magic, as also Mrs. Browning's _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_.
On the contrary, Milton's _Comus_, Robert Herrick's _The Hag_, and
James Hogg's _The Witch of Fife_ illustrate the uglier aspects of
enchantment.
There are two definite types of witches seen in English fiction, the
first being merely the reputed witch, the woman who is falsely accused
or suspected of black arts, and who either is persecuted, or else gains
what she wishes by hints of her traffic in evil, like the Old Granny
Young in _Mine Host and the Witch_, by James Blythe, who chants as a
charm-rune,
"A curse shall lay on water and land
For the thing denied the witch's hand,"
so that everybody is afraid to refuse her whatever she demands. This
is a highly conventionalized type of the motif and, though it is found
in great numbers in modern fiction, is not particularly important. The
principal complications of the plot are usually the same, the character
known as the witch being either an appealing figure winning sympathy
because of her beauty and youth, or else touching to pity because of
her age and infirmities. No person of average age or pulchritude is
ever accused of witchcraft in English fiction. She is always very
old and poor or young and lovely. Item also, she invariably has two
lovers, in the latter case. She is merely a romantic peg on which to
hang a story, not always real as a human being and not a real witch.
In these stories the only magic used is love, the fair maid having
unintentionally charmed the heart of a villain, who, failing to win
her, accuses her of witchcraft in order to frighten her into love.
In some of the novels and stories the victim is actually executed,
while in others she is rescued by her noble lover at the fifty-ninth
second. We have the pursuing villain, the distressed innocence, the
chivalric lover disporting themselves in late Gothic fashion over
many romances. Even Mary Johnston with her knowledge of Colonial
times and her power to give atmosphere to the past does not succeed
in imparting the breath of life to her late novel of witchcraft,
_The Witch_. These pink-and-white beauties who speak in Euphuistic
sentences, who show a lamblike defiance toward the dark tempters,
who breathe prayers to heaven for protection and forgiveness to
their enemies in one breath, who die or are rescued with equal grace
and propriety,--one is carried away from the scaffold by Kidd, the
pirate, thus delaying for several chapters her rescue by her faithful
lover--do not really touch the heart any more than they interest the
intellect. Yet there are occasional instances of the imputed witch
who seems real despite her handicap of beauty and youth, as Iseult le
Desireuse, in Maurice Hewlett's _Forest Lovers_, whom Prosper le Gai
weds to save from the hangman. The young woman in F. Marion Crawford's
_Witch of Prague_ might be called a problematic witch, for while she
does undoubtedly work magic, it is for the most part attributed to her
powers of hypnotism rather than to the black art itself. We find an
excellent example of the reputed witch who is a woman of real charm
and individuality, in D'Annunzio's _The Daughter of Jorio_, where the
young girl is beset by cruel dangers because of her charm and her
lonely condition, and who rises to tragic heights of sacrifice to save
her lover from death, choosing to be burned to death as a witch to save
him from paying the penalty of murder. She actually convinces him, as
well as the others, that she has bewitched him by unholy powers, that
she has slain his father and made him believe that he himself did it
to save her honor, and she goes to her death with a white fervor of
courage, with no word of complaint, save one gentle rebuke to him that
_he_ should not revile her.
The aged pseudo-witch is in the main more appealing than the young
one, because more realistic. Yet there is no modern instance that is
so touching as the poor old crone in _The Witch of Edmonton_, who is
persecuted for being a witch and who turns upon her tormentors with a
speech that reminds us of Shylock's famous outcry, showing clearly how
their suspicion and accusation have made her what she is. We see here
a witch in the making, an innocent old woman who is harried by human
beings till she makes a compact with the devil. Meg Merrilies[150] is
a problematic witch, a majestic, sibylline figure, very individual
and human, yet with more than a suggestion of superhuman wisdom and
power. Scott limned her with a loving hand, and Keats was so impressed
with her personality that he wrote a poem concerning her. Elizabeth
Enderfield, in Hardy's _Under the Greenwood Tree_, is a reputed witch
and witch-pricking is also tried in his _Return of the Native_. Various
experiments with magic are used in Hardy's work, as the instance of
the woman's touching her withered arm to the neck of a man that had
been hanged, consulting the conjurer concerning butter that won't come,
and so forth. Old Aunt Keziah in Hawthorne's _Septimius Felton_ might
be called a problematic witch, as the woman in _The Witch_ by Eden
Phillpotts. She has a great number of cats, and something dreadful
happens to anyone who injures one of them; she calls the three black
toads her servants and goes through incantations over a snake skeleton,
the carcass of a toad, and the mummy of a cat. Mother Tab may or may
not be a _bona fide_ witch, but she causes much trouble to those
associated with her.
[150] Of Scott's _Guy Mannering_.
The unquestioned witch, possessing indubitable powers of enchantment,
occurs frequently and conveys a genuine thrill. Her attributes have
been less conventionalized than those of her youthful companions who
are merely under the imputation of black art, and she possesses a
diabolic individuality. Though she may not remain long in view, she
is an impressive figure not soon forgotten. The old crone in Scott's
_The Two Drovers_ gives warning to Robin Oig, "walking the deasil," as
it is called, around him, tracing the propitiation which some think a
reminiscence of Druidical mythology,--which is performed by walking
three times round the one in danger, moving according to the course of
the sun. In the midst of her incantation the hag exclaims, "Blood on
your hand, and it is English blood!" True enough, before his journey's
end young Robin does murder his English companion. In the same story
other evidences of witchcraft are shown, as the directions for keeping
away the evil influence from cattle by tying St. Mungo's knot on their
tails.
The subject of witchcraft greatly interested Hawthorne, for he
introduces it in a number of instances. _Young Goodman Brown_ shows
the aspects of the diabolic union between the devil and his earthly
companions, their unholy congregations in the forest, reports their
sardonic conversations and suggestions of evil in others, and pictures
the witches riding on broomsticks high in the heavens and working
their magic spells. The young husband sees in that convocation all
the persons whom he has most revered--his minister, his Sabbath-school
teacher, and even his young wife, so that all his after-life is
saddened by the thought of it. Witchcraft enters into _The Scarlet
Letter_, _Main Street_, and _Feathertop_, and is mentioned in other
stories.
Old Mother Sheehy in Kipling's _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_
pronounces a malediction against Private Mulvany and the girl he
loves, prophesying that he will be reduced in rank instead of being
promoted, will be a slave to drink so that his young wife will take
in washing for officers' wives instead of herself being the wife of
an officer, and that their only child will die,--every bitter word
of which comes true in after years. The old witch mother in Howard
Pyle's _The Evil Eye_ inspires her daughter to cast a spell over the
man she loves but who does not think of her, causing him to leave his
betrothed and wed the witch daughter. When understanding comes to him,
and with it loathing, the girl seeks to regain his love by following
the counsel of an old magician, who gives her an image to be burnt. But
that burning of the image kills her and looses the man from her spell.
That incident is similar to that in D'Annunzio's _Sogno d'un Tramonto
d'Autunno_ where the Dogaressa seeks to slay her rival, both probably
being based on the unforgettable employment of the theme in Rossetti's
_Sister Helen_, where the young girl causes the death of her betrayer
by melting the image.
In Gordon Bottomley's play, _Riding to Lithend_, three old women
enter, who seem to partake of the nature of the Parcæ as well as of
Shakespeare's Weird Sisters. They have bat-webbed fingers, the hound
bays uncannily at their approach, they show supernatural knowledge
of events, and they chant a wild prophecy of doom, then mysteriously
disappear. Fate marches swiftly on as they foretell.
The young and beautiful witch can work as much evil as the ancient
crone, perhaps more, since her emotions are wilder and more
unrestrained. She can project a curse that reaches its victim across
the ocean, when the one who sent the curse is rotting in the tomb, as
in _The Curse of the Cashmere Shawl_, where a betrayed and deserted
woman in India sends a rare shawl to her rival, then drowns herself.
Months after, when the husband, forgetful of the source, lays the shawl
around his wife's shoulders, the dead woman takes her place. After this
gruesome transfer of personality, the wife, impelled by a terrible urge
she cannot understand, drowns herself as the other has done months
before. Oscar Wilde[151] shows a young and lovely witch with a human
longing for the love of the young man who throws away his soul for
love of a mermaid. Through life's tragic satire, she is compelled, in
spite of her entreaties, to show him how he may damn himself and win
the other's affection. The jealousy shown here and in other instances
is an illustration of the human nature of the witch, who, like the
devil, makes a strong appeal to our sympathy in spite of the undoubted
iniquity.
[151] In _The Fisherman and his Soul_.
The element of symbolism enters largely into the witch-creations, even
from the time of Shakespeare's Three in _Macbeth_, who are terrible
symbolic figures of the evil in man's soul. They appear as the visible
embodiment of Macbeth's thoughts, and by their mysterious suggestive
utterances tempt him to put his unlawful dreams into action. They seem
both cause and effect here, for though when they first appear to him
his hands are innocent of blood, his heart is tainted with selfish
ambition, and their whispers of promise hurry on the deed. In _Ancient
Sorceries_, by Algernon Blackwood, the village is full of persons who
at night by the power of an ancestral curse, a heritage of subliminal
memory, become witches, horrible cat-creatures, unhuman, that dance
the blasphemous dance of the Devil's Sabbath. The story symbolizes the
eternal curse that rests upon evil, the undying quality of thought and
action that cannot cease when the body of the sinner has become dust,
but reaches out into endless generations.
In _Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts_ by A. T. Quiller-Couch, we see a
witch, a young woman whose soul is under a spell from the devil. She
gives rich gifts to the church, but her offerings turn into toads and
vipers, defiling the sanctuary, and as she sings her wild songs the
bodies of drowned men come floating to the surface of the water and
join in the words of her song. Her beauty is supernatural and accursed,
yet her soul is innocent of wish to do evil, though it leaves her body
and goes like a cresseted flame at night to follow the devil, while the
body is powerless in sleep. Finally the devil comes in the form of a
Moor, possibly a suggestion from _Zofloya_, and summons her, when she
dies, with a crucifix clasped over her heart.
W. B. Yeats has pictured several witches for us, as the crone of the
gray hawk, in _The Wisdom of the King_, a woman tall with more than
mortal height, with feathers of the gray hawk growing in her hair,
who stoops over the royal cradle and whispers a strange thing to the
child, as a result of which he grows up in a solitude of his own mystic
thoughts with dreams that are like the marching and counter-marching
of armies. When he realizes that the simple joys of life and love are
not for him, he disappears, some say to make his home with the immortal
demons, some say with the shadowy goddesses that haunt the midnight
pools in the forest. In _The Curse of the Fires and the Shadows_, Yeats
pictures another witch, tall and in a gray gown, who is standing in the
river and washing, washing the dead body of a man. As the troopers who
have murdered the friars and burned down the church ride past, each man
recognizes in the dead face his own face,--just a moment before they
all plunge over the abyss to death.
There are witches in most collections of English folk-tales, for the
simpler people, the more elemental natures, have a strong feeling for
the twilight of nature and of life. The weird woman has power over the
forces of nature and can evoke the wrath of the elements as of unholy
powers against her enemies. Stories of witches, as of sorcerers, occur
in Indian folk-tales, as well as in those of the American Indian,
differing in details in the tribal collections yet showing similar
essential ideas. The Scotch show special predilection for the witch,
since with their tense, stern natures, they stand in awe of the darker
powers and of those that call them forth. They relate curious instances
of the relations between the animal world and witchcraft, as in _The
Dark Nameless One_, by Fiona McLeod, the story of a nun that falls in
love with a seal and is forced to live forever in the sea, weaving her
spells where the white foam froths, and knowing that her soul is lost.
This is akin to the theme that Matthew Arnold uses,[152] though with a
different treatment, showing similarity to Hans Christian Andersen's
tale of _The Little Mermaid_. The cailleachuisge, or the water-witch,
and the maighdeanmhara, the mermaid, and the kelpie, the sea-beast,
are cursed with dæmonic spells and live forever in their witchery.
When mortals forsake the earth and follow them their children are
beings that have no souls. The Irish folk-tales, on the other hand,
while having their quota of witches, do not think so much about them
or take them quite so seriously, inclining more to the faëry forms of
supernaturalism suited to their poetic natures. The sense of beauty
of the Irish is so vivid and their innate poetry so intense that they
glimpse the loveliness of magic, and their enchanted beings are of
beauty rather than of horror.
[152] In his _Forsaken Merman_ and _The Neckan_.
We even have the humorous and satiric witch, to correspond to similar
representations of the ghost and the devil in modern fiction. The
instance in Burns's _Tam O'Shanter_ needs only to be recalled, with the
ludicrous description of the wild race at night to escape the dread
powers. _Bones, Sanders, and Another_, by Edgar Wallace, introduces a
witch with comic qualities, a woman whose husband has been a magician,
and the reputed familiar of a devil. She cures people by laying her
hands on them, once causing a bone that was choking a child to fly
out with "a cry terrible to hear, such a cry as a leopard makes when
pursued by ghosts." When this witch with a sense of humor is arrested
as a trouble-maker by an army officer, she "eradicates" her clothes,
causing very comic complications. The best example of the satiric witch
is Hawthorne's Mother Rigby, in _Feathertop_, who constructs a man
from a broomstick and other materials for a scarecrow. In this satiric
sermon upon the shams and hypocrisies of life, Mother Rigby, with her
sardonic humor, her cynical comments, parodies society, holds the
mirror up to human life and shows more than one poor painted scarecrow,
simulacrum of humanity, masquerading as a man. The figure that she
creates, with his yearnings and his pride, his horror when he realizes
his own falsity and emptiness, is more human, more a man, than many a
being we meet in literature or in life.
Barry Pain has several witch stories that do not fall readily into any
category, curious stories of scientific dream-supernaturalism, in the
realm of the unreal. _Exchange_ is the account of a supernatural woman,
whether a witch or one of the Fates, one does not know, who comes,
clad in scarlet rags, to show human souls their destinies. She permits
an exchange of fate, if one is willing to pay her price, which is in
each case terrible enough. One young girl gives up her pictured future
of life and love, and surrenders her mind for the purpose of saving her
baby brother from his destined fate of suicide in manhood. The crone
appears to an old man that loves the child, who takes upon himself her
fate of being turned into a bird to be tortured after human death, so
that the young girl may have his future, to be turned into a white lamb
that dies after an hour, then be a soul set free. _The Glass of Supreme
Moments_ is another story of prophetic witchery, of revealed fate seen
in supernatural dreams. A young man in his college study sees the
fireplace turn into a silver stairway down which a lovely gray-robed
woman comes to him. She shows him a mirror, the glass of supreme
moments, in which the highest instants of each man's life are shown.
She says of it, "All the ecstasy of the world lies there. The supreme
moments of each man's life, the scene, the spoken words--all lie there.
Past and present and future--all are there." She shows an emotion
meter that measures the thrill of joy. After he has seen the climactic
instants of his friends' lives he asks to see his own, when she tells
him his are here and now. She tells him that her name is Death and that
he will die if he kisses her, but he cries out, "I will die kissing
you!" And presently his mates return to find his body fallen dead
across his table.
There is something infinitely appealing about the character of the
witch. She seems a creature of tragic loneliness, conscious of her
own dark powers, yet conscious also of her exile from the good, and
knowing that all the evil she evokes will somehow come back to her,
that her curses will come home, as in the case of _Witch Hazel_, where
the witch, by making a cake of hair to overcome her rival in love,
brings on a tempest that kills her lover and drives her mad. Each evil
act, each dark imagining seems to create a demon and turn him loose
to harry humanity with unceasing force, as Matthew Maule's curse in
_The House of Seven Gables_ casts a spiritual shadow on the home. Yet
the witch is sometimes a minister of good, as Mephistopheles says of
himself, achieving the good where he meant evil; sometimes typifying
the mysterious mother nature, as the old Wittikin in Hauptmann's
_Sunken Bell_, neither good nor evil, neither altogether human nor
supernatural. Her strange symbolism is always impressive.
=Dæmonic Spirits--Vampires.= Closely related to the devil are certain
diabolic spirits that are given supernatural power by him and
acknowledge his suzerainty. These include ghouls, vampires, werewolves,
and other demoniac animals, as well as the human beings that through a
compact with the fiend share in his dark force. Since such creatures
possess dramatic possibilities, they have given interest to fiction
and other literature from early times. This idea of an unholy alliance
between earth and hell, has fascinated the human mind and been
reflected astonishingly in literature. In studying the appearance of
these beings in English fiction, we note, as in the case of the ghost,
the witch, and the devil, a certain leveling influence, a tendency to
humanize them and give them characteristics that appeal to our sympathy.
The vampire and the ghoul are closely related and by some authorities
are considered the same, yet there is a distinction. The ghoul is a
being, to quote Poe, "neither man nor woman, neither brute nor human"
that feeds upon corpses, stealing out at midnight for loathsome
banquets in graveyards. He devours the flesh of the dead, while the
vampire drains the blood of the living. The ghoul is an Asiatic
creature and has left but slight impress upon English literature,
while the vampire has been a definite motif. The vampire superstition
goes back to ancient times, being referred to on Chaldean and Assyrian
tablets. William of Newbury, of the twelfth century in England, relates
several stories of them; one vampire was burned in Melrose Abbey, and
tourists in Ireland are still shown the grave of a vampire. Perhaps the
vampire superstition goes back to the savagery of remote times, and is
an animistic survival of human sacrifices, of cannibalism and the like.
The vampire is thought of as an evil spirit issuing forth at night to
attack the living in their sleep and drain the blood which is necessary
to prolong its own revolting existence. Certain persons were thought
to be especially liable to become vampires at death, such as suicides,
witches, wizards, persons who in life had been attacked by vampires,
outcasts of various kinds, as well as certain animals, werewolves, dead
lizards, and others.
The vampire superstition was general in the East and extended to
Europe, it is thought, by way of Greece. The Greeks thought of the
vampire as a beautiful young woman, a lamia, who lured young men to
their death. The belief was particularly strong in central Europe, but
never seemed to gain the same foothold in England that it did on the
continent, though it is evident here and has influenced literature. The
vampire has been the inspiration for several operas, and has figured
in the drama, in poetry, in the novel and short story, as well as in
folk-tales and medieval legends. The stories show the various aspects
of the belief and its ancient hold on the popular mind. The vampire,
as well as the ghost, the devil, and the witch, has appeared on the
English stage. _The Vampire_, an anonymous melodrama in two acts, _The
Vampire_, a tragedy by St. John Dorset (1821), _The Vampire Bride_, a
play, _Le Vampire_, by Alexander Dumas _père_, and _The Vampire, or the
Bride of the Isles_, by J. R. Planche, were presented in the London
theater. The latter which was published in 1820 is remarkably similar
to _The Vampyre_, a novelette by Polidori, published in 1819,--the
story written after the famous ghost session where Byron, the Shelleys,
and Polidori agreed each to write a ghostly story, Mary Shelley writing
_Frankenstein_.
Polidori's story, like the play referred to, has for its principal
character an Englishman, Lord Ruthven, the Earl of Marsden, who is the
vampire. In each case there is a supposed death, where the dying man
asks that his body be placed where the last rays of the moon can fall
upon it. The corpse then mysteriously vanishes. In each story there is
a complication of a rash pledge of silence made by a man that discovers
the diabolical nature of the earl, who, having risen from the dead,
is ravaging society as a vampire. In each case a peculiar turn of the
story is that the masculine vampire requires for his subsistence the
blood of young women, to whom he must be married. He demands a new
victim, hence a hurried wedding is planned. In the play the ceremony
is interrupted by the bride's father, but in the novelette the plot
is finished and the girl becomes the victim of the destroyer. It is
a question which of these productions was written first, and which
imitated the other, or if they had a common source. The author of the
drama admits getting his material from a French play, but where did
Polidori get his?
Byron seems to have been fascinated with the vampire theme, for in
addition to his unsuccessful short story, he has used the theme in his
poem, _The Giaour_. Here he brings in the idea that the vampire curse
is a judgment from God for sin, and that the most terrible part of the
punishment is the being forced to prey upon those who in life were
dearest to him, which idea occurs in various stories.
"But first on earth as Vampyre sent
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent;
Then ghastly haunt thy native place
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy _daughter_, _sister_, _wife_,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid, living corse.
Thy victims, ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire;
As, cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one, that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, best-beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a _father's_ name--
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end the task and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shall tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which, in life, a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,--
But now is borne away by thee
Memorial of thine agony!
Yet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing teeth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave
Go--and with ghouls and Afrits rave,
Till these in horror shrink away
From specter more accursed than they!"
Southey in his _Thalaba_ shows us a vampire, a young girl in this case,
who has been torn away from her husband on their wedding day. The curse
impels her to attack him, to seek to drain his lifeblood. He becomes
aware of the truth and takes her father with him to the tomb, to await
her coming forth at midnight, which is the striking hour for vampires.
When she appears, "in her eyes a brightness more terrible than all the
loathsomeness of death," her father has the courage to strike a lance
through her heart to dispel the demon and let her soul be at peace.
"Then howling with the wound
The fiendish tenant fled....
And garmented with glory in their sight
Oneiza's spirit stood."
Keats uses the Greek idea of the vampire as a lamia or beautiful young
woman luring young men to death,--the same theme employed by Goethe in
his _Die Braut von Corinth_. In _Lamia_, when the evil spirit in the
form of a lovely, alluring woman, is accused by the old philosopher,
she gives a terrible scream and vanishes. This vanishing business is a
favorite trick with vampires--they leave suddenly when circumstances
crowd them.
F. Marion Crawford, in _For the Blood Is the Life_, has given us a
terrible vampire story, in which the dream element is present to a
marked degree. The young man, who has been vainly loved by a young
girl, is after her death vampirized by her, something after the fashion
of Turgeniev's Clara Militch, and when his friends get an inkling of
the truth, and go to rescue him, they find him on her grave, a thin red
line of blood trickling from his throat.
And the flickering light of the lantern played upon another face
that looked up from the feast,--upon two deep, dead eyes that saw
in spite of death--upon parted lips redder than life itself--upon
gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop.
The hawthorne stake is driven through her heart and the vampire expires
after a terrific struggle, uttering diabolic, human shrieks. There is
a certain similarity between this and Gautier's _La Morte Amoreuse_,
where the truth is concealed till the last of the story and only
the initiated would perhaps know that the reincarnated woman was a
vampire. It is also a bit like Turgeniev's _Phantoms_, where a subtle
suggestion at the last gives the reader the clue to vampirism, though
the author really asks the question at the close, Was she a vampire?
The character of the woman is problematic here, as in Gautier's story,
less pronounced than in Crawford's.
The idea of occult vampirism used by Turgeniev is also employed by
Reginald Hodder in his work, _The Vampire_. Here peculiar power is
possessed by a woman leader of an occult band, who vampirizes by
means of a talisman. Her ravages are psychic rather than physical.
Theosophists, according to the _Occult Magazine_, believe in vampires
even in the present. According to their theory, one who has been very
wicked in life is in death so inextricably entangled with his evil
motives and acts that he is hopelessly lost and knows it, yet seeks to
delay for a time his final damnation. He can ward off spiritual death
so long as he can keep alive by means of blood his physical corpse. The
_Occult Review_ believes that probably only those acquainted with black
magic in their lifetime can become vampires,--a thought comforting to
some of us.
It is in Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ that one finds the tensest, most
dreadful modern story of vampirism. This novel seems to omit no detail
of terror, for every aspect of vampire horror is touched upon with
brutal and ghastly effect. The combination of ghouls, vampires, ghosts,
werewolves, and other awful elements is almost unendurable, yet the
book loses in effect toward the last, for the mind cannot endure four
hundred pages of vampiric outrage and respond to fresh impressions
of horror. The initial vampire here is a Hungarian count, who, after
terrorizing his own country for years, transports himself to England
to start his ravages there. Each victim in turn becomes a vampire. The
combination of modern science with medieval superstition to fight the
scourge, using garlic and sprigs of the wild rose together with blood
transfusion, is interesting. All the resources of modern science are
pitted against the infection and the complications are dramatically
thrilling. The book is not advised as suitable reading for one sitting
alone at night.
There are other types of vampirism in addition to the conventional
theme and the occult vampirism. H. G. Wells gives his customary twist
of novelty to supernaturalism by the introduction of a botanical
vampire in his _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid_. An orchid
collector is found unaccountably dead in a jungle in the Andaman
Islands, with a strange bulb lying under him, which bulb is brought
to England and watched carefully by a botanist there till it comes to
flower. When at last its blossoms burst open, great tentacles reach out
to grasp the man, sucking his blood and strangling him. The tentacles
dripping blood have to be torn away and the man snatched violently from
the plant just in time to save his life.
Algernon Blackwood, who has touched upon every terrible aspect of
supernaturalism, gives us two types of vampires in his story, _The
Transfer_. The one is a psychic vampire, stealing the vital power from
others, a human sponge, absorbing the strength, the ideas, the soul, of
others. The governess describes him: "I watched his hard, bleak face;
I noticed how thin he was, and the curious, oily brightness of his
steady eyes. And everything he said or did announced what I may dare
to call the _suction_ of his presence." This human vampire comes in
contact with one of another sort, a soil vampire, the Forbidden Corner,
a bald, sore place in the rose garden, like a dangerous bog. The woman
and a little child know the truth of this spot so barren in the midst
of luxurious growth, so sinister in its look and implication. The child
says of it, "It's bad. It's hungry. It's dying because it can't get the
food it wants. But I know what would make it feel right." The earth
vampire stretches out silent feelers from its secret strength when the
man comes near the evil spot; the empty, yawning spot gives out audible
cries, then laughs hideously as the man falls forward into the middle
of the patch. "His eyes, as he dropped, faded shockingly, and across
the countenance was written plainly what I can only call an expression
of destruction." The man lives on physically, yet without vitality,
without real life. But it was otherwise with the Forbidden Corner, for
soon "it lay untouched, full of great, luscious, driving weeds and
creepers, very strong, full-fed and bursting thick with life."
And so the vampire stories vary in theme and in treatment. Indian
folk-tales appearing in English show that the Jigar-Khor, or
Liver-eater of India is a cousin to the vampire, for he can steal your
liver by just looking at you. (It has long been known that hearts can
be filched in this way, but the liver wrinkle is a new one.) There are
several points to be noted in connection with these stories of the
Un-dead, the incorruptible corpses, the loathsome spirits that haunt
the living. Many of the stories have a setting in the countries where
the vampire superstition has been most common, though there are English
settings as well. Continental countries are richer in vampire lore than
England, which explains the location of the incidents even in many
English stories and poems. Another point to be noted is the agreement
of the stories in the essential features. While there are numerous
variants, of course, there is less divergence than in the case of
ghosts, for instance. The description of the dæmonic spirit tenanting
the body of a dead person, driving him by a dreadful urge to attack the
living, especially those dear to him in life, is much the same. The
personality of the vampire may vary, in one line of stories being a
young woman who lures men to death, in the other a man who must quench
his thirst with the blood of brides. These are the usual types, though
there are other variants.
=The Werewolf and Others.= Another dæmonic figure popular in fiction
is the werewolf. The idea is a very old one, having been mentioned
by various classical writers, it is said, including Pomponius Mela,
Herodotus, and Ovid. The legend of the werewolf is found in practically
all European countries, especially those where the wolf is common. In
France many stories of the loup-garou are current. The werewolf is a
human being cursed with the power or the obligation to be transformed
into an animal who goes forth to slay and devour. Like a vampire, he
might become such as a curse from God, or he might be an innocent
victim, or might suffer from an atavistic tendency, a cannibalistic
craving for blood. Distinction is to be made between the real werewolf
and the lycanthrope,--the latter a human being who, on account of
some peculiar twist of insanity, fancies himself a wolf and acts
accordingly. There is such a character in _The Duchess of Malfi_, a
maniac who thinks himself a mad wolf, and another in _The Albigenses_,
a creature that crouches in a corner of its lair, gnawing at a skull
snatched from the graveyard, uttering bestial growls. Algernon
Blackwood has a curdling story of lycanthropy, where the insane man
will eat nothing but raw meat and devours everything living that he
can get hold of. He confesses to a visitor that he used to bite his old
servant, but that he gave it up, since the old Jew tasted bitter. The
servant also is mad, and "hides in a vacuum" when his master goes on a
rampage. Stories of lycanthropy illustrate an interesting aspect of the
association between insanity and the supernatural in fiction.
The most revolting story of lycanthropy is in Frank Norris's posthumous
novel, _Vandover and the Brute_. This is a study in soul degeneration,
akin to the moral decay that George Eliot has shown in the character of
Tito Melema, but grosser and utterly lacking in artistic restraint. We
see a young man, at first sensitive, delicate, and with high ideals,
gradually through love of ease and self-indulgence, through taking
always the line of least resistance, becoming a moral outcast. The
brute that ever strains at the leash in man gains the mastery and the
artist soul ends in a bestial creature. Dissipation brings on madness,
called by the doctors "lycanthropy-mathesis." In his paroxysms of
insanity the wretch thinks that his body is turned into the beast that
his soul symbolizes, and runs about his room, naked, four-footed,
growling like a jungle animal and uttering harsh, raucous cries of
_Wolf-wolf!_
Kipling's _The Mark of the Beast_ is midway between a lycanthrope and
a werewolf story, for while the soul of the beast--or whatever passes
for the brutish soul--enters into the man and drives out his spirit,
and while many bestial characteristics result, including the revolting
odor, the man does not change his human form.
While lycanthropy has never been a frequent theme in fiction, the
werewolf is a common figure, appearing in various forms of literature,
from medieval ballads and legends to modern short stories. Marie de
France, the Anglo-Norman writer,[153] tells of a werewolf that is
by day a gallant knight and kindly gentleman, yet goes on nocturnal
marauding expeditions. When his wife shows curiosity concerning his
absences and presses him for an explanation, he reluctantly tells her
that he is a werewolf, hiding his clothes in a hollow tree, and that
if they were removed he would have to remain a wolf. She has her lover
steal his clothes, then marries the lover. One day long afterward the
king's attention is called to a wolf that runs up to him and acts
strangely. It is a tame and well-mannered beast till the false knight
and his wife appear, when he tries to tear their throats. Investigation
reveals the truth, the clothes are fetched, and the curse removed.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy's modern version of this, as of others of Marie's
_lais_, is charming.
[153] In her lay of _Bisclavret_.
Like the vampire, the werewolf is under a curse that impels him to prey
upon those dearest to him. Controlled by a dæmonic spirit, the human
being, that in his normal personality is kindly and gentle, becomes a
jungle beast with ravening instincts. The motif is obviously tangled
up with the vampire superstition here, and it would be interesting,
if possible, to trace out the two to a point of combination. This
irresistible impulse to slay his dear ones introduces a dramatic
element into the plot, here as in the vampire stories. The wolf is not
the only animal around whom such plots center, but being most common
he has given his name to the type. _The Albigenses_ tell of a young
husband who, as a werewolf, slays his bride, then vanishes to be seen
no more.
There are interesting variants of the werewolf story, introducing other
elements of supernaturalism. In _A Vendetta of the Jungle_,[154] we
have the idea of successive infection of the moral curse, similar to
the continuation of vampirism. Mrs. Crump, a lady in India, is eaten
by a tiger, who has a good digestion for he assimilates not only her
body but her soul. So that now it is Mrs. Crump-Tiger, we might say,
that goes about the jungle eating persons. In time she devours her
successor in her husband's affection. The man is aware that it is his
first wife who has eaten his second, so he starts out to kill the
animal to clear off the score. But by the time he reaches the jungle
the beast has had time to digest his meal and when the husband levels
his gun to fire, the eyes that look out at him from the brutish face
are his beloved's eyes. What could he do?
[154] By Arthur Applier and H. Sidney Warwick.
Eugene Field gives a new turn to the idea by representing the werewolf
curse as a definite atavistic throw-back. His wolf-man is an innocent
marauder, the reincarnation of a wicked grandfather, yet a gentle,
chivalrous soul very different from his grandparent. The old gentleman
has left him heir to nothing but the curse and a magic spear given
him by the witch Brunhilde. The werewolf bears a charmed life against
which no weapon of man can avail, and the country is panic-stricken
over his ravages. The legend is that the beast's fury cannot be stopped
till some man offers himself as a voluntary sacrifice to the wolf. The
youth does not know that he is the guilty one until his reprehensible
grandfather appears to him in a vision, demanding his soul. He hears
that there is to be a meeting in the sacred grove on a certain day
and begs his beloved to remain away, lest the werewolf come. But when
she insists that she will go, he gives her his magic spear, telling
her to strike the wolf through the heart if he approaches her. True
to his accursed destiny the wolf does come to the grove and lunges at
the girl. All the men flee but one, and his weapons fail,--then the
terrified girl hurls the spear, striking the beast to the heart. But
when he falls, it is young Harold who is dying, who has given himself
a voluntary sacrifice to save others. The curse is lifted but he is
dead.
In _The Camp of the Dog_, by Algernon Blackwood, we have another
unconscious werewolf, a gentle, modest, manly young fellow madly
in love with a girl who doesn't care for him. In his sleep he goes
questing for her. While his body lies shrunken on a cot in his tent,
his soul takes the form of a wolf and goes to the hilltop, uttering
unearthly howls. By an equally strong psychic disturbance the girl is
impelled to go in a somnambulistic state to the hilltop. Each is in
waking hours utterly unaware of their strange jaunts, till the father
shoots the wolf. The young man in this case suffers only curious
psychic wounds, from which he recovers when the girl promises to marry
him, and the wolf is seen no more.
The panther plays his part in this were-menagerie. Ambrose Bierce, in
_The Eyes of the Panther_, tells of a young girl who, because of a
prenatal curse similar to that affecting Elsie Venner, is not wholly
human. She is conscious of her dual nature and tells the man she loves
that she cannot marry him since she is a panther by night. He thinks
her mildly insane till one night a settler sees a beast's eyes glaring
into his window and fires. When they follow the blood-tracks, they find
the girl dying. This is one of the conventions of the werewolf story,
the wounding of an animal that escapes and the blood-trail that leads
to a human being wounded just as the beast was.
Elliott O'Donnell, in a volume called _Werewolves_ published in London
in 1912, gives serious credence to the existence of werewolves not only
in the past but also in the present. He tells a number of stories of
what he claims are authenticated instances of such beings in actual
life. He relates the experience of a man who told him that he had
himself seen a youth turn himself into a tiger after preparatory
passes of enchantment. The watcher made haste to climb a sacred Vishnu
tree when the transformation was complete. O'Donnell tells a tale of a
widow with three children that married a Russian nobleman. She saw him
and his servant change into werewolves, at least partially, remaining
in a half state, devouring her children whom she left behind in her
escape.
O'Donnell relates several stories of authentic (according to him)
werewolf stories of England in recent times, giving the dates and
places and names of the persons who saw the beasts. The incidents may
be similar to those spoken of in Dickens's _Haunted House_, where
the famous "'ooded woman with the howl" was seen,--or at least, many
persons saw the owl and knew that the woman must be near by. These
witnesses of werewolves may have seen animals, all right enough.
Modernity is combined with medieval superstition here, and it seems
uncanny, for instance, to identify a werewolf by means of an electric
pocket flashlight.
In collections of folk-tales, the tribal legends of the American
redmen as well as of Kipling's India and of England, there are various
stories of werewolves. Among primitive peoples there is a close
relation between the brute and the human and the attributing of human
characteristics and powers to the beast and _vice versa_ is common, so
that this supernatural transfer of personality is natural enough. A
madwolf might suggest the idea for a werewolf.
Algernon Blackwood advances the theory that the werewolf is a true
psychical fact of profound importance, however it may have been garbled
by superstition. He thinks that the werewolf is the projection of the
untamed slumbering sanguinary instincts of man, "scouring the world
in his fluidic body, the body of desire." As the mind wanders free
from the conscious control of the will in sleep, so the body may free
itself from the fetters of mind or of custom and go forth in elemental
form to satisfy its craving to slay, to slake its wild thirst for
blood. O'Donnell says that werewolves may be phantasms of the dead that
cannot be at peace, or a certain kind of Elementals. He also thinks
that they may be the projection of one phase of man's nature, of the
cruelty latent in mankind that seeks expression in this way. According
to that theory, a chap might have a whole menagerie inside him, to
turn loose at intervals, which would be exciting but rather risky
for society. It was doubtless a nature such as this that Maupassant
attempts to describe in his story _The Wolf_, where the man has all the
instincts of the wolf yet never changes his human form.
The werewolf in fiction has suffered the same leveling influence
that we have observed in the case of the ghost, the devil, the
witch, and the vampire. He is becoming a more psychical creature, a
romantic figure to be sympathized with, rather than a beast to be
utterly condemned. In recent fiction the werewolf is represented
as an involuntary and even unconscious departure from the human,
who is shocked when he learns the truth about himself. Whether he
be the victim of a divine curse, an agent of atavistic tendencies,
or a being who thus gives vent to his real and brutish instincts,
we feel a sympathy with him. We analyze his motives--at a safe
distance--seek to understand his vagaries and to estimate his kinship
with us. We think of him now as a noble figure in fiction, a lupine
Galahad like Blackwood's, a renunciatory hero like Eugene Field's
or what not. Or we reflect that he may be a case of metempsychosis
and treat him courteously, for who knows what we may be ourselves
some day? The werewolf has not figured in poetry or in the drama as
have other supernatural beings, as the ghost, the devil, the witch,
the vampire,--one wonders why. He is a dramatic figure and his
character-analysis might well furnish themes for poetry though stage
presentation would have its difficulties.
* * * * *
Perhaps the revival of interest in Elizabethan literature has had a
good deal to do with the use of supernatural beings in literature
of recent times. The devil and the dæmonic spirits he controls, the
witches and wizards, the vampires, the enchanted animals, to whom he
delegates a part of his infernal power, appear as impressive moral
allegories, mystical stories of life, symbols of truths. As literature
is a reflection of life, the evil as well as the good enters in. But
since the things of the spirit are intangible they must be represented
in concrete form, as definite beings whom our minds can apprehend. Thus
the poets and dramatists and story-makers must show us images to shadow
forth spiritual things. As with a shudder we close the books that tell
us horrifying tales of satanic spirits, of accursed beings that are
neither wholly animal nor human, of mortals with diabolic powers, we
shrink from the evils of the soul that they represent, and recognize
their essential truth in the guise of fiction.
CHAPTER V
Supernatural Life
The fiction dealing with immortal life shows, more than any other
aspect of the subject, humanity's deep hunger for the supernatural.
Whether it be stories of continuance of earthly existence without death
as in the legends of the undying persons like the Wandering Jew; or of
supernaturally renewed or preserved youth as described in the tales of
the elixir of life; or of the transference of the soul after death into
another body; or of life continued in the spirit in other worlds than
this after the body's death,--all show our craving for something above
and beyond what we know here and now. Conscious of our own helplessness
we long to feel ourselves leagued with immortal powers; shrinking
affrighted from the grave's near brink we yearn for that which would
spare us death's sting and victory. Sadly knowing with what swift,
relentless pace old age is overtaking us we would fain find something
to give us eternal youth. But since we cannot have these gifts in our
own persons we seek them vicariously in fiction, and for a few hours'
leisured forgetfulness we are endowed with immortal youth and joy. Or,
looking past death, we can feel ourselves more than conquerors in a
life beyond.
"Oh world unknowable, we touch thee!
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!"
We somehow snatch a strange comfort from these stories of a life beyond
our own. We are comforted for our mortality when we see the tragedy
that dogs the steps of those who may not die, whether Swift's loathsome
Struldbrugs or the Wandering Jew. Our own ignorance of the future
makes us credulous of any man's dream of heaven and at the same time
sceptical of anybody else's hell. We are such indestructible optimists
that we can take any sort of raw material of fiction and transmute it
into stuff that hope is made of.
=The Wandering Jew.= There is no legend more impressive than that of
the Wandering Jew, and none save the Faust theme that has so influenced
literature. The story is as deathless as the person it portrays and
has wandered into as many lands, though it is impossible to trace with
certainty its origin or first migrations. There is an Arabian legend of
one Samiri who forever wanders, crying, "Touch me not!" as there is a
Buddhist account of a man cursed for working miracles for show, to whom
Buddha said, "Thou shalt not attain Nirvana while my religion lasts."
There are similar Chinese and Indian versions and the idea occurs in
English folk-tales, where the plovers are thought to be the souls of
those that crucified Christ, condemned to fly forever over the world,
uttering their plaintive cry.
The first appearance of the Wandering Jew in English literature is in
the Chronicles of Roger of Wendover, who reports the legend as being
told at the monastery of St. Albans by an Armenian bishop, in 1228, but
to hearers already familiar with it. There are two distinct versions
of the story appearing in English literature. One relates that the
wanderer is a certain Cartapholus, a servant in Pilate's palace, who
struck Jesus a brutal blow as He was led forth to death, and to whom He
said, "Thou shalt wander till I come!" The other is of German origin
giving the personality of Ahasuerus, a shoemaker of Jerusalem, who
mocked the Savior as He passed to Golgotha. Bowed under the weight of
the cross, Christ leaned for a moment's rest against the door of the
little shop, but Ahasuerus said scornfully, "Go faster, Jew!" With one
look of deep reproach, Christ answered, "I go, but tarry thou till I
come!"
The Wandering Jew story is cosmopolitan, used in the literature of many
lands. In Germany it has engaged the attention of Berthold Auerbach,
Kingemann, Schlegel, Julius Mosen, and Chamisso, in France that of
Edgar Quinet and Eugene Sue. Hans Christian Andersen has used it while
Heijermans has written a Dutch play on it and Carmen Sylva, late Queen
of Roumania, made it the basis for a long dramatic poem.
The theme has appeared in various forms in English literature, besides
in fiction where it has been most prominent. A comedy[155] was
published in 1797, by Andrew Franklin, though the wanderer is here
used only as a hoax. Wordsworth has a poem entitled The _Song of the
Wandering Jew_, and Shelley was fascinated by the legend, as we see
from the fact that he used it three times. One of his first poems, a
long dramatic attempt, written at eighteen, is _The Wandering Jew_,
a fevered poem showing the same weaknesses that his Gothic romances
reveal, yet with a hint of his later power. The Wandering Jew appears
as a definite character in both _Queen Mab_ and _Hellas_, in the first
Ahasuerus being summoned to testify concerning God, while he appears in
the latter to give supernatural vision of events. In both poems he is
very old, for in the first it is said:
[155] _The Wandering Jew_, or _Love's Masquerade_.
"His port and mien bore marks of many years....
"Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth," while in the latter he is
described as being "so old he seems to have outlived a world's decay."
Shelley follows the German version, as used in a fragment he picked up
torn and soiled in Lincoln's Inn Fields, whose author he did not know.
Mr. Eubule-Evans, in a long dramatic poem of considerable power,[156]
tells the story of Theudas, who could be released from his doom of
immortality if only he would repent, but he will not. He renews his
youth every forty years, growing suddenly from a decrepit man to a
handsome, gifted youth, which naturally suggests complications of human
love-affairs. Other elements of supernaturalism are used, as angels,
demons, and so forth while the Æons and the Intermedii (whoever they
are!) appear as chorus.
[156] _The Curse of the Wandering Jew._
_The Wandering Jew, a Christmas Carol_,[157] retells the story with
variations and with some power. The Jew here is shown to be very old
and feeble, clad in antique raiment, with stigmata of the wounds on
hands and feet. He is symbolic of the Christ, of His failure to win men.
"For lo, at last I knew
The lineaments of that diviner Jew,
That like a Phantom passeth everywhere,
The world's last hope and bitterest despair,
Deathless, yet dead!
And lo! while all men come and pass away
That phantom of the Christ, forlorn and gray,
Haunteth the earth, with desolate footfall."
[157] By Robert Buchanan.
The Wandering Jew is seen definitely once in Gothic fiction, in Lewis's
_The Monk_, where a mysterious stranger, bearing on his forehead a
burning cross imprinted, appears and is spoken of as the Wandering
Jew. He is unable to stay more than fourteen days in any one place but
must forever hurry on. Rev. T. Clark[158] gives a bird's-eye view of
history such as a person of the long life and extensive migrations of
the wanderer would see it.
[158] In _The Wandering Jew_, or the _Travels and Observations
of Bareach the Prolonged_.
The idea of a deathless man appealed strongly to Hawthorne, who plays
with the theme in various passages in his works and notebooks. In
_A Virtuoso's Collection_, where Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, is
door-keeper and where the collection includes a letter from the Flying
Dutchman to his wife, together with a flask of the elixir of life, the
virtuoso himself is none other than the Wandering Jew. He speaks of
his destiny and says that human prayers will not avail to aid him. The
touch of his hand is like ice, conveying a sense of spiritual as well
as physical chill. The character appears also as one of the guests in
_A Select Party_, of whom the author remarks: "This personage, however,
had latterly grown so common by mingling in all sorts of society and
appearing at the beck of every entertainer that he could hardly be
deemed a proper guest in an exclusive circle." This bit of satire
illustrates how common the theme had become at that time in fiction.
There are various threads of narration tangled up with the Wandering
Jew motif. He is said by some writers to have supernatural power to
heal disease, while by others he is thought to be the helpless bearer
of evil and death. Eugène Sue in his novel represents him as carrying
the plague, knowing his awful destiny, yet, while wildly regretting it,
powerless in the clutch of fate. Here he appears as a voluntary agent
of good toward the Rennepont family and an involuntary minister of evil
in other ways. An anonymous story[159] uses the same idea of the plague
association but carries it further, for here the wanderer is not a
personality but the plague itself, passing like a doom over the world,
which shows how far that phase of the legend has gone.
[159] _In the Track of the Wandering Jew._
The legend has been utilized variously to impress religious truths.
Charles Granville[160] writes a symbolic story with a definite
religious message. The idea of the immortal wanderer is represented as
the concept of a part of humanity urged by an earnest longing which
dominates their whole life and thought, the desire that a new kingdom
of God might come. The book is a social satire, an appeal for the
coming of a real democracy, real justice and genuine spirituality.
George Croly[161] has for his purpose the proving that Christ's second
coming is near at hand. Lew Wallace, who himself uses the theme of
the Wanderer, thought this book one of the half dozen volumes which
taken alone would constitute a British literature. We are likely to
find ourselves questioning Wallace's judgment in the matter, for
while the novel is interesting and has a sermon impressed with some
interest, it is by no means a great piece of literature. Salathiel is
pictured as a young, enthusiastic, passionate Jew striving to defend
his country against the woes that threaten her. His life is given in
detail immediately following his unpardonable sin, and his definite
career ends with the destruction of Jerusalem, though his immortality
is suggested at the close. The book describes many supernatural
happenings, the miraculous phenomena accompanying the death of Christ
and manifestations following the fate of the city.
[160] In _The Plaint of the Wandering Jew_.
[161] In _Salathiel the Immortal_, or _Tarry Thou Till I Come_.
In Lew Wallace's _The Prince of India_ the deathless man appears
again. In the beginning of the story he enters a vault from which he
removes the treasure from mummy cases, remarking that the place has
not been visited since he was there a thousand years before. He has
numerous impressive experiences, such as seeing a monk that seems the
reincarnation of Jesus, and hearing again the centurion's call to
him. Wallace pictures the Jew as old, a philosopher, in contrast to
Salathiel's impetuous youth. He is striving to bring the sons of men
into closer spiritual truth with each other and with God, as Salathiel
tries to prevent the material destruction of the city. The sense of
responsibility, the feeling of a mission toward others, expressed in
this novel, may be compared with that of Eugène Sue's Wandering Jew who
acts as a friend to the Rennepont family, protecting their interests
against the wily Jesuits.
The Wandering Jew has been represented in many ways, with stress
placed on various aspects of his life and character. He has been
depicted psychologically, as a suffering human being, mythologically to
illustrate the growth and change in life, religiously to preach certain
tenets and beliefs, and symbolically to show forth the soul of man. He
appears symbolically as the creature accursed of God, driven forever
in the face of doom. Shelley and others show him as vainly attempting
suicide, but living on, anguished yet deathless, in the face of every
effort to take his own life as in the teeth of torture from others. He
stands at once for the undying power of God's plan, and, as in Robert
Buchanan's version, for the typified failure of Christ's mission. He is
used to prove that Christ's second coming is near, and to prove also
that He will never come. To the Christian he stands for the evidence
of Christ's power of divinity, while to the Jew he is a symbol of that
unhappy race that wanders ever, with no home in any land.
Besides those mentioned, other English and American writers who have
made use of the legend are Kipling; Bram Stoker, who discusses him
in his assembly of Famous Impostors; M. D. Conway, who gives various
versions of the story; David Hoffman, Henry Seton Merriman, S.
Baring-Gould, W. H. Ainsworth, and others.
A legend closely associated with this and yet separate, is that of
a woman who bore the curse of eternal wandering. One version brings
in Herodias as the doomed woman, while the character of Kundry in
_Parsifal_ represents another feminine wanderer. William Sharp, in his
_Gypsy Christ_, gives the story differently still, saying that it is
not correctly told in _Parsifal_. As Sharp tells it, it is a piece of
tragic symbolism. Kundry, a gypsy woman of evil life, mocks Christ on
Golgotha and demands of Him a sign, to whom He says, "To thee and thine
I bequeath the signs of my Passion to be a shame and horror among thy
people forevermore!" Upon her hands and feet appear the stigmata of His
wounds, never to fade away, and to be borne by her descendants in every
third generation. Various ones of her descendants are crucified, and
wherever the wanderers go on earth they bear the marks of horror. The
curse would be lifted from them only when a Gypsy Christ should be born
of a virgin; but then the Children of the Wind should be dispersed and
vanish from among men. In the last chapter Naomi prophesies that she is
to give birth to the Gypsy Christ.
The theme of the Wandering Jew, while rivalling the Faust legend in
impressiveness and in the frequence with which it has been used in
literature, yet is different in having had no adequate representation.
No truly great poem or drama or novel has been written concerning
this tragic, deathless character. Perhaps it may come yet. Only
hints of his personality have appeared in very recent fiction,
such as the reincarnation in the character of the young Jew in
A. T. Quiller-Couch's story, _The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem_, or the
humorous reference to him in Brander Matthews's _Primer of Imaginary
Geography_, or _The Holy Cross_ by Eugene Field, where the wanderer is
pitied by a Spanish priest in Cortez's train in Mexico. His prayers win
forgiveness and the tortured Jew dies. After his death an earthquake
supernaturally splits a gulf on each side of the grave and a cross of
snow appears there, to remain forever. Perhaps the theme is fading out
now in fiction and drama, to disappear completely, or perhaps it is
lying forgotten for a while, waiting the master hand that shall give it
adequate treatment.
=Elixir of Life.= Immortality that proves such a curse in the case
of the Wandering Jew forms the basis for various other stories.
The elixir of life was a favorite theme with the Gothicists, being
used by Maturin, Godwin, and Shelley, and has continued to furnish
complication for fiction since that time. The theme has been popular on
the continent as well as in England, Balzac and Hoffman being the most
impressive users of it.
Bulwer-Lytton, in _A Strange Story_, introduces the elixir of life
together with other forms of supernaturalism, such as mesmerism, magic,
spectral apparitions, invisible manifestations, awful bodiless Eyes, a
gigantic Foot, and so forth. Margrave attempts to concoct the potion
that shall give him endless life, but after mysterious preparations,
incantations, and supernatural manifestations, at the crucial moment a
stampede of maddened beasts, urged forward by the dreadful Foot, dashes
the beaker from his lips. The irreplaceable liquid wastes its force on
the desert sands, where a magic richness of herbage instantly springs
up in contrast to the barrenness around it. Flowers bloom, myriads
of insects hover round them, and all is life, but the man who sought
the elixir with such pains lies dead. The author suggests a symbolic
meaning for his story, hinting that the scientist's laboratory holds
many elixirs of life, that all growth and life are magical, that all
being is miraculous.
Rider Haggard, in _She_ and _Ayesha_, its sequel, describes a
wonderful woman who possesses the secret of eternal life and has lived
for thousands of years, ever young and beautiful, supernaturally
enchanting. Her magic potion not only gives her length of days but
protection against danger as well, for her rival's dagger glances
harmlessly away from her, and she is proof against chance and fate.
She gains her immortal life partly by bathing in a secret essence or
vapor whose emanations give her mystic force and immortal beauty.
There are many other elements of supernaturalism in association with
the not impossible She,--magic vision, reincarnation, a mystic light
that envelops her body, the power to call up the dead, to reanimate
the skeletons in the desert and raise them to dreadful life. She is an
interesting but fearsome personality.
In _Ahrinziman_, by Anita Silvani, we have magic chemistry yielding up
the elixir of life. Jelul-uh-din has lived for five hundred years and
looks forward to a still more protracted existence. His magic drug not
only gives him prolonged life but will do anything he wishes besides,
since he has hypnotized it. Yet he is found dead. "On his wrists were
marks of giant fingers, scorched and burnt into the flesh like marks
of hot iron. And on his throat were marks of a similar hand which had
evidently strangled him." It is apparent that his master, the De'il,
got impatient and cut short the leisurely existence that he felt
belonged to him.
Hawthorne was greatly interested in the theme of the elixir of life. He
gives us two brews of it in _Septimius Felton_, one an Indian potion
concocted by an old sachem. The red man gets so old that his tribe
find him a great nuisance and obstacle to progress so they gravely
request permission to kill him. But his skull is so hard that the stone
hammers are smashed when they try to brain him, his skin so tough
that no arrows will pierce it, and nothing seems to avail. Finally
they fill his mouth and nostrils with clay and put him in the sun to
bake, till presently his heart bursts with a loud explosion, tearing
his body to fragments. This brew of his is matched by one made by an
European scientist after long endeavors. Here the ultimate ingredient
is supposed to be a strange herb that grows from a mysterious grave.
At last, just when the youth thinks he has the right combination, the
woman who has lured him on to destruction dashes the cup from his lips,
saving him from the poison he would have drunk. The flower has grown
from the grave of her lover, whom the young scientist has murdered.
In _The Dolliver Romance_, that pathetic fragment Hawthorne left
unfinished at his death, we find another treatment of the theme. It
seems symbolic that in his old age and failing powers, he should
have been thinking of immortal youth, of deathless life. In this
story various magical elements are introduced. The herbs grown in old
Grandsir Dolliver's garden have a strange power, for when a woman lays
a flower from one on her breast, it glows like a gem and lends a bloom
of youth to her cheeks. The old man seeks the one unknown essence, the
incalculable element necessary to make up the elixir of life, as did
the youth in _Septimius Felton_. He drinks occasional mouthfuls of a
strange cordial that he finds in an old bottle on the shelf, and seems
to grow younger and stronger. He, too, like Septimius, has a visitor;
a man that demands the cordial as belonging to him by ancestral right,
snatches it from the aged hands, drinks it down at a draught and grows
violently young, but dies in convulsions.
In _Dr. Heidigger's Experiment_ Hawthorne gives us another sad symbolic
story of the quest of the elixir of youth. The old physician invites
four aged friends to make an experiment, to drink of a cordial which
shall restore youth, but which he himself is too wise to share. The
strange potion proves its power by restoring to beauty and perfume a
rose that has been dead for over fifty years. When the old persons
drink they become young and happy and beautiful once more. Age drops
from them like a mantle discarded and the world glows again with
passion and color and joy. But alas! it is only ephemeral, for the
effects soon pass away and senility is doubly tragic after one snatched
hour of joy and youth. There is a sad philosophy of life expressed in
these symbolic allegories such as Hawthorne alone knows how to tell.
Elsewhere Hawthorne shows his deep interest in the theme. In _The
Birthmark_ the scientist intimates that he could brew the life elixir
if he would, but that it would produce a discord in nature such as
all the world, and chiefly he that drank it, would curse at last.
The subject is referred to in other places,[162] and a flask of the
precious, dreadful elixir is one of the treasures in the Virtuoso's
collection. In a note concerning his use of the theme in _The Dolliver
Romance_ Hawthorne states that he has been accused of plagiarizing from
Dumas, but that in reality Dumas plagiarized from him, since his book
was many years the earlier.
[162] In _Dr. Bullivant_.
H. G. Wells[163] uses this theme combined with the transfer of
personality. An aged man bargains with a youth to make him his heir on
certain conditions. The purpose, unknown to the young fellow, is to
rob him of his youth to reanimate the old man. A magic drink transfers
the personality of the octogenarian to the body of youth and leaves
the young man's soul cabined in the worn-out frame. But the drug is
more powerful than Mr. Elvesham supposed, for it brings death to both
who drink it and the bargain has a ghastly climax. Barry Pain has a
somewhat similar situation of the tragic miscalculation, in _The Wrong
Elixir_, the story of an alchemist who brews the life-giving potion but
means to keep it all to himself. On a certain night he will drink it
and become immortally young, in a world of dying men. While he waits,
a gypsy girl asks him to give her a poison to kill a man she hates.
He prepares the potion for her and sets it aside. He drinks at the
time he planned, but instead of eternal life, the draught brings him
swift-footed death. Does he drink the wrong elixir, or have all his
calculations been wrong?
[163] In _The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham_.
An example of the way in which the magic of the old fiction of
supernaturalism has been transferred into the scientific in modern
times, is seen in _The Elixir of Youth_, by Albert Bigelow Paine. A
man in an upper room alone is wishing that he had the gift of immortal
youth, when a stranger in black enters and answers his thought. He
tells him that to read the mind is not black magic, but science; that
he is not a magician, but a scientist, and as such he has compounded
the elixir of youth, which he will give to him. This drug will enable
a man to halt his age at any year he chooses and to make it permanent,
as Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess of Towers did in their dream-life.
The stranger leaves the flask with the man and goes away. But the one
who wished for immortal life decides that after all God must know best,
and, though his decision not to drink has not crystalized, he is not
greatly sorry when the flask is shattered and the liquid spilled. This
is symbolic of the real wisdom of life.
The frequent use of the theme of the elixir of life, of deathless
youth, illustrates how humanity clutches at youth with pathos and
shrinks from age. Red Ranrahan, the loved singer of Ireland, whom W. B.
Yeats creates for us with unforgettable words, makes a curse against
old age when he feels it creeping on him.
Various other stories of supernatural length of years appear in English
fiction, besides those based on the definite use of the life elixir.
_The Woman from Yonder_, by Stephen French Whitman, shows us the
revived, reanimated body of a woman who has been buried in a glacier
since Hannibal crossed the Alps, till she is dug out and miraculously
restored, by blood-transfusion, by an interfering scientist. The
writer queries, "If the soul exists, where had that soul been? What
regions did it relinquish at the command of the reviving body?" A
humorous application of the idea of the deathless man is seen in A.
Conan Doyle's _The Los Amigos Fiasco_, where the citizens of a frontier
town, wishing to kill a criminal by some other method than the trite
rope, try to kill him by putting him in connection with a big dynamo.
But their amateur efforts have a peculiar effect. They succeed only
in so magnetizing his body that it is impossible for him to die. They
try shooting, hanging, and so forth, but he has gained such an access
of vitality from electricity that he comes out unscathed through
everything, resembling the ancient sachem in Hawthorne's novel.
The Flying Dutchman forms the theme for stories in folklore, of a
wanderer of the seas condemned to touch shore only once in seven years,
because he swore he would round Cape Horn in spite of heaven and hell.
Hawthorne has preserved a letter from the Dutchman to his wife, in
the Virtuoso's collection, and John Kendrick Bangs has furnished the
inevitable parody in his _Pursuit of the Houseboat_. _The Dead Ship_
of Harpwell is another story of a wandering, accursed ship. There is a
similar legend told by C. M. Skinner,[164] of a man, who, for a cruel
murder of a servant, was condemned to wear always a halter round his
neck and was unable to die.
[164] In _Myths and Legends of Our Land_.
Bram Stoker furnishes us with several interesting specimens of
supernatural life, always tangled with other uncanny motives. The
count, in _Dracula_, who has lived his vampire life for centuries, is
said to be hale and fresh as if he were forty. Of course, all vampires
live to a strange lease on life, but most of them are spirits rather
than human beings as was Dracula. In _The Lair of the White Worm_,
Stoker tells of a woman who was at once an alluring woman and a snake
thousands of years old. The snake is so large that, when it goes out to
walk, it looks like a high white tower, and can gaze over the tops of
the trees.
Bulwer-Lytton's _The Haunters and the Haunted_ tells the story of a
mysterious being who passes through untold years with a strange power
over life and the personality of others. He appears, no man knows
whence nor why, and disappears as strangely, while about his whole
career is a shroud of mystery. Thackeray, in his _Notch on the Axe_,
burlesques this and similar stories in playful satire, yet seems to
enjoy his theme. It is not wholly a burlesque, we may suppose. He
adds a touch of realism to his humorous description by the fact that,
throughout his hero's long-continued life, or series of lives--one
doesn't know which--he retains always his German-Jewish accent. Andrew
Lang describes[165] the person who may have been the original of these
stories in real life. Horace Walpole has mentioned him in his letters
and he seems to have a teasing mystery about his life and career that
makes him much talked-of.
[165] In _St. Germain the Deathless_.
Edwin Lester Arnold[166] tells a story of continued life with an
Oriental setting and mystery. Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_,
by the introduction of a magic sleep makes a man live far beyond the
natural span and be able to see into the distant future, while the
youth in Mark Twain's _A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court_ has
a magic length of life, living a dual existence, in Arthurian England
and in present-day America. H. G. Wells[167] uses something of the same
idea, in that he makes his hero live a very long time in a few hours,
compressing time into minute tabules, as it were, as he does in another
story of the magic accelerator that makes a man live fast and furiously
with tenfold powers at crucial moments. The story of Peter Rugg, the
Missing Man, is that of another immortal wanderer, whose story is told
in _Myths and Legends of Our Land_, and utilized by Alfred Austin. He
goes out into a storm, saying, "I will see home to-night or I will
never see it!" He flies forever pursued by the storm, never resting,
and never seeing his home. This is symbolic of the haunted soul pursued
by its own destiny.
[166] In _The Strange Adventures of Phra the Phoenician_.
[167] In his _Time Machine_.
The theme of the elixir of life is one of the old motifs of
supernaturalism retained in modern fiction. The conventional alchemist
has given place to a more up-to-date investigator in the chemical
laboratory, yet the same thrill of interest is imparted by the thought
of a magic potion prepared by man that shall endow him with earthly
immortality. The theme has changed less in its treatment and symbolism
than most of the supernatural elements in fiction, for though we see
the added elements of modern satire and symbolism, its essential
aspects remain the same.
=Metempsychosis.= The idea of metempsychosis, the thought that at
death the soul of a human being may pass into another mortal body
or into a lower stage, into an animal or even a plant, has been
used considerably in English fiction. This Oriental belief has its
basis in antiquity, in animistic ideas in primitive culture. One
of the earliest appearances of the theme in English fiction is that
middle-eighteenth-century story of Dr. John Hawkesworth's,[168] an
account of a soul that has not behaved itself seemly, so descends in
the spiritual scale till it ends by being a flea. The German Hoffmann
used the theme repeatedly, and Poe, who was to a certain extent
influenced by his supernaturalism, employs it in several stories. In _A
Tale of the Ragged Mountains_, the young man named Bedlo experiences,
in dreams of extraordinary vividness, the life of battle, of confusion,
ending in death, in a tropical city. He sees himself die, struck on the
temple by a poisoned arrow. He is recognized by an elderly man as the
exact counterpart of a Mr. Oldeb who perished in the manner dreamed of
in a battle in Benares. Mr. Bedlo, while wandering in the mountains of
Virginia, contracts a cold and fever, for the cure of which leeches
are applied, but by mistake a poisonous sangsue is substituted for
the leech, and the patient dies of a wound on the temple, similar
to that caused by a poisoned arrow. Poe's concept in other stories
is not that of the conventionally easy passage of the soul into the
body of a new-born babe that wouldn't be expected to put up much of
a fight, but he makes the psychic feature the central horror, saying
in that connection that man is on the brink of tremendous psychical
discoveries. In _Morella_ the theme is used with telling power, where
the wife, once greatly loved but now loathed, on her deathbed tells her
husband that her child will live after her. The daughter grows up into
supernatural likeness of her mother, but remains nameless, since her
father, for a reason he cannot analyze, hesitates to give her any name.
But at last, as she stands before the altar to be christened, some
force outside the father causes him to call her Morella.
What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and
overspread them with the hues of death, as, starting at that
scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from earth to
heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral
vault, responded, "I am here"!
[168] _The Transmigration of a Soul._
The young girl is found to be dead and the father says: "With my own
hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed, with a long and bitter
laugh, as I found no traces of the first in the charnel where I laid
the second Morella."
An obvious imitation of Poe's story is found in Bram Stoker's novel,
_The Jewel of Seven Stars_, where the soul of an Egyptian princess
enters into the body of a baby born to one of the explorers who rifle
her tomb. The child grows into the perfect duplicate of the princess,
even showing on her wrists the marks of violence that cut off the
mummy's hand. The Egyptian's familiar, a mummified cat, comes to life
to revenge itself upon the archæologists who have disturbed the tomb.
When by magic incantations and scientific experiments combined, the
collectors try to revivify the mummy, the body mysteriously disappears,
and the young girl is found dead, leading us to suppose that the
reanimated princess has stolen the girl's life for her own.
In _Ligeia_, another of Poe's morbid studies of metempsychosis, the
theme is clearly announced, as quoted from Joseph Glanville: "Man
doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly save only
through the weakness of his own feeble will." The worshipped Ligeia
dies, and in an hour of madness her husband marries the Lady Rowena.
The bride soon sickens and as the husband watches alone by her bed
at midnight, he sees drops of ruby liquid fall from some mysterious
source, into the wine he is offering her. When the Lady Rowena
presently dies, the husband, again alone with her, sees the corpse
undergo an awful transformation. It is reanimated, but the body that
lives is not that of Rowena, but of Ligeia, who has come back to life
again by exerting her deathless will over the physical being of her
rival. The climax with which the story closes has perhaps no parallel
in fiction. As for the ruby drops, are we to think of them as an elixir
of life for the dead Ligeia struggling back to being, or as poison to
slay the living Rowena?
Ligeia's story is reflected, or at least shows an evident influence, in
_The Second Wife_, by Mary Heaton Vorse. Here again the dead wife comes
to oust her supplanter, but in this instance the interloper does not
die, but without dying merely _becomes_ the person and the personality
of the first wife. The change is gradual but incontrovertible, felt by
the woman herself before it is complete, and noticed by the husband
and the mother-in-law. Here the human will, indestructible by death,
asserts itself over mortal flesh and effects a transfer of personality.
But where did the second wife's soul go, pray,--the "she o' the she" as
Patience Worth would say?
A similar transfer of soul, effected while both persons are living
but caused by the malignance of an evil dead spirit, is found in
Blackwood's _The Terror of the Twins_. A father, who resents the fact
that instead of a single heir twins are born to him, swears in his
madness before he dies, that before their majority he will bring it to
pass that there shall be only _one_. By the help of powers from the
Pit he filches from the younger his vitality, his strength of mind and
soul and body, his personality, and gives this access of power to the
elder. The younger dies a hopeless idiot and the elder lives on with
a double dower of being. Ambrose Bierce carries this idea to a climax
of horror,[169] when he makes an evil spirit take possession of a dead
mother's body and slay her son, who recognizes his loved mother's
face, knows that it is her eyes that glare fiend-like at him, her hands
that are strangling him,--yet cannot know that it is a hideous fiend in
her corpse.
[169] In _The Death of Halpin Frazer_.
The theme of metempsychosis is found tangled up with various other
motives in fiction, the use of the elixir of life, hypnotism,
dream-supernaturalism, witchcraft and so forth. Rider Haggard has
given a curious combination of metempsychosis, and the supernatural
continuance of life by means of the elixir, in _She_ and its sequel,
_Ayesha_. The wonderful woman, the dread She-who-must-be-obeyed who
keeps her youth and beauty by means of bathing in the magic fluid,
recognizes in various stages of her existence the lover whom she has
known thousands of years before. Not having the advantage of the
Turkish bath or patent medicine, he dies periodically and has to be
born all over again in some other century. This is agitating to the
lady, so she determines to inoculate him with immortality so that
they can reign together without those troublesome interruptions of
mortality. But the impatient lover insists on kissing her, which proves
too much for him, since her divinity is fatal to mere mankind, so he
dies again.
The close relation between metempsychosis and hypnotism is shown in
various stories. Several cases of troublesome atavistic personality or
reincarnation are cured by psychotherapy. Theodora, a young woman in a
novel by Frances Fenwick Williams, bearing that title-name, realizes
herself to be the reincarnation of a remote ancestress, an Orientalist,
a witch, who has terrorized the country with her sorceries. She is
cured of her mental hauntings by means of hypnotism. Another novel by
the same author,[170] gives also the reincarnation of a witch character
in modern life, with a cure effected by psycho-analysis. The young
woman discovers herself to be the heiress of a curse, which is removed
only after study of pre-natal influences and investigations concerning
the subconscious self.
[170] _A Soul on Fire._
As is seen by these examples, the relation between witchcraft
and metempsychosis is very close, since in recent fiction the
witch characters have unusual powers of returning to life in some
other form. In Algernon Blackwood's _Ancient Sorceries_, we have
witch-metempsychosis on a large scale, the population of a whole
village being but the reanimations of long-dead witches and wizards
who once lived there. I know of no other case of mob-metempsychosis
in English fiction, but the instances where several are reincarnated
at once are numerous. Algernon Blackwood's recent novel, _Jules Le
Vallon_, is based on a story of collective reincarnation, the chief
characters in the dramatic action realizing that they have lived
and been associated with each other before, and feeling that they
must expiate a sin of a previous existence. Another recent novel by
Blackwood, _The Wave_, has for its theme the reincarnation of the
principal characters, realized by them. Blackwood has been much drawn
to psychic subjects in general and metempsychosis in particular, for
it enters into many of his stories. In _Old Clothes_ he gives us an
instance of a child who knows herself to be the reborn personality of
some one else and suffers poignantly in reliving the experiences of
that long-dead ancestress, while those around her are recognized as
the companions of her life of the far past, though they are unaware of
it. The fatuous remark of lovers in fiction, that they feel that they
have lived and loved each other in a previous existence, is a literary
bromide now, but has its basis in a recurrence in fiction. Antonio
Fogazzaro's novel, _The Woman_, is a good example in Italian,--for the
woman feels that she and her lover are reincarnations of long-dead
selves who have suffered tragic experiences together, which morbid idea
culminates in tragic madness.
_The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem_, by A. T. Quiller-Couch, is a
striking story of dual reincarnation. A young Jew in England and a
half-witted girl, a farmer's daughter, recognize in each other and
in themselves, the personalities of a young Jew led to the lions
for becoming a Christian, and a Roman princess who loved him. They
recall their successive lives wherein they have known and loved each
other, to be separated by cruel destiny each time, but at last they
die a tragic death together. The character of the man here is given
additional interest for us in that he is said to be a reincarnation of
Cartapholus, Pilate's porter, who struck Jesus, bidding Him go faster,
and who is immortalized as the Wandering Jew. Here he lives successive
lives rather than a continuous existence. Somewhat similar to this
is another combination of hypnotism and metempsychosis in _The Witch
of Prague_, by F. Marion Crawford, where Uorna makes Israel Kafka go
through the physical and psychical tortures of Simon Abeles, a young
Jew killed by his people for becoming a Christian. By hypnotism the
young man is made to pass through the experiences of a dead youth of
whom he has never heard, and to die his death anew.
There is a close relation between dreams and metempsychosis, as is seen
in certain stories. Kipling's charming prose idyll, _The Brushwood
Boy_, may be called a piece of dream-metempsychosis, for the youth and
girl when they first meet in real life recognize in each other the
companions of their childhood and adolescent dream-life, and complete
their dual memories. They have dreamed the same dreams even to minute
details of conversation, and familiar names. Du Maurier combines the
two motives very skillfully in his novels, for it is in successive
dreams that the Martian reveals herself to Barty Joscelyn telling him
of her life on another planet, and inspiring him to write--or writing
for him--books of genius, before she takes up earthly life in one
of his children. She tells him that she will come to him no more in
dreams, but that she will live in the child that is to be born. And in
dual dreams Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess of Towers live over again
their childhood life together, are able to find at will their golden
yesterdays, and know in happy reality the joys of the past, while the
present keeps them cruelly apart. They are able to call back to shadowy
life their common ancestors, to see and hear the joys, the work, the
griefs they knew so long ago. They plumb their sub-consciousness, dream
over again their sub-dreams, until they at last not only see these
long-dead men and women, but _become_ them.
We could each be Gatienne for a space (though not both of us
together) and when we resumed our own personality again we carried
back with it a portion of hers, never to be lost again--strange
phenomenon if the reader will but think of it, and constituting the
germ of a comparative personal immortality on earth.
Not only does Peter live in the past, but he has the power to transport
these dead ancestors of his to his present and let them share in his
life, so that Gatienne, a French woman dead for generations, lives
over again in an English prison as Peter Ibbetson, or travels as Mary
Towers, seeing things she never had dreamed of in her own life.
H. G. Wells in _A Dream of Armageddon_ gives a curious story of the
dream-future. A man in consecutive visions sees himself killed. He then
dreams that he is another man, living in a different part of the world,
far in the future, till he sees himself die in his second personality.
He describes his experiences as given in "a dream so accurate that
afterwards you remember little details you had forgotten." He suffers
tortures of love and grief, so that his dream-life of the future is
infinitely more real to him than his actual existence of his own time.
What was the real "him o' him," to quote Patience Worth, the man of the
dream-future, or the business man of the present telling the story to
his friend?
A different version of metempsychosis is shown in _The Immortal
Gymnasts_, by Marie Cher, for here the beloved trio, Pantaloon,
Harlequin and Columbine are embodied as human beings and come to live
among men. Harlequin has the power of magic vision which enables him to
see into the minds and hearts of mortals by means of "cloud-currents."
This question of--shall we say transmigration?--of fictive characters
into actual life is found in various stories, such as Kipling's _The
Last of the Stories_, John Kendrick Bangs' _The Rebellious Heroine_,
and others. It illustrates the fantastic use to which every serious
theme is sooner or later put. There is no motif in supernatural
literature that is not parodied in some form or other, if only by
suggestion.
The symbolic treatment of metempsychosis is strongly evident in
recent fiction, as the theme lends itself particularly well to the
allegoric and symbolic style. Barry Pain's _Exchange_ shows aspects
of transmigration different from the conventional treatment, for he
describes the soul of the old man as giving up its right to peace that
it might purchase ease for a soul he loved. He passes into the body of
a captive bird beating its hopeless wings against the bars and tortured
with pain and thirst, as a mark of the witch woman's wrath, while the
soul of the young girl goes into the body of a snow-white lamb that
lives a day then is set free. As she passes by, in the state of a freed
soul, she sees the piteous bird, and says to herself, "I am glad I was
never a bird."
Algernon Blackwood, in _The Return_, gives a peculiar story of
metempsychosis, where the selfish materialist finds himself suddenly
reinforced with a new personality from without. His eyes are opened
miraculously to the magic and beauty of the world, and he knows beyond
doubt that his friend, the artist, who promised to come to him when he
died, has died and that his soul has become a part of his own being.
The most impressive example of this sudden merging of two natures, two
souls into one, is found in Granville Barker's _Souls on Fifth_. Here a
man suddenly acquires, or recognizes, the power to see the souls that
linger earth-bound around him, and comes to have a strange sympathy
with that of a woman, whom he calls the "Little Soul." When he speaks
of going away, after a time, she begs him not to leave her since she
is very lonely in this wilderness of unbodied souls. She asks that if
he will not take her into his soul, he carry her to some wide prairie,
and there in the unspaced expanse leave her,--but instead he gives a
reluctant consent for her to enter into his life. He presses the little
symbolic figure to his heart, then feels a new sense of being, of
personality, and knows that her soul has become forever a part of his.
Lord Dunsany, who lends a strange, new beauty to every supernatural
theme he touches, has a little prose-poem of symbolic metempsychosis,
called _Usury_, where Yohu, one of the evil spirits, lures the shadows
to work for him by giving them gleaming lives to polish.
And ever Yohu lures more shadows and sends them to brighten his
Lives, sending the old Lives out again to make them brighter still;
and sometimes he gives to a shadow a Life that was once a king's
and sendeth him with it down to the earth to play the part of a
beggar, or sometimes he sendeth a beggar's Life to play the part of
a king. What careth Yohu?
=Spiritualism and Psychical Research.= The influence of modern
Spiritualism and Psychical Research on the literature of supernaturalism
has been marked, especially of late years. It would be inevitable that
movements which interest so many persons, among them many of more
than ordinary intelligence, should be reflected in fiction. These two
aspects of the subject will be treated together since they are closely
allied. For though Spiritualism is a form of religion and Psychical
Research a new science,--and so-called religion and so-called science
are not always parallel--the lines of investigation here are similar.
While Spiritualism endeavors to get in touch with the spirits of the
dead that the living may be comforted and enlightened, and Psychical
Research attempts to classify the supposedly authentic cases of
such communication, and in so much their methods of approach are
different,--yet the results may be discussed together.
Hawthorne was interested in Spiritualism as literary material, since
a discussion of it is introduced in _Blithedale Romance_ and various
passages in his notebooks treat of the matter showing the fascination
it had for him. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, in addition to her
fictional treatises of heaven, takes up Spiritualism as well. In _The
Day of My Death_ she gives a satiric account of the return of a spirit
who says he is a lost soul tortured in hell. He doubtless deserves
it, for he sticks the baby full of pins and ties it to a tree, and
folds the clothes from the wash in the shape of corpses. He is still
interested in this life, however, since he requests a piece of squash
pie. In _Kentucky's Ghost_ she depicts a spirit actuated by definite
malice. In the previous story seven mediums tell a man that he will die
at a certain day and hour, but he lives cheerfully on.
William Dean Howells has given a study in his usual kindly satire
and sympathetic seriousness, of the phenomena of Spiritualism and
mesmerism, in _The Undiscovered Country_. Dr. Boynton, a mistaken
zealot, holds seances assisted by his daughter, a delicate, sensitive
girl who is physically prostrated after each performance and begs her
father to spare her. She acts as medium where the usual effects of
rapping, table levitation, and so forth take place, where spirit hands
wave in the air and messages, grave and jocular, are delivered. The
characterization is handled with skill to bring out the sincerity of
each person involved in the web of superstition and false belief, and
Howells shows real sympathy with each, the scoffers as well as the
misguided fanatics. It is only when the doctor looks death in the face
that he realizes his error and seeks to know by faith in the Bible the
truths of the far country of the soul.
Hamlin Garland has shown considerable interest in Spiritualism in his
fiction. He refuses to commit himself as to his own opinion of the
question, but he has written two novels dealing with it, _The Tyranny
of the Dark_ and _The Shadow World_. The former is considerably like
Howells's novel, for here also a young girl is made the innocent victim
of fanatics, her mother and a preacher who has fallen in love with her.
She is made to take part in spiritualistic manifestations, whether as
a victim of fraud or as a genuine medium the author leaves in doubt.
When the girl casts him off the preacher kills himself that he may come
into closer communication with her after death than he has been able
to do in life. Richard Harding Davis has contributed a volume with a
similar plot, the exploitation of an innocent and, of course, beautiful
girl by fanatics, in _Vera the Medium_. Here the girl is more than half
aware that she is a fraud and in her last seance, at the conclusion
of which she is to be carried triumphantly away by her lover, the New
York district attorney, she dramatically confesses her deception. As a
sympathy-getter, she pleads that she was very lonely, that because her
grandmother and mother were mediums, she had been cut off from society.
"I used to play round the kitchen stove with Pocahontas and Alexander
the Great, and Martin Luther lived in our china closet."
David Belasco's _The Return of Peter Grimm_, drama and novel, is based
upon spiritualistic manifestations. We are told that the "envelope"
or shadow-self of a sleeper has been photographed by means of
radio-photography. When a certain part of the shadow body is pricked
with a pin, as the cheek, the corresponding portion of the sleeper's
body is seen to bleed. Peter Grimm comes back from the other world to
direct the actions of the living, and though at first only a child sees
him,--for children are the best sensitives save animals,--eventually
the adults recognize him also and yield to his guidance. Spiritualism
enters directly or indirectly into many works of fiction of late years.
Whether people believe in it or not, they are thinking and writing
about it. The subject receives its usual humorous turn in various
stories, as Nelson Lloyd's _The Last Ghost in Harmony_, the story of
a specter who complains of the scientific unimaginativeness of his
village, saying that though he had entreated the spooks to hold out for
a little while as he had heard Spiritualism was headed that way and
would bring about a revival of interest in ghosts, the spirits all got
discouraged and quit the place. And we recall Sandy's mournful comment
to Mark Twain's Captain Stormfield, that he wished there was something
_in_ that miserable Spiritualism, so he could send word back to the
folks.
The Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society have a twofold
association with literature, for not only have various modern novels
and stories been inspired by such material, but the instances recorded
are similar in many cases to the classical ghost stories. Lacy
Collison-Morley in his _Greek and Roman Ghost Stories_ says, "There
are a number of stories of the passing of souls which are curiously
like some of those collected by the Psychical Research Society, in
the Fourth Book of Gregory the Great's _Dialogues_." The double
source of many modern stories may be found by a comparative study of
Collison-Morley's book and Myers's _Human Personality_, while G. H.
Gerould's volume, _The Grateful Dead_, introduces recent instances that
are like classical stories. The inability of the soul to have rest in
the other world if its body was unburied, as held by the ancients,
is reflected in Gothic romance, Elizabethan drama as well as in the
classics. The ghost of Jack, whom Peele tells us about, is a case of a
ghost coming back to befriend his undertaker. From these comparisons
it would appear that there is something inherently true to humanity
in these beliefs, for the revenge ghost and the grateful dead have
appeared all along the line. Perhaps human personality is largely the
same in all lands and all times, and ghosts have the same elemental
emotions however much they may have acquired a veneer of modernity.
There are many instances of the compact-ghost, the spirit who returns
just after death in accordance with a promise made in life, to manifest
himself to some friend or to some skeptic. Algernon Blackwood gives
several stories based on that theme, one a curious case where the ghost
is so lifelike his friend does not dream he is not the living man,
and assigns him to a bedroom. Later he is invisible, yet undoubtedly
present, for his heavy breathing, movements of the covers, and impress
on the bed are beyond dispute. _Afterwards_, by Fred C. Smale, shows a
ghost returning to attend a neighborhood club. When his name is called
by mistake, he takes part on the program, speaking through the lips of
a young man present, who goes off in a cataleptic trance. During this
coma the youth, who is ignorant of music, gives a technical discussion
of notation, analyzing diatonic semi-tones and discussing the note a
nightingale trills on. When he wakes he says he has felt a chill and
a touch. Alice Brown relates a story of a lover who promised to come
to his sweetheart at the moment of death, but who, like Ahimeas in the
Bible, runs before he is ready, and keeps his ghostly tryst while the
rescuers bring him back to life. He hasn't really been drowned at all.
A recent novelette by Frances Hodgson Burnett, called _The White
People_, has psychical phenomena for its central interest. A little
child, born after her father's tragic death and when her dying mother
is conscious of his spiritual presence, grows up with a strange
sensitiveness to manifestations from the other world. Her home is
on a lonely estate in Scotland, so that her chief companionship is
with the "white people," the spirits of the dead, though she does not
so recognize them. Her playmate is Wee Brown Elsbeth, who has been
murdered hundreds of years before, and she is able to see the dead
hover near their loved ones wherever she goes. So when she comes to
realize what a strange vision is hers, she has no horror of death, and
when her lover dies she does not grieve, but waits to see him stand
smiling beside her as in life. The theme of the story is the nearness
of the dead to the living, the thin texture of the veil that separates
the two worlds.
Basil King tells a poignant story of a soul trying vainly to return in
body to right a wrong done in life but unable to accomplish her purpose
by physical means. At last she effects it by impressing the mind of
a living woman who carries out the suggestion psychically given. One
of the most effective recent accounts of a spirit's return to earth
to influence the life of the living, to give messages or to control
destiny, is in Ellen Glasgow's _The Shadowy Third_. Here the ghost of
a child, a little girl whom her stepfather has done to death for her
money, returns to cause his death in an unusual way. She throws her
little skipping-rope carelessly on the stairway where he must trip up
in it when he sees her phantom figure in front of him in the gloom, so
to fall headlong to his death. This is an impressive revenge ghost.
Henry James based his ghost story, _The Turn of the Screw_, on an
incident reported to the Psychical Society, of a spectral old woman
corrupting the mind of a child. The central character in Arnold
Bennett's novel, _The Ghost_, is a specter, one of the most rabid
revenge ghosts in literature, who is eaten up with jealousy lest
the woman he loved in life shall care for some one else. Algernon
Blackwood uses much psychical material in his numberless stories of the
supernatural, often mentioning the work of the Society, and Andrew Lang
has contributed much to the subject. Arthur Machen has just published a
collection of stories of war-apparitions that are interesting psychical
specimens, called _The Bowmen_. In one story in the volume he shows us
how a contemporary legend may be built up, since from a short piece of
fiction written by him has evolved the mass of material relating to the
angels at Mons. One tale is a story of the supernatural intervention of
Saint George and his army to drive back the Germans and save the hour
for the Allies, while another describes the vision of a soldier wounded
in battle defending his comrades, who sees the long-dead heroes of
England file past him to praise him for his valor. The minister gives
him wine to drink and
His voice was hushed. For as he looked at the minister the fashion
of his vesture was changed. He was all in armor, if armor be made
of starlight, of the rose of dawn, and of sunset fires; and he
lifted up a great sword of flame.
"Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphant Michael brandished
And trampled the Apostate's pride."
Another case of collective apparitions is the experience of a soldier,
wounded in battle, who tells of strange fighters who have come in to
aid the English. He thinks they are some of the tribesmen that Britain
employs, but from his descriptions the minister knows that they are the
long-dead Greeks who have arisen to take part in the struggle which
their modern descendants are reluctant to share. These stories are only
a few among the many instances of supernaturalism in fiction traceable
to the influence of the war.
Certain volumes of ghost stories have appeared, claiming to be not
fiction but fact, accounts of actual apparitions seen and snap-shotted.
This sort of problematic fiction is not new, however, since Defoe long
ago published one of the best of the kind, the story of Mrs. Veal, who
appeared to her friend Mrs. Bargrave, and conversed with her, gravely
telling her that heaven is much like the descriptions in a certain
religious book written shortly before that. She seems very realistic,
with her dress of newly scoured silk, which her friend rubs between
her fingers, and her lifelike conversation. This story has usually
been regarded as one of Defoe's "lies like truth," but recent evidence
leads one to believe that it is a reportorial account of a ghost story
current at the time, which missed being reported to the Society for
Psychical Research merely because the organization did not exist then.
The modern stories that stridently claim to be real lack the interest
in many instances that Mrs. Veal is able to impart, and in most cases
the reader loses his taste for that sort of fiction because it is
rammed down his throat for fact. They don't impress one, either as fact
or as fiction.
One of the most interesting aspects of the literature relating to
psychic matters in recent years is the number of books that claim to
be spirit-inspired. These instances of psychography are not what we
might expect immortals to indite, but it appears that there must be a
marked decrease of intelligence when one reaches the other world. The
messages sent back by dead genius lack the master style, even lacking
that control over spelling and grammar which low, earth-bound editors
consider necessary. But perhaps the spirits of the great grow tired
of being made messenger boys, and show their resentment by literary
strikes. Anita Silvani has published several volumes that she claims
were written while she was in a semi-trance,--which statement no reader
will doubt. Her accommodating dictator furnishes illustrations for
her stuff, as well, for she says she would have inner visions of the
scenes described, "as if a dioram passed" before her. These romances
of three worlds are quite peculiar productions. The inner voices asked
her in advance not to read any literature on theosophy or Spiritualism
or the supernatural since they wished her mind to be free from any
previous bias. Mrs. Elsa Barker is another of these literary mediums,
for she has put out two volumes of letters in narrative form, which
she makes affidavit were dictated to her by a disembodied spirit, the
ghost of the late Judge Hatch, of California. She states that while
she was sitting in her room in Paris one day, her hand was violently
seized, a pencil thrust into it, and the automatic writing began. Mrs.
Campbell-Praed is another of these feminine stenographers for spooks,
but like the rest she has left nothing that could well be included
in a literary anthology. These spirit-writers tell us of life after
death, but nothing that is a contribution to existing ignorance on the
subject. According to Judge Hatch, whose post-mortem pen-name is X, the
present war has its parallel in a conflict of spirits, and the astral
world is in dire confusion because of overcrowding, so that the souls
of the slain must go through torments and struggle with demons.
The most recent instance of psychography comes to us by way of the
ouija-board from St. Louis, the authenticity of which is vouched for
by Mr. Casper Yost, of the editorial staff of the _Globe-Democrat_.
But if the ouija-board dictated the stories and plays, giving the name
of Patience Worth as the spirit author, and if Mrs. Curran took them
down, why does Mr. Yost appear as the author? Patience Worth says
that she lived a long time ago. Mr. Yost insists that her language is
Elizabethan, but it seems rather a curious conglomeration, unlike any
Elizabethan style I am familiar with. She has written stories, lyrics,
a long drama, and other informal compositions, a marvelous output when
one considers the slow movements of the ouija-board. The communications
seem to have human interest and a certain literary value, though they
bring us no messages from the Elizabethan section of eternity.[171]
[171] Other examples of the books that claim to be inspired
by spirits are: _An Angel Message_, Being a Series of Angelic
and Holy Communications Received by a Lady; _Nyria_, by Mrs.
Campbell-Praed; _Letters from a Living Dead Man_, by Elsa
Barker, and _War Letters from a Living Dead Man_; _Stranger
than Fiction_, by Mary L. Lewis; _The Soul of the Moor_, by
Stratford Jolly; _Ida Lymond and Her Hour of Vision_, by Hope
Crawford; _The Life Elysian_; _The Car of Phoebus_; _The
Heretic_; _An Astral Bridegroom_; _Through the Mists_, _The
Vagrom Spirit_, and _Leaves from the Autobiography of a Soul in
Paradise_, by Robert James Lee. This last-named gentleman seems
to be in touch with spirits as rapid in composition as Robert
W. Chambers.
Automatic writing appears in _The Martian_ by Du Maurier, where the
spirit from Mars causes Barty Joscelyn in his sleep to write books
impossible to him in his waking hours. The type has been parodied by
John Kendrick Bangs in his _Enchanted Typewriter_, which machine worked
industriously recording telegraphic despatches from across the Styx.
The invisible operator gives his name as Jim Boswell. The writer states:
The substance of the following pages has evolved itself between the
hours of midnight and four o'clock, during a period of six months,
from a type-writing machine standing in a corner of my library,
manipulated by unseen hands.
It is astonishing how many ghosts are trying to break into print
these days. And after all, what do the poor things get out of it? No
royalties, scant praise, and much ridicule when their style fails to
come up to specifications.
Interesting psychical material is found in a new volume of plays by
Theodore Dreiser.[172] He gives curious twists to the unearthly, as
in _The Blue Sphere_, where a shadow and a fast mail are among the
_dramatis personæ_, typifying the fate idea of the old drama. The
shadow lures a child monstrosity out on to the railway track, after
he has caused the elders to leave the gate open, and the train, made
very human, kills the child. The psychic effects in _In the Dark_
are even more peculiar, the characters including various spirits, a
wraith, and a ghost with red eyes, who circle round the human beings
and force them to discover a murder that has been committed. The effect
of supernatural manifestation on animals is brought out here, in the
bellowing of the bull and the howling of the dogs as the ghosts pass
by. In _A Spring Recital_ troops of nymphs and hamadryads, fauns,
clouds of loathsome spirits of hags and wastrels, "persistences" of
fish, birds, and animals, "various living and newly dead spirits
wandering in from the street," the ghost of an English minister of St.
Giles, who died in 1631, a monk of the Thebaid, of date 300 and three
priests of Isis of 2840 B.C. enter to hear the organist play. He is
unaware that anybody is hearing his music save the four human beings
who have happened in. These dramas of course are purely literary
plays, impossible of presentation on the stage, and in their curious
character show a likeness to some of the late German supernaturalism,
such as the plays of August Stramm. They show in an extreme form the
tendency toward psychic material that the American and English drama
has evidenced lately.
[172] _Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural._
=Life after Death.= Mankind is immensely interested in heaven and
hell, though he knows but little concerning these places. But man is
a born traveler and gives much thought to distant countries, whether
he definitely expects to go there or not. This interest is no new
thing, for classical mythology is full of doleful accounts of the
after life. The early English stage represented heaven and hell in
addition to the earth, and Elizabethan drama shows many references to
the underworld, with a strong Senecan influence. There are especially
frequent allusions to certain famous sufferers in Hades, as Ixion,
Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Tityus. Modern English fiction has likewise
been influenced by the epic supernaturalism, reflecting the heaven and
hell of Dante and Milton. Yet as in his own thinking each person lays
out a Celestial City for himself and pictures his own inferno to fit
his ideas of mercy and justice, peopling them with appropriate beings,
changing and coloring the conceptions of Bunyan, for instance, to suit
his own desires, so it is in fiction. Some think of heaven and hell as
definite places, while to others they are states of mind. To some the
devil is as real as in the darkey folk-song, where,
"Up stepped de debbil
Wid his iron wooden shubbil,
Tearin' up de yearth wid his big-toe nail!"
while to others he is an iconoclastic new thought. Heaven and
hell have been treated in every conceivable way in English
fiction--conventionally, symbolically, humorously, and satirically, so
that one may choose the type he prefers. There are enough kinds to go
around.
Among the portrayers of the traditional heaven and hell Mrs. Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps Ward is prominent. Her works on contemporary immortality
are said to have had a tremendous vogue in the period following
the Civil War, when death had claimed so many that the living were
thinking of the other world more than of this. Her pictures of heaven
in _Gates Ajar_ are comforting, for she assures to each person his own
dearest wish in fulfillment, to the ambitious youth his books, to the
young girl her piano, and to the small child her ginger-snaps instead
of earthly bread and butter. In _The Gates Between_ the physician,
suddenly killed, finds himself embarrassed by immortality. He doesn't
know how to adjust himself to eternity and at first brings many of
earth's problems with him. In the third of the series, _The Gates
Beyond_, she describes a very material yet spiritual heaven. Bodies are
much like those on earth, not vaporous projections; there are museums,
hospitals, universities, telephones, concerts and all up-to-date
improvements and conveniences. The dead woman discovers that she
remembers what she read on earth, takes pleasure in simple things such
as the smell of mignonette, hears the birds sing a Te Deum, while a
brook and a bird sing a duet, and the leaves are also vocal. There is a
Universal Language which must be learned by each soul, and heaven holds
all sorts of occupations, material, mental, and spiritual. She says
that near earth are many earth-bound spirits occupied in low and coarse
and selfish ways, who lack "spiritual momentum to get away." "They
loved nothing, lived for nothing, believed in nothing, they cultivated
themselves for nothing but the earth,"--which may be compared with the
state of the souls on Fifth Avenue, described by Granville Barker.
Mrs. Ward's pictures of heaven may seem sentimental and conventional to
us to-day, yet to be appreciated they must be considered in relation to
the religious thought of her time. She represented a reaction against
the rigid theology, the stern concepts of an older generation than
her own, and she wished to make heaven more homelike. She did have an
influence in her day, as may be illustrated by a remark from a sermon
recently delivered by a New York pastor, that the reading of her books
had exerted a great influence over him, that they made heaven over for
him.
Mrs. Oliphant is another of the conductors of fictive Cook's tours
through heaven and hell, after the fashion started by Dante and Milton,
and modernized by Mrs. Ward. She devotes volumes to describing the
future worlds in their relation to mortal destiny. One story[173]
tells of a soul that comes back from purgatory to be comforted by the
old minister and sent away happy; another[174] is the account of a
spirit returning from heaven to right a wrong that her husband is doing
another. Still another[175] gives the experiences of a woman who is
distressed when she finds herself in heaven, because she has hidden her
will and her young niece is thereby left penniless, but she asks advice
of various celestial authorities and finally succeeds in returning to
earth and righting matters. _A Beleaguered City_ is a peculiar story
of a French town besieged by the dead, who drive out the inhabitants
because of their cruelty toward some nuns. A strange gloom pervades
the place, the cathedral bells ring of themselves, and flaming signs
appear on the church doors, till after much penance the citizens are
allowed to return and the invading hosts from eternity withdraw. In
one story,[176] Mrs. Oliphant gives her ideas of heaven, as a place of
light, of rest, of joy, of service, where the great angel Pain helps
the souls to wisdom. In a counter-picture,[177] she shows hell, the
world of the unhappy dead, where are cruelty, selfishness, suffering,
a world filled with tears that drip from earth. Yet it is a hell as
well-regulated, as thoroughly disciplined as a German municipality,
with various punishments,--the most terrible being a lecture platform
from which are delivered eternal addresses.
[173] _The Open Door._
[174] _The Portrait._
[175] _Old Lady Mary._
[176] _The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen._
[177] _The Land of Darkness._
These would-be-realistic stories of heaven and hell somehow leave the
reader cold, after Dante and Milton, however much one may feel the
sincerity of the authors. Heaven and hell are such vast provinces that
one cannot chart them in imagination sufficiently to grasp somebody
else's concept in story.
Other stories of life after death, given from the spirit-angle rather
than from the mortal point of view as in most ghost stories, are among
the recent types of supernaturalism. Alice Brown has several stories of
the kind, in one showing a woman who comes to tell her friend not to be
afraid of dying, because There is much like Here, and another symbolic
of the power of love to come back even from the pit of blackness after
death. Olivia Howard Dunbar's _The Shell of Sense_ gives the psychosis
of a woman who cannot go to heaven because she is jealous of her
husband. She _sees_ the form of the wind, _hears_ the roses open in the
garden, and senses many things unknown to human beings, yet is actuated
by very human motives. Katherine Butler[178] suggests that death must
be a painless process and the after life much like mortality, since
the man doesn't realize that he is dead but attempts to go about his
affairs as usual.
[178] In _In No Strange Land._
The symbolic treatment of the theme of life after death is more
effective and shows more literary art than the conventional pictures
of Mrs. Ward's and Mrs. Oliphant's. No human vocabulary is able to
describe immortality of glory or despair, hence it is more effective
merely to suggest the thought by allegory or symbolism. Hawthorne
gives us a symbolic morality in _The Celestial Railroad_, where he
pictures the road between heaven and hell, drawing on Bunyan's imagery
to describe the landscape and characters. Apollyon is engineer and
emits realistic blasts of smoke. Eugene Field[179] tells of a mother
just entering heaven who asks an angel where she may find her little
baby, dead long ago, to whom the angel whispers that she is the babe,
grown to maturity in Paradise. Julian Hawthorne's _Lovers in Heaven_
is a symbolic picture of the after life, where a man just dead goes
in search of the beloved he lost long before. He sees her on the far
slope of a heavenly hill, but before he can reach her the devil appears
to him in his own double, "the Satan of mine own self, the part of me
wherein God had no share." This is a quite modern concept of diabolism.
But love struggles to save him, and he resists his evil self.
[179] In _The Mother in Paradise_.
_Ahrinziman_, by Anita Silvani, shows lurid pictures of the world to
come. In the Inferno of the Dark Star the soul sees the attendant genii
of his life, each symbolizing some passion of his nature. There are
horrible astral birds and beasts and combinations unknown to mortal
biology, while vultures hover overhead and a foul astral odor fills
the air. The spirits are of peculiar substance, for they fight and
slay each other, some being torn to pieces. The soul is supposed to
progress toward the Silver and later the Golden Star. Marie Corelli's
_Romance of Two Worlds_ is a queer production, preaching the doctrine
of psychical electricity, which is to be a sort of wonder-working
magician, and in other novels she gives theories of radio-activity, a
theosophical cure-all for this world and the next.
_A Vision of Judgment_, by H. G. Wells, is a satire on man's judgment
of sin and character and of destiny after death, showing the pettiness
and folly of Ahab, proud of his sins, and the hypocrisy of a so-called
saint, conceited over his self-torture. "At last the two sat side
by side, stark of all illusions, in the shadow of the robe of God's
charity, like brothers." The picture of God and the throne vanish
and they behold a land austere and beautiful, with the enlightened
souls of men in clean bodies all about him. This symbolic allegory
setting forth the shallowness of human judgment as set against God's
clarity of vision and charity of wisdom is like Oscar Wilde's _The
House of Judgment_, a terrible piece of symbolism expressed in a few
words. A soul who has been altogether evil comes at last before God
to be judged. God speaks to him of his vileness, his cruelty, his
selfishness, to all of which the soul makes confession of guilt.
And God, closing the book of the man's Life, said, "Surely I will
send thee into Hell. Even unto Hell will I send thee."
And the man cried out, "Thou canst not!"
And God said to the man, "Wherefore can I not send thee to Hell,
and for what reason?"
"Because in Hell I have always lived," answered the man.
And there was silence in the house of judgment.
And after a space God spake and said to the man, "Seeing that I may
not send thee into Hell, I will send thee into Heaven. Surely unto
Heaven I will send thee."
And the man cried out, "Thou canst not!"
And God said to the man, "Wherefore can I not send thee unto
Heaven, and for what reason?"
"Because, never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it!"
answered the man.
And there was silence in the house of judgment.
The fact that a man's thoughts make his heaven or his hell is brought
out in a recent book, _The Case of John Smith_, by Elizabeth Bisland,
where the central character receives a revelation while working at his
typewriter one day. The message says, "Oh, Peevish and Perverse! How
know you that you have not died elsewhere and that this is not the
Heaven which there you dreamed? How know you that your Hell may not lie
only in not recognizing this as Heaven?"
In many recent examples of allegory and symbolism we get suggestive
impressions of the other life, of the soul's realities. Some of these
have the inevitable words, the fatal phrases that seem to penetrate
into the real heaven and hell for us. The most remarkable instance
of symbolic treatment of the after-life is in _Souls on Fifth_, by
Granville Barker, where the spirits of the dead are represented as
unable to rise above the level of the ideals they had held in life, and
drift endlessly up and down the Avenue, some in the form of tarnished
gilt, some with white plague spots of cowardice, or blisters of
slanderous thoughts, some horny with selfishness, some with lines of
secret cruelty. There are few squares but mostly irregular shapes of
sin.
The purely humorous treatment of life after death, the comic pictures
of heaven and hell, are of a piece with the humorous treatment of other
phases of supernaturalism, and are distinctly modern. The flippant way
in which sacred subjects are handled is a far cry from the heaven and
hell of Dante and Milton. Modern writers slap the devil on the back,
make fun of the archangels and appeal to the ridiculous in one-time
sacred situations, with a freedom that would have made the Puritans
gasp. For instance, St. Peter has been the butt of so many jokes that
he is really hackneyed.
The Flying Dutchman, whom Brander Matthews introduces in his _Primer of
Imaginary Geography_, and who says that the Wandering Jew is the only
person he can have any satisfactory chats with now, speaks of knowing
Charon, "who keeps the ferry across the Styx. I met him last month and
he was very proud of his new electric launch with its storage battery."
He says that hell is now lighted by electricity and that Pluto has put
in all the modern improvements. John Kendrick Bangs, in his _House-boat
on the Styx_, brings together the shades of many illustrious persons;
Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh, Socrates, Xantippe, Captain Kidd, and
many others. From them we get pictures of the life after death and of
their characteristic attitudes toward it and each other. He continues
the situation in _The Pursuit of the House-boat_, as the redoubtable
Captain Kidd makes off with the ship and the ladies, leaving all the
men behind. But they follow the bold buccaneer and after exciting
adventures reaching from the Styx to Paris, they recapture the fair.
Carolyn Wells has recently given us a Styx River Anthology. In modern
stories we visit the comic devil on his native heath, see him in
his own home town, as in previous chapters we discussed him in his
appearances on earth. Kipling's _The Last of the Stories_ shows us the
Hades of literary endeavor, the limbo of lost characters, presided over
by a large and luminous devil of fluent tongue. Kipling recognizes many
persons from fiction, and sees various tortures in process. All do
obeisance to the shade of Rabelais, the Master. Kipling is terrified by
the characters he himself has brought into being and begs to hide his
face from them. F. Marion Crawford gives us another glimpse of literary
eternity,[180] where the spirits of learned personages meet and
discuss life. A recent poem describes a meeting and dialogue in Hades
between Chaucer and Cressida.
[180] In _Among the Immortals_.
It is possibly Bernard Shaw who would be most liable to prosecution by
the devil for lèse-majesté, for in _Man and Superman_, Mine Host of
the Pit is represented as an affable gentleman who tries to make hell
attractive to his guests, and exercises not the least constraint on
their movements. They are free to leave him and go to heaven if they
like,--he only warns them that they will find it tiresome. He converses
with Don Juan and a couple of other blasé mortals, uttering Shavian
iconoclasms with an air of courteous boredom. He is very different from
the sinister personage of conventional fiction.
Mark Twain has given humorous views of heaven in his _Extract from
Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven_. A bluff, hearty old salt finds
the celestial regions very different from the traditional descriptions
of them. The heavenly citizens are a polite set, wishful for him to do
what he likes, yet he tires of the things he thought paradise consisted
of, lays aside his harp and crown, and takes his wings off for greater
ease. He finds his pleasures in the meeting of an occasional patriarch,
or prophet, and the excitement of the entry of a converted bartender
from Jersey City. He changes his views on many points, saying for
instance, "I begin to see a man's got to be in his own heaven to be
happy," and again, "Happiness ain't a thing in itself,--it's only a
contrast with something that ain't pleasant." Again Sandy, his friend,
says, "I wish there was something _in_ that miserable Spiritualism so
we could send the folks word about it."
Something of the same combination of humor and earnestness is found in
Nicholas Vachell Lindsay's poem, _General William Booth Enters into
Heaven_.
"Booth led boldly with his big bass drum,
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
The saints smiled gravely as they said, 'He's come.'
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
(Bass drums)
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alley-ways and drug-fiends pale
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-power frail!
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of death,--
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
(Reverently sung--no instruments)
And while Booth halted by the curb for prayer
He saw his Master through the flag-filled air.
Christ came gently with a robe and crown
For Booth the soldier, while the crowd knelt down.
He saw King Jesus--they were face to face--
And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_"
This combination of realism with idealism, of homely details with
celestial symbolism, is also seen in another recent poem, _The Man with
the Pigeons_, by William Rose Benet, who shows us two pictures, the
first of a tramp in Madison Square Garden, who loves the pigeons and
has them ever clustering around him in devotion. The next is of heaven,
with the celestial gardens, where among the goldhaired angels the old
tramp stands at home, still wearing his rusty shoes and battered derby
hat. The quaint commingling of fancy and fact reminds us of Hannele's
dreams of heaven, in Hauptmann's _Hannele_, where the schoolmaster is
confused with the angels, and heaven and the sordid little room are
somehow united.
H. G. Wells, in _A Wonderful Visit_ shows us another side of the
picture, for he draws an angel down and lets him tell the citizens
of the earth of the land he comes from. I make no attempt in this
discussion to decide concerning the personality of angels, whether
they are the spirits of the just made perfect or pre-Adamite creatures
that never were and never could be man. For the present purpose, they
are simply angels. This book of Wells's is an example of the satiric
treatment of heaven and earth that constitutes a special point of
importance in the modern supernaturalism. It is a social satire, and
a burlesque on the formal and insincere manifestations of religion.
A vicar takes a pot shot at what he supposes is a rare bird, seeing
a rainbow flash in the sky,--but instead, an angel comes tumbling
down with a broken wing. This thrusts him upon the vicar as a guest
for some time, and introduces complications in the village life. The
parishioners do not believe in angels save in stained glass windows
or in church on Sunday, and they make life difficult for the vicar
and his guest. The angel shows a human sense of humor, that quaint
philosophy of the incongruous which is the basis of all true humor,
and his naïve comments on earthly conventions, his smiling wonder at
the popular misconceptions in regard to his heaven--to which he is
surprised to learn that mortals are thought to go, since he says he has
never seen any there--make him a lovable character. But village custom
compels him to fold his shining wings under a coat till he looks like a
hunch-back, put boots on so that he "has hoofs like a hippogrif," as he
plaintively says to the vicar, and he finds conformity to convention a
painful process. The novel ends sadly, symbolizing the world's stupid
harshness, for the angel is sent away from the village as unworthy to
live among the people, and his heart is almost broken.
The same type of humor and satire may be found in James Stephens's
_The Demi-Gods_, and in Anatole France's, _The Revolt of the Angels_.
Stephens's novel contains an insert of a short story of heaven
previously published, which depicts a preliminary skirmish in heaven
over a coin a corpse has had left in his hand and has taken to eternity
with him. In each novel several angels come tumbling down from
heaven and take up earthly life as they find it, engaging in affairs
not considered angelic. Stephens, in addition to the two fighting
celestials, gives us an archangel, a seraph, and a cherub. There is
in both stories a certain embarrassment over clothes, the fallen ones
arriving in a state of nudity. The necessity for donning earthly
garments, the removal of the wings, and the adaptation to human life
furnish complication and interest, with the added feminine element,
though Stephens's novel is not marred by the unclean imaginings of
Anatole France.
The revolters in the French novel take up Parisian life, while
Stephens's angelic trio join an itinerant tinker and his daughter
who are journeying aimlessly about, accompanied by a cart and a
sad-eyed philosopher, an ass. They engage in activities and joys not
conventionally archangelic, such as smoking corn-cob pipes, eating cold
potatoes, and, when necessary, stealing the potatoes. The contrasts
between heavenly ideas and Irish tramp life are inimitable. At last
when the three, having decided to go back to heaven, don their wings
and crowns and say good-bye, the cherub turns back for one more word
of farewell with Mary. Seeing her tears over his going, he tears his
shining wings to shreds and casts them from him, electing to stay on
earth with the tinker's cart, for the sake of love. It is really quite
a demi-god-like thing to do.
Unlike France's book, which is a blasting satire on religion, these
two English novels are amusing, with a certain measure of satire, yet
with a whimsicality that does not antagonize. France's angels remain on
earth and become more corrupt than men, and Wells's wonderful visitor
is banished from the village as an undesirable alien. Stephens's
archangel and seraph go back to heaven after their vacation, while
the cherub turns his back on immortal glory rather than break a
woman's heart. In all three of these books we notice the same leveling
tendency shown in characterization of the angels that we have observed
heretofore in the case of ghosts and devils, werewolves, and witches.
The angels are human, with charming personality and a piquant sense
of humor, whose attempts to understand mortal conventions reveal the
essential absurdity of earthly ideas in many instances. The three
taken together constitute an interesting case of literary parallelism
and it would be gratifying to discover whether France was influenced
by Wells and Stephens, or Stephens by Wells and France,--but in any
event Wells can prove a clear alibi as to imitation, since his novel
appeared a number of years before the others. The possible inspiration
for all of these in Byron's _Heaven and Earth_ suggests an interesting
investigation. A more recent story, _The Ticket-of-Leave Angel_,
brings an angel down to a New York apartment, where he has peculiar
experiences and illustrates a new type of angelic psychology. The
tendency to satirize immortality has crept even into poetry, for in a
recent volume by Rupert Brooke there are several satiric studies. One,
entitled _On Certain Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society_,
ridicules the idea that spirits would return to earth to deliver the
trivial messages attributed to them, and another, _Heaven_, is a
vitriolic thrust at the hope of a better life after death, sneering at
it with unpleasant imagery.
One of the recent instances of satiric pictures of the hereafter is
Lord Dunsany's _The Glittering Gate_, a one-act drama, where Bill
and Jim, two burglars, crack the gate of heaven to get in. Sardonic
laughter sounds while they are engaged in the effort to effect an
entrance, and wondering what heaven will be like. Bill thinks that his
mother will be there.
"I don't know if they want a good mother in there who would be kind
to the angels and sit and smile at them when they sing, and soothe
them if they were cross. (Suddenly) Jim, they won't have brought me
up against her, will they?"
Jim: "It would be just like them to. Very like them."
When the glittering gate of heaven swings open and the two toughs enter
eagerly, they find nothing--absolutely nothing but empty space, and the
sardonic laughter sounds in their ears. Bill cries out, "It is just
like them! Very like them"!
Was not this suggested by Rupert Brooke's poem, _Failure_?
In the stories treating satirically or humorously of the future life we
find the purpose in reality to be to image this life by illustration
of the other. Eternity is described in order that we may understand
time a little better. Angels and devils are made like men, to show
mortal potentialities either way. The absurdities of mankind are
illustrated as seen by angel eyes, the follies as satirized by devils.
The tendency now is to treat supernatural life humorously, satirically
or symbolically, rather than with the conventional methods of the past.
Commonplace treatment of great subjects is liable to be unsatisfactory,
and any serious treatment, other than symbolically simple, of heaven or
hell seems flat after Dante and Milton.
In considering these various types of stories dealing with supernatural
life, whether continued beyond the mortal span on earth, renewed by
reincarnation, or taken up in another world after death, we find that
several facts seem to appear with reference to the type chosen for
treatment by men as distinct from women, and _vice versa_. So far as my
search has gone, I have found no instance in English literature where a
woman has used either the motif of the Wandering Jew or the Elixir of
Life. I do not say that no such instances exist, but I have not found
them. Carmen Sylva is the only woman I know of at all who has taken up
the characterization of the Wandering Jew. On the other hand, women
write often of heaven, most of the stories of conventional ideas of
heaven being by women. Where men have pictured heaven or hell they have
done it for the most part humorously, satirically or symbolically. They
seem to curve round the subject rather than to approach it directly.
Yet where it is a question of continuing life here in this world, by
means of an elixir or other method, or as an ever-living being like the
Jew, men have used the theme frequently. Since fiction does reflect
our thought-life and our individual as well as racial preferences, the
conclusions that might be drawn, if one were sure of their basis, would
be interesting. Can it be that men are more deeply interested in this
life on earth and cling to it in thought more tenaciously than women,
and that women are more truly citizens of the other world? Are men
skeptical of the existence of any but a satiric or symbolic heaven, or
merely doubtful of reaching there?
CHAPTER VI
The Supernatural in Folk-Tales
The folk-tale is one of the new fashions in fiction. True, folk-lore
has long constituted an important element of literature, constantly
recurring in poetry, particularly in the ballad, in the drama, the
novel, and short story. Yet it has been in solution. It has not been
thought important enough to merit consideration for its own sake, but
has been rather apologized for, covered up with other materials, so
that its presence is scarcely recognized. Now, however, as Professor
Kittredge says, folk-lore is no longer on the defensive, which fact
is evident in fiction as elsewhere. Scholars of our day are eagerly
hunting down the various forms of folk-lore to preserve them in
literature before they vanish completely, and learned societies
are recording with care the myths and legends and superstitions of
peasants. Many volumes have appeared giving in literary form the
fictions of various races and tribes, and comparative folk-lore is
found to be an engrossing science.
The supernatural forms a large element of folk-literature. The
traditions and stories that come down to us from the childhood of
any race are like the stories that children delight in, tales of the
marvelous, of the impossible, of magic and wonder. Folk-literature
recks little of realism. It revels in the romantic, the mystic. Tales
of gods and demi-gods, of giants and demons, of fairy-folk, of animals
endowed with human powers of speech and cunning, of supernatural flora
as well as fauna, of ghosts, devils, of saints, and miracles, are the
frame-work of such fiction. English literature is especially rich in
these collections, for not only are the sections of English-speaking
countries themselves fortunate fields for supernatural folk-tales,
but the English, being a race of colonizers, have gone far in many
lands and from the distant corners of the earth have written down the
legends of many tribes and nations. This discussion does not take into
consideration primarily folk-tales translated from other languages, but
deals only with those appearing in English, though, of course, in many
cases, they are transcripts from the spoken dialects of other people.
But it is for their appearance as English fiction, not for their value
as folk-lore, that they are taken up here.
Wherever in fiction the life of the peasant class is definitely
treated, there is likely to be found a good deal of folk-lore in the
form of superstitions, taboos, racial traditions of the supernatural.
This is present to a marked degree in the stories of Sir Walter Scott,
and in fact one might write a volume on the supernatural in Scott's
work alone. For example, we have Oriental magic and wonder,[181]
supernatural vision,[182] superhuman foreknowledge,[183] unearthly
"stirs,"[184] the White Lady of Avenel,[185] the bahrgeist,[186]
besides his use of diabolism, witchcraft, and so forth already
discussed. Thomas Hardy's work, relating as it does almost wholly to
rustic life, is rich in superstitions and traditions of the peasants.
_The Withered Arm_ gives a gruesome account of a woman's attempt to
cure her affliction by touching her arm to the corpse of a man who
has been hanged, the complicating horror being furnished by the fact
that the youth is her husband's secret son. He gives a story[187] of
a supernatural coach that heralds certain events in the family life,
charms for securing love as for making refractory butter come when the
churn is bewitched, and so forth. Similar elements occur in others of
his novels and stories. Eden Phillpotts' fiction[188] shows a large
admixture of the folk-supernaturalism of the Dartmoor peasants, as do
_Lorna Doone_, _Wuthering Heights_ and numberless other novels and
stories of other sections. There are guild superstitions reflected in
the work of various writers of the sea, as in W. W. Jacobs' stories,
for instance, tales of mining life, and so on.
[181] In _The Talisman_.
[182] In _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_.
[183] In _The Two Drovers_.
[184] In _Woodstock_.
[185] In _The Monastery_.
[186] In _The Betrothed_.
[187] In _Tess_.
[188] _Children of the Mist_, _The Witch_, and others.
American fiction is equally rich in such material. Stories of the
South, showing life in contact with the negroes, reveal it to a marked
degree, as in the work of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris,
Ruth McEnery Stuart, Will Allen Dromgoole, and others. The Creole
sense of the supernatural appears in George W. Cable's novels and
stories, the mountain superstitions in those of John Fox, Jr., and
Charles Egbert Craddock, those of New England in Mary Wilkins Freeman,
Alice Brown, and their followers, the Indian traditions in Helen Hunt
Jackson, J. Fenimore Cooper, the Dutch supernaturalism in Washington
Irving, who also gives us the legendry of Spain in his tales of the
Alhambra. Thomas A. Janvier has recreated antique Mexico for us in his
stories of ghosts and saints, of devils and miracles.
In most fiction that represents truly the life of simple people there
will be found a certain amount of superstition which is inherent in
practically every soul. There is no one of us but has his ideas of
fate, of luck, of taboo. We are so used to these elements in life that
we scarcely pay heed to them in fiction, yet a brief glance at books
will recall their frequent appearance. They color poetry to a marked
degree. In fact, without the sense of the marvelous, the unreal, the
wonderful, the magical, what would poetry mean to us? So we should
feel a keen loss in our fiction if all the vague elements of the
supernatural were effaced. Absolute realism is the last thing we desire.
Now the folk-tale, told frankly as such, with no apology for its
unreality, no attempt to make of it merely an allegory or vehicle
for teaching moral truth, has taken its place in our literature.
The science of ethnology has brought a wider interest in the oral
heritage of the past, linking it to our life of the present. And the
multiplication of volumes recording stories of symbolic phenomena
of nature, of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, of supernormal animals
and plants, of fairies, banshees, bogles, giants, saints, miracles,
and what-not make it possible to compare the widely disseminated
stories, the variants and contrasting types of folk-supernaturalism.
But my purpose in this discussion is to show the presence of the
folk-supernaturalism in literature, in prose fiction particularly.
There is no science more fascinating than comparative folk-lore and no
language affords so many original examples of oral literature as the
English. As we study its influence on fiction and poetry, we feel the
truth of what Tylor says[189]:
Little by little, in what seems the most spontaneous fiction, a
more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry and romance
begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, a story of inherited
materials from which each province of the poet's land has been
shaped and built over and peopled.
[189] In _Primitive Culture_, vol. i., page 273.
The Celtic Revival, the renascence of wonder in Ireland, has done more
than anything else to awaken modern love for antiquity, to bring over
into literature the legends of gods and men
"Beyond the misty space
Of twice a thousand years."
While the movement concerns itself more with poetry and the drama than
with prose,--Ireland has been likened to "a nest of singing birds,"
though the voices of some have been sadly silenced of late--yet fiction
has felt its influence as well. The land of the immortals glooms and
gleams again for us in storied vision, and the ancient past yields up
to us its magic, its laughter, its tears. These romances are written,
not in pedestrian prose as ordinary folk-tales, but with a bardic
beauty that gives to style the lifting wings of verse. Each fact and
figure is expressed in poetic symbols, which Yeats calls "streams of
passion poured about concrete forms." A sense of ancient, divine powers
is in every bush and bog, every lake and valley. Ireland has enriched
universal fancy and the effect on literature will perhaps never be lost.
* * * * *
One of the most interesting aspects of folk-loristic supernaturalism
is that concerned with nature. The primitive mind needs no scientific
proof for theories of causation, since, given a belief in gods, it can
manage the rest for itself. With the Celts there is ever a feeling
of nature as a mighty personality. Every aspect, every phase of her
power is endowed with life and temperament. Celtic pantheism saw in
every form a spirit, in every spring or cloud or hill-top, in every
bird or blossom some unearthly divinity of being. A primrose is vastly
more than a yellow primrose, but one of "the dear golden folk"; the
hawthorn is the barking of hounds, leek is the tear of a fair woman,
and so on, which poetic speech bears a likeness to the Icelandic court
poetry. This figurative sense suggests "an _after-thought_ of the old
nature-worship lingering yet about the fjords and glens where Druidism
never was quite overcome by Christianity." It lends to the Celtic
folk-tales their wild, unearthly beauty, their passionate poetry and
mystic symbolism akin to the classic mythology and such as we find in
no other folk-literature of the present time.
In the stories of Lady Gregory, John Synge, Yeats, Lady Wilde, and
various other chroniclers of Celtic legendry, we find explanations
of many phenomena, accounts of diverse occurrences. Lady Wilde[190]
(Speranza) tells of natural appearances, such as a great chasm
which was opened to swallow a man who incurred the anger of God by
challenging Him to combat for destroying his crops. A supernatural
whirlwind caught up the blasphemer and hurled him into the chasm that
yawned to receive him. Many of the aspects of nature are attributed
to the activities of giants, and later of demons; as the piling up of
cyclopean walls, massive breast-works of earth, or gigantic masses of
rocks said to be the work of playful or irate giants. The titans were
frolicsome and delighted in feats to show off. There is a large body
of legends of diabolized nature, as the changing of the landscape by
demons, the sulphurizing of springs, and the cursing of localities.
[190] In _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_.
Many other aspects of nature are made the basis for supernatural
folk-tales too numerous to mention. Stories of the enchanted bird,
music, and water appear in various forms, and the droll-tellers of
the Cornish country tell many stories of the weird associated with
out-of-doors. The Celtic superstitions and tales have lived on through
successive invasions and through many centuries have been told beside
the peat fire. They have been preserved as an oral heritage or else in
almost illegible manuscripts in antique libraries, from which they are
taken to be put into literature by the Celtic patriots of letters. The
sense of terror and of awe, a belief in the darker powers, as well as
an all-enveloping feeling of beauty is a heritage of the Celtic mind.
It is interesting to note the obstinacy of these pantheistic, druidic
stories in the face of Irish Catholicism. In many other bodies of
folk-supernaturalism in English we have similar legends of nature, as
in the Hawaiian, the Indian, African, Canadian, Mexican stories, and
elsewhere. But the material is so voluminous that one can do no more
than suggest the field.
Certain forces of nature are given supernatural power in drama and
fiction, as the sea that is an awful, brooding Fate, in Synge's
drama, or the wind and the flame in Algernon Blackwood's story, _The
Regeneration of Lord Ernie_, or the goblin trees in another of his
tales, that signify diabolic spirits, or the trees[191] that have a
strange, compelling power over men, drawing them, going out bodily to
meet them, luring them to destruction. Blackwood has stressed this
form of supernaturalism to a marked degree. In _Sand_ he shows desert
incantations that embody majestic forces, evocations of ancient deities
that bring the Sphynx to life, and other sinister powers. He takes
the folk-loristic aspects of nature and makes them live, personifying
the forces of out-door life as mythology did. The trees, the sand,
the fire, the snow, the wind, the stream, the sea are all alive, with
personality, with emotion, and definite being. His trees are more
awesome than the woods of Dunsinane, for they actually do move upon
their foe. In _The Sea Fit_ he contends that the gods are not dead, but
merely withdrawn, that one true worshiper can call them back to earth,
especially the sea-gods. The sea comes in power for the man with the
Viking soul and takes him to itself. His going is symbolic.
Uttering the singing sound of falling waters, he bent forward,
turned. The next instant, curving over like a falling wave he swept
along the glistening surface of the sands and was gone. In fluid
form, wave-like, his being slipped away into the Being of the Sea.
[191] In _The Man Whom the Trees Loved_.
The uncanny potentialities of fire are revealed[192] where the internal
flame breaks out of itself, the inner fire that burns in the heart
of the earth and in men's hearts. The artist trying to paint a great
picture of the Fire-worshiper is consumed by an intense, rapturous
fever, and as he dies his face is like a white flame. The snow appears
embodied as a luring woman.[193] She tries to draw a man to his
death, with dæmonic charm, seen as a lovely woman, but a snow demon.
Blackwood shows the curious combination of the soul of a dead woman
with the spirit of a place,[194] where a man is ejected by his own
estate, turned out bodily as well as psychically, because he has become
out of harmony with the locale. Nature here is sentient, emotional,
possessing a child, expressing through her lips and hands a message of
menace and warning. The moon is given diabolic power in one of Barry
Pain's stories, and the maelstrom described by Poe has a sinister, more
than human, power. August Stramm, the German dramatist, has given an
uncanny force to the moor in one of his plays, making it the principal
character as well as the setting for the action. This embodiment of
nature's phases and phenomena as terrible powers goes back to ancient
mythology with a revivifying influence.
[192] In _The Heath Fire_.
[193] In _The Glamor of the Snow_.
[194] In _The Temptation of the Clay_.
The supernatural beast-tale has always been a beloved form, Æsop's
fables, the beast-cycles of medievalism, Reynard the Fox, the German
Reinecke Fuchs, all show how fond humanity is of the story that endows
animals with human powers. Naturally one thinks of Kipling's _Jungle
Tales_ and Joel Chandler Harris' _Uncle Remus_ stories as the best
modern examples, and these are so well known as to need but mention.
Similar beast-cycles are found in the folk-fiction of other countries.
Of course, it is understood that the _Uncle Remus_ stories are not
native to America, but were brought from Africa by the slaves and
handed down through generations in the form in which Harris heard them
by the cabin firesides in his boyhood. They are not "cooked" or edited
any more than he could help, he tells us, but given in the dialectic
form in which they came to him. There are various tales similar to this
series, as Kaffir tales, collected by Theal, Amazonian tortoise myths
brought together by Charles F. Hart, and _Reynard, the Fox in South
Africa_, by W. H. I. Bleek. J. W. Powell in his investigations for the
Smithsonian Institute found legends among the Indians that led him to
believe the _Uncle Remus_ stories were originally learned from the red
men, but Harris thought there was no basis for such theory. _Anansi
Stories_, by Mary Pamela Milne-Horne, includes animal tales of the
African type. Anansi is a mysterious being, a supernatural old man like
a Scandinavian troll or English lubber-fiend, who plays tricks like
those of the fox and like the jackal in Hindu stories. He is a spider
as well as a man and can assume either shape at will.
In primitive races and in the childhood of peoples there is the same
element of close association between man and the animals that one
finds in child-life. An animal is often nearer and dearer to a child
than is a human being, as in crude races man is more like the animals,
candid, careless, unreflecting. His sensations and emotions are simple,
hunger, love, hate, fear. Animals, in turn, are lifted nearer the human
in man's thinking, and are given human attributes in folk-lore which
bridges the gulf that civilization has tended to fix between man and
animals, and gives one more of a sense of the social union that Burns
longed for. There is in these stories of whatever country a naïveté
reflecting the childhood of the race and of the world, a primitive
simplicity in dealing with the supernatural.
The folk-fiction of each country gives stories of the animals common
to that section. In tropic countries we have stories of supernatural
snakes, who appear in various forms, as were-snakes, shall we say?
by turns reptiles and men, who marry mortal women, or as diabolic
creatures that, like the devil, lose their divinity and become evil
powers. We also see in the tropics elephants, lions, tigers, baboons,
gorillas, and so forth, as well as certain insects, while in colder
climes we have the fox, the wolf, the bear, and their confrères. In
island countries we find a large element of the supernatural associated
with fishes and sea-animals. Hawaiian stories recount adventures of
magic beings born of sharks and women, who are themselves, by turns,
human beings living a normal human life, and sharks, devouring men
and women. Several of Eugene Field's stories are drawn from Hawaiian
folk-supernaturalism, as _The Eel-king_, and _The Moon Lady_.
The Gaelic stories of Fiona McLeod show the supernatural relation
existing between mortals and seals. The seals may wed human beings and
their children are beings without souls, who may be either mortal or
animal. The power of enchantment exercised by the creatures of the sea
may turn men and women into sea-beasts, forever to lose their souls.
This may be compared with _The Pagan Seal-Wife_, by Eugene Field, Hans
Christian Andersen's sad story of the little mermaid, and _The Forsaken
Merman_, by Matthew Arnold. Fiona McLeod tells the story of the Dark
Nameless One, a nun who became the prey of a seal and was cursed with
the penalty of living under the sea to weave fatal enchantments.
The mermaids, the kelpies, the sea-beasts are all half-human, half
sea-beast, and have a fatal power over human souls, drawing them with
a strange lure to give up their immortality. The kelpie appears in
several of Fiona McLeod's stories and in _The Judgment of God_ the
maighdeanhmara, a sea-maid, bewitches Murdoch, coming up out of the
water as a seal and turning him into a beast, to live with her forever,
a black seal that laughs hideously with the laughter of Murdoch. Edward
Sheldon has recently written a play[195] using the mermaid motif, and
H. G. Wells employs it as a vehicle for social satire[196] where a
mermaid comes ashore from The Great Beyond and contrasts mortal life
with hers. _The Merman and the Seraph_, by William Benjamin Smith, is
an unusual combination of unearthly creatures.
[195] _The Mermaid._
[196] In _The Sea Lady_.
In _The Old Men of the Twilight_, W. B. Yeats describes the enchantment
inflicted on the old men of learning, the ancient Druids, who were
cursed by being turned into gray herons that must stand in useless
meditation in pools or flit in solitary flight cross the world, like
passing sighs. Lady Gregory tells of magic by which Lugh of the Long
Hand puts his soul into the body of a mayfly that drops into the
cup that Dechtire drinks from, so that she drinks his soul and must
follow him to the dwelling-place of the Sidhe, or fairy people. Her
fifty maidens must go with her under a like spell that turns them into
birds, that fly in nine flocks, linked together two by two with silver
chains, save those that lead who have golden chains. These beautiful
birds live in the enchanted land far away from their loved ones. J. H.
Pearce tells a touching story of the Little Crow of Paradise, of the
bird that was cursed and sent to hell because it mocked Christ on the
cross, but because it had pity on a mortal sufferer in hell and brought
some cooling drops of water in its bill to cool his parching tongue,
it was allowed to fly up and light on the walls of Paradise where it
remains forever. Oscar Wilde's story _The Nightingale and the Rose_ is
symbolic of tragic genius, of vain sacrifice, where the tender-hearted
bird gives his life-blood to stain a white rose red because a careless
girl has told the poet who loves her that she must wear a red rose to
the ball. But at the last she casts the rose aside and wears the jewels
that a richer lover has sent, while the nightingale lies dead under the
rose-tree.
So we see everywhere in folk-fiction the supernatural power given to
animals, which acts as an aid to man, as a shield and protection for
him, or for his undoing. We see human beings turned into beasts as a
curse from the gods for sin or as expressing the kinship between man
and nature. In the different cycles of beast-tales we find a large
element of humor, the keener-witted animals possessing a rare sense of
the comical and relishing a joke on each other as on man. The _Uncle
Remus_ stories are often laughable in the extreme, and Bre'er Rabbit,
who, we might at first thought decide, would be stupid, is no mean
wit. We see a tragic symbolism in the stories of unhappy beasts who
must lure mortals to their damnation, yet feel a sense of human sorrow
and remorse. In these animal stories we find most of the significant
qualities of literature, humor, romance, tragedy, mysticism, and
symbolic poetry, with a deep underlying philosophy of life pervading
them all.
Lord Dunsany in his modern aspects of mythology, perhaps drawn in
part from classic mythology though perhaps altogether Celtic in its
material, brings together animals to which we are not accustomed. He
has a story of a centaur, a frolicsome creature two hundred and fifty
years young, who goes caracoling off the end of the world to find his
bride. Algernon Blackwood tells of a man who remembers having been a
centaur and lives in memory-metempsychosis his experiences of that
far-off time. Dunsany introduces other curious, unfamiliar beasts to
us, as the bride whom the man-horse seeks in her temple beside her sad
lake-sepulchre, Sombelene, of immortal beauty, whose father was half
centaur and half god, whose mother the child of a desert lion and the
sphinx. There is the high-priest of Maharrion, who is neither bird nor
cat, but a weird gray beast like both. There is the loathsome dragon
with glittering golden scales that rattles up the London streets and
seizes Miss Cubbige from her balcony and carries her off to the eternal
lands of romance lying far away by the ancient, soundless sea. We must
not forget the Gladsome Beast, he who dwells underneath fairyland,
at the edge of the world, the beast that eats men and destroys the
cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland, but is the synonym
for joy. His joyous chuckles never cease till Ackronnion sings of the
malignity of time, when the Gladsome Beast weeps great tears into an
agate bowl. There are the hippogriffs, dancing and whirling in the far
sunlight, coming to earth with whirring flight, bathing in the pure
dawn, one to be caught with a magic halter, to carry its rider past the
Under Pits to the City of Never. There are the gnoles in their high
house, whose silence is unearthly "like the touch of a ghoul," over
which is "a look in the sky that is worse than a spoken doom," that
watch the mortals through holes in the trunks of trees and bear them
away to their fate. Lord Dunsany looses the reins of his fancy to carry
him into far, ancient lands, to show us the wonders that never were.
Magic forms an alluring element of the supernatural romance, and we
find it manifesting itself in many ways. In the romances of William
Morris, prose as well as poetry, we find enchantment recurring again
and again, as in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_, _The Wood beyond
the World_, _The Well at the World's End_, and others. Yeats said
that Morris's style in these old stories was the most beautiful prose
he had ever read, and that it influenced his own work greatly. He has
unearthly characters, such as the Witch-wife, the Wood-wife, the Stony
People, and so forth. He shows us the enchanted boat, the Sending
Boat, the cage with the golden bars which prison the three maidens,
magic runes with mighty power, the Water of Might which gives to the
one drinking it supernatural vision and magic power, the changing
skin, the Wailing Tower, the Black Valley of the Greyweathers, and so
forth. Birdalone's swoon-dream in the White Palace is unearthly, as the
witches' wordless howls. Part of the weirdness of Morris's prose is due
to the antique tone, the forgotten words, the rune-like quality of the
rhythm.
Yeats tells of magic whereby a woman is gifted with immortal youth and
beauty, so that she may wed the prince of the fairies; of the glamour
that falls on a mortal so that he loses his wits and remains "with
his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death"; of shadow
hares, of fire-tongued hounds that follow the lost soul across the
world, of whistling seals that sink great ships, of bat-like darker
powers, of the little gray doves of the good.
Dr. Hyde, in his _Paudeen O'Kelly and the Weasel_, speaks of a
sun-myth, of a haunted forest, of a princess supernaturally beautiful,
of the witch who complains to the robber, "Why did you bring away my
gold that I was for five hundred years gathering through the hills and
hollows of the world?"
Lady Gregory tells of Diarmuid's love-spot, where Youth touched him
on the forehead, so that no woman could look upon him without giving
him her love; of Miach who put the eye of a cat in a man's head, with
inconvenient results, for
when he wanted to sleep and take his rest, it is then the eye would
start at the squeaking of the mice, or the flight of birds, or the
movement of the rushes; and when he was wanting to watch an army or
a gathering, it is then it was sure to be in a sound sleep.
She shows us Druid rods that change mortals into birds; of Druid mists
that envelop armies and let the ancient heroes win; of Druid sleep
that lasts sometimes for years; of the screaming stone; of kisses that
turn into birds, some of them saying, "Come! Come!" and others "I go!
I go!"; of invisible walls that shield one from sight; of magic that
makes armies from stalks of grass; of wells of healing that cure every
wound.
Oscar Wilde, in his fairy stories and symbolic allegories, tells of
magic, whereby the Happy Prince, high on the pedestal on the square,
has a heart of lead because he sees the misery of the people, and sends
a swallow as his messenger to pick out his jeweled eyes and take them
to the suffering ones. He speaks of the wonder by which the bodies of
the mermaid and the fisherman who lost his soul for love of her, when
they are buried in unconsecrated ground, send forth strange flowers
that are placed on the sacred altar.
The dark enchantment appears in the poetry as often as in the prose,
from Coleridge's _Christabel_ to the present. Gordon Bottomley's _The
Crier by Night_ is a story of an evil presence that lurks in a pool,
coming out to steal the souls of those it can lure into its waters. The
woman, desperate from jealousy, who invokes its aid, says:
"For I can use this body worn to a soul
To barter with the Crier of hidden things
That if he tangle him in his chill hair
Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow
Past where the ringed stars ebb past the light
And turn to water under the dark world!"
The fairy has always been a favorite being with poets, dramatists,
and romancers, from Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton to the present
time. There is no figure more firmly established in folk-literature,
none more difficult to dislodge despite their delicacy and ethereal
qualities than the Little People. The belief in fairies is firmly
established in Gaelic-speaking sections and the Celtic peasant would as
soon give up his religion as his belief in the Sidhe. W. B. Yeats, in
_Celtic Twilight_, tells of an Irish woman of daring unbelief in hell,
or in ghosts who, she held, would not be permitted to go trapsin' about
the earth at their own free will, but who asserted, "There are fairies,
and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." Everybody
among the peasantry believes in fairies, "for they stand to reason."
And there are not wanting others more learned that believe in the small
folk, as W. Y. E. Wentz, who in his volume _Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries_ puts up a loyal argument for the existence of the Sidhe. He
says:
Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the
same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychological
researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like
what William James calls soul-stuff or more individual units like
veridical apparitions.
If it were left to me, I'd as soon not believe in fairies as have to
think of them as veridical units! Mr. Wentz has never seen any fairies
himself, but he tells a number of stories to substantiate his faith in
them.
The volumes of fairy stories are by no means all for juvenile
consumption, since the modern adult dearly loves the type himself.
Many, or most, of the stories of fairies told frankly for children are
adaptations or variants of continental folk-legends. The more literary
side of fairy-literature has come from the Celtic lore, for the Dim
People are dearest of all supernatural beings to the Celtic soul. The
Irish, more innately poetic than most races, cling more fondly to the
beings of beauty and gather round them delicate, undying stories. W. B.
Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde, John Singe, and Fiona
McLeod have given in poetry and lyric prose the Celtic fairy-lore, and
have made us know the same wild, sweet thrill that the peasants feel.
The poetic thought of the primitive races peoples everything in nature,
every bird and blossom and tree, with its own fairy personality.
Thackeray has written a fairy pantomime for great and small children,
as he says, in which the adventures of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulbo
are recounted. Eugene Field has a charming story of the _Fairies of
Pesth_, and Charles Kingsley's _Water Babies_ enriched the imagination
of most of us in youthful or adult years with its charming nonsense
of beings possible and impossible. J. M. Barrie in _Peter Pan_ won
the doubtful world over to a confessed faith in the fairy-folk, for
did we not see the marvels before our eyes? In _The Little White
Bird_ Barrie tells us how fairies came to be,--that they have their
origin in the first laugh of the first baby that broke into a million
bits and went skipping about, each one a fairy. He shows us the wee
folk in Kensington Gardens, where by the ignorant they are mistaken
for flowers, but children and those with the poet heart can see the
flashing faces and green garments of the fairies among the pansy beds.
W. B. Yeats is a favorite with the fairies, for they have given him the
dower of magic vision, to glimpse the unseen things, to hear the faint,
musical voices of fairy pipes and song. He tells us many stories of the
Dim People, in his tales and dramas. _The Land of Heart's Desire_,
the story of the struggle between the divine and mortal forces and the
powers of the Sidhe to claim the soul of the young wife and of the
triumph of the fairies, by which the girl's body falls lifeless by the
hearth while her spirit speeds away to live forever in the land "where
nobody gets old or sorry or poor," has a poignant pathos, a wild,
dreamy beauty that touches the heart. Yeats tells of the Imperishable
Rose of Beauty, of fantastic doings of the fairy-folk who steal mortals
away, especially new-born babies or new-wed brides, of evil fairies who
slay men in malice, and of the dances by moonlit hillside when mortals
are asleep.
James Stephens in _The Crock of Gold_ mingles delightfully fairy-lore
with other elements of the supernatural, as talking beasts, and
insects, the gods, a leprechaun, and Pan, combining with the droll
philosophy of the bachelor man to make a charming social satire. The
union of the world of reality with that of the wee people is seen
in the sad little story of H. G. Wells, _The Man Who Had Been in
Fairyland_. A crude, materialistic middle-class Englishman, in love
with an ordinary young woman, falls asleep on a fairy knoll one night
and is kidnapped by the Dim People who take him to their country, where
their queen falls in love with him. She vainly woos him, but he is
stolidly true to the thick-ankled girl of the town, until the fairies
send him back in sleep to mortal life. But when he wakes on the knoll
he is home-sick for fairyland, he cares no more for the village girl
who seems coarse and repulsive compared with the elfin creature whose
love he might have kept in the land of wonder, so he is wretched,
unable to fit again into mortal life and unable to reopen the doors
that closed inexorably upon him by his wish. This is a modern version
of the motif of the mortal lover and the fairy bride that we find
so often in mediæval ballads and romances, a survival of the Celtic
wonder-lore. Arthur Lewis in _London Fairy Tales_ writes philosophic
human stories in the guise of fairy tales, attempting frankly to bring
the impossible into contact with daily life. They are weird little
symbolic stories with an earthly wisdom associated with unearthly
beings. _The Passionate Crime_, by E. Temple Thurston, is a symbolic
fairy novel, the fairies being figures of the man's besetting sins,
bodiless presences blown on the winds of feeling, as the woman he loves
is lured by the fairy of her own beauty.
Whether fairyland be an actual place or a state of mind, it is a
province still open to romancers, and folklorists have aroused a
new interest in the Little People who may come nearer to us than
before. The flood of volumes recounting Celtic folk-tales with their
fairy-lore alone would make a long catalogue, and one can do no more
than suggest the presence of the fairy in English fiction. Andrew Lang
was a faithful lover of the Sidhe and made many collections of fairy
stories, Eden Phillpotts has written much of them, and various writers
have opened their magic to us. Some place the land of faerie under
the ground, some in secret caves, some in the mind, and Lord Dunsany
says that the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland lives in a house whose
parlor windows look away from the world, and "empties his slops sheer
on to the Southern Cross."
We find many stories of gods, demigods, and heroes tangled up together
in folk-tales and in the literature they have influenced. It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish between them, and again it is
interesting to note how the hero-myth has been converted into the tale
of a god. Celtic romances and folk-supernaturalism give many stories of
gods, demigods, and heroes of superhuman force. It would be interesting
if one could trace them to their ultimate sources and discover how
much they have been suggested or influenced by classical mythology.
In _Fiction of the Irish Celts_, by Patrick Kennedy, are numberless
stories of the Fianna Eironn, or Heroes of Ireland, some of whom really
flourished in the third century and whose adventures were the favorite
stories of the kings and chiefs as sung by the ancient bards. Kennedy
also retells many of the Ossianic legends. In _Bardic Stories of
Ireland_ he relates the exploits of personages dating back to druidic
times and earlier, who reflect the remote stages of the legendary
history of the people, such as the antique King Fergus, who was given
supernatural power by the fairies and slew the sea-monster; Cormac,
who did many doughty deeds assisted by the powers of the Immortals,
and many others. W. B. Yeats, in his _Stories of Red Ranrahan_, gives
us glimpses of an Irish François Villon, a man of wandering nature, of
human frailties, yet with a divine gift of song.
Lady Gregory tells the wonderful saga of Cuchulain, the hero-god of
Ireland, in _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which W. B. Yeats calls "perhaps
the best book that has ever come out of Ireland." It was his mother
Dechtire that drank the soul of Lugh of the Strong Hand, as he flew
into her wine-cup in the form of a Mayfly, so that she was bound by
enchantment and carried away with her fifty maidens as a flock of
lovely birds. When anger came upon him the hero light would shine about
his head, he understood all the arts of the druids and had supernatural
beauty and strength in battle. Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, and his
Red Branch have filled the legendry of Ireland with wonder.
Lady Gregory tells of the high king of Ireland who married Etain of
the Sidhe; of the nine pipers that came out of the hill of the Sidhe,
whom to fight with was to fight with a shadow, for they could not be
killed; of Conchobar, the king, that loved Deirdre of the burning
beauty for whom many candles of the Gael were blown out; of Cruachan,
who knew druid enchantments greater than the magic of the fairies so
that he was able to fight with the Dim People and overcome them, and
to cover the whole province with a deep snow so that they could not
follow him. In _Gods and Fighting Men_ Lady Gregory tells of ancient
divinities that met men as equals. We come to know Oisin, son of Finn,
who is king over a divine country; of the Men of Dea who fought against
the misshapen Fomer. Men are called to the country of Under-Wave where
the gods promise them all their desires, as the god Medhir tells
Queen Etain that in his country one never grows old, that there is no
sorrow, no care among invisible gods. She tells us of Finn, who fought
with monsters, who killed many great serpents in Loch Cuilinn, and
Shadow-shapes at Loch Lein, and fought with the three-headed hag, and
nine headless bodies that raised harsh screeches. We meet Diarmuid,
who married a daughter of King Under-Wave, who raised a house by
enchantment, and whom Grania, of the fatal beauty, loved.
Jeremiah Curtin, Aldis Dunbar, and many another writer have told us
of the wonderful legends of the Celtic gods and heroes, who somehow
seem more human than Arthur and his Table Round or any of the English
mythical heroes.
It is Lord Dunsany, however, who specializes in gods in recent
times. He fairly revels in divinities and demons, in idols and
out-of-the-world creatures. His dramas of this nature are mentioned in
another connection, as _A Night at an Inn_, where a jade idol slays
with silent horror the men who have stolen his emerald eye; _The Gods
of the Mountains_, where seven beggars masquerade as the mountain gods
come to life, and some of the people believe but some doubt. But at
last the seven gods from the mountain come down, terrible figures of
green stone, and with sinister menace point terrible fingers at the
beggars, who stiffen as on pedestals, draw their feet under them like
the cross-legged posture of the images, and turn to stone, so that the
people coming say: "They were the true gods. They have turned to stone
because we doubted them." In _The Gods of Pegana_ are many fantastic
tales of divinities never heard of before, whom Dunsany calls to life
with the lavish ease of genius and makes immortal. In _Time and the
Gods_ we see many gods, with their servant the swart, sinister Time
who serves them, but maliciously. The gods dream marble dreams that
have magic power, for "with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and
stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white to
the morning." But Sardathrion, this city of visions, is overthrown by
hateful Time, whereat the mighty gods weep grievous tears. He tells us
of Slid, a new god that comes striding through the stars, past where
the ancient divinities are seated on their thrones, as a million waves
march behind him; of Inzana, the daughter of all the gods who plays
with the sun as her golden ball and weeps when it falls into the sea,
so that Umborodom with his thunder hound must seek it again and again
for her. He whispers to us of the prophet who saw the gods one night as
they strode knee-deep in stars, and above them a mighty hand, showing
a higher power. The gods are jealous of him that he has seen, so they
rob him of knowledge of the gods, of moon and sky, of butterflies and
flowers, and all lovely things. And last they steal his soul away from
him, from which they make the South Wind, forever to roam the waste
spaces of the world, mournful, unremembering.
In _The Book of Wonder_ are still other gods, as Hlo-Hlo, who wears
the haloes of other gods on golden hooks along his hunting-belt;
the Sphinx, who "remembers in her smitten mind at which little boys
now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands
aghast"; the certain disreputable god who knows nothing of etiquette
and will grant prayers that no respectable god would ever consent to
hear; Chu-chu and Sheemish, who become angry with each other and raise
rival earthquakes that destroy their temple and them. We are told of
the Gibbelins that eat men, whose home is beyond the known regions, and
whose treasures many burglars try in vain to steal only to meet death
instead. Alderic tries a crafty way to evade them but they are waiting
for him. "And without saying a word _or even smiling_ they neatly hang
him on the outer wall,--and the tale is one of those that have not a
happy ending." But enough of gods!--though we should not forget the
Aztec legend on which Lew Wallace's novel, _The Fair God_, was founded,
of the white divinity who was to come and rule the people.
There are many other elements of folkloristic supernaturalism that
cannot be mentioned, as the banshee, the wailful creature that is a
presager of death and the loss of the soul; the fetches, ghosts of the
living, whom John and Michael Banim write much about; the pixies, as
appearing in such works as S. Baring-Gould's _Eve_, and Stephens's _The
Crock of Gold_; the mountain trolls that play pranks on Ibsen's Peer
Gynt and Irving's Rip van Winkle; the "worrie-cow" that Scott tells
about; the saints and miracles that abound in Celtic literature as in
that of any Catholic country, and such as Thomas A. Janvier has told
of so delightfully in his legends of the City of Mexico. The giant has
almost faded from fiction, since, poor thing, he doesn't fit in well
with the modern scheme of housing. He came into the Gothic novel from
the Oriental tale where he had his origin, but now he appears in our
fiction only sporadically, as in Oscar Wilde's _The Selfish Giant_,
in a couple of stories by Blackwood, and a few others. We are glad to
meet him occasionally in frank folk-tales since literature at large
repudiates this favorite of our youth. He would not suit well on the
stage, for obvious reasons, and realism rejects him.
Lord Dunsany tells of elves and gnomes, of the Moomoo, of the magic
sword called Mouse, of the gnoles that caught Tonker, of the ancient
Thuls, of the window that opened to the magic of the world, and of many
other things which only the very young or the very wise care for.
Arthur Machen deals with strange, sinister aspects of supernaturalism
unlike the wholesome folklore that other writers reveal to us. He seems
to take his material chiefly from the Pit, to let loose upon the world
a slimy horde of unnamable spirits of ageless evil. One reads of the
White People, who are most loathsome fairies under whose influence the
rocks dance obscene dances in the Witches' Sabbath, and the great white
moon seems an unclean thing. Images of clay made by human hands come
to diabolic life, and at mystic incantations the nymph Alanna turns
the pool in the woodland to a pool of fire. In _The Great God Pan_ the
timeless menace comes to earth again, corrupting the souls of men and
women, rendering them unbelievably vile. In _The Red Hand_ he brings
together ancient runes with magic power, black stones that tell secrets
of buried treasure, flinty stone like obsidian ten thousand years old
that murders a man on a London street, a whorl of figures that tell of
the black heaven, giving an impression of vast ages of enigmatic power.
One feels one should rinse his mind out after reading Arthur Machen's
stories, particularly the collection called _The Three Impostors_.
This discussion has taken more note of the Celtic folk-fiction than
of any other group influence, because more than any other it has left
its imprint on modern literature. There are hundreds of volumes of
folk-tales of the supernatural in English, but the Celtic Revival has
molded its legends into literature that is its own excuse for being.
In the work of this school we get a passionate mysticism, a poetic
symbolism that we find scarcely anywhere else in English prose, save
in such rhapsodic passages as some of De Quincey's impassioned prose.
Melody, which forms so large a part of the effect of supernaturalism
in poetry, is here employed to heighten lyric prose. Some of the wild
stories are like the croon of the peasant mother by her cradle beside
the peat-fire, some like wild barbaric runes of terrible unguessed
import, some like the battle-cry of hero-gods, some like the keening of
women beside their dead. The essential poetry of the Celtic soul pours
itself forth in rapturous, wistful music, now like a chant, a hymn, a
wedding-song, a lament for the lost soul.
In the Celtic folk-tales we get a mixture of romances, of the survivals
of barbaric days, the ancient druid myths, the pagan legends, savage
beliefs overlaid and interwoven with the later Christian traditions.
Sometimes the old pagan myths themselves become moral allegories,
the legend being used to tell a late-learned moral truth. But, for
the most part, there is no attempt at teaching save that which comes
spontaneously, the outburst of passionate, poetic romance, the heritage
of a people that love wonder and beauty.
The pagan poetry of the Gaelic race lives on and throbs over again in
Fiona McLeod's symbolic moralities. The mystical figures of awe and
woe appear from the dim past, a rapturous paganism showing through the
medieval religious brooding. Yet they are so symbolic of the spirit
that they are timeless. Coming as they do out of the dim legendary
past, they may reflect the veiled years of the future. They are mystic
chronicles of the soul, as in _The Divine Adventure_, where the Body
and Will alike shrink back from that "silent, sad-eyed foreigner, the
Soul."
In the stories of Yeats we get similar effects, the weird power of the
old curse-making bards, the gift of second-sight, a spiritual vision,
the spiritual sense that hears past the broken discordant sounds the
music of the world, the power to catch the moment "that trembles with
the Song of Immortal Powers." We hear faint whispers, catch fleeting
glimpses of the Dim People, see again the druids, the culdees, the
ancient bards and heroes. We discern in the Celtic literature a
sadness, dim, unreasoning yet deep, such as we see in the faces of
animals and little children. We see such symbolism as that of the
self-centered lovers who have heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,
seeing only their own images throughout eternity. We feel the poetic
thoughts drifting past us like sweet falling rose-leaves, bright with
the colors of bygone years, like fluttering bird-wings, like happy
sighs. Yet again they are terrible trumpets blown in the day of doom.
We have the modern mysticism and symbolism side by side with the old
druidic mysticism, which seems like dream-stuff with deep spiritual
import. Yeats makes us feel that the old divinities are not dead,
but have taken up their abode in the hearts of poets and writers of
romance, and that the land of faery is all about us if we would only
see. But we lack the poetic vision. He makes us see the actuality of
thought, that thinking has its own vital being and goes out into the
world like a living thing, possessed by some wandering soul. He shows
us that thought can create black hounds or silver doves to follow the
soul, bring to life at will a divinity or a demon.
A certain supernatural element of style seems to lend itself to some
of the writers of strange fiction. Some of Oscar Wilde's sentences
unfold like wild, exotic flowers, in a perfumed beauty that suggests a
subtle poison at the heart. Lord Dunsany writes joyously of fantastic
creatures with a happy grace, sometimes like a lilting laugh, sometimes
a lyric rhapsody. His evoked beings are sportive or awesome but never
unclean. Arthur Machen's stories have an effect like a slimy trail
of some loathly beast or serpent. William Morris's style is like an
old Norse rune, while Algernon Blackwood makes us think of awakened,
elemental forces hostile to man. We feel bodiless emotions, feelings
unclothed with flesh, sad formless spirits blown on the winds of the
world. These folk-tales reflect the sweet carelessness of the Irish
soul, the stern sadness of the Scotch, the psychic subtlety of the
modern English. And as the study of folk-lore has influenced the
fiction of the supernatural, so these published romances have aroused a
wondering interest in the legendry of the past and made of folk-lore a
science.
CHAPTER VII
Supernatural Science
The application of modern science to supernaturalism, or of the
supernatural to modern science, is one of the distinctive features
of recent literature. Ghostly fiction took a new and definite turn
with the rapid advance in scientific knowledge and investigation in
the latter part of the nineteenth century, for the work of Darwin,
Spencer, Huxley, and their co-laborers did as much to quicken thought
in romance as in other lines. Previous literature had made but scant
effort to reflect even the crude science of the times, and what
was written was so unconvincing that it made comparatively little
impress. Almost the only science that Gothic fiction dealt with, to
any noticeable extent, was associated with alchemy and astrology. The
alchemist sought the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life while
the astrologer tried to divine human destiny by the stars. Zofloya
dabbled in diabolic chemistry, and Frankenstein created a man-monster
that was noteworthy as an incursion into supernatural biology, yet
they are almost isolated instances. Now each advance in science has
had its reflection in supernatural fiction and each phase of research
contributes plot material, while some of the elements once considered
wholly of the devil are now scientific. The sorcerer has given place
to the bacteriologist and the botanist, the marvels of discovery have
displaced miracles as basis for unearthly plot material, and it is
from the laboratory that the ghostly stories are now evolved, rather
than from the vault and charnel-room as in the past. Science not only
furnishes extraordinary situations for curdling tales, but it is an
excellent hook to hang supernatural tales upon, for it gives an excuse
for believing anything, however incredible. Man is willing to accept
the impossible, if he be but given a modern excuse for it. He will
swallow the wildest improbability if the bait be labeled science or
psychical research. No supernaturalism is incredible if it is expressed
in technical terminology, and no miracle will be rejected if its
setting be in a laboratory. One peculiar thing about modern scientific
thought in its reaction upon fiction is that it is equally effective in
realism, such as shown in the naturalistic novels of Zola, the plays
of Brieux and others, and in supernaturalism, as in the work of H. G.
Wells, for instance, where the ghostly is grafted on to cold realism.
The transition from the sorcerer, the wizard, the warlock of older
fiction to the scientist in the present has been gradual. The sorcerer
relied wholly upon supernatural, chiefly diabolic, agencies for his
power, while the wizard of the modern laboratory applies his knowledge
of molecules and gases to aid his supermortal forces. Modern science
itself seems miraculous, so its employment in ghostly stories is
but natural. The _Arabian Nights' Tales_ seem not more marvelous
than the stories of modern investigations. Hawthorne's narratives
stand between the old and the new types of science, his Rappaccini,
Dr. Heidigger, Gaffer Dolliver, Septimius Felton and his rivals in
search for the elixir of youth, as well as the husband who sought to
efface the birthmark from his young wife's cheek, being related in
theme to the older conventional type and in treatment to the new.
Poe's scientific stories are more modern in method and material, and
in fact he made claim of originality of invention for the idea of
making fiction plausible by the use of scientific laws. His _Descent
into the Maelstrom_, _MS. Found in a Bottle_, and other stories were
novel in the manner in which they united the scientifically real and
the supernatural. _The Pit and the Pendulum_, with its diabolical
machinery, is akin to the modern mechanistic stories rather than to
anything that had preceded it. Poe paved the way for H. G. Wells's use
of the ghostly mechanical and scientific narratives, as his stories
of hypnotism with its hideous aftermath of horror must have given
suggestion for Arthur Machen's revolting stories of physical operations
with unearthly consequences. An example of the later manifestations of
supernaturalism in connection with science is in Sax Rohmer's tales
of Fu-Manchu, the Chinese terror, the embodied spirit of an ancient
evil that entered into him at his birth, because of his nearness to an
old burying-ground, and who, to his unholy alliance unites a wizard
knowledge of modern science in its various aspects. With every power of
cunning and intellect intensified, with a technical knowledge of all
means with which to fight his enemies, he ravages society as no mere
sorcerer of early fiction could do.
The modern stories of magic have a skillful power of suggestiveness,
being so cunningly contrived that on the surface they seem plausible
and natural, with nothing supernatural about them. Yet behind this
seeming simplicity lurks a mystery, an unanswered question, an unsolved
problem. W. W. Jacobs's _The Monkey's Paw_, for instance, is one of
the most effectively terrible stories of magic that one could conceive
of. The shriveled paw of a dead monkey, that is believed by some to
give its possessor the right to have three wishes granted, becomes the
symbol of inescapable destiny, the Weird, or Fate of the old tragedy,
though the horrors that follow upon the wishes' rash utterance _may_
be explained on natural grounds. The insidious enigma is what makes the
story unforgettable. Barry Pain's _Exchange_ might be given as another
example of problematic magic that owes its power to elusive mystery.
The witch-woman, the solitary Fate, who appears to persons offering
them such dreadful alternatives, might be conceived of as the figment
of sick brains, yet the reader knows that she is not.
Richard Middleton's _The Coffin Merchant_ seems simple enough on the
surface, and the literal-minded could explain the occurrence on normal
grounds, yet the story has a peculiar haunting supernaturalism. A
coffin merchant claims to be able to know who among passers-by will die
soon, and hands a man an advertisement for a coffin, asserting that he
will need it. The man later goes to the shop to rebuke the merchant
for his methods but ends by signing a contract for his own funeral. On
leaving, he shakes hands with the dealer, after which he unconsciously
puts his hand to his lips, feeling a slight sting. He dies that
night,--of what? Of poison, of fear, of supernatural suggestion, or in
the natural course of events? The series called _The Strange Cases of
Dr. Stanchion_, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, shows instances occurring
among the clientele of a famous brain specialist, where the materialist
might put aside the explanation of the supernatural, only to be
confronted by still greater problems. The relation between insanity and
ghostliness in recent fiction is significant and forms the crux of many
a story since Poe. Mrs. Bacon's _The Miracle_, for instance, has its
setting in an insane asylum, but the uncanny happenings almost convince
us of the sanity of the patients and the paranoia of the outsiders. We
come to agree with the specialist that every person is more or less a
paranoiac, and none more so than he who scoffs at the supernatural.
Another aspect of the transfer of magic in modern fiction to a
scientific basis is that of second sight or supernatural vision. This
motif still retains all its former effect of the unearthly, perhaps
gaining more, since the scientific twist seems to give the idea that
the ghostly power resides in the atoms and molecules and gases and
machines themselves, rather than in the person who manipulates them,
which is more subtly haunting in its impression. Second sight has been
used as a means for producing uncanny effects all along the line of
fiction. Defoe even used it in a number of his hoax pamphlets, as well
as in his _History of Duncan Campbell_, and folk-lore is full of such
stories, especially in the Highlands.
The modern use of supernatural vision is based apparently on natural
science, which makes the weird power more striking. _The Black Patch_,
by Randolph Hartley, tells of an experiment in optics that produces a
strange result. Two students exchange left eyeballs for the purpose
of studying the effects of the operation, leaving the right eye in
each case unimpaired. When the young men recover from the operation
and the bandages are removed, they discover that an extraordinary
thing has taken place. The first, while seeing with his right eye
his own surroundings as usual, sees also with his left--which is his
friend's left, that is--what that friend is looking at with his right
eye, thousands of miles away. The severing of the optic nerve has not
disturbed the sympathetic vision between the companion eyes, so this
curious double sight results. In a quarrel arising from this peculiar
situation, the first man kills the second, and sees on his left eye the
hideous image of his own face distorted with murderous rage, as his
friend saw it, which is never to be effaced, because the companion eye
is dead and will see no more.
Another instance of farsightedness is told in John Kendrick Bangs's
_The Speck on the Lens_, where a man has such an extraordinary left
eye that when he looks through a lens he sees round the world, and gets
a glimpse of the back of his own head which he thinks is a speck on the
lens. Only two men in the world are supposed to have that power.
_The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes_, by H. G. Wells, is an
interesting example of this new scientific transference of magic
vision. Davidson is working in a laboratory which is struck by
lightning, and after the shock he finds himself unable to visualize
his surroundings, but instead sees the other side of the world, ships,
a sea, sands. The explanation given by a professor turns on learned
theories of space and the Fourth Dimension. He thinks that Davidson,
in stooping between the poles of the electro-magnet, experienced a
queer twist in his mental retinal elements through the sudden force
of the lightning. As the author says: "It sets one dreaming of the
oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending
an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, of being
watched in our most secret operations by unexpected eyes." Davidson's
vision comes back queerly, for he begins to see the things around him
by piecemeal, as apparently the two fields of vision overlap for a time.
Brander Matthews in _The Kinetoscope of Time_ introduces an instrument
with eyepieces that show magic vision. The beholder sees scenes from
the past, from literature as well as from life, has glimpses of Salome
dancing, of Esmerelda, witnesses the combat between Achilles and
Hector, the tourney between Saladin and the Knight of the Leopard. The
magician offers to show him his future--for a price--but he is wise
enough to refuse.
Magic views of the future constitute an interesting aspect of the
supernatural vision in modern stories. _The Lifted Veil_, by George
Eliot, is an account of a man who has prophetic glimpses of his fate,
which seem powerless to warn him, since he marries the woman who
he knows will be his doom, and he is aware that he will die alone,
deserted even by his servants, yet cannot help it. He sees himself
dying, with the attendants off on their own concerns, knows every
detail beforehand, but unavailingly. This suggests _Amos Judd_, by
J. A. Mitchell, which is a curious instance of the transition stage of
second sight, related both to the old sorcerer type and to the new
scientific ideas. Amos Judd, so called, is the son of an Indian rajah,
sent out of his country because of a revolution, and brought up in
ignorance of his birth in a New England farmhouse. Vishnu, in the far
past, has laid his finger on the brow of one of the rajah's ancestors,
thereby endowing him with the gift of magic vision, which descends
once in a hundred years to some one of his line. Amos Judd therefore,
can see the future by pictures, beholding clearly everything that will
happen to him. He sees himself lying dead at a desk, on which stands a
calendar marking the date, November 4th. His friends persuade him to
live past the date, and they think all is well, till one day while he
is on a visit to a strange house he is killed by an assassin. They find
him lying at a desk, with an out-of-date calendar beside him, marking
November 4th.
Barry Pain endows a bulldog with the power to foretell the future, to
reveal disaster and oppose it. Zero, in the story by that name, is a
common bulldog greatly valued because he has a supernatural knowledge
of any evil that threatens those he loves, and by his canine sagacity
he forestalls fate. In the end, in protecting his master's little
child, he is bitten by a mad dog, whose coming he has supernaturally
foreseen, and he commits suicide as the only way out of the difficulty.
Arthur Machen, in _The Bowmen and Others_, tells varied stories of
supernatural vision associated with the war.
_The Door in the Wall_, by H. G. Wells, depicts a man who in his
dreamy childhood wanders into a secret garden where he is shown the
book of his past and future, but who afterwards is unable to find the
door by which he enters, though he seeks it often. Later in life,
at several times when he is in a special haste to reach some place
for an important appointment, he sees the door, but does not enter.
Finally he goes in to his death. This is an instance of the suggestive
supernaturalism associated with dreams and visions.
The use of mirrors in supernatural vision is significant and appears
in a number of ways in modern fiction. Scott's _My Aunt Margaret's
Mirror_ is an early instance, where the magician shows the seeker
a glass wherein she sees what is taking place in another country,
sees her husband on his way to the altar with another woman, sees a
stranger stop the marriage, and witnesses the fatal duel. Hawthorne
has used mirrors extensively as symbolic of an inner vision, of a look
into the realities of the soul. For instance, when poor Feathertop,
the make-believe man, the animated scarecrow, looks into the mirror
he sees not the brave figure the world beholds in him, but the thing
of sticks and straw, the sham that he is, as the minister shrinks
from the mirrored reflection of the black veil, symbol of mystery
that he wears. Hawthorne elsewhere speaks of Echo as the voice of the
reflection in a mirror, and says that our reflections are ghosts of
ourselves. Mr. Titbottom, in George William Curtis's _Prue and I_,
who has the power of seeing into the souls of human beings by means
of his magic spectacles and catching symbolic glimpses of what they
are instead of what they appear to be, beholds himself in a mirror
and shrinks back aghast from the revelation of his own nature. Barry
Pain's story, referred to in another connection, shows a mirror wherein
a supernatural visitant reveals to a young man the supreme moments of
life, his own and those of others, pictures of the highest moments of
ecstasy or despair, of fulfillment of dear dreams.
_The Silver Mirror_, by A. Conan Doyle, represents a man alone night
after night, working with overstrained nerves on a set of books, who
sees in an antique mirror a strange scene re-enacted and finds later
that the glass has once belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and that
he has seen the murder of Rizzio. Brander Matthews also has a story
concerned with re-created images in an old mirror. The looking-glass
in fiction seems to be not only a sort of hand conscience, as Markheim
calls it, but a betrayer of secrets, a revealer of the forgotten past,
a prophet of the future as well. It is also a strange symbol to show
hearts as they are in reality, reflecting the soul rather than the
body. It is employed in diverse ways and is an effective means of
supernatural suggestion, of ghostly power.
The Fourth Dimension is another motif that seems to interest the
writers of recent ghostly tales. They make use of it in various
ways and seem to have different ideas concerning it, but they like
to play with the thought and twist it to their whim. Ambrose Bierce
has a collection of stories dealing with mysterious disappearances,
in which he tells of persons who are transferred from the known,
calculable space to some "non-Euclidean space" where they are lost.
In some strange pockets of nowhere they fall, unable to see or to be
seen, to hear or to be heard, neither living nor dying, since "in that
space is no power of life or of death." It is all very mysterious and
uncanny. He uses the theme as the basis for a number of short stories
of ghostly power, which offer no solution but leave the mystery in the
air. In some of these stories Bierce represents the person as crying
out, and being heard, but no help can go, because he is invisible and
intangible, not knowing where he is nor what has happened to him. H. G.
Wells, in _The Plattner Case_, which shows an obvious influence of
Bierce, gives a similar case. He explains the extraordinary happenings
by advancing the theory that Plattner has changed sides. According to
mathematics, he says, we are told that the only way in which the right
and left sides of a solid body can be changed is by taking that body
clean out of space as we know it, out of ordinary existence, that is,
and turning it somewhere outside space. Plattner has been moved out
into the Fourth Dimension and been returned to the world with a curious
inversion of body. He is absent from the world for nine days and has
extraordinary experiences in the Other-World. This happens through an
explosion in the laboratory where he is working, similarly to Wells's
story of Davidson, where the infringement on the Fourth Dimension is
the result of a lightning stroke.
Mary Wilkins Freeman deals with the Fourth Dimension in _The Hall
Bedroom_, where the boarder drifts off into unknown space, never to
return, from gazing at a picture on the wall, as has happened in the
case of previous occupants of the room. Richard Middleton employs
the same idea in a story of a conjurer who nightly plays a trick in
public, causing his wife to seem to disappear into space. One night she
actually does so vanish, never to be seen again. Other instances of the
form may be found in recent fiction. H. G. Wells uses the theme with
a different twist in his _Time Machine_. Here the scientist insists
that time is the Fourth Dimension, that persons who talk of the matter
ordinarily have no idea of what it is, but that he has solved it. He
constructs a machine which enables him to project himself into the
future or into the past, and sees what will happen or what has happened
in other centuries. He lives years in the space of a few moments
and has amazing adventures on his temporal expeditions. But finally
the Fourth Dimension, which may be thought of as a terrible Fate or
inescapable destiny awaiting all who dally with it, gets him too, for
he fails to return from one of his trips. Another story tells of a man
who by drinking quantities of green tea could project himself into the
Fourth Dimension.
A number of stories of scientific supernaturalism are concerned with
glimpses into the future. _The Time Machine_, just mentioned, with
its invasions of the unknown space and time, its trips into eternity
by the agency of a miraculous vehicle, illustrates the method. The
scientist finds that he can travel backwards or forwards, accelerating
or retarding his speed as he will, and get a section of life in any age
he wishes. He discovers that in the future which he visits many reforms
have been inaugurated, preventive medicine established, noxious weeds
eradicated, and yet strange conditions exist. Mankind has undergone
a two-fold involution, the soft conditions of life having caused the
higher classes to degenerate into flabby beings of no strength, while
an underground race has grown up of horrible depraved nature, blind
from living in subterranean passages, cannibalistic while the others
are vegetarian. The lower classes are like hideous apes, while the
higher are effeminate, relaxed. The traveler escapes a dire fate only
by rushing to his machine and returning to his own time. Samuel Butler
suggests that machines will be the real rulers in the coming ages, that
man will be preserved only to feed and care for the machines which
will have attained supernatural sensibility and power. He says that
mechanisms will acquire feelings and tastes and culture, and that man
will be the servant of steel and steam in the future, instead of master
as now; that engines will wed and rear families which men, as slaves,
must wait upon.
Frank R. Stockton[197] gives another supernatural scientific glimpse
into the future, showing as impossibilities certain things that have
since come to pass, while some of the changes prophesied as imminent
are yet unrealized and apparently far from actualities. Jack London's
_Scarlet Plague_ pictures the earth returned to barbarism, since most
of the inhabitants have been swept away by a scourge and the others
have failed to carry on the torch of civilization. H. G. Wells[198]
gives account of a tour into futurity, wherein the miracles of modern
science work revolutions in human life, and[199] he satirizes society,
showing a topsy-turvy state of affairs in A.D. 2100. His _Dream of
Armageddon_ is a story of futurity wherein a man has continuous
visions of what his experiences will be in another life far in the
future. That life becomes more real to him than his actual existence,
and he grows indifferent to events taking place around him while
rent with emotion over the griefs to come in another age. Of course,
Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, with its social and mechanistic
miracles that now seem flat and tame to us, might be said to be the
father of most of these modern prophecies of scientific futurity.
Samuel Butler's _Erewhon_ contains many elements of impossibility in
relation to life, and is a satire on society, though perhaps not,
strictly speaking, supernatural. These prophecies of the time to come
are in the main intended as social satires, as symbolic analyses of
the weaknesses of present life. They evince vivid imagination and much
ingenuity in contriving the mechanisms that are to transform life, yet
they are not examples of great fiction. Mark Twain reverses the type
in his _Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court_, for he shows a
man of the present taking part in the life of the far past, managing
to parody both mediævalism and the Yankee character at once. H. G.
Wells is particularly interested in studying the unused forces of the
world and fancying what would happen under other conditions. His play
of scientific speculation has produced many stories that he does not
greatly value now himself, but which are of interest as showing certain
tendencies of fiction.
[197] In _The Great Stone of Sardis_.
[198] In _A Story of Days to Come_.
[199] In _When the Sleeper Wakes_.
* * * * *
Views of other planets form a feature of modern supernaturalism, for
the writer now sets his stories not only on earth, in heaven, and in
hell but on other worlds besides. The astrologer of ancient fiction,
with his eye fixed ever on the stars, seeking to discern their
influence on human destiny, appears no more among us. He has been
replaced by the astronomer who scans the stars yet with a different
purpose in fiction. He wishes to find out the life of citizens of
other planets rather than to figure out the fate of mortals on the
earth. Many stories of modern times cause new planets to swim into our
literary ken and describe their citizens with ease. H. G. Wells stars
here as elsewhere. In his _War of the Worlds_ he depicts a struggle
between the earth people and the Martians, in which many supernatural
elements enter. The people of Mars are a repulsive horde of creatures,
yet they have wonderful organization and command of resources, and
they conquer the earth to prey upon it. This book has suffered the
inevitable parody.[200] In _The Crystal Egg_, Wells describes a curious
globe in which the gazer can see scenes reflected from Mars. The author
suggests two theories as to the possibility of this,--either that
the crystal is in both worlds at once, remaining stationary in one
and moving in the other, and that it reflects scenes in Mars so that
they are visible on earth, or else that by a peculiar sympathy with
a companion globe on the other planet it shows on its surface what
happens in the other world. It is hinted that the Martians have sent
the crystal to the earth in order that they might catch glimpses of our
life.
[200] In _The War of the Wenuses_, by C. L. Graves and E. V.
Lucas.
In _The Star_, Wells gives yet another story of the future, of other
planetary influences. By the passing of a strange star, life on earth
is convulsed and conditions radically changed. These conditions are
observed by the astronomers on Mars, who are beings different from
men, yet very intelligent. They draw conclusions as to the amount of
damage done to the earth, satirizing human theories as to Mars. _The
Days of the Comet_ shows earthly life changed by the passing of a
comet, but instead of the destruction described in the other story, the
social conditions are vastly improved and a millennium is ushered in.
Wells[201] makes a voyage to the moon possible by the discovery of a
substance which resists gravity. Other instances might be given, for
there has been no lack of lunar literature, but they are not usually
worth much.
[201] In _The First Men in the Moon_.
Du Maurier's _The Martian_, which combines the elements of
metempsychosis, automatic writing, and dream-supernaturalism, with the
idea of ghostly astronomy, tells of a supernatural visitant from Mars.
The Martian is a young woman whose spirit comes to inhabit a young
man to whom she dictates wonderful books in his dreams. She writes
letters to him in a sort of private code, in which she tells of her
previous incarnations on Mars, of the Martians who are extraordinary
amphibious beings, descended from a small sea animal. They have unusual
acuteness of senses with an added sixth sense, a sort of orientation,
a feeling of a magnetic current, which she imparts to her protégé,
Barty Joscelyn. Jack London[202] tells a story of interplanetary
metempsychosis, where the central character, a prisoner in San Quentin,
finds himself able to will his body to die at times, thus releasing
his spirit to fly through space and relive its experiences in previous
incarnations.
[202] In _The Star Rover_.
Barry Pain's _The Celestial Grocery_ is a phantasy of insanity and the
supernatural, with its setting on two planets. It contains a cab horse
that talks and laughs, and other inversions of the natural. A man is
taken on a journey to another world, sees the stars and the earth in
space beneath him, and finds everything different from what he has
known before. People there have two bodies and send them alternately
to the wash, though they seldom wear them. The celestial shop sells
nothing concrete, only abstractions, emotions, experiences. One may
buy measures of love, requited or unselfishly hopeless, of political
success, of literary fame, or of power or what-not. Happiness is a
blend, however, for which one must mix the ingredients for himself. The
story is symbolic of the ideals of earth, with a sad, effective satire.
The end is insanity, leaving one wondering how much of it is pure
phantasy of a mad man's brain or how much actuality. It is reminiscent
of Hawthorne's Intelligence Office with its symbolic supernaturalism.
* * * * *
Hypnotism enters largely into the fiction of modern times. Hypnotism
may or may not be considered as supernatural, yet it borders so closely
on to the realm of the uncanny, and is so related to science of to-day
as well as to the sorcery of the past, that it should be considered in
this connection for it carries on the traditions of the supernatural.
In its earlier stages hypnotism was considered as distinctly diabolic,
used only for unlawful purposes, being associated with witchcraft. It
is only in more recent times that it has been rehabilitated in the
public mind and thought of as a science which may be used for helpful
ends. It is so mysterious in its power that it affords complications
in plenty for the novelist and has been utilized in various ways.
In some cases, as F. Marion Crawford's _The Witch of Prague_, it is
associated still with evil power and held as a black art. Unorna has an
unearthly power gained through hypnotism which is more than hypnotic,
and which she uses to further her own ends. Strange scientific ideas of
life and of death are seen here, and someone says of her: "You would
make a living mummy of a man. I should expect to find him with his
head cut off and living by means of a glass heart and thinking through
a rabbit's brain." She embalms an old man in a continuous hypnotic
lethargy, recalling him only at intervals to do mechanically the things
necessary to prolong life. She is trying to see if she can cause human
tissue to live forever in this embalmed state, hoping to learn through
it the secret of eternal life. This, of course, suggests Poe's stories
of the subject, _Mesmeric Revelations_ and _The Facts in the Case of
M. Waldemar_. The latter is one of the most revolting instances of
scientific supernaturalism, for the dying man is mesmerized in the
moment of death and remains in that condition, dead, yet undecaying,
and speaking, repeating with his horrible tongue the statement, "I am
dead." After seven months, further experiments break the spell, and
he, pleading to be allowed to be at peace in death, falls suddenly
away into a loathsome, liquid putrescence before the eyes of the
experimenters.
_The Portent_, by George MacDonald, is a curious study of hypnotic
influence, of a woman who is her true self only when in a
somnambulistic state. A supernatural connection of soul exists between
her and a youth born on the same day, and it is only through his
hypnotic aid that she gains her personality and sanity. James L. Ford
plays with the subject by having a group of persons in an evening party
submit themselves to be hypnotized in turn, each telling a true story
of his life while in that condition. W. D. Howells combines mesmerism
with spiritualism in his novel,[203] where the séances are really the
result of hypnotism rather than supernatural revelation as the medium
thinks. H. G. Wells has used this theme, as almost every other form of
scientific ghostliness, though without marked success. The prize story
of hypnotism, however, still remains Du Maurier's _Trilby_, for no
mesmerist in this fiction has been able to outdo Svengali.
[203] _The Undiscovered Country._
* * * * *
Uncanny chemistry forms the ingredient for many a modern story. The
alchemist was the favored feature of the older supernatural fiction of
science, and his efforts to discover the philosopher's stone and to
brew the magic elixir have furnished plots for divers stories. He does
not often waste his time in these vain endeavors in recent stories,
though his efforts have not altogether ceased, as we have seen in a
previous chapter. A. Conan Doyle[204] is among the last to treat the
theme, and makes the scientist find his efforts worse than useless,
for the research student finds that his discovery of the art of making
gold is disturbing the nice balance of nature and bringing injury to
those he meant to help, so he destroys his secret formula and dies.
_The Elixir of Youth_ illustrates the transference of power from the
sorcerer to the scientist, for the magician that gives the stranger a
potion to restore his youth tells him that he is not a sorcerer, not a
diabolic agent, but a scientist learning to utilize the forces that are
at the command of any intelligence.
[204] In _The Doings of Raffles Haw_.
Barry Pain's _The Love Philter_ is related both to the old and the new
types of supernatural chemistry. A man loves a woman who doesn't care,
so he asks aid of a wise woman, who gives him a potion that will surely
win the stubborn heart. As he lies asleep in the desert, on his way
back, he dreams that his love says to him that love gained by such
means is not love, so he pours the liquid on the sand. When he returns,
the woman tells him that she has been with him in his dreams and loves
him because he would not claim her wrongly. _Blue Roses_ is another of
his stories of magic that bring love to the indifferent. _Twilight_,
by Frank Danby, is a novel based on the relation between morphia and
the supernatural. A woman ill of nervous trouble, under the influence
of opiates, continually sees the spirit of a woman dead for years,
who relives her story before her eyes, so that the personalities are
curiously merged. This inevitably suggests De Quincey's _Confessions of
an English Opium-Eater_ with its dream-wonders, yet it has a power of
its own and the skillful blending of reality with dream-supernaturalism
and insanity has an uncanny distinction.
Fu-Manchu, the Chinese wonder-worker in Sax Rohmer's series of
stories bearing that name, is a representative example of the modern
use of chemistry for supernormal effect. He employs all the forces
of up-to-the-minute science to compass his diabolic ends and works
miracles of chemistry by seemingly natural methods. By a hypodermic
injection he can instantly drive a man to acute insanity incurable save
by a counter-injection which only Fu-Manchu can give, but which as
instantly restores the reason. By another needle he can cause a person
to die--to all intents and purposes, at least,--and after the body has
been buried for days he can restore it to life by another prick of the
needle. He terrorizes England by his infernal powers, killing off or
converting to slavery the leading intelligences that oppose him.
Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ is perhaps the best-known
instance of chemical supernaturalism. Here the magic drug not only
changes the body, evolving from the respectable Dr. Jekyll his baser
self in the form of Mr. Hyde, enabling him to give rein to his criminal
instincts without bringing reproach on his reputation, but has the
subtle power to fix the personality of evil, so that each time the drug
is used Hyde is given a stronger force and Jekyll is weakened. This
fictive sermon on dual nature, the ascendence of evil over the nobler
soul if it be indulged, seems yet an appallingly real story of human
life. In a similar fashion Arthur Machen uses supernatural chemistry
most hideously in _The Three Impostors_, where a certain powder
perverts the soul, making man a sharer in the unspeakable orgies of
ancient evil forces.
_The Invisible Man_, by H. G. Wells, shows an unusual application of
chemistry to ghostly fiction that gives a peculiar effect of reality
because its style is that of scientific realism. By experimentation
with drugs a man finds a combination that will render living tissue
absolutely invisible. When he swallows a portion of it, he cannot be
seen. His clothes appear to be walking around by themselves and the
complications are uncanny. As one may see, the comic possibilities
are prominent and for a time we laugh over the mystification of the
persons with whom he comes in contact, but soon stark tragedy results.
During the man-chase, as the hunted creature seeks to escape, the
people hear the thud-thud of running steps, watch bloody footprints
form before their eyes, yet see nothing else. Here is a genuine thrill
that is new in fiction. The man gradually becomes visible, but only in
death is his dreadful figure seen completely again. This modern method
of transferring to science the idea of invisibility so prominent in
connection with ghosts, showing the invisibility as the result of a
chemical compound, not of supernatural intervention, affecting a living
man not a spirit, makes the effect of supernaturalism more vivid even
than in the case of ghosts.
These are only suggestions of the varied uses to which chemistry has
been put in producing ghostly plots and utilizing in novel ways the
conventional motifs of older stories. These themes are more popular now
than they would have been half a century ago because now the average
reader knows more about scientific facts and is better prepared to
appreciate them. A man ignorant of chemistry would care nothing for the
throes of Dr. Jekyll or the complicating experiences of the invisible
man, because he would have slight basis for his imagination to build
upon. Each widening of the popular intelligence and each branch of
science added to the mental store of the ordinary reader is a distinct
gain to fiction.
* * * * *
Supernatural biology looms large in modern fiction, though it is not
always easy to differentiate between the predominance of chemical and
biological motifs. In many cases the two are tangled up together, and
as, in the stories of dual personality and invisibility just mentioned,
one may not readily say which is uppermost, the biological or the
chemical side, for the experiments are of the effects of certain drugs
upon living human tissue. There are various similar instances in the
fiction of scientific supernaturalism. Hawthorne's _The Birthmark_ is
a case of chemical biology, where the husband seeking to remove by
powerful drugs the mark from his wife's cheek succeeds in doing so
but causes her death. Here the supernaturalism is symbolic, suggested
rather than boldly stated, as is usually the case with Hawthorne's work.
A. Conan Doyle in _The Los Amigos Fiasco_ shows supernaturalism based
on the effect of electricity on the body, for the lynchers in trying to
kill a man by connecting him with a dynamo succeed in so magnetizing
him that he can't be killed in any way. Sax Rohmer tells one Fu-Manchu
story of a mysterious murder committed by means of an imprisoned gas
that escapes from a mummy case and poisons those exposed to it, and, in
another, he introduces a diabolic red insect attracted by the scent of
a poisonous orchid, that bites the marked victim.
Wells's _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ is a ghastly study in vivisection.
Two scientists on a remote island with no other human inhabitants try
unspeakable experiments on animals, trying by pruning and grafting and
training the living tissue to make them human. They do succeed in a
measure, for they teach the beasts to talk and to observe a sort of
jungle law laid down by man, yet the effect is sickening. The animals
are not human and never can be, and these revolting experiments deprive
them of all animal dignity without adding any of the human. In the end
they revert to savagery, becoming even more bestial than before. The
most dreadful biological experiments in recent fiction are described in
Arthur Machen's volume of short stories, _The House of Souls_. In one
story an operation on the brain enables a victim to "see the great god
Pan," to have revelations of ancient supernaturalism wherein Pan and
the devil are united in one character. In another, a delicate cutting
of the brain removes the soul,--which takes the form of a wonderful
jewel,--and utterly diabolizes the character. These curious and
revolting stories are advanced instances of scientific diabolism and
leave a smear on the mind. They are more horrible than the creation of
Frankenstein's man-monster, for here moral monsters are evolved.
Medicated supernaturalism associated with prenatal influence occurs
in various stories where a supernormal twist is given because of some
event out of the ordinary. Ambrose Bierce's _The Eyes of the Panther_,
a story of a young woman who is a panther for part of the time as a
result of a shock, is associated with the snake nature of Elsie Venner.
Barry Pain's _The Undying Thing_ is one of the most horrible of such
complications, for because of a mother's fright over a pack of wolves
a monster is born, neither wolf nor human, neither animal nor man,
neither mortal nor immortal. It is hidden in a secret cave to die,
yet lives on, though not living, to fulfil a curse upon the ancient
house. A. Conan Doyle's _The Terror of Blue John Gap_ is a story of a
monstrous animal, like a bear yet bigger than an elephant, that ravages
the countryside. The theory for its being is that it is a survival, in
a subterranean cave, of a long-extinct type, from prehistoric times,
that comes out in its blindness to destroy. There are other examples of
supernormal animals in modern fiction, yet these suffice to illustrate
the _genre_.
* * * * *
Botany furnishes its ghostly plots in fiction as well as other branches
of science, for we have plant vampires and witches and devils. Trees
and flowers are highly psychic and run a gamut of emotions. Hawthorne
shows us supernatural plants in several of his novels and stories,
such as the mysterious plant growing from a secret grave, which has a
strange poisonous power, or the flowers from Gaffer Dolliver's garden
that shine like jewels and lend a glow to the living face near them,
when worn on a woman's breast. In _Rappaccini's Daughter_ the garden
is full of flowers of subtle poison, so insidious that their venom
has entered into the life of the young girl, rendering her a living
menace to those around her. She is the victim of her father's dæmonic
experiments in the effects of poison on the human body, and her kiss
means death. Algernon Blackwood[205] tells of the uncanny power of
motion and emotion possessed by the trees, where the forest exercises a
magnetic force upon human beings sympathetic to them, going out after
men and luring them to their fate. He describes the cedar as friendly
to man and attempting but in vain to protect him from the creeping
malignant power of the forest.
[205] In _The Man whom the Trees Loved_.
Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer's Chinese horror, performs various experiments
in botany to further his dreadful ends. He develops a species of
poisonous fungi till they become giant in size and acquire certain
powers through being kept in the darkness. When a light is turned on
them, the fungi explode, turning loose, on the men he would murder,
fumes that drive them mad. From the ceiling above are released ripe
spores of the giant Empusa, for the air in the second cellar, being
surcharged with oxygen, makes them germinate instantly. They fall like
powdered snow upon the victims and the horrible fungi grow magically,
spreading over the writhing bodies of the mad-men and wrapping them
in ghostly shrouds. In _The Flower of Silence_ he describes a strange
orchid that has the uncanny habit of stinging or biting when it is
broken or roughly handled, sending forth a poison that first makes a
man deaf then kills him. Fu-Manchu introduces this flower into the
sleeping-rooms of those he wishes to put out of the way, and sends them
into eternal silence. _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid_, by H. G.
Wells, is the story of a murderous plant, a vampire that kills men in
the jungle, and in a greenhouse in England sends out its tentacles
that grip the botanist, drinking his blood and seeking to slay him.
This orchid has the power to project its vampiric attacks when it
is a shriveled bulb or in the flower. This reminds us of Algernon
Blackwood's story of the vampire soil, which after its psychic orgy
burst into loathsome luxuriant bloom where before it had been barren.
It is a curious heightening of supernatural effect to give to beautiful
flowers diabolical cunning and murderous motives, to endow them with
human psychology and devilish designs. The magic associated with botany
is usually black instead of white. One wonders if transmigration of
soul does not enter subconsciously into these plots, and if a vampire
orchid is not a trailing off of a human soul, the murderous blossom
a revenge ghost expressing himself in that way. The plots in this
type of fiction are wrought with much imagination and the scientific
exactness combined with the supernatural gives a peculiar effect of
reality.
* * * * *
There are varied forms of supernatural science that do not come under
any of the heads discussed. The applications of research to weird
fiction are as diverse as the phases of investigation and only a few
may be mentioned to suggest the variety of themes employed. Inversion
of natural laws furnishes plots,--as in Frank R. Stockton's _Tale of
Negative Gravity_ with its discovery of a substance that enables a man
to save himself all fatigue by means of a something that inverts the
law of gravity. With a little package in his pocket a man can climb
mountains without effort, but the discoverer miscalculates the amount
of energy required to move and finally rises instead of staying on the
earth, till his wife has to fish him into the second-story window.
Poe's _Loss of Breath_ illustrates another infringement of a natural
law, as do several stories where a human being loses his shadow.
In _The Diamond Lens_, Fitz-James O'Brien tells of a man who looking
at a drop of water through a giant microscope sees in the drop a
lovely woman with whom he falls madly in love, only to watch her fade
away under the lens as his despairing eyes see the water evaporate.
Supernatural acoustics enters[206] in the story of a man who discovers
the sound-center in an opera house and reads the unspoken thoughts
of those around him. He applies the laws of acoustics to mentality
and spirituality, making astounding discoveries. Bram Stoker combines
superstition with modern science in his books, as[207] where Oriental
magic is used to fight the encroachments of an evil force emanating
from a mummy, as also to bring the mummy to life, while a respirator is
employed to keep away the subtle odor. He brings in blood transfusion
together with superstitious symbols, to combat the ravages of
vampires.[208] Blood transfusion also enters into supernaturalism in
Stephen French Whitney's story, where a woman who has been buried in a
glacier for two thousand years is recalled to life.
[206] In _The Spider's Eye_, by Lucretia P. Hale.
[207] In _The Jewel of Seven Stars_.
[208] In _Dracula_.
_The Human Chord_, by Algernon Blackwood, is a novel based on the
psychic values of sounds, which claims that sounds are all powerful,
are everything,--for forms, shapes, bodies are but vibratory activities
of sound made visible. The research worker here believes that he who
has the power to call a thing by its proper name is master of that
thing, or of that person, and that to be able to call the name of Deity
would be to enable one to become as God. He seeks to bring together
a human chord, four persons in harmony as to voice and soul, who can
pronounce the awful name and become divine with him. He can change
the form or the nature of anything by calling its name, as a woman is
deformed by mispronunciation, and the walls of a room expanded by his
voice. He can make of himself a dwarf or a giant at will, by different
methods of speaking his own name. He says that sound could re-create
or destroy the universe. He has captured sounds that strain at their
leashes in his secret rooms, gigantic, wonderful. But in the effort
to call upon the mighty Name he mispronounces it, bringing a terrible
convulsion of nature which destroys him. The beholders see an awful
fire in which Letters escape back to heaven in chariots of flame.
Psychology furnishes some interesting contributions to recent fiction
along the line of what might be called momentary or instantaneous
plots. Ambrose Bierce's _The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_ is a good
example,--where a man is being hanged and in the instant between the
drop from the bridge and the breaking of the neck he lives through
long and dramatic adventures, escaping his pursuers by falling into
the river and swimming ashore, reaching home at last to greet his
wife and children. Yet in a second his lifeless body swings from the
bridge. _The Warning_, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, shows the case of a
man who lives years in another country during a few moments of acute
mental strain carried to the point of paranoia. Barry Pain has a story
where in the time in which a man drives home from the theater he visits
another planet and changes the current of his life, while Algernon
Blackwood compresses a great experience into a few minutes of dreaming.
One noteworthy point in connection with the scientific supernaturalism
is that these themes appear only in novels and short stories. They do
not cross over into poetry as do most of the other forms of the ghostly
art. Perhaps this is because the situations are intellectual rather
than emotional, brain-problems or studies in mechanisms rather than in
feelings or emotions. The province of science is removed from that of
poetry because the methods and purposes are altogether different. The
scientific methods are clear-cut, coldly intellectual. Science demands
an exactness, a meticulous accuracy hostile to poetry which requires
suggestion, vagueness, veiled mystery for its greatest effect. _The
Flower of Silence_, for instance, would be a fitting title for a poem,
but the poetic effect would be destroyed by the need for stating the
genus and species of the orchid and analyzing its destruction of human
tissue. Nature's mysterious forces and elements in general and vaguely
considered, veiled in mists of imagination and with a sense of vastness
and beauty, are extremely poetic. But the notebook and laboratory
methods of pure science are antagonistic to poetry, though they fit
admirably into the requirements of fiction, whose purpose is to give an
impression of actuality.
Another reason why these scientific themes do not pass over into poetry
may be that scientific methods as we know them are new, and poetry
clings to the old and established conventions and emotions. There
is amazing human interest in these experiments, a veritable wealth
of romance, with dramatic possibilities tragic and comic, yet they
are more suited to prose fiction than to poetry. We have adapted our
brain-cells to their concepts in prose, yet we have not thus molded our
poetic ideas. It gives us a shock to have new concepts introduced into
poetry. An instance of this clash of realism with sentiment is shown in
a recent poem where the setting is a physics laboratory. Yet in a few
more decades we may find the poets eagerly converting the raw materials
of science into the essence of poetry itself, and by a mystic alchemy
more wonderful than any yet known, transmuting intellectual problems of
science into magic verse. _Creation_, by Alfred Noyes, is an impressive
discussion of evolution as related to God.
Perhaps another reason why these themes have not been utilized in
poetry is because they are too fantastic, too bizarre. They lack
the proportion and sense of artistic harmony that poetry requires.
Strangeness and wonder are true elements of poetry, and magic is
an element of the greatest art, but in solution as it were, not in
the form observed in science. The miracles of the laboratory are
too abrupt, too inconceivable save by intellectual analysis, and
present too great a strain upon the powers of the imagination. They
are fantastic, while true poetry is concerned with the fancy. Magic
and wonder in verse must come from concepts that steal upon the
imagination and make appeal through the emotions. Thus some forms of
supernaturalism are admirably adapted to the province of poetry,
such as the presence of spirits, visitations of angels or demons,
ancient witchcraft, and so forth. The elements that have universal
appeal through the sense of the supernatural move us in poetry, but
the isolated instances, the peculiar problems that occur in scientific
research if transferred to poetry would leave us cold. Yet they may
come to be used in the next _vers libre_.
Nor do these situations come over into the drama save in rare
instances. Theodore Dreiser, in a recent volume, _Plays of the Natural
and the Supernatural_, makes use of certain motifs that are striking
and modern, as[209] where a physician goes on the operating-table,
the _dramatis personæ_ including Demyaphon (Nitrous Acid), and
Alcepheron (a Power of Physics), as well as several Shadows, mysterious
personages of vagueness. These Shadows here, as in _The Blue Sphere_,
are not altogether clear as to motivation, yet they seem to stand for
Fate interference in human destiny. In the latter play Fate is also
represented by a Fast Mail which is one of the active characters,
menacing and destroying a child.
[209] In _Laughing Gas_.
One reason why these motifs of science are not used in drama to any
extent is that they are impossible of representation on the stage.
Even the wizardry of modern producers would be unable to show a Power
of Physics, or Nitrous Acid, save as they might be embodied, as were
the symbolic characters in Maeterlinck's _Blue Bird_, which would mean
that they would lose their effect. And what would a stage manager do
with the rhythm of the universe, which enters into Dreiser's play? Many
sounds can be managed off stage, but hardly that, one fancies. These
themes are not even found in closet drama, where many other elements of
supernaturalism which would be difficult or impossible of presentation
on the stage trail off. William Sharp's _Vistas_, for instance, could
not be shown on the stage, yet the little plays in that volume are
of wonderful dramatic power. The drama can stand a good deal of
supernaturalism of various kinds, from the visible ghosts and devils
of the Elizabethans to the atmospheric supernaturalism of Maeterlinck,
but it could scarcely support the presentations of chemicals and gases
and supernatural botany and biology that fiction handles with ease. The
miraculous machinery would balk at stage action. Fancy the Time Machine
staged, for instance!
We notice in these scientific stories a widening of the sphere of
supernatural fiction. It is extended to include more of the normal
interests and activities of man than has formerly been the case. Here
we notice a spirit similar to that of the leveling influence seen
in the case of the ghosts, devils, witches, angels, and so forth,
who have been made more human not only in appearance but in emotions
and activities as well. Likewise these scientific elements have been
elevated to the human. Supernatural as well as human attributes have
been extended to material things, as animals are given supernormal
powers in a sense different from and yet similar to those possessed by
the enchanted animals in folk-lore. Science has its physical as well as
psychic horrors which the scientific ghostly tales bring in.
Not only are animals gifted with supernatural powers but plants as
well are humanized, diabolized. We have strange murderous trees,
vampire orchids, flowers that slay men in secret ways with all the
smiling loveliness of a treacherous woman. The dæmonics of modern
botany form an interesting phase of ghostly fiction and give a new
thrill to supernaturalism. Inanimate, concrete things are endowed with
unearthly cunning and strength, as well as animals and plants. The new
type of fiction gives to chemicals and gases a hellish intelligence, a
diabolic force of minds. It creates machinery and gives it an excess
of force, a supernatural, more than human cunning, sometimes helpful,
sometimes dæmonic. Machines have been spiritualized and some engines
are philanthropic while some are like damned souls.
This scientific supernaturalism concerns itself with mortal life, not
with immortality as do some of the other aspects of the _genre_. It is
concrete in its effects, not spiritual. Its incursions into futurity
are earthly, not of heaven or hell, and its problems are of time, not
of eternity. The form shows how clear, cold intelligence plays with
miracles and applies the supernatural to daily life. The enthusiasm,
wild and exaggerated in some ways, that sprang up over the prospects
of what modern science and investigation would almost immediately do
for the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had no
more interesting effect than in the stimulating of scientific fictive
supernaturalism. And though mankind has learned that science will not
immediately bring the millennium, science still exercises a strong
power over fiction. This type shows a strange effect of realism in
supernaturalism, because of the scientific methods, for supernaturalism
imposed on material things produces an effect of verisimilitude not
gained in the realm of pure spirit. Too intellectually cold for the
purposes of poetry, too abstract and elusive for presentation in
drama, and too removed by its association with the fantastic aspects
of investigation and the curiosities of science to be very appropriate
for tragedy, which has hitherto been the chief medium of expressing
the dramatic supernatural, science finds its fitting expression in
prose fiction. It is an illustration of the widening range of the
supernatural in fiction and as such is significant.
CHAPTER VIII
Conclusion
In the previous chapters I have endeavored to show the continuance
and persistence of the supernatural in English fiction, as well as in
other forms of literature, and to give some idea of the variety of its
manifestations. There has been no period in our history from Beowulf
to the present when the ghostly was not found in our literature. Of
course, there have been periods when the interest in it waned, yet
it has never been wholly absent. There is at the present a definite
revival of interest in the supernatural appearing in the drama, in
poetry and in fiction, evident to anyone who has carefully studied
the recent publications and magazines. Within the last few years,
especially in the last two years, an astonishing amount of ghostly
material has appeared. Some of these stories are of the hoax variety,
others are suggestive, allegorical or symbolic, while others frankly
accept the forces beyond man's mortal life and human dominion. I
hesitate to suggest a reason for this sudden rising tide of occultism
at this particular time, but it seems clear to me that the war
has had much to do with it. I have found a number of supernatural
productions directly associated with the struggle. Among them might be
mentioned Katherine Fullerton Gerould's extraordinary, elusive story
of horror[210]; _The Second Coming_, by Frederick Arnold Kummer and
Henry P. Janes, where Christ walks the battlefields on Christmas Eve,
pleading with the Kaiser to stop the slaughter of men, but in vain,
and the carnage goes on till Easter, when the Christ stands beside
the dying Emperor, with the roar of the rioting people heard in the
streets outside, and softens his heart at last, so that he says, "Lord,
I have sinned! Give my people peace!"; Kipling's ghost-story,[211]
with its specters of children slain by the Germans; _The Gray Guest_,
showing Napoleon returning to lead the French forces to victory in a
crisis; _Jeanne, the Maid_ where the spirit of Joan of Arc descends
upon a young French girl of to-day, enabling her to do wonderful things
for her countrymen; _War Letters from a Living Dead Man_, a series
of professed psychic communications from the other world, by Elsa
Barker; _Real Ghost Stories_, a volume containing a number of stories
by different writers, describing some of the phantoms seen by soldiers
on the battlefield; and Arthur Machen's _The Bowmen_, a collection
of striking fictive instances of crowd-supernaturalism associated
with the war. The last volume affords an interesting glimpse into the
way in which legends are built up, for it is a contemporary legend
in connection with the Angels at Mons. Carl Hauptmann has a striking
play,[212] showing the use of war-supernaturalism in the drama. When
the eyes of the world are turned toward the battlefields and death
is an ever-present reality, it is natural that human thoughts occupy
themselves with visions of a life after death. _Kingdom Come_, by Vida
Sutton, shows the spirits of Russian peasants slain for refusing to
fight, specters unaware that they are dead. Various martial heroes
of the past are resurrected to give inspiration in battle in recent
stories.
[210] _The Eighty-Third._
[211] _Swept and Garnished._
[212] _The Dead Are Singing_, in the May, 1916, _Texas Review_.
But whatever be the reason for this revival of the ghostly, the
fact remains that this is distinctly the day for the phantom and
his confrères. While romanticism is always with us, it appears in
different manifestations. A few years ago the swashbuckling hero and
his adventures seemed the most striking survival of the earlier days
of romanticism, but now the weird and the ghostly have regained a
popularity which they never surpassed even in the heyday of Gothic
fiction. The slashing sword has been displaced by the psychographic
pen. The crucial struggles now are occult, rather than adventurous,
as before, and while realism in fiction is immensely popular--never
more so than now--it is likely to have supernaturalism overlaid upon
it, as in De Morgan's work, to give a single example. Recent poetry
manifests the same tendency, and likewise the drama, particularly the
closet drama and the playlet. While literary history shows clearly the
continuity of the supernatural, with certain rise and fall of interest
in it at different periods, it is apparent that now there is a more
general fondness for the form than at any other period in English
literature. The supernatural is in solution and exists everywhere.
Recent poetry shows a strong predilection for the uncanny, sometimes
in the manner of the old ballads, while in other instances the
ghostly is treated with a spirit of critical detachment as in Rupert
Brooke's sonnet,[213] or with skepticism as in his sardonic satire on
faith.[214] In the recent volume of Brooke's collected poems, there
are about a dozen dealing with the supernatural. Maeterlinck expressed
the feeling that a spiritual epoch is perhaps upon us, as Poe said
that we are in the midst of great psychal powers. As Francis Thompson
says in his _Hound of Heaven_, "Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake
our drought!" The interest in certain lines of thought which lead to
the writing of supernatural fiction, as Spiritualism or folk-lore, or
science or psychical research, may have the reflex action of arousing
interest in the subjects themselves. But at all events, there is no
lack of uncanny literature at present.
[213] _Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research._
[214] In his _Heaven_.
One feature of the modern supernatural literature as distinguished
from that of other periods, is in the matter of length. Of course,
the ballad and the folk-tale expressed the ghostly in brief form,
but the epic held the stage longer, while in Elizabethan times the
drama was the preferred form as in the eighteenth century the Gothic
novel. During the nineteenth century, particularly the latter half,
the preference was decidedly for the short story, while more recently
the one-act play has come into vogue. But in the last few years the
supernatural novel seems to be returning to favor, though without
displacing the shorter forms. Brevity has much to commend it as a
vehicle for the uncanny. The effect of the ghostly may be attained with
much more unity in a short story or playlet than in a novel or long
drama, for in the more lengthy form much outside matter is necessarily
included. The whole plot could scarcely be made up of the unearthly,
for that would mean a weakening of power through exaggeration, though
this is sometimes found to be the case, as in several of Bram Stoker's
novels. Recently the number of novels dealing with supernatural themes
has noticeably increased, which leads one to believe that the occult
is transcending even the limitations of length and claiming all forms
for its own. Now no literary type bars the supernatural, which appears
in the novel as in the story, in the drama as in the playlet, and in
narrative, dramatic, and lyric poetry. Even the epic of the more than
mortal has not entirely vanished, as the work of Dr. William Cleaver
Wilkinson attests, but popular taste does not really run to epics
nowadays. The ghostly is more often seen in the shorter forms, where
brevity gives a chance for compression and intensity of force difficult
in longer vehicles. The rise of the one-act play in popular favor is
significant in this connection. The short dramas of Synge, Yeats, Lady
Gregory, William Sharpe, Gordon Bottomley, and Theodore Dreiser show
the possibilities of the playlet for weird effect. Maeterlinck's plays
for marionettes are especially powerful, but the work of Lord Dunsany
furnishes more peculiar ghostliness than that of any other present
dramatist. His jade idols, for instance, that wake to terrible life
and revenge themselves on presumptuous mortals, are a new touch in
dramatics. Algernon Blackwood is doing more significant work in psychic
fiction than anyone else, his prose showing poetic beauty as well as
eerie power.
Another significant fact to be noted in connection with the later
ghostly stories as compared with the Gothic is in the greater number
and variety of materials employed. The early religious plays had
introduced devils, angels, and divinity to a considerable extent, while
the Elizabethan drama relied for its thrills chiefly on the witch and
the revenge-ghost. The Gothic romance was strong for the ghost, with
one or two Wandering Jews, occasional werewolves and lycanthropes,
and sporadic satanity, but made no use of angels or of divinity. The
modern fiction, however, gathers up all of these personages and puts
them into service freely. In addition to these old themes brought
up to date and varied astonishingly, the new fiction has adapted
other types. The scientific supernaturalism is practically new--save
for the Gothic employment of alchemy and astrology--and now all the
discoveries and investigations of the laboratory are utilized and
embued with supernaturalism. Diabolic botany, psychological chemistry,
and supermortal biology appear in recent fiction. The countless arts
and sciences, acoustics, optics, dietetics, and what-not are levied
on for plots, while astronomy shows us wonders the astrologer never
dreamed of. The stars knew their place and kept it in early romance,
but they are given to strange aberration and unaccountable conduct in
late narration.
The futuristic fiction gives us return trips into time to come,
while we may be transported into the far past, as with Mark Twain's
Connecticut Yankee that visits King Arthur's Court. The extent to
which a homespun realist like Mark Twain uses the supernatural is
significant. No province or small corner of science has failed to
furnish material for the new ghostly fiction, and even the Fourth and
Fifth Dimensions are brought in as plot complications. Microscopes are
bewitched, mirrors are enchanted, and science reverses its own laws at
will to suit the weird demands.
Another modern material is the mechanistic. This is the age of
machinery, and even engines are run by ghost-power. Examples of the
mechanical spook are legion. There is the haunted automobile in
Harriet Prescott Spofford's story, _The Mad Lady_, that reproduces
through its speaking tube the long-dead voice, that runs away with its
occupants, reliving previous tragic experiences. A phantom Ford is an
idea combining romanticism with realism surely! In connection with
this extraordinary car is a house that erects itself out of dreams and
is substantial enough for living purposes. Other specimens are John
Kendrick Bangs's enchanted typewriter that clicks off psychograms in
the dark, between midnight and three o'clock in the morning; Frank
R. Stockton's machine for negativing gravity; Poe's balloon in which
Hans Pfaal makes his magic trip to the moon; Wells's new accelerator
that condenses and intensifies vital energy, enabling a man to crowd
the forces of a week into an hour of emergency, as likewise his time
machine that permits the inventor to project himself into the future
or the past at will, to spend a week-end in any era. The butterfly
in Hawthorne's story shows the spiritualization of machinery as the
poor artist of the beautiful conceived it, the delicate toy imbibing a
magnetism, a spiritual essence that gives it life and beauty and power
of voluntary motion. This etherealized machinery is manifest in modern
fiction as well as the diabolic constructions that wreck and ruin.
Inanimate objects have a strange power in later fiction as Poe's ship
that is said in certain seas to increase in size, as the trees told
of by Algernon Blackwood that grow in the picture. There are various
haunted portraits, as the picture of Dorian Gray that bears on its
face the lines of sin the living face does not show, and whose hands
are bloodstained when Dorian commits murder; and the painting told
of in De Morgan's _A Likely Story_, that overhears a quarrel between
an artist and his wife, the woman wrongly suspecting her husband
and leaving him. The picture relates the story to a man who has the
painting photographed and a copy sent to the wife. There is the haunted
tapestry[215] that is curiously related to the living and to the long
dead.
[215] In Poe's _Metzengerstein_.
Another aspect of the later as distinguished from the earlier occult
literature is the attention paid to ghostly children. Youngsters are
coming to the front of the stage everywhere nowadays, particularly in
America, so it is but natural that they should demand to be heard as
well as seen, in supernatural fiction. In the Gothic ghosts I found no
individualized children, and children in groups only twice. In one of
James Hogg's short novels a vicious man is haunted on his death-bed by
the specters of little ones dead because of him, but they are nameless
and indistinguishable. In Maturin's _The Albigenses_ a relentless
persecutor, while passing through a lonely forest, sees the phantoms of
those he has done to death, little children and babes at the breast,
as well as men and women. But here again they are not given separable
character, but are merely group figures, hence do not count.
There is a ghost-child mentioned in Hawthorne's _Blithedale Romance_,
but it is not until more recent fiction that children's ghosts enter
personated and individualized. The exquisitely shy little ones in
Kipling's _They_ are among the most wonderful of his child-creations,
very human and lovable. In a war story,[216] he shows us the phantoms
of several children whom the Germans have killed, natural youngsters
with appealing childish attributes, especially the small boy with his
pride in his first trousers. Arthur Machen[217] tells of a German
soldier who has crucified a child against the church door and is driven
to insanity by the baby spirit. Quiller-Couch[218] shows the specter
of a little girl that returns at night to do housework for the living,
visible only as two slender hands, who reminds us of the shepherd boy
Richard Middleton tells of, who having died because of his drunken
father's neglect, comes back to help him tend the sheep. Algernon
Blackwood relates the story of a little child who has been wont to pray
for the unquiet ghost of Petavel, a wicked man who haunts his house.
After the child is dead, the mother sees the little boy leading Petavel
by the hand, and says, "He's leading him into peace and safety. Perhaps
that's why God took him."
[216] _Swept and Garnished._
[217] In _The Monstrance_, another story of the war.
[218] In _A Pair of Hands_.
Richard Middleton's story of a little ghost-boy[219] is poignantly
pathetic. The little chap comes back to play with his grieving sister,
making his presence known by his gay feet dancing through the bracken,
and his joyous imitations of an automobile's chug-chug. Mary MacMillan
speaks of the spirits of little children that are "out earlier at
night than the older ghosts, you know, because they have to go to bed
earlier, being so young." Two very recent child ghosts are Wee Brown
Elsbeth whom Frances Hodgson Burnett shows to us, the wraith of a
little girl pitifully slain centuries ago by her father to save her
from torture, who comes back to play with a living playmate; and the
terrible revenge-ghost of the child slain by her stepfather, who comes
back to cause his death, whom Ellen Glasgow describes.
[219] _The Passing of Edward._
The spirits of children that never were enter into the late stories,
as in _The Children_, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, a story of confused
paranoia and supernaturalism. A woman grieves over the children she
never had till they assume personality and being for her. They become
so real that they are finally seen by other children who wish to play
with them. This reminds us of Thomas Bailey Aldrich's imagined child,
Miss Mehitabel's son. Algernon Blackwood[220] shows us a multitude of
baby spirits, with reaching arms, pattering steps, and lisping voices,
spirits of the unborn that haunt childless women. The room which they
enter seems sacred with the potentialities of motherhood, so that a
man sleeping there sees his own dead mother return to him among the
babes. These ghosts of little children that never were and never may be
are like the spirits of the yet to be born children in Maeterlinck's
dream-drama,[221] where, in the Land of the Future, the child-souls
wait for the angel to summon them to life. In these stories associating
children with the ghostly there is always a tender pathos, a sad beauty
that is appealing.
[220] In _Clairvoyance_.
[221] _The Blue Bird._
The spectral insect or animal is another innovation in recent fiction,
though there have been occasional cases before, as Vergil's _Culex_,
the story of the ghost of a gnat killed thoughtlessly coming back to
tell its murderer of its sufferings in the insect hades. Robert W.
Chambers shows us several ghostly insects, a death's head moth that
is a presager of disaster, and a butterfly that brings a murderer to
justice, while Frederick Swanson in a story[222] makes a spectral
insect a minister of fate. The most curdling example, however, of the
entomological supernaturalism, is Richard Marsh's novel, _The Beetle_,
a modernized version of the ancient superstitions of Egypt, whereby a
priestess of Isis continues her mysterious, horrid life alternately as
a human being and as a beetle. This lively scarab has mesmeric, magic
power over mortals and by its sensational shape-shifting furnishes
complicating terror to the plot.
[222] _The Ghost Moth._
The dog is frequently the subject of occult fiction, more so than any
other animal, perhaps because the dog seems more nearly human than any
save possibly the horse. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward shows us a
dog very much at home in heaven, while she has a ghost-dog on earth
coming back to march in a Decoration Day parade beside his master.
Isabel Howe Fisk in a drama shows the Archangel Raphael accompanied by
his dog, a cavortive canine, not apparently archangelic. Ambrose Bierce
evokes one terrible revenge-ghost, a dog that kills the murderer of his
master, while[223] Eden Phillpotts represents a pack of spectral dogs
that pursue the Evil One over the earth till the Judgment Day, each
being a lost soul. A young girl's little unbaptized baby is thought
to be one of the number. Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles
is a terrifying canine of legendary power. Kerfol by Edith Wharton
shows the ghosts of five dogs, each carefully individualized,--a
Chinese sleeve-dog, a rough brindled bulldog, a long-haired white
mongrel, a large white pointer with one brown ear, and a small black
grayhound. These specters of animals that have been killed by a jealous
husband--he had the cheerful habit of strangling every pet his wife
cared for and laying it without a word on her pillow--appear once a
year on the anniversary of the day on which the wife in desperation
slew him. They preserve a most undoglike silence and follow the
beholder with strange gaze. Kipling's dog Harvey is a supernatural
beast, but what he represents I have never been able to determine. _At
the Gate_ is a recent story, showing a great concourse of dogs just
outside the portals of heaven, unwilling to enter till their masters
come to join them.
[223] In _Another Little Heath Hound_.
The diabolic horse in Poe's _Metzengerstein_ is a curious composite of
metempsychosis, haunted inanimate object, and straight ghost, but at
all events sufficiently terrifying to the victim it pursued. Algernon
Blackwood in Wendigo has created a supernatural animal that flies
through the air and carries men away to insanity and death. Henry
Rideout shows the ghost of a white tiger, while there are assorted
elephant spooks, and Miss Burns in her studies in Shropshire folk-tales
relates stories of human beings whose ghosts appear as animals suited
to the personality of the deceased, as bears, bulls, hogs, and so
forth. That adds a new terror to death!
* * * * *
Not only are new materials introduced in the later fiction of the
uncanny but new types are stressed. In addition to the weird stories
told with direct aim and art--ghosts for ghosts' sake--there are tales
where the supernatural element is of secondary importance, being
used to teach some truth or ridicule some fallacy. The symbolistic,
humorous, and satiric methods abound in modern occult fiction and
when well done have a double effect, that of primary supernatural
impressiveness, and, in addition, of the subtler purposes behind the
stories. Moralized legends, spiritual allegories such as Hawthorne
wrote with consummate art, have continued to the present and form
a contrast to the crude machinery of Gothic horrors. The delicacy
of suggestion, the power of hinted ghostliness, though manifest in
Shakespeare, are really modern achievements, for no one save him
attained to them in earlier art. Mystic poetic fiction, spiritual
symbolism appears in much of the modern unearthly writing. In certain
cases it is interesting to note the change of old mythological stories
into moral allegory. The plays and the stories of Lord Dunsany are
peculiarly symbolic and have the force of antique mythology made
instant and real. Yet they have a distinctive touch all their own.
For instance, the story of the king who goes over the world seeking
his lost yesterday, his dear past, who is told by the weird keeper
of the bygone years that he cannot have it back, no not one golden
second, has a delicate pathos of poetry. When the mournful king has
gone back to his palace, a hoar harper comes who plays for him, and
lo! to the strings of the harp have clung the golden seconds of his
happiest hours, so that he lives them over again while the music
lasts. _The Book of the Serpent_ tells symbolic stories that are poems
in prose, fantastic fables. The Creator is making experiments with
dust-heaps, while the Serpent, the Turtle, and the Grasshopper look
on, ask questions, and offer comments. The Serpent trails all through
the dust-heap meant as stuff for artists, and the Maker drops a tear
in that whereof He means to make mothers. He experiments with monkeys
trying to learn how best to make man, and after man is complete, He
makes woman. The stories of Oscar Wilde have, some of them, a beauty
like that of some antique illuminated missal, with its jeweled words,
its mystic figures. Wilde's ornate style, prose that trembles on the
verge of poetry, full of passion and color and light, makes one think
of his own words in _The Nightingale and the Rose_, where the poet's
song was "builded of music by moonlight and stained with his own
heart's blood."
The delicate suggestion of the unearthly, the element of suspense that
gives the sense of the supernatural to that which may be mortal, is
seen in such stories as _A Dream of Provence_, by Frederick Wedmore.
The ancient belief that the soul may return to the body within a few
days after death forms the basis for this dream-poem in prose. It
shows the soul on tiptoe for the Unseen, with a love transcending the
barriers of the grave, revealing idyllic sorrow in a father's love that
denies death, and expresses the sense of expectancy in the hope of a
miracle, with a beauty that is almost unbearable. Something of the same
theme, of a father's waiting by his daughter's grave to hear the loved
voice once more, is expressed in Andreyev's story.[224] But here there
is horror and remorse instead of holy love. When the father cries out,
the silence that issues from the grave is more terrible than ghostly
sounds would be, more dreadful in its supermortal suggestion.
[224] _Silence._
* * * * *
The purely humorous supernaturalism is essentially a new thing. The old
religious dramas had used comic devils, and Peele's Ghost of Jack is
supposed to be humorous, but not at all in the modern sense. There was
nothing in early drama or fiction like the rollicking fun of Richard
Middleton's Ghost Ship, or Frank R. Stockton's spectral humorists. The
work of John Kendrick Bangs illustrates the free and easy manner of the
moderns toward ghosts, picturing them in unconventional situations and
divesting them of all their ancient dignity. He shows us the wraith
of the maiden who drowned herself in a fit of pique, for which she
is punished by having to haunt the ancestral house as a shower-bath.
His spectral cook of Bangletop is an original revenge-ghost, with a
villainous inversion of h's, who haunts an estate because a medieval
baron discharged her without wages. His convivial spooks in their ghost
club, his astrals who play pranks on mortals, and their confrères are
examples of the modern flippancy toward supernaturals.
The satirical use of supernaturalism is also new. Late literature
laughs at everything, with a daring familiarity undreamed of before,
save in sporadic cases. The devil has been an ancient subject for
laughter, but recent fiction ridicules him still more, so that we have
scant respect for him, while the ghost, formerly a personage held in
great respect, now comes in for his share of ragging. No being is
too sacred to escape the light arrows of fun. Heaven is satirically
exploited, and angels, saints, and even Deity have become subjects
for jesting, conventionalized with the mother-in-law, the tenderfoot,
the Irishman, and so forth. There is a considerable body of anecdotal
literature of the supernatural, showing to what extent the levity of
treatment has gone. Various aspects of mortal life are satirized, as
in Inez Haynes Gilmore's _Angel Island_, which is a campaign document
for woman's suffrage. Satiric supernaturalism is employed to drive home
many truths, to puncture conceits of all kinds, and when well done is
effective, for laughter is a clever weapon.
The advance of the later supernatural fiction over the earlier is
nowhere seen more distinctly than in the increased effectiveness with
which it manages the mechanics of emotion, its skill in selecting and
elaborating the details by which terror and awe are produced. The
present-day artist of the uncanny knows how to strike the varied tones
of supernaturalism, the shrill notes of fear, the deep diapason of awe,
the crashing chords of horror. The skillful writer chooses with utmost
care the seemingly trivial details that go to make up the atmosphere of
the unearthly. Shakespeare was a master of that, but none other of his
time. The knocking at the gate in _Macbeth_, for instance, is a perfect
example of the employment of a natural incident to produce an effect
of the supernatural, as De Quincey has pointed out in his essay on the
subject.
The Gothic novel relied largely for its impressiveness on emphasizing
ghostly scenes by representing aspects of weather to harmonize with
the emotions of the characters. This was overworked in terror fiction,
and while it still possesses power it is a much less common method of
technique than it used to be. Poe's introductory paragraph in _The
Fall of the House of Usher_ is a notable example of skill in creating
atmosphere of the supernatural by various details including phenomena
of weather, and Hardy shows special power in harmonizing nature to the
moods and purposes of his characters. Yet many a modern story produces
a profound sense of awe, and purges the soul by means of terror with no
reference at all to foreboding weather. However, the allusions now made
are more skillful and show more selective power than of old.
Gothic fiction had much to say of melancholy birds that circled
portentously over ancient castles filled with gloom and ghosts, but
they were generic and not individual specimens. The fowl was always
spoken of as "a bird of prey," "a night bird," "a bat," "an owl," or
by some such vague term. Natural history has become more generally
known since those times and writers of to-day introduce their ominous
birds with more definiteness and appropriateness. The repulsive bat
that clings to the window ledge in Bram Stoker's novel is a vampire,
a symbol of the whole horrible situation, as the kite that soars
menacingly overhead in another of his novels is individualized and
becomes a definite thing of terror. Poe's raven is vastly more a bird
of evil than any specimen in the Gothic aviary. Robert W. Chambers
brings in a cormorant several times as a portent of ghostly disaster,
particularly foreboding when it turns toward the land. "On the dark
glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea, sat a
cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward heaven."
There is in recent fiction no bird more dreadful in import than the
belled buzzard that Irvin Cobb makes the leading figure in his story by
that name. This is an excellent example of the use of the natural to
produce terror and awe, for the murderer sees in the bird a minister of
fate, and the faint tinkle of its bell as it soars over the marsh where
the body lies buried paralyzes him with horror. At last he can bear no
more, and hearing it, as he thinks, close at hand, he shrieks out his
confession,--only to find this time that it is not the belled buzzard
at all that he hears, but only an old cowbell that a little negro child
has picked up in the barnyard!
Robert W. Chambers in his early stories contrives to give varying
supernatural effects by descriptions of shadows as symbolic of life
and character. He speaks of shadows of spirits or of persons fated to
disaster as white; again his supernatural shadows may be gray--gray
is a favored shade for ghostly effect whether for witches or for
phantoms--and sometimes they are perfectly black, to indicate differing
conditions of destiny. Quiller-Couch has a strange little allegory,
_The Magic Shadow_, and other writers have used similar methods to
produce uncanny effects.
The Gothic romance made much use of portents of the supernatural, which
later fiction does as well, but differently and with greater skill. The
modern stories for the most part abandon the conventional portents,
the dear old clock forever striking twelve or one--there was no
Gothic castle so impoverished as to lack such ghostly horologue!--the
abbey bell that tolls at touch of spirit hands or wizard winds, the
statuesque nose-bleed, the fire that burns blue at approach of a
specter, and so forth. The later story is more selective in its aids
to ghostly effect, and adapts the means desired to each particular
case, so that it hits the mark. For instance, the sardonic laughter
that sounds as the burglars are cracking the gate of heaven to get in,
and imagining what they will find, is prophetic of the emptiness, the
nothingness, that meets their astounded gaze when they are within.
Ambrose Bierce in some of his stories describes the repulsiveness of
the fleshly corpse, reanimated by the spirit, perhaps not the spirit
belonging to it, with a loathly effect more awful than any purely
psychic phantom could produce, which reminds us somewhat of the corpse
come to life in Thomas Lovell Beddoes's _Death's Jest Book_.
The horrors of invisibility in modern fiction avail to give a ghastly
chill to the soul that visible apparitions rarely impart. Likewise the
effect of mystery, of the incalculable element, in giving an impression
of supernaturalism is a recognized method of technique in many stories,
as the minister's black veil in Hawthorne's symbolic story. The
unspeakable revolting suggestion in Edith Wharton's _The Eyes_, where
a man is haunted by two hideous eyes that "have the physical effect
of a bad smell, whose look left a smear like a snail," is built up
with uncommon art. We do not realize how much is due to insanity and
how much to the supernatural, when, after telling the story of his
obsession, his fears that as a climax he will become like those Eyes,
the man suddenly sees his reflection in the mirror and meets their
dreadful gaze. "He and the image confronted each other with a glare
of slowly gathering hate!" Mention might be made of an incident in a
recently published literary drama, where a man seeks over the world for
the unknown woman with whom he has fallen in love, and on his calling
aloud in question as to who she is, "the grave, with nettle-bearded
lips replied, 'It is I, Death!'" These are only suggestions of
numberless instances that might be given of a modern technique of
supernaturalism that surpasses anything in Gothic fiction.
The effectiveness of modern ghostly stories is aided by the
suggestiveness of the unearthly given by the use of "sensitives,"
animals or persons that are peculiarly alert to the occult impressions.
We see in many stories that children perceive the supernatural
presences more quickly than adults, as in Mrs. Oliphant's story of the
ghost returning to right a wrong, trying strenuously to make herself
known to the grown person and realized only by a little child. In
Belasco's play the little boy is the first and for a long time the only
one to sense the return of Peter Grimm. In Maeterlinck's _The Blind_,
the baby in arms is aware of the unearthly presences better than the
men and women. Sometimes the sensitive is a blind person, as the old
grandfather in another of Maeterlinck's short plays, who is conscious
of the approaching Death before any of the others, or blind Anna in
D'Annunzio's drama, _The Dead City_.
Animals are quick to perceive supernatural manifestations. Cats
in fiction are shown as being at ease in the presence of ghosts
perhaps because of their uncanny alliance with witches, while dogs
and horses go wild with fear. This is noticed in many stories, as in
Bulwer-Lytton's story of the haunted house where the dog dies of
terror in the face of the ghostly phenomena. The Psychic Doctor told of
in Blackwood's uncanny stories, who goes to a house possessed by evil
spirits, takes with him a cat and a dog which by their difference of
action reveal to him the presence of the spirits long before they are
visualized for him.
In general, there is more power of suggestion in the later ghostly
stories than in the earlier. The art is more subtle, the technique more
skillfully studied, more artfully accidental.
There is in modern fiction, notably the work of Poe, and that of many
recent writers, Russian, French, and German as well as English, a type
of supernaturalism that is closely associated with insanity. One may
not tell just where the line is drawn, just how much of the element
of the uncanny is the result of the broodings of an unbalanced brain,
and how much is real ghostliness. Poe's studies of madness verge on
the unearthly, as do Maupassant's, Hoffmann's, and others. Josephine
Daskam Bacon illustrates this genre in a recent volume of stories, _The
Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchion_, the plots centering round instances of
paranoia occurring in the practice of a famous alienist,--yet they are
_not paranoia alone_! One instance is of a young girl who is haunted
by the ghost of a nurse who has died because given the wrong medicine
by mistake. She is on the border-line of insanity when her lover cries
aloud that he would take the curse on himself for her if he could,
which, by some unknown psychic law, does effect a transference which
frees her and obsesses him. Another is that of a man in the insane
asylum, who recognizes in a mysterious housekeeper the spirit of his
wife, who comes from the grave to keep him company and vanishes on the
day of his death. These are curious analyses of the _idée fixe_ in
its effect on the human mind, of insanity as a cause or effect of the
supernatural. Barry Pain's _Celestial Grocery_ is a recent example,
a story of a man whose madness carries him to another planet, showing
him inverted aspects of life, where emotions are the only real things,
all else but shadows. Du Maurier's pathetic novel portraying the
passion and anguish and joy of Peter Ibbetson that touches the thin
line between sanity and madness, showing in his dream-metempsychosis
a power to relive the past and even to live someone else's life, is a
striking example. One interesting aspect of that story is the point
where the spirit of Mary changes from the dream-lover of twenty-eight
to the ghost of the woman of fifty-two, since she has died and can no
more come to her lover as she once did, but must come as her own
phantom. There are extraordinary effects of insanity associated with
the supernatural in the work of Ambrose Bierce, of Arthur Machen and
others of the modern school. Italian literature shows some significant
instances in Fogazzaro's _The Woman_ and D'Annunzio's _Sogno d'un
Mattino di Primavera_. As Lord Dunsany says of it, "Who can say of
insanity,--whether it be divine or of the Pit?"
* * * * *
We have noticed in preceding chapters two aspects of modern
supernaturalism as distinguished from the Gothic,--the giving of
cumulative and more terrible power to ghostly beings, and on the
other hand the leveling influence that makes them more human. The
access of horror and unearthly force as shown in the characters
described by certain writers is significant. In the work of Bierce,
Machen, Blackwood, Stoker, and others supernaturalism is raised to
the nth power and every possible thrill is employed. The carrion
ghosts of Bierce, animated by malignant foreign spirits, surpass the
charnel shudders produced by the Gothic. Algernon Blackwood's Psychic
Invasions, where localities rather than mere apartments or houses alone
are haunted, diabolized by undying evil influences with compound
power, his Elementals that control the forces of wind and wave and fire
to work their demon will, are unlike anything that the early terror
novel conceived of. Horace Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe knew no thrills
like those of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula who is an immemorial evil,
a vampire and werewolf as well as man, with power to change himself
into a vampire bat or animal of prey at will. _The Unburied_, by
Josephine Daskam Bacon, is more horrific than any mere revenge ghost,
however much it shrieked "Vindicta!" The diabolism in Arthur Machen's
work reeks obscurely of a Pit more horrible than epic or drama has
portrayed. In general, many of the later ghostly characters are more
complex, more intense in evil than the Gothic.
While it is true that certain writers show a tendency to create
supernatural characters having an excess of evil power beyond the
previous uncanny beings, on the other hand there is an equally strong
and significant tendency to reduce the ghostly beings nearer to the
human. Fiction here, as frequently, seems ahead of general belief, and
refuses to believe in the altogether evil. Ghosts, angels, witches,
devils, werewolves, and so forth are now made more human, more like to
man, yet without losing any of their ancient power to thrill. Ghosts
in late literature have more of the mortal characteristics than ever
before, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter. They look more
human, more normal, they are clad in everyday garments of varied
colors, from red shirts and khaki riding-habits to ball-gowns,--though
gray seems the favored shade for shades as well as witches,--and they
have lost that look of pallor that distinguished early phantoms. Now
they are more than merely vaporous projections as they used to be, more
than merely phantasmogenetic apparitions,--but are healthy, red-blooded
spooks. They are not tongue-tied as their ancestors were, but are very
chatty, giving forth views on everything they are interested in, from
socialism to the present war. And their range of interests has widened
immeasurably. It would seem that the literacy test has been applied to
ghosts in recent fiction. Modern specters are so normal in appearance
that often no one recognizes them as ghosts,--as in Edith Wharton's
story _Afterwards_, where the peculiar thing about the apparition
haunting a certain house is that it is not till long afterwards that
one knows it was a ghost. The man in the gray suit whom the wife thinks
a chance caller is the spirit of a man not yet dead, a terrible living
revenge-ghost, who finally takes his victim mysteriously away with him.
Modern ghosts have both motions and emotions like men, hence mortals
are coming to regard them more sympathetically, to have more of a
fellow-feeling for them.
Likewise the angels are now only a very little higher if any than men.
Seraphs are democratic, and angels have developed a sense of humor
that renders them more interesting than they used to be. The winged
being that H. G. Wells's vicar goes gunning for is a charming youth
with a naïve satire, as the angels in Mark Twain's story of heaven
are realistically mortal and masculine in tastes. They care little
for harps and crowns, grow fidgety under excess of rest, and engage
in all sorts of activities, retaining their individual tastes. James
Stephens's archangel, seraph, and cherub are chatty, cordial souls with
an avidity for cold potatoes and Irish companionship.
The demons as well have felt the same leveling influence experienced by
the ghosts and the angels. Only, in their case, the thing is reversed,
and they are raised to the grade of humanity. We are coming to see,
in modern fiction, at least, that the devil is not really black,
only a pleasant mottled gray like ourselves. Satan, in Mark Twain's
posthumous novel,[225] is an affable young fellow, claiming to be the
nephew and namesake of the personage best known by that name. Bernard
Shaw's devil is of a Chesterfieldian courtesy, willing to speed the
parting as to welcome the coming guest. I have found no comic use of
the werewolf or of the vampire, though there are several comic witch
stories, yet all these personages are humanized in modern fiction.
We feel in some recent supernatural stories a sense of a continuing
current of life. These ghosts, devils, witches, angels, and so forth
are too real to be cut short by an author's _Finis_.
[225] _The Mysterious Stranger._
Another aspect of the leveling influence is seen in the more than
natural power of motion, feeling, and intelligence given to inanimate
objects, machinery, plants, and animals, in late literature. The idea
of endowing inanimate figures with life and personality is seen several
times in Hawthorne's stories, as his snow image, Drowne's wooden image,
the vivified scarecrow, Feathertop, that the witch makes. The clay
figures that Satan in Mark Twain's novel models, endues with life, then
destroys with the fine, casual carelessness of a god, remind one of an
incident from mythology. The statue in Edith Wharton's _The Duchess at
Prayer_ that changes its expression, showing on its marble face through
a century the loathing and horror that the living countenance wore, or
Lord Dunsany's jade idol[226] that comes with stony steps across the
desolate moor to exact vengeance on four men helpless in its presence,
has a more intense thrill than Otranto's peripatetic statue. Lord
Dunsany's _The Gods of the Mountains_, of which Frank Harris says, "It
is the only play which has meant anything to me in twenty years," shows
an inexorable fatality as in the Greek drama.
[226] In _A Night at an Inn_.
Science is revealing wonderful facts and fiction is quick to realize
the possibilities for startling situations in every field. So diabolic
botanical specimens, animals endowed with human or more than human
craft--sometimes gifted with immortality as well--add a new interest
to uncanny fiction. And the new machines that make all impossibilities
come to pass inspire a significant class of supernatural stories. In
general, a new force is given to all things, to raise them to the level
of the human.
In the same way nature is given a new power and becomes man's
equal,--sometimes far his superior--in thought and action. The
maelstrom in Poe's story is more than merely a part of the setting,--it
is a terrible force in action. Algernon Blackwood stresses this
variously in his stories, as where Egypt is shown as a vital presence
and power, or where the "goblin trees" are as awful as any of the
other characters of evil, or in the wind and flame on the mountain
that are elements of supernatural power, with a resistless lure for
mortals, or in the vampire soil that steals a man's strength. This may
be illustrated as well from the drama, as in Maeterlinck's where Death
is the silent, invisible, yet dominant force, or in Synge's where the
sea is a terrible foe, lying in wait for man, or in August Stramm's
_The Daughter of the Moor_, where the moor is a compelling character
of evil. Gothic fiction did associate the phenomena of nature with
the moods of the action, yet in a less effective way. The aspects of
nature in recent literature have been raised to the level of humanity,
becoming mortal or else diabolic or divine.
In general, in modern fiction, man now makes his supernatural
characters in his own image. Ghosts, angels, devils, witches,
werewolves, are humanized, made like to man in appearance, passions,
and powers. On the other hand, plants, inanimate objects, and animals,
as well as the phenomena of nature, are raised to the human plane
and given access of power. This leveling process democratizes the
supernatural elements and tends to make them almost equal.
* * * * *
The present revival of interest in the supernatural and its appearance
in literature are as marked in the drama as in fiction or poetry. Mr.
E. C. Whitmore, in a recently published volume on _The Supernatural in
Tragedy_, has ably treated the subject, especially in the Greek classic
period and the Elizabethan age in England. His thesis is that the
supernatural is most frequently associated with tragedy, and is found
where tragedy is at its best. This may be true of earlier periods of
the tragic drama, yet it would be going too far to make the assertion
of the drama of the present time. The occult makes its appearance to a
considerable extent now in melodrama and even in comedy, though with no
decrease in the frequency and effectiveness of its use in tragedy. This
only illustrates the widening of its sphere and its adaptability to
varying forms of art.
A brief survey of some of the plays produced in the last few years,
most of them being seen in New York, will illustrate the extent to
which the ghostly motifs are used on the stage of to-day. Double
personality is represented[227] by Edward Locke, in a play which
is said by critics to be virtually a dramatization of Dr. Morton
Prince's study,[228] where psychological apparatus used in laboratory
experiments to expel the evil intruder from the girl, a chronoscope, a
dynograph, revolving mirrors, make the setting seem truly psychical.
But the most dramatic instance of the kind, of course, is the
dramatization of Dr. Jekyll's alter ego.
[227] In _The Case of Becky_.
[228] _The Disassociation of a Personality._
The plays of Charles Rann Kennedy[229] and Jerome K. Jerome[230] are
akin to the old mystery plays in that they personate divinity and
show the miracle of Christly influence on sinful hearts. Augustus
Thomas[231] and Edward Milton Royle[232] introduce hypnotism as the
basis of complication and denouement. Supernatural healing, miraculous
intervention of divine power, occur in plays by William Vaughan
Moody,[233] Björnson,[234] and George M. Cohan.[235] Another[236]
turns on converse with spirits, as does Belasco's _Return of Peter
Grimm_, while a war play by Vida Sutton[237] shows four ghosts on the
stage at once, astonishing phantoms who do not realize that they are
dead. Others[238] have for their themes miracles of faith and rescue
from danger, though the first-named play satirizes such belief and the
latter is a piece of Catholic propaganda.
[229] _The Servant in the House._
[230] _The Passing of the Third Floor Back._
[231] In _The Witching Hour_.
[232] In _The Unwritten Law_.
[233] _The Faith Healer._
[234] _Beyond Their Strength._
[235] _The Miracle Man._
[236] _The Spiritualist._
[237] _Kingdom Come._
[238] As _The Eternal Mystery_, by George Jean Nathan, and _The
Rosary_.
_Magic_, by G. K. Chesterton, introduces supernatural forces whereby
strange things are made to happen, such as the changing of the electric
light from green to blue. _Peter Ibbetson_, the dramatization of Du
Maurier's novel, shows dream-supernaturalism, and various other psychic
effects in a delicate and distinctive manner. And _The Willow Tree_, by
Benrimo and Harrison Rhodes, is built upon an ancient Japanese legend,
relating a hamadryad myth with other supermortal phantasies, such as
representing a woman's soul as contained in a mirror.
We have fairy plays by J. M. Barrie,[239] W. B. Yeats,[240] and
Maeterlinck,[241] and the mermaid has even been staged,[242] Bernard
Shaw shows us the devil in his own home town, while Hauptmann gives us
Hannele's visions of heaven. The Frankenstein theme is used to provoke
laughter mixed with thrills.[243] Owen and Robert Davis[244] symbolize
man's better angel, while _The Eternal Magdalene_, a dream-drama, shows
another piece of symbolic supernaturalism. Lord Dunsany's plays have
already been mentioned.
[239] _Peter Pan._
[240] _The Land of Heart's Desire._
[241] _The Blue Bird._
[242] _The Mermaid._
[243] In _The Last Laugh_, by Paul Dickey and Charles W.
Goddard.
[244] In _Any House_.
Yet the drama, though showing a definite revival of the supernatural,
and illustrating various forms of it, is more restricted than fiction.
Many aspects of the occult appear and the psychic drama is popular,
but the necessities of presentation on the stage inevitably bar many
forms of the ghostly art that take their place naturally in fiction.
The closet drama does not come under this limitation, for in effect
it is almost as free as fiction to introduce mystical, symbolic, and
invisible presences. The closet drama is usually in poetic form and
poetry is closer akin to certain forms of the supernatural than is
prose, which makes their use more natural.
The literary playlet, so popular just now, uses the ghostly in many
ways. One shows the Archangel Raphael with his dog, working miracles,
while another includes in its _dramatis personæ_ a faun and a moon
goddess who insists on giving the faun a soul, at which he wildly
protests. As through suffering and human pain he accepts the gift, a
symbolic white butterfly poises itself on his uplifted hand, then flits
toward Heaven. In another, Padraic yields himself to the fairies' power
as the price of bread for the girl he loves. Theodore Dreiser's short
plays bring in creatures impossible of representation on the stage,
"persistences" of fish, animals, and birds, symbolic Shadows, a Blue
Sphere, a Power of Physics, Nitrous Acid, a Fast Mail (though trains
have been used on the stage), and so forth.
Instances from recent German drama might be given, as the work of
August Stramm, who like Rupert Brooke and the ill-starred poets of
the Irish revolution has fallen as a sacrifice to the war. An article
in the _Literary Digest_ says of Stramm that "he felt behind all the
beauty of the world its elemental passions and believed these to be the
projections of human passions in the waves of wind and light and water,
in flames of earth." He includes among his characters[245] a Spider,
Nightingales, Moonlight, Wind, and Blossoms. Carl Hauptmann[246]
likewise shows the elemental forces of nature and of super-nature. On
the battlefield of death the dead arise to join in one dreadful chant
of hate against their enemies.
[245] In _Sancta Susanna_.
[246] In _The Dead Are Singing_.
Leonid Andreyev's striking play[247] might be mentioned as an example
from the Russian. King-Hunger, Death, and Old time Bell-Ringer, are
the principal actors, while the human beings are all deformed and
distorted, "one continuous malicious monstrosity bearing only a remote
likeness to man." The starving men are slain, but over the field of
the dead the motionless figure of Death is seen silhouetted. But the
dead arise, and a dull, distant, manifold murmur, as if underground, is
heard, "We come! Woe unto the victorious!"
[247] _King-Hunger._
But as I have said, these are literary dramas, impossible of
presentation on the stage, so that they are judged by literary rather
than dramatic standards. For the most part fiction is infinitely freer
in its range and choice of subjects from the supernatural than is the
drama. The suggestive, symbolic, mystic effects which could not in
any way be presented on the stage, but which are more truly of the
province of poetry, are used in prose that has a jeweled beauty and a
melody as of poetry. Elements such as invisibility, for instance, and
various occult agencies may be stressed and analyzed in fiction as
would be impossible on the stage. The close relation between insanity
and the weird can be much more effectively shown in the novel or short
story than in the drama, as the forces of mystery, the incalculable
agencies can be thus better emphasized. Ghosts need to be seen on the
stage to have the best effect, even if they are meant as "selective
apparitions" like Banquo, and if thus seen they are too corporeal for
the most impressive influence, while in fiction they can be suggested
with delicate reserve. Supernatural presences that could not be imaged
on the boards may be represented in the novel or story, as Blackwood's
Elementals or Psychic Invasions. How could one stage such action,
for instance, as his citizens turning into witch-cats or his Giant
Devil looming mightily in the heavens? Likewise in fiction the full
presentation of scientific supernaturalism can be achieved, which would
be impossible on the stage.
In conclusion, it might be said that fiction offers the most
popular present vehicle for expression of the undoubtedly reviving
supernaturalism in English literature. And fiction is likewise the best
form, that which affords the more varied chances for effectiveness.
The rising tide of the unearthly in art shows itself in all literary
forms, as dramatic, narrative, and lyric poetry, with a few epics--in
the playlet as in the standard drama, in the short story as in the
novel. It manifests itself in countless ways in current literature and
inviting lines of investigation suggest themselves with reference to
various aspects of its study. The supernatural as especially related to
religion offers an interesting field for research. The miracles from
the Bible are often used, as in Lew Wallace's _Ben Hur_, and Christ
is introduced in other times and places, as the war novel,[248] or in
Marie Corelli's satire on Episcopacy,[249] where the cardinal finds the
Christ child outside the cathedral. The more than mortal elements, as
answers to prayer, the experience of conversion, spiritual miracles,
and so forth, are present to a considerable extent in modern fiction.
Two very recent novels of importance base their plots on the miraculous
in religion, _The Brook Kerith_, by George Moore, and _The Leather-wood
God_, by William Dean Howells. I have touched on this aspect of the
subject in a previous article.[250]
[248] _The Second Coming._
[249] _The Master Christian._
[250] "Religion in Recent American Novels," in the January,
1914, _Review and Expositor_.
One might profitably trace out the appearances of the ghostly in
modern poetry, or one might study its manifestations in the late
drama, including melodrama and comedy as well as tragedy. This present
treatment of the supernatural in modern English fiction makes no
pretensions to being complete. It is meant to be suggestive rather than
exhaustive, and I shall be gratified if it may help to arouse further
interest in a significant and vital phase of our literature and lead
others to pursue the investigations.
INDEX
A
_Accusing Spirit, The_, 21
_Address to the De'il, An_, 131
Æsop, _Fables_, 231
_Affair of Dishonor, An_, 91
_Afterwards_, 102, 202
_Afterwards_, 302
Ahasuerus, 176
_Ahrinziman_, 88, 183, 213
Aids to Gothic Effect, 36 _et seq._
Ainsworth, W. H., 181
_Albigenses, The_, 9, 11, 94, 168, 288
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 63
---- _Miss Mehitabel's Son_, 68, 85, 287
---- _Père Antoine's Date Palm_, 63
---- _Queen of Sheba, The_, 122
_Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, 232
_Amboyna_, 41
Amiel, Friedrich, 144
_Among the Immortals_, 217
_Amos Judd_, 40, 257
_Amphitryon_, 122
_Amycus and Celestine_, 63
_Anansi Stories_, 232
_Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_, 229
_Ancient Records of the Abbey of St. Oswyth_, 9, 21
_Ancient Sorceries_, 65, 105, 124, 153, 194
Andersen, Hans Christian, 155, 176, 233
---- _The Little Mermaid_, 155, 176, 233
Andreyev, Leonidas, 69
---- _King-Hunger_,308
---- _Red Laugh, The_, 69
---- _Silence_, 293
_Angel Island_, 294
_Angel Message, An_, 207
_Ankerwich Castle_, 34
_Another Little Heath Hound_, 290
_Anti-Jacobin, The_, 51
_Any House_, 307
Apuleius, Lucius, _Metamorphoses_, 145
Applier, Arthur, _Vendetta of the Jungles, A_, 168
_Arabian Nights' Tales_, 252
Architecture, Gothic, 8 _et seq._
_Ariel, or the Invisible Monitor_, 24
Arnim, Achim von, _Die Beiden Waldemar_, 122
Arnold, Edwin Lester, _Strange Adventures of Phra, the
Phoenician, The_, 188
Arnold, Matthew:
---- _Forsaken Merman, The_, 155,233
---- _Neckan, The_, 155
_Arrest, An_, 85
_Arthur and Gorlogon_, 30
_Arthur Mervyn_, 35
_Artist of the Beautiful, The_, 287
_Astral Bridegroom, An_, 207
_At the End of the Passage_, 120
_At the Gate_, 201, 291
Auerbach, Berthold, 176
Austen, Jane, 47, 49
---- _Northanger Abbey_, 47, 51
Austin, Alfred, _Peter Rugg, the Missing Man_, 189
Austin, M. H., _Readjustment_, 107
_Avengers, The_, 56
_Ayesha_, 183, 193
B
Bacon, Josephine Daskam, 94
---- _Children, The_, 289
---- _Heritage, The_, 94
---- _Miracle, The_, 254
---- _Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchion, The_, 254, 299
---- _Unburied, The_, 66, 301
---- _Warning, The_, 276
Bahr-geist, The, 115, 225
Balzac, Honoré de, 182
---- _Elixir of Life, The_, 60
---- _Magic Skin, The_, 60
---- _Melmoth Réconcilié_, 59
---- _Unknown Masterpiece, The_, 60
Bangs, John Kendrick, 112, 293
---- _Enchanted Typewriter, The_, 207, 286
---- _House-boat on the Styx, The_, 112, 216
---- _Pursuit of the House-boat, The_, 112, 187, 216
---- _Rebellious Heroine, The_, 197
---- _Speck on the Lens, The_, 255
---- _Thurlow's Christmas Story_, 121
---- _Water-Ghost and Others, The_, 112
Banshee, The, 99
_Bardic Stories of Ireland_, 243
Baring-Gould, S., 181
---- _Eve_, 246
Barker, Elsa, 206, 207
---- _Letters from a Living Dead Man_, 207
---- _War Letters from a Living Dead Man_, 206, 292
Barker, Granville, 123, 198
---- _Souls on Fifth_, 123, 198, 215
Barrett, Eaton Stannard, 8, 49
---- _Heroine, The_, 49, 50
Barrie, J. M., 240
---- _Little White Bird, The_, 240
---- _Peter Pan_, 240, 306
Baynim, John, 246
Baynim, Michael, 246
Beckford, William, 17
---- _Vathek_, 8, 17, 22, 25, 29, 33, 37, 70
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 53, 297
---- _Death's Jest Book_, 53, 115, 297
_Beetle, The_, 290
Belasco, David, _Return of Peter Grimm, The_, 201, 298
_Beleaguered City, The_, 211
Bellamy, Edward, 189
---- _Looking Backward_, 189, 262
_Belled Buzzard, The_, 296
Benet, William Rose, _Man with the Pigeons, The_, 218
_Ben Hur_, 309
Bennett, Arnold, _Ghost, The_, 117
_Beowulf_, 281
_Berenice_, 62
Besant, Walter, _Ivory Gate, The_, 122
_Betrothed, The_, 225
_Beyond Their Strength_, 306
Bierce, Ambrose, 53, 61, 109, 116, 290, 300
---- _Arrest, An_, 85
---- _Damned Thing, The_, 61, 92
---- _Death of Halpin Frazer, The_, 110, 192
---- _Eyes of the Panther, The_, 170, 271
---- _Middle Toe of the Right Foot, The_, 61, 92
---- _Mysterious Disappearances_, 259
---- _Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The_, 275
---- _Two Military Executions_, 116
---- _Vine on the House, A_, 90
Biology, Supernatural, 270
Biology, Supernatural in Gothicism, 34
_Birthmark, The_, 185, 270
_Bisclavret_, 30, 168
Bisland, Elizabeth, _The Case of John Smith_, 215
Björnson, Björnstjerne, 306
---- _Beyond Their Strength_, 306
_Black Magic_, 146
_Black Monk, The_, 69
_Black Patch, The_, 255
Blackmore, R. D., _Lorna Doone_, 226
Blackwood, Algernon, 68, 76, 79, 85, 96, 105, 166, 171, 235, 273,
285, 287, 300, 304, 309
---- _Ancient Sorceries_, 65, 124, 153, 194
---- _Camp of the Dog, The_, 170
---- _Clairvoyance_, 289
---- _Empty House, The_, 98, 117
---- _Glamour of the Snow, The_, 231
---- _Haunted Island, A_, 114
---- _Heath Fire, The_, 231
---- _Human Chord, The_, 275
---- _Jules Le Vallon_, 194
---- _Keeping His Promise_, 98
---- _Man from the Gods, The_, 121
---- _Man Whom the Trees Loved, The_, 230, 272
---- _Nemesis of the Fire, A_, 98
---- _Old Clothes_, 124, 194
---- _Psychic Invasion, A_, 106
---- _Regeneration of Lord Ernie, The_, 230
---- _Return, The_, 123, 198
---- _Sand_, 230
---- _Sea Fit, The_, 230
---- _Secret Worship_, 105, 117, 137
---- _Temptation of the Clay, The_, 231
---- _Terror of the Twins, The_, 122, 192
---- _Transfer, The_, 164
---- _Wave, The_, 194
---- _With Intent to Steal_, 62, 117
Bleek, W. H. I., _Reynard, the Fox, in South Africa_, 232
_Blind, The_, 64, 298
_Blithedale Romance, The_, 188, 199
_Blue-Bird, The_, 64, 278, 280, 306
_Blue Roses_, 268
_Blue Sphere, The_, 208, 278
Blythe, James, _Mine Host and the Witch_, 148
_Bon Bon_, 95, 141
_Bones, Sanders, and Another_, 156
Bonhote, Mrs., 20
---- _Bungay Castle_, 20, 45
_Book of the Serpent_, 292
_Book of Wonder, The_, 245
_Borderland, The_, 124
Botany, Supernatural, 272 _et seq._
_Bottle Imp, The_, 70
Bottomley, Gordon, 65, 153, 285
---- _Crier by Night, The_, 65, 238
---- _Riding to Lithend_, 152
_Bowmen and Others, The_, 204, 258, 282
_Brand_, 65
Brandes, Georg, 122
---- _Romantic Reduplication and Personality_, 122
Brentano, _Die Mehreren Wehmüller_, 122
_Bride of Lammermoor, The_, 38
Brieux, Eugene, 252
_Brissot's Ghost_, 89
Brontë, Emily, 86
---- _Wuthering Heights_, 86, 226
_Brook Kerith, The_, 310
Brooke, Rupert, 308
---- _Failure_, 222
---- _Heaven_, 221, 283
---- _On Certain Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society_,
281, 283
Brown, Alice, 101, 211
---- _Here and There_, 101, 107
---- _Tryst, The_, 126, 211
Brown, Charles Brockden, 35
---- _Arthur Mervyn_, 35
---- _Edgar Huntley_, 39
---- _Wieland_, 35, 39
_Brownie of Bodbeck, The_, 26, 38
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 148
---- _Drama of Exile, A_, 133
---- _Lay of the Brown Rosary, The_, 148
Browning, Robert, 69
---- _Sludge, the Medium_, 69
_Brushwood Boy, The_, 195
_Bubble Well Road_, 138
Buchanan, Robert, 177
---- _Wandering Jew, a Christmas Carol, The_, 177, 180
---- _Haunters and the Haunted, The_, 60, 78, 188, 299
---- _Strange Story, A_, 90, 182
_Bungay Castle_, 20, 45
Bunyan, John, 213
Burger, 56
---- _Lenore_, 56
Burnett, Frances Hodgson, _White People, The_, 203, 298
Burns, Robert, 232
---- _Address to the De'il, An_, 131
---- _Tam O'Shanter_, 156
Burns, Miss, _Shropshire Folk-tales_, 291
Butler, Ellis Parker, _Dey Ain't No Ghosts_, 128
Butler, Katherine,
---- _In No Strange Land_, 96, 212
Butler, Samuel, 262
---- _Erewhon_, 262
_By the Waters of Paradise_, 83
Byron, Lord:
---- _Cain_, 136
---- _Giaour, The_, 160
---- _Heaven and Earth_, 221
---- _Vision of Judgment, A_, 134
C
Cable, George W., 226
Calderon, 27, 133
---- _El Embozado_, 119
---- _El Magico Prodigioso_, 100, 143
_Camp of the Dog, The_, 170
Campbell-Praed, Mrs., 207
---- _Nyria_, 207
_Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, Extracts from_, 201, 217
_Car of Phoebus, The_, 207
Carmen Sylva, 176, 233
_Case of Becky, The_, 305
_Case of John Smith, The_, 215
_Castle of Caithness, The_, 20
_Castle of Otranto, The_, 4, 8, 16, 25, 31, 36, 40, 52, 101
_Castle of Wolfenbach, The_, 48
_Castle Specter, The_, 53
_Celestial Grocery, The_, 265, 300
_Celestial Railroad, The_, 213, 265, 300
_Celtic Revival, The_, 227
_Celtic Twilight, The_, 239
Chambers, Robert W., 87, 290, 296
---- _The Messenger_, 88
Chamisso, 59, 176
---- _Erscheinung_, 122
_Chansons de Gestes_, 7
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 87, 140, 217
---- _Friar's Tale, The_, 140
Chemistry, Supernatural, 267
Cher, Marie, 197
---- _Immortal Gymnasts, The_, 197
Chesterton, G. K., 306
---- _Magic_, 306
_Children, The_, 289
_Children of the Mist, The_, 226
_Christabel_, 148, 238
_Clairvoyance_, 289
_Clara Militch_, 68, 162
Clark, Rev. T., _Wandering Jew, or the Travels of Bareach, the
Prolonged, The_, 178
Clarke, Laurence, 94
---- _Grey Guest, The_, 94, 282
_Clermont_, 48
_Cloak, The_, 68
_Closed Cabinet, The_, 107
Cobb, Irvin, _Belled Buzzard, The_, 296
Cobb, Palmer, _Influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann on Edgar Allan Poe,
The_, 58
_Cocotte_, 61
_Coffin Merchant, The_, 254
Cohan, George M., 306
---- _Miracle Man, The_, 306
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 65, 118
---- _Christabel_, 148, 238
---- _Wanderings of Cain, The_, 118
Collins, Wilkie, 78
---- _Dream Woman, The_, 78
---- _Ghost Touch, The_, 103
---- _Haunted Hotel, The_, 89, 100
---- _Queen of Hearts, The_, 107, 113
Collins, William, _Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the
Highlands_, 74
Collison-Morley, Lacy, 202
---- _Greek and Roman Ghost Stories_, 202
Comer, Cornelia A. P., _Little Grey Ghost, The_, 118
_Comus_, 7, 148
_Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, 29
_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, 268
_Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, A_, 189, 262, 286
Converse, F., 93
---- _Co-operative Ghosts_, 93, 98
Conway, Hugh, 103
---- _Our Last Walk_, 103
Conway, M. D., 180
Cooper, J. Fenimore, 226
_Co-operative Ghosts_, 93, 98
Corbin, John, 76
Corelli, Marie:
---- _Master Christian, The_, 309
---- _Romance of Two Worlds, A_, 213
---- _Sorrows of Satan, The_, 136, 144
_Count Roderick's Castle_, or _Gothic Times_, 20
_Countess Cathleen_, 65, 143
_Courting of Dinah Shadd, The_, 152
_Coward, The_, 61
Craddock, Charles Egbert, 83, 104, 226
---- _His Unquiet Ghost_, 83
Crawford, F. Marion, 37, 68, 94, 109, 116, 117
---- _Among the Immortals_, 217
---- _By the Waters of Paradise_, 83
---- _Dead Smile, The_, 70, 109
---- _Doll's Ghost_, A, 98
---- _For the Blood Is the Life_, 62, 78, 162
---- _Khaled_, 62, 70, 147
---- _Man Overboard_, 97
---- _Mr. Isaacs_, 37, 71
---- _Screaming Skull, The_, 60, 89, 92
---- _Upper Berth, The_, 100
---- _Witch of Prague, The_, 149, 195, 266
Crawford, Hope, _Ida Lomond and Her Hour of Vision_, 207
_Creation_, 277
_Crier by Night, The_, 65, 238
_Crock of Gold, The_, 241, 246
Croly, George, 179
---- _Salathiel_, or _Tarry Thou Till I Come_, 179
_Crystal Egg, The_, 263
_Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, 243
_Culex_, 290
Curran, Mrs. John H., _Patience Worth_, 197, 207
_Curse of the Cashmere Shawl, The_, 153
_Curse of the Fires and the Shadows, The_, 154
_Curse of the Wandering Jew, The_, 177
Curtin, Jeremiah, 244
Curtis, George William, 121, 258
---- _Prue and I_, 121, 258
D
Dacre, Mrs., 10, 77
---- _Zofloya_, 10, 17, 28, 33, 35, 37, 38, 53, 154, 251
_Damned Thing, The_, 61, 92
Danby, Frank, _Twilight_, 268
_Daniel and the Devil_, 141
D'Annunzio, Gabriel, 66
---- _Daughter of Jorio, The_, 67, 149
---- _La Città Morta_, 66, 298
---- _Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera_, 67, 300
---- _Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_, 67, 152
Dante, 27, 130, 133, 144, 209, 215
_Dark Nameless One, The_, 155
Darwin, Charles, 73, 251
Darwin, Erasmus, 14
_Daughter of Jorio, The_, 67, 149
_Daughter of the Moor, The_, 304
Davis, Owen, and Robert, _Any House_, 307
Davis, Richard Harding, _Vera, the Medium_, 200
_Day of My Death, The_, 199
_Days of the Comet, The_, 264
_Dead Are Singing, The_, 282
_Dead City, The_, 298
_Dead Ship of Harpswell, The_, 187
_Dead Smile, The_, 70, 109
Deakin, Lumley, 146
---- _Red Debts_, 146
_Death of Halpin Frazer, The_, 110, 192
_Death's Jest Book_, 53, 115, 297
Defoe, Daniel, 205
---- _Apparition of Mrs. Veal_, 205
---- _History of Duncan Campbell, The_, 225
Demi-gods, 242
_Demi-gods, The_, 219, 221
Dæmonic Spirits, 158 _et seq._
Dæmonology, Gothic, 33
De Morgan, William Frend, 92, 283
---- _Affair of Dishonor, An_, 91
---- _Likely Story, A_, 287
De Quincey, Thomas
---- _Avengers, The_, 56
---- _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, 268
---- _Dream Fugue_, 15
---- _Klosterheim_, 56
---- _On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth_, 295
_Descent into the Maelstrom, The_, 231, 253
_Devil, The_, 138
Devil and His Allies, The, 130 _et seq._
Devil, Gothic, The, 27 _et seq._
_Devil and Tom Walker, The_, 140
_Devil in the Belfry, The_, 141
_Dey Ain't No Ghosts_, 128
_Diamond Lens, The_, 274
Dickey, Paul, 307
---- _Last Laugh, The_, 307
Dickens, Charles:
---- _Haunted House, The_, 171
---- _Signal Man, The_, 114
_Die Beiden Waldemar_, 122
_Die Braut von Corinth_, 162
_Die Mehreren Wehmüller_, 122
_Disassociation of a Personality, The_, 305
_Divine Adventure, The_, 248
_Dr. Bullivant_, 185
_Dr. Faustus_, 15, 143
_Dr. Heidigger's Experiment_, 184, 252
_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, 120, 268, 305
_Dog Harvey, The_, 291
_Doings of Raffles Haw, The_, 267
_Dolliver Romance, The_, 183, 184
_Doll's Ghost, A_, 98
_Door in the Wall, The_, 258
Doppelgänger, 57, 119
_Doppelgänger, The_, 122
Dorset, St. John, 159
---- _Vampire, The_, 159
Double Personality, 305
Doyle, A. Conan, 79
---- _Doings of Raffles Haw, The_, 267
---- _Hound of the Baskervilles, The_, 290
---- _Los Amigos Fiasco, The_, 187, 270
---- _Lot No. 49_, 62
---- _Secret of Goresthorpe Grange, The_, 79
---- _Silver Mirror, The_, 259
---- _Terror of Blue John Gap, The_, 272
_Dracula_, 78, 163, 188, 301
_Dream, The_, 68
_Dream Fugue_, 15
_Dream Gown of the Japanese Ambassador, The_, 79
_Dream of Armageddon, A_, 196, 262
_Dream of Provence, A_, 293
_Dream Woman, The_, 78
Dreams, 13, 77
Dreiser, Theodore:
---- _Blue Sphere, The_, 208, 278
---- _In the Dark_, 208
---- _Laughing Gas_, 278
---- _Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural_, 208
---- _Spring Recital, A_, 208
Dromgoole, Will Allen, 226
Dryden, John, 41
---- _Amboyna_, 41
_Duchess at Prayer, The_, 121, 303
_Duchess of Malfi, The_, 8, 166
Dumas, Alexandre, Père, 159
---- _Le Vampire_, 159
Du Maurier, George:
---- _Martian, The_, 196, 207, 264
---- _Peter Ibbetson_, 186, 196, 206, 300
---- _Trilby_, 267
Dunbar, Aldis, 244
Dunbar, Olivia Howard, 85
---- _Shell of Sense, The_, 85, 212
Dunsany, Lord, 52, 63, 235, 242, 244, 247, 249, 285, 292, 300
---- _Book of Wonder, The_, 245
---- _Glittering Gate, The_, 221, 222
---- _Gods of Pegana, The_, 245
---- _Gods of the Mountain, The_, 244, 303
---- _Night at an Inn, A_, 244, 303
---- _Time and the Gods_, 245
---- _Usury_, 198
---- _When the Gods Slept_, 63, 74
E
_Edgar Huntley_, 39
Edwards, Amelia, 86
---- _Four-fifteen Express, The_, 86
_Eel-King, The_, 233
_Eighty-third, The_, 61, 281
_El Embozado_, 119
Elementals, 300
_Eleonora_, 103
Eliot, George, 167, 257
---- _Lifted Veil, The_, 157
_Elixiere des Teufels_, 57
Elixir of Life, The, 35, 182 _et seq._
_Elixir of Life, The_, 60
_Elixir of Youth, The_, 186
_Elizabethan Drama, The_, 139
_El Magico Prodigioso_, 100, 143
_Elsie Venner_, 170
Elves, 247
_Emperor and Galilean_, 42, 66
_Empty House, The_, 98, 117
_Enchanted Typewriter, The_, 207, 286
Erckmann-Chatrian, 62
---- _Invisible Eye, The_, 62
---- _Owl's Ear, The_, 62
---- _Waters of Death, The_, 62
_Erewhon_, 262
_Erscheinung_, 122
_Eternal Magdalen, The_, 27
_Eternal Mystery, The_, 306
_Ethelwina, or the House of Fitz-Auburne_, 25
Eubule-Evans, A., 177
---- _Curse of the Wandering Jew, The_, 177
_Eve_, 246
_Evil Eye, The_, 152
_Exchange, The_, 153, 156, 197
_Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, An_, 217
_Eyes, The_, 297
_Eyes of the Panther, The_, 170, 271
F
_Fable for Critics, A_, 57
_Fables_, 231
_Facts in the Case of M. Waldemar_, 266
_Faerie Queene, The_, 7
_Failure_, 22
_Fair God, The_, 246
_Fairies of Pesth, The_, 240
_Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_, 237
Fairy, The, 239 _et seq._
_Faith Healer, The_, 306
_Fall of the House of Usher, The_, 295
_Faraway Melody, A_, 97
_Faust_, 143, 175
_Feathertop_, 152, 156
Fenn, George M., _Man with the Shadow, The_, 122
_Fiction of the Irish Celts_, 243
Field, Eugene, 141
---- _Daniel and the Devil_, 141
---- _Eel-King, The_, 233
---- _Holy Cross, The_, 181
---- _Moon Lady, The_, 233
---- _Mother in Paradise, The_, 213
---- _Pagan Seal-wife, The_, 233
---- _Werewolf, The_, 169, 172
Finch, Lucine, _Butterfly, The_, 307
_First Men in the Moon, The_, 264
_Fisherman and His Soul, The_, 134, 153, 236
_Fisk, Isabel Howe_, 290
_Flaireurs_, 64
_Flower of Silence, The_, 273
_Flowering of the Strange Orchid, The_, 62, 164, 273
_Flying Dutchman, The_, 187
Fogazzaro, Antonio, 66
---- _Saint, The_, 66
---- _Sinner, The_, 66
---- _Woman, The_, 66, 194, 300
Folk-lore, 73
Ford, James L., 266
_Forest Lovers_, 149
_Forsaken Merman, The_, 155, 233
_For the Blood Is the Life_, 62, 78, 162
Fouqué, Henri Auguste, 57, 59
---- _Undine_, 57
_Four-fifteen Express, The_, 86
Fourth Dimension, The, 256
Fox, John, Jr., 226
France, Anatole, 63
---- _Amycus and Celestine_, 63
---- _Isle of the Penguins, The_, 63
---- _Juggler of Notre Dame, The_, 63
---- _Mass of Shadows, The_, 63
---- _Putois_, 63
---- _Revolt of the Angels, The_, 220
---- _Scholasticus_, 63
_Frankenstein_, 14, 17, 34
Franklin, Andrew, 176
---- _Wandering Jew, The_, 176
Freeman, Mary Wilkins, 78
---- _Faraway Melody_, 97
---- _Hall Bedroom, The_, 79, 260
---- _Shadows on the Wall, The_, 78, 99, 104, 226
Freud, 79
_Friar's Tale, The_, 140
_Fu Manchu Stories_, 253, 268, 270, 272
_Furnished Room, The_, 60, 101
Future, Magic Views of the, 256
G
Garland, Hamlin, 69, 76, 200
---- _Shadow World, The_, 200
---- _Tyranny of the Dark, The_, 200
Garments of Ghosts, 92 _et seq._
_Gaston de Blondeville_, 19
_Gates Ajar, The_, 210
_Gates Between, The_, 210
_Gates Beyond, The_, 210
Gautier, Théophile, 62
---- _La Morte Amoreuse_, 62, 163
---- _Mummy's Foot, The_, 62
---- _Romance of the Mummy, The_, 62
_General William Booth Enters into Heaven_, 217
German Romanticism, 67
Gerould, Gordon H., 202
---- _Grateful Dead, The_, 202
Gerould, Katherine Fullerton, 61, 71, 104
---- _Eighty-Third, The_, 61, 281
---- _Louquier's Third Act_, 61
---- _On the Stairs_, 83, 114, 122
_Ghost, The_, 60
_Ghost at Point of Rock, The_, 83
Ghost-children, 287 _et seq._
_Ghost Moth, The_, 290
_Ghost of Miser Brimpson, The_, 83
_Ghost of the White Tiger_, 291
_Ghost Ship, The_, 111, 293
Ghost of Futurity, 114
Ghost of Jack, The, 110
Ghost Touch, The, 101, 103
Ghostly Doubles, 119
Ghostly Odor, 100
Ghostly Perfume, 101
Ghostly Psychology, 106
Ghostly Sounds, 97 _et seq._
Ghosts, Gothic, 18 _et seq._
Ghosts, Modern, 81 _et seq._
Ghouls, 158
_Giaour, The_, 160
Gigantism, 36
Gilmore, Inez Haynes, 294
---- _Angel Island_, 294
_Glamour of the Snow, The_, 231
Glanville, Joseph, 191
Glasgow, Ellen, _Shadowy Third, The_, 203
_Glass of Supreme Moments, The_, 157
_Glittering Gate, The_, 221, 222
Glover, Richard, _Ballad of Hosier's Ghost_, 89
Gnoles, 247
Gnomes, 247
_Goblin Market_, 148
Goddard, Charles W., 307
---- _Last Laugh, The_, 307
Gods, 242
_Gods and Fighting Men_, 244
_Gods of Pegana_, 245
_Gods of the Mountains, The_, 244, 303
Godwin, William, 35, 182
---- _St. Leon_, 35, 36
Goethe, 133, 162
---- _Die Braut von Corinth_, 162
---- _Faust_, 143, 175
Gogol, 68
---- _Cloak, The_, 68
Gothic Romance, 6 _et seq._
Granville, Charles, 179
---- _Plaint of the Wandering Jew, The_, 179
_Great God Pan, The_, 247
_Great Stone of Sardis, The_, 262
_Greek and Roman Ghost Stories_, 202
Gregory the Great, _Dialogues_, 202
Gregory, Lady, 229, 234, 237, 240, 285
---- _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, 243
---- _Gods and Fighting Men_, 243
_Grey Guest, The_, 94, 282
Grosse, Marquis, 49
---- _Horrid Mysteries_, 49
_Guy Mannering_, 150
_Gypsy Christ, The_, 181
H
_Hag, The_, 148
Haggard, Rider, 183, 193
---- _Ayesha_, 183, 193
---- _She_, 183
Hale, Lucretia P., _Spider's Eye, The_, 62, 274
_Hall Bedroom, The_, 79, 260
_Hall of Eblis, The_, 8
_Hamlet_, 18, 118, 144
_Hand, The_, 61
_Hannele_, 218
_Hans Pfaal_, 286
_Happy Prince, The_, 238
Hardy, Thomas:
---- _Return of the Native, The_, 150
---- _Tess of the D' Urbervilles_, 143
---- _Under the Greenwood Tree_, 150
---- _Withered Arm, The_, 225
Harper, Olive, _Sociable Ghost, The_, 111
Harris, Joel Chandler, 74, 226
---- _Uncle Remus Tales_, 232, 235
Hart, Charles F., _Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, 232
Hartley, Randolph, _Black Patch, The_, 255
_Haunted Hotel, The_, 89, 100
_Haunted House, The_, 171
_Haunted Island, A_, 114
_Haunted Subalterns, The_, 138
_Haunters and the Haunted, The_, 60, 78, 188, 299
Hauptmann, Carl, 282
---- _Dead Are Singing, The_, 282
Hauptmann, Gerhardt:
---- _Hannele_, 218
---- _Sunken Bell, The_, 158
Hawkesworth, John, 70, 190
---- _Transmigration of a Soul_, 190
Hawthorne, Julian, 121
---- _Lovers in Heaven_, 121, 144, 213
Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
---- _Artist of the Beautiful, The_, 287
---- _Birthmark, The_, 185, 270
---- _Blithedale Romance, The_, 188, 199
---- _Celestial Railroad, The_, 213
---- _Dr. Heidigger's Experiment_, 184, 252
---- _Dolliver Romance, The_, 183, 184
---- _Feathertop_, 152, 156
---- _House of Seven Gables, The_, 158
---- _Howe's Masquerade_, 122
---- _Intelligence Office, The_, 265
---- _Main Street_, 152
---- _Marble Faun, The_, 57
---- _Prophetic Pictures_, 121
---- _Rappacini's Daughter_, 252, 272
---- _Scarlet Letter, The_, 152
---- _Select Party, A_, 178
---- _Septimius Felton_, 143, 150, 183, 252
---- _Virtuoso's Collection, A_, 78
---- _Young Goodman Brown_, 151
Hearn, Lafcadio, 1, 77
---- _Interpretations of Literature_, 1, 77
_Heath Fire, The_, 231
_Heaven_, 221, 283
_Heaven and Earth_, 221
Heijermans, 176
_Hellas_, 176
Henry, O., _Furnished Room, The_, 60, 101
_Here and There_, 101, 107
_Heretic, The_, 207
_Heritage, The_, 94
Herodotus, 166
Heroes, 242
_Heroine, The_, 49, 50
Herrick, Robert, _Hag, The_, 148
Hewlett, Maurice, _Forest Lovers_, 149
Heywood, Eliza, _Lasselia_, 42
_His Unquiet Ghost_, 83
_History of Duncan Campbell, The_, 255
_History of Jack Smith, or the Castle of St. Donats_, 20
Hoax Ghosts, 82
Hodder, Reginald, _Vampire, The_, 68, 163
Hoffmann, David, 181
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 51, 59, 69, 182, 190, 199
---- _Doppelgänger_, 58
---- _Elixiere des Teufels_, 58
---- _Kater Murr_, 58
---- _Magnetiseur_, 58
Hogg, James:
---- _Brownie of Bodbeck_, 26, 38
---- _Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, 29
---- _Hunt of Eildon, The_, 26, 27, 30, 32
---- _Witch of Fife, The_, 148
---- _Wool-gatherer, The_, 23, 29, 30, 32
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, _Elsie Venner_, 170
_Holy Cross, The_, 181
_Horrid Mysteries_, 49
Horsley-Curties, T. J., 9
---- _Ancient Records or the Abbey of St. Oswyth_, 9, 12, 21, 32,
42, 43
---- _Ethelwina, or the House of Fitz-Auburne_, 25, 38
_Hound of the Baskervilles, The_, 290
_Hound of Heaven, The_, 283
_House of Judgment, The_, 214
_House of Souls, The_, 271
_House-boat on the Styx, The_, 112, 216
_House of Seven Gables, The_, 158
Howells, William Dean, 76
---- _Leatherwood God, The_, 310
---- _Undiscovered Country, The_, 200, 267
_Howe's Masquerade_, 122
_Human, Chord, The_, 275
_Human Personality_, 202
Humorous Ghosts, 110
Hunt, Leigh, 105
_Hunt of Eildon, The_, 26, 27, 30, 32
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 73, 252
Hyde, Dr., _Paudeen O'Kelley and the Weasel_, 237
I
Ibsen, Henrik, 35, 42
---- _Brand_, 65
---- _Emperor and Galilean_, 42, 66
---- _Lady from the Sea, The_, 66
---- _Master Builder_, 35, 66
---- _Pretenders, The_, 65
---- _Rosmersholm_, 66
---- _Vikings of Helgeland, The_, 65
_Ida Lomond and Her Hour of Vision_, 207
_Immortal Gymnasts, The_, 197
_In Castle Perilous_, 118
_In Mr. Eberdeen's House_, 124
_In No Strange Land_, 96, 212
_In the Dark_, 208
_In the House of Suddoo_, 146
_Inferno_, 144
Insanity and the Supernatural, 69, 299
Insanity in Gothic Fiction, 35 _et seq._
_Intelligence Office, The_, 265
_Interior_, 64
_Interpretations of Literature_, 1, 77
Intricate Personality of Specters, 119
_Invisible Man, The_, 95, 269
_Invisible Eye, The_, 62
Irving, Washington, 110, 226
---- _Devil and Tom Walker, The_, 140
---- _Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The_, 89
---- _Rip Van Winkle_, 246
---- _Specter Bridegroom, The_, 83, 110
---- _Tales of the Alhambra_, 226
_Island of Dr. Moreau, The_, 271
_Isle of the Penguins, The_, 63
_Italian, The_, 48
_Ivan, the Fool_, 68, 138, 144
_Ivory Gate, The_, 122
_In the Track of the Wandering Jew_, 178
J
Jacobs, W. W., _Monkey's Paw, The_, 98, 253
James, Henry:
---- _Jolly Corner, The_, 122
---- _Turn of the Screw, The_, 86, 91, 109
Janvier, Thomas A., _Legends of the City of Mexico_, 226
Jealousy of Ghosts, 117
_Jeanne, The Maid_, 282
Jerome, Jerome K., _Passing of the Third Floor Back, The_, 305
_Jewel of Seven Stars, The_, 191, 274
Jigar-Khor, The, 165
_John Inglesant_, 87, 98
Johnson, Arthur, _In Mr. Eberdeen's House_, 124
Johnston, Mary, _Witch, The_, 150
_Jolly Corner, The_, 122
_Joyzelle_, 64
_Judgment of God, The_, 234
_Juggler of Notre Dame, The_, 63
_Jules Le Vallon_, 194
_Julius Cæsar_, 18, 84
_Jungle Tales_, 232
K
_Kaffir Tales_, 232
_Kater Murr_, 58
Keats, John, 148
---- _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, 148
---- _Lamia_, 162
_Keeping His Promise_, 98
Kelpie, The, 155
Kennedy, Charles Rann, _Servant in the House, The_, 66, 305
Kennedy, Patrick, 243
---- _Bardic Stories of Ireland_, 243
---- _Fiction of the Irish Celts_, 243
_Kentucky's Ghost_, 199
_Kerfol_, 290
_Khaled_, 62, 70, 147
_Kinetoscope of Time, The_, 256
King, Basil, 203
---- _Old Lady Pingree_, 203
_King Lear_, 13
_Kingdom Come_, 282, 306
Kingemann, 176
_King Hunger_, 207, 308
Kingsley, Charles, _Water Babies_, 240
Kipling, Rudyard, 53, 71, 99, 104, 180
---- _At the End of the Passage_, 120
---- _Brushwood Boy, The_, 195
---- _Bubble Well Road_, 138
---- _Courting of Dinah Shadd, The_, 152
---- _Dog Harvey, The_, 291
---- _Haunted Subalterns, The_, 138
---- _In the House of Suddoo_, 146
---- _Jungle Tales_, 232
---- _Last of the Stories, The_, 197,215
---- _Mark of the Beast, The_, 100, 167
---- _Phantom Rickshaw, The_, 88, 94
---- _Swept and Garnished_, 94, 282, 288
---- _They_, 84, 93, 288
Kittredge, George Lyman, 30, 224
---- _Arthur and Gorlogon_, 30
Kleist, 59
_Klosterheim_, 56
_Knock! Knock! Knock!_ 68
Kummer, Frederick Arnold, _Second Coming, The_, 281
Kundry, 181
L
_Le Belle Dame sans Merci_, 148
_La Città Morta_, 66, 299
_Lady from the Sea, The_, 66
_La Horla_, 61, 95
_Lair of the White Worm, The_, 188
_Lais_, 7
_Lamia_, 162
_La Morte Amoreuse_, 62, 163
_Land of Darkness, The_, 212
_Land of Heart's Desire, The_, 65, 240, 306
Lang, Andrew, 118, 188, 242
---- _In Castle Perilous_, 118
---- _St. Germain, the Deathless_, 188
_Lasselia_, 42
_Last Ghost in Harmony, The_, 104, 201
_Last Laugh, The_, 307
_Last of the Stories, The_, 197, 215
Later Influences, 54 _et seq._
Latham, Francis, _Midnight Bell_, 49
_Laughing Gas_, 278
_Lay of the Brown Rosary, The_, 148
_Leatherwood God, The_, 310
_Leaves from the Autobiography of a Soul in Paradise_, 207
Lee, Robert James:
---- _Astral Bridegroom, An_, 207
---- _Car of Phoebus, The_, 207
---- _Heretic, The_, 207
---- _Leaves from the Autobiography of a Soul in Paradise_, 207
---- _Life Elysian, The_, 207
---- _Through the Mists_, 208
---- _Vagrom Spirit, The_, 207
_Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The_, 89
_Legend of Sharp, A_, 134
Leprechauns, 239
_Letters from a Living Dead Man_, 207
_Le Vampire_, 159
Lewis, Arthur, 242
---- _London Fairy Tales_, 242
Lewis, Mary L., _Stranger than Fiction_, 207
Lewis, Matthew Gregory ("Monk"), 14, 16, 77
---- _Castle Specter, The_, 53
---- _Monk, The_, 12, 16, 22, 24, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34, 35, 37, 177
_Liebgeber Schappe_, 122
Life after Death, 209 _et seq._
_Lifted Veil, The_, 257
_Ligeia_, 123, 191
_Likely Story, A_, 287
Lindsay, Nicholas Vachell, _General William Booth Enters into
Heaven_, 217
_Little Crow of Paradise, The_, 234
_Little Gray Ghost, The_, 118
_Little Mermaid, The_, 155, 176, 233
_Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, The_, 212
_Little White Bird, The_, 240
Lloyd, N. M., _Last Ghost in Harmony, The_, 104, 201
Locke, Edward, _Case of Becky, The_, 305
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 74
---- _Raymond, or Life and Death_, 75
_London Fairy Tales_, 242
London, Jack:
---- _Scarlet Plague, The_, 262
---- _Star Rover, The_, 264
_Long Chamber, The_, 118
_Looking Backward_, 189, 262
_Los Amigos Fiasco, The_, 187, 270
_Loss of Breath, The_, 74
_Lot No. 49_, 62
_Louquier's Third Act_, 61
_Love Philter, The_, 267
_Lovers in Heaven_, 121, 144, 213
Lowell, James Russell, _Fable for Critics_, A, 57
Lucas, Charles, _History of Jack Smith, or the Castle of St.
Donats, The_, 20
_Lycanthrope, The_, 39
Lytton, Edward George, Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st baron, 60
M
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 110
_Macbeth_, 18, 98, 153, 295
Machen, Arthur, 52, 70, 79, 117, 247, 250, 300, 301
---- _Bowmen and Others, The_, 204, 258, 282
---- _Hill of Dreams, The_, 79
---- _House of Souls, The_, 271
---- _Monstrance, The_, 288
---- _Red Hand, The_, 247
---- _Seeing the Great God Pan_, 139
---- _Three Impostors, The_, 247, 269
_Mad_, 61
_Mad Lady, The_, 286
_Madness_, 61
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 6, 42, 64, 299
---- _Blind, The_, 64, 298
---- _Blue-bird, The_, 64, 278, 289, 306
---- _Interior_,64
---- _Intruder, The_, 64, 304
---- _Joyzelle_, 64
Magic, 306
_Magic Shadow, The_, 296
_Magic Skin, The_, 60
_Magnetiseur_, 58
Maighdeanmhara, The, 155
_Main Street_, 152
_Man and Superman_, 217
_Man in Black, The_, 137
_Man from the Gods, The_, 121
_Man Overboard_, 97
_Man with a Shadow, The_, 122
_Man Whom the Trees Loved, The_, 230, 272
_Man with the Pigeons, The_, 218
_Man Who had been in Fairyland, The_, 241
_MS. found in a Bottle, The_, 253
_Marble Faun, The_, 57
Marie de France, 30, 118
---- _Bisclavret_, 30, 168
_Markheim_, 120
_Mark of the Beast, The_, 100, 167
Marlowe, Christopher, 27, 153
---- _Doctor Faustus_, 15, 143
Marsh, Richard, _Beetle, The_, 290
_Martian, The_, 196, 207, 264
_Mass of Shadows, The_, 63
_Master Builder, The_, 35, 66
_Master Christian, The_, 309
Mather, Cotton, 130
Matthews, Brander:
---- _Dream Gown of the Japanese Ambassador, The_, 79
---- _Kinetoscope of Time, The_, 256
---- _Primer of Imaginary Geography, A_, 181, 216
---- _Rival Ghosts_, 112
Maturin, Charles Robert, 9, 17, 38, 59, 182
---- _Albigenses, The_, 9, 11, 94, 168, 288
---- _Melmoth, the Wanderer_, 8, 10, 12, 24, 26, 36, 41, 44, 138
Maupassant, Guy de, 60, 69, 299
---- _Cocotte_, 61
---- _Coward, The_, 61
---- _Ghost, The_, 60
---- _Hand, The_, 61
---- _La Horla_, 61, 95
---- _Mad_, 61
---- _Madness_, 61
---- _Tress, The_, 61
---- _Wolf, The_, 172
McDonald, George, _Portent, The_, 266
McLeod, Fiona:
---- _Dark Nameless One, The_, 155
---- _Divine Adventure, The_, 248
---- _Judgment of God, The_, 234
---- _Sin Eater, The_, 138
Mechanistic Supernaturalism, 286 _et seq._
Meg Merrilies, 150
Meinhold, 56
_Melmoth Réconcilié_, 59
_Melmoth, the Wanderer_, 8, 10, 12, 24, 26, 36, 41, 44, 138
Meredith, George, 71, 127
---- _Shaving of Shagpat, The_, 71
Merlin, 145
Mermaid, The, 234
_Mermaid, The_, 306
_Merman and the Seraph, The_, 234
Meroe, 145
_Mesmeric Revelations_, 266
_Messenger, The_, 88
_Metamorphoses_, 145
Metempsychosis, 180 _et seq._
_Metzengerstein_, 287, 291
_Middle Toe of the Right Foot, The_, 61, 92
Middleton, Jessie Adelaide, 92
---- _Ghost with Half a Face, The_, 92
Middleton, Richard, 111, 288
---- _Coffin Merchant, The_, 254
---- _Ghost Ship, The_, 111, 293
---- _Passing of Edward, The_, 99, 288
_Midnight Bell_, 49
_Midsummer Night's Dream, A_, 64
Milne-Horne, Mary Pamela, _Anansi Stories_, 232
Milton, John, 27, 133, 239
---- _Comus_, 7, 148
---- _Paradise Lost_, 144, 209, 211, 215
_Mine Host and the Witch_, 148
_Miracle, The_, 254
_Miracle Man, The_, 306
_Miss Mehitabel's Son_, 63, 68, 85, 287
_Mistaken Ghost, The_, 62
Mitchell, J. A., _Amos Judd_, 40, 257
Molnar, Fernac, _Devil, The_, 138
_Monastery, The_, 225
_Monk, The_, 12, 16, 22, 24, 26, 27, 30, 33, 35, 37, 177
_Monkey's Paw, The_, 98
_Monstrance, The_, 288
Moody, William Vaughn, _Faith Healer, The_, 306
_Moon Lady, The_, 233
_Moon Madness_, 139, 231
Moore, George, _Brook Kerith, The_, 310
_Morella_, 123, 190
Morris, William, 236, 250
---- _Water of the Wondrous Isle, The_, 236
---- _Well at the World's End, The_, 236
---- _Wood beyond the World, The_, 236
Mosen, Julius, 176
_Mother in Paradise, The_, 213
Motives for Ghost Appearance, 113
_Mr. Isaacs_, 37, 71
_Mrs. Veal_, 205
_Mummy's Foot, The_, 62
_Mummy's Tale, The_, 110
_My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, 225
Myers, _Human Personality_, 202
_Mysteries of Udolpho, The_, 9, 48
_Mysterious Mother, The_, 53
_Mysterious Stranger, The_, 142
_Mysterious Warnings_, 49
Mystery and Mystification in Gothicism, 43
_Mystery of Joseph Laquedem, The_, 181, 195
_Myths and Legends of Our Land_, 187
N
Nathan, George Jean, _Eternal Mystery, The_, 306
_Neckan, The_, 155, 233
_Nemesis of Fire, A_, 98
_Never Bet the Devil Your Head_, 140
_New Accelerator, The_, 286
_New Arabian Nights, The_, 70
_Night at an Inn, A_, 244, 303
_Night Call, The_, 83
_Nightingale and the Rose, The_, 235, 293
_Nightmare Abbey_, 51
Norris, Frank, _Vandover and the Brute_, 167
_Northanger Abbey_, 47, 51
_Notch on the Axe, The_, 89, 188
Noyes, Alfred, _Creation_, 277
_Nyria_, 207
O
O'Brien, Fitz-James, 61
---- _Diamond Lens, The_, 274
---- _What Was It? A Mystery_, 61, 96
_Occult Magazine, The_, 163
_Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The_, 275
_Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands_, 74
O'Donnell, Elliot, 88, 110
---- _Mummy's Tale, The_, 110
---- _Werewolves_, 170
_Old Clothes_, 124, 194
_Old English Baron, The_, 16, 19, 40
_Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts_, 154
_Old Lady Mary_, 211
_Old Men of the Twilight, The_, 234
_Old Wives' Tale_, 110, 145
Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret:
---- _Beleaguered City, The_, 211
---- _Land of Darkness, The_, 212
---- _Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, The_, 212
---- _Old Lady Mary_, 211, 298
---- _Open Door, The_, 211
---- _Portrait, The_, 211
_On Certain Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society_, 221
_On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth_, 295
_On the Stairs_, 61, 114, 122
_Open Door, The_, 211
Origin of Individual Gothic Tales, 13 _et seq._
O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, 168
_Our Last Walk_, 103
_Oval Portrait, The_, 58
Ovid, 166
_Owl's Ear, The_, 62
P
_Pagan Seal-wife, The_, 233
Page, Thomas Nelson, 226
Pain, Barry, 53, 79, 157
---- _Blue Roses_, 268
---- _Celestial Grocery, The_, 265, 300
---- _Exchange, The_, 153, 156, 197
---- _Glass of Supreme Moments, The_, 157
---- _Love Philter, The_, 267
---- _Moon Madness_, 139, 231
---- _Undying Thing, The_, 271
---- _Wrong Elixir, The_, 186
---- _Zero_, 257
Paine, Albert Bigelow, _Elixir of Youth, The_, 186
_Pair of Hands, A_, 103, 288
Pangborn, Georgia Wood, _Substitute, The_, 88
_Paradise Lost_, 144, 209, 211, 215
_Parsifal_, 181
Parsons, Francis, _Borderland, The_, 124
Parsons, Mrs. M., _Mysterious Warnings_, 49
_Passing of Edward, The_, 99, 288
_Passing of the Third Floor Back, The_, 66, 303
_Passionate Crime, The_, 242
_Patience Worth_, 197, 207
_Paudeen O'Kelley and the Weasel_, 237
Peacock, Thomas Love, _Nightmare Abbey_, 51
Pearce, J. H., _Little Crow of Paradise, The_, 234
Peele, George, 145
---- _Old Wives' Tale_, 110, 145, 202, 293
_Père Antoine's Date Palm_, 63
_Peter Ibbetson_, 186, 196, 206, 300
_Peter Pan_, 240, 306
_Peter Rugg, the Missing Man_, 189
_Phantom Rickshaw, The_, 88, 94
_Phantoms_, 68
Phelps, William Lyon, 41
---- _Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement_, 41
Phillpotts, Eden, 83
---- _Another Little Heath Hound_, 290
---- _Children of the Mist_, 226
---- _Ghost of Miser Brimpson, The_, 83
---- _Witch, The_, 151, 226
_Picture of Dorian Gray, The_, 32, 60, 121, 134
_Pit and the Pendulum, The_, 253
_Plaint of the Wandering Jew, The_, 179
Planche, J. R., 160
---- _Vampire, or the Bride of the Isles_, 160
_Plattner Case, The_, 260
_Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural_, 208
Pliny, 72
Poe, Edgar Allan, 58, 69, 252, 299
---- _Berenice_, 62
---- _Bon Bon_, 41, 95
---- _Descent into the Maelstrom, The_, 231, 253
---- _Devil in the Belfry, The_, 141
---- _Eleonora_, 103
---- _Facts in the Case of M. Waldemar, The_, 266
---- _Fall of the House of Usher, The_, 295
---- _Hans Pfaal_, 286
---- _Ligeia_, 123, 191
---- _Loss of Breath_, 74
---- _MS. Found in a Bottle_, 253
---- _Mesmeric Revelations_, 266
---- _Metzengerstein_, 287, 291
---- _Morella_, 123, 190
---- _Never Bet the Devil Your Head_, 140
---- _Oval Portrait, The_, 58
---- _Pit and the Pendulum, The_, 253
---- _Raven, The_, 56
---- _Tale of the Ragged Mountains, A_, 58, 190
---- _William Wilson_, 58, 120
Polidior, _Vampyre, The_, 160
Pomponius Mela, 166
_Portent, The_, 266
Portents in Gothic Romance, 39
_Portrait, The_, 211
Powell, J. W., 232
_Pretender, The_, 65
_Primer of Imaginary Geography, The_, 181, 216
_Primitive Culture_, 227
Prince, Morton, 305
---- _Disassociation of a Personality, The_, 305
_Prince of India, The_, 179
Proby, W. C., _Spirit of the Castle, The_, 40
_Prophetic Pictures_, 121
_Prue and I_, 121, 258
_Psychic Invasion, A_, 106
Psychical Research, 73, 199 _et seq._
_Pursuit of the House-boat, The_, 112, 187, 216
Pushkin, Alexander, _Queen of Spades, The_, 69
_Putois_, 63
Pyle, Howard, _Evil Eye, The_, 152
Q
_Queen Mab_, 176
_Queen of Hearts, The_, 107, 113
_Queen of Sheba, The_, 122
_Queen of Spades, The_, 69
Quiller-Couch, A. T., 154
---- _Magic Shadow, The_, 296
---- _Mystery of Joseph Laquedem, The_, 181, 195
---- _Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts_, 154
---- _Pair of Hands, A_, 103, 288
---- _Roll-call of the Reef, The_, 107
Quinet, Edgar, 176
R
Radcliffe, Anne, 9, 16, 23, 43, 44, 45, 46, 71, 82
---- _Gaston de Blondeville_, 19
---- _Italian, The_, 48
---- _Mysteries of Udolpho, The_, 9, 48
---- _Romance of the Castle, The_, 44
---- _Sicilian Romance, A_, 45, 50, 301
Raleigh, Sir Walter, _English Novel, The_, 46
_Rappacini's Daughter_, 252, 272
_Raven, The_, 56
_Raymond, or Life and Death_, 75
_Readjustment_, 107
_Real Ghost Stories_, 282
_Rebellious Heroine, The_, 197
_Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut, The_, 122
_Red Debts_, 146
_Red Hand, The_, 247
_Red Ranrahan_, 186, 243
Reeve, Clara, 16
---- _Old English Baron, The_, 16, 19, 40
_Regeneration of Lord Ernie, The_, 230
_Reinecke Fuchs_, 213
_Religion in Recent American Novels_, 310
_Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes, The_, 256
_Return, The_, 123, 198
_Return of Peter Grimm, The_, 201, 298
_Return of the Native, The_, 150
_Revolt, of the Angels, The_, 220
Reynard the Fox, 231
_Reynard the Fox, in South Africa_, 232
Rhodes, Benrimo and Harrison, _Willow Tree, The_, 306
Richter, Jean Paul, _Leibgeber Schappe_, 122
Rideout, Henry, _Ghost of the White Tiger, The_, 291
_Riders to the Sea_, 10, 304
_Riding to Lithend_, 152
_Rip Van Winkle_, 246
_Rival Ghosts_, 112
Roche, Regina Maria, 10, 43, 45, 50
---- _Clermont_, 45, 49
_Roger of Wendover's Chronicles_, 175
Rohmer, Sax, 146
---- _Flower of Silence, The_, 273
---- _Fu-Manchu Stories_, 253, 268, 270, 272
_Roll-call of the Reef, The_, 107
_Romance of the Castle, The_, 40
_Romance of the Mummy, The_, 62
_Romance of Two Worlds, A_, 213
Romantic Movement, 55
_Romantic Reduplication and Psychology_, 122
_Rosary, The_, 306
_Rosmersholm_, 66
Rossetti, Christina, _Goblin Market_, 148
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, _Sister Helen_, 67, 153
Royle, Edward Milton, _Unwritten Law, The_, 306
Russian Literature, 67
S
_St. Germain, the Deathless_, 188
_St. Irvyne, the Rosicrucian_, 17, 35, 36
_St. Leon_, 35, 36
_St. Oswyth_, 12
Saintsbury, George, _Tales of Mystery_, 48
_Saint, The_, 66
_Salathiel, or Tarry Thou Till I Come_, 179
_Sancta Susanna_, 307
Satire on Gothicism, 47 _et seq._
Satirical Supernaturalism, 294
_Scarlet Letter, The_, 152
_Scarlet Plague, The_, 262
Scenery, Gothic, 10
Schiller, _Robbers, The_, 16
Schlegel, 176
_Scholasticus_, 63
Science, Gothic, 33
Science, Supernatural, 251 _et seq._
Scott, Sir Walter, 38, 56, 115, 225, 246
---- _Betrothed, The_, 225
---- _Bride of Lammermoor, The_, 38
---- _Guy Mannering_, 150
---- _Monastery, The_, 225
---- _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, 225
---- _Talisman, The_, 134, 146, 147, 225
---- _Two Drovers, The_, 151, 225
---- _Woodstock_, 225
_Screaming Skull, The_, 60, 89, 92
_Sea Fit, The_, 230
_Sea Lady, The_, 234
_Second Coming, The_, 281
_Second Wife, The_, 122
_Secret of Goresthorpe Grange, The_, 79
_Secret Worship_, 105, 117, 137
_Seeing the Great God Pan_, 139
_Select Party, A_, 178
_Selfish Giant, The_, 246
Sensitives, 298
_Septimius Felton_, 143, 150, 183, 252
_Servant in the House, The_, 66, 305
_Shadow World, The_, 200
_Shadows on the Wall, The_, 78, 99, 104, 226
_Shadowy Third, The_, 203
Shakespeare, 13, 18, 56, 84, 115, 119
---- _Hamlet_, 18, 118, 144
---- _Julius Cæsar_, 18, 84
---- _King Lear_, 13
---- _Macbeth_, 17, 98, 152, 153, 295
---- _Midsummer Night's Dream_, 64
---- _Tempest, The_, 64
Sharp, William, 65, 285
---- _Gypsy Christ, The_, 181
---- _Vistas_, 65, 278
_Shaving of Shagpat, The_, 71
Shaw, George Bernard, _Man and Superman_, 217, 306
_She_, 183
Sheldon, Edward:
---- _Mermaid, The_, 234
_Shell of Sense, The_, 85, 212
Shelley, Mary, 14
---- _Frankenstein_, 14, 17, 34
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 17, 35, 176, 180,182
---- _Fragment of an Unfinished Drama_, 48
---- _Hellas_, 176
---- _Queen Mab_, 176
---- _St. Irvyne, the Rosicrucian_, 17, 35, 36
---- _Witch of Atlas, The_, 148
---- _Wandering Jew, The_, 176
---- _Zastrozzi_, 10, 12
Shorthouse, J. H.:
---- _Countess Eve_, 138
---- _John Inglesant_, 66, 87, 98
_Shropshire Folk Tales_, 291
_Sicilian Romance, A_, 45, 50, 301
Sidhe, The, 242
_Signal Man, The_, 114
_Silence_, 293
Silvani, Anita, 88, 207
---- _Ahrinziman_, 88, 183, 213
_Silver Mirror, The_, 259
_Sin Eater, The_, 138
_Sinner, The_, 66
_Sister Helen_, 67, 153
Skinner, C. M., 187
---- _Myths and Legends of Our Land_, 187
Smale, Fred C., _Afterwards_, 102, 202
Smith, Benjamin, _Merman and the Seraph, The_, 234
_Sociable Ghost, The_, 111
_Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera_, 67, 300
_Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_, 67, 152
Solomon, Simeon, _Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, 79
_Song of Love Triumphant, The_, 68
_Songs from a Vagrom Spirit_, 207
_Song of the Wandering Jew, The_, 176
_Sorcerer, The_, 145
_Sorrows of Satan, The_, 136, 144
_Soul of the Moor, The_, 207
_Soul on Fire, A_, 193
_Souls on Fifth_, 123, 198, 215
Southey, Robert, _Thalaba_, 161
Spearmen, F. H., _Ghost at Point of Rock, The_, 83
_Speck on the Lens, The_, 255
_Specter Bridegroom, The_, 83, 110
_Spectral Mortgage, The_, 63
Spencer, Herbert, 251
Spenser, Edmund, 239
---- _Faerie Queene, The_, 7
Speranza (Lady Wilde), 229, 240
---- _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_, 229
_Spider's Eye, The_, 62, 274
_Spirit of Turrettville, The_, 23
Spiritualism, 73, 199 _et seq._
Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 286
---- _Mad Lady, The_, 286
_Spring Recital, A_, 208
_Star, The_, 264
_Star Rover, The_, 264
Stead, W. T., 74
Stephens, James, 219
---- _Crock of Gold, The_, 241, 246
---- _Demi-gods, The_, 219, 221
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 70
---- _Bottle Imp, The_, 70
---- _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, 120, 268, 305
---- _Markheim_, 120
---- _New Arabian Nights, The_, 70
---- _Thrawn Janet_, 137
Stockton, Frank R., 293
---- _Great Stone of Sardis, The_, 262
---- _Spectral Mortgage, The_, 63
---- _Tale of Negative Gravity, A_, 274, 286
---- _Transferred Ghost, The_, 63, 87, 111, 122
Stoker, Bram, 78, 92, 117, 180
---- _Dracula_, 78, 163, 188, 301
---- _Jewel of Seven Stars, The_, 191, 274
---- _Lair of the White Worm, The_, 188
_Stories of Red Ranrahan_, 186, 243
_Story of Days to Come, A_, 262
_Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham, The_, 122, 185
Stramm, August, 209, 251, 308
---- _Daughter of the Moor, The_, 304
---- _Sancta Susanna_, 307
_Strange Adventures of Phra, the Phoenician, The_, 188
_Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchion, The_, 254, 299
_Strange Story, A_, 90, 182
Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 226
_Styx River Anthology, The_, 216
Subjective Ghosts, 83
_Substitute, The_, 88
Sue, Eugene, 176, 178
---- _Wandering Jew, The_, 176, 180
_Suggested by Some of the Proceedings of the Psychical Research
Society_, 283
_Sunken Bell, The_, 158
Supernatural in Folk-tales, 233 _et seq._
_Supernatural in Tragedy, The_, 305
Supernatural Life, 174 _et seq._
Supernatural Science, 251 _et seq._
Sutton, Vida, _Kingdom Come_, 282, 306
_Swept and Garnished_, 94, 282, 288
Synge, John, 10, 229, 240
---- _Riders to the Sea_, 10, 304
Swanson, Frederick, _Ghost Moth, The_, 290
Swift, Dean, 35
T
_Tale of Negative Gravity, A_, 274, 286
_Tale of the Ragged Mountains, A_, 58, 190
_Tales of the Alhambra_, 226
_Tales of Mystery_, 48
_Talisman, The_, 134, 146, 147, 225
_Tam O'Shanter_, 156
Tchekhoff:
---- _Black Monk, The_, 69
---- _Sleepyhead_, 69
---- _Ward No. 6_, 69
Temperament, Gothic, 46
_Tempest, The_, 64
_Temptation of the Clay, The_, 231
_Terror of Blue John Gap, The_, 272
_Terror of the Twins, The_, 122, 192
_Tess of the D' Urbervilles_, 143
Thackeray, W. M., 55, 89
---- _Fairy Pantomime, A_, 240
---- _Notch on the Axe, A_, 89, 188
_Thalaba_, 161
Theal, _Kaffir Tales_, 232
_Theodora_, 103
_They_, 84, 93, 288
_They That Mourn_, 85, 108
_They That Walk in Darkness_, 136
Thomas, Augustus, 306
---- _Witching Hour, The_, 306
Thompson, Francis, _Hound of Heaven, The_, 283
Thorndike, Ashley Horace, 42
---- _Tragedy_, 42
_Thrawn, Janet_, 137
_Three Impostors, The_, 247, 269
_Through the Mists_, 207
_Thurlow's Christmas Story_, 121
Thurston, E. Temple, _Passionate Crime, The_, 242
_Ticket-of-leave Angel, The_, 221
Tieck, Ludwig, 56, 59
_Time and the Gods_, 245
_Time Machine, The_, 189, 260
Tolstoi, Ivan, 68
---- _Ivan, the Fool_, 68, 138, 144
Tompkins, Juliet Wilbur, _They That Mourn_, 85, 108
_Tragedy_, 42
_Transfer, The_, 164
_Transferred Ghost, The_, 63, 87, 111, 122
_Transmigration of a Soul, The_, 190
_Tress, The_, 61
_Trilby_, 267
_Triumph of Night, The_, 121
_Tryst, The_, 126, 211
Turgeniev, Ivan, 68, 69, 163
---- _Clara Militch_, 68, 162
---- _Dream, The_, 68
---- _Knock! Knock! Knock!_, 68
---- _Phantoms_, 68
---- _Song of Love Triumphant, The_, 68
_Turn of the Screw, The_, 86, 91, 109
Twain, Mark, 142
---- _Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, A_, 189, 262, 286
---- _Extracts from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven_, 201, 217
---- _Mysterious Stranger, The_, 142, 303
---- _Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut, The_, 122
_Twilight_, 268
_Two Drovers, The_, 151, 225
_Two Military Executions_, 116
_Two Voices_, 97
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 227
_Tyranny of the Dark, The_, 200
U
_Unburied, The_, 66, 301
_Uncle Remus Tales_, 232, 235
_Under the Greenwood Tree_, 150
_Undine_, 57
_Undiscovered Country, The_, 200, 267
_Unknown Masterpiece, The_, 60
_Undying Thing, The_, 271
_Unwritten Law, The_, 306
_Upper Berth, The_, 100
_Usury_, 198
V
Vampire, The, 159
_Vampire, The_, 68, 163
_Vampire Bride, The_, 159
_Vampire, or the Bride of the Isles, The_, 159
Vampires, 158 _et seq._
_Vampyre, The_, 160
_Vandover and the Brute_, 167
Van Dyke, Henry, _Night Call, The_, 83
Van Lerberghe, Charles, _Flaireurs_, 64
_Vathek_, 8, 17, 22, 25, 29, 33, 37, 70
_Vendetta of the Jungle, A_, 168
_Vera, the Medium_, 200
Vergil, _Culex_, 290
Views of Other Planets, 263
_Vikings of Helgeland, The_, 65
_Vine on the House, The_, 90
_Virtuoso's Collection, The_, 78
Vision of Judgment, A, 214
_Vision of Judgment, A_, 134
_Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, A_, 79
_Vistas_, 65, 278
Vorse, Mary Heaton, _Second Wife, The_, 122, 192
W
Wallace, _Edgar, Bones, Sanders, and Another_, 156
Wallace, Lew, 179
---- _Fair God, The_, 256
---- _Prince of India_, 179
Wandering Jew, The, 8, 175 _et seq._
_Wandering Jew, The_, 176
_Wandering Jew, The_, 176
_Wandering Jew, The_, 176, 180
_Wandering Jew, A Christmas Carol, The_, 177
_Wandering Jew, or the Travels of Bareach, the Prolonged, The_, 178
_Wanderings of Cain, The_, 118
Walpole, Horace, 6, 8, 11, 14, 71, 92, 188, 309
---- _Castle of Otranto, The_, 6, 8, 16, 17, 25, 31, 32, 36, 40,
41, 52, 101
---- _Mysterious Mother, The_, 53
_War Letters from a Living Dead Man_, 207, 292
_War of the Wenuses, The_, 263
_War of the Worlds, The_, 263
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 199, 290
---- _Day of My Death, The_, 199
---- _Gates Ajar, The_, 210
---- _Gates Between, The_, 210
---- _Gates Beyond, The_, 210
---- _Kentucky's Ghost_, 199
_Ward No. 6_, 69
_Warning, The_, 276
_Water Babies, The_, 240
_Water Ghost and Others, The_, 112
_Water of the Wondrous Isle, The_, 236
_Waters of Death, The_, 62
_Wave, The_, 194
Webster, John, _Duchess of Malfi, The_, 8, 166
Wedmore, Frederick, _Dream of Provence, A_, 293
_Well at the World's End, The_, 236
Wells, Carolyn, _Styx River Anthology, The_, 216
Wells, H. G.:
---- _Crystal Egg, The_, 263
---- _Days of the Comet, The_, 264
---- _Door in the Wall, The_, 258
---- _Dream of Armageddon, A_, 196, 262
---- _First Men in the Moon, The_, 264
---- _Flowering of the Strange Orchid_, 62, 164, 273
---- _In the Days of the Comet_, 264
---- _Invisible Man, The_, 95, 269
---- _Island of Dr. Moreau, The_, 271
---- _Man Who Had Been in Fairyland, The_, 241
---- _New Accelerator, The_, 286
---- _Plattner Case, The_, 260
---- _Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes, The_, 256
---- _Sea Lady, The_, 234
---- _Star, The_, 264
---- _Story of Days to Come, A_, 262
---- _Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham, The_, 122, 185
---- _Time Machine, The_, 189, 260
---- _Vision of Judgment, A_, 214
---- _War of the Worlds, The_, 263
---- _When the Sleeper Wakes_, 262
---- _Wonderful Visit, The_, 218, 221, 302
Wentz, W. Y. E., 239
---- _Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_, 239
Werewolf, The, 166 _et seq._
_Werewolf, The_, 169, 172
Werewolves, 170
Weston, Jessie Adelaide, 146
---- _Black Magic_, 146
---- _Mummy's Foot, The_, 62
Wetmore, Elizabeth Bisland, _Doppelgänger, The_, 122
Weyman, Stanley J., _Man in Black, The_, 137
Wharton, Edith, 53, 121
---- _Afterwards_, 302
---- _Duchess at Prayer, The_, 121, 303
---- _Eyes, The_, 297
---- _Kerfol_, 290
---- _Triumph of Night, The_, 121
_What Was It? A Mystery_, 61, 96
_When the Gods Slept_, 63, 74
_When the Sleeper Wakes_, 262
Whicher, George Frisbee, _Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza
Heywood_, 42
_White Lady of Avenel_, 225
_White People, The_, 203, 298
_White Sleep of Auber Hurn, The_, 121
Whitman, Stephen French, _Woman from Yonder, The_, 126, 187
Whitmore, E. C., 305
---- _Supernatural in Tragedy, The_, 305
Wieland, 35, 39
Wilde, Oscar, 32, 240, 249
---- _Fisherman and His Soul, The_, 134, 153, 236
---- _Happy Prince, The_, 238
---- _House of Judgment, The_, 214
---- _Legend of Sharp, A_, 134
---- _Nightingale and the Rose, The_, 235, 293
---- _Picture of Dorian Gray, The_, 32, 60, 121, 134
---- _Selfish Giant, The_, 246
Wilkinson, William Cleaver, 284
William of Newbury, 159
_William Wilson_, 58, 120
Williams, Blanche Colton, 83
Williams, Frances Fenwick:
---- _Soul on Fire, A_, 193
---- _Theodora_, 193
_Willow Tree, The_, 306
_Wisdom of the King, The_, 154
_Witch, The_, 149
_Witch, The_, 151
Witch, The, 145 _et seq._
_Witch of Atlas, The_, 148
_Witch of Edmondton, The_, 150
_Witch of Endor, The_, 145
_Witch of Fife, The_, 148
_Witch of Prague, The_, 149, 195, 266
_Witch Hazel_, 157
Witches, Gothic, 26 _et seq._
_Witching Hour, The_, 306
_With Intent to Steal_, 62, 117
_Withered Arm, The_, 225
Wizard, The, 145 _et seq._
_Wolf, The_, 172
_Woman, The_, 66, 194, 300
_Woman from Yonder, The_, 126, 187
_Wonderful Visit, The_, 218, 221, 302
_Wood beyond the World, The_, 236
_Woodstock_, 225
_Wool-gatherer, The_, 23, 29, 30
_Word with a Mummy, A_, 62
Wordsworth, William, _Song of the Wandering Jew, The_, 176
_Wrong Elixir, The_, 186
_Wuthering Heights_, 86, 226
Y
Yeats, W. B., 226, 237, 240, 248, 285
---- _Celtic Twilight, The_, 239
---- _Countess Cathleen_, 65, 143
---- _Curse of the Fires and the Shadows, The_, 154
---- _Land of Heart's Desire, The_, 65, 240, 306
---- _Old Men of the Twilight, The_, 234
---- _Stories of Red Ranrahan_, 186, 243
---- _Wisdom of the King, The_, 154
_Young Goodman Brown_, 151
Z
Zangwill, Israel, _They That Walk in Darkness_, 136
_Zastrozzi_, 17
_Zero_, 257
_Zofloya_, 10, 17, 28, 33, 37, 38, 53, 154, 251
Zola, Émile, 252
Transcriber's note
Words in italics were surrounded with _underscores_, bold with =signs=,
and small capitals changed to all capitals. The footnotes were moved to
directly after the paragraph they belong to.
Errors in punctuation and spacing were corrected without note, also
some missing pagenumbers en incorrectly used italics in the index.
All occasions of "Dorian Grey" were changed to "Dorian Gray", and all
occasions of "Elixire des Teufels" or "Elixière des Teufels" changed to
"Elixiere des Teufels". Also the following corrections were made, on
page
30 "Bisclaveret" changed to "Bisclavret" (Marie de France's
charming little lai, _Le Bisclavret_)
104 "Pangborne" changed to "Pangborn" (Georgia Wood Pangborn brings
one out)
169 "replicaed" changed to "replicated" (a replicated mirage of a
black monk)
171 "Dicken's" changed to "Dickens's" (those spoken of in Dickens's
_Haunted House_)
174 "CHAPTER" added for consistency (CHAPTER V)
214 "hyprocrisy" changed to "hypocrisy" (hypocrisy of a so-called
saint)
221 "mmortal" changed to "immortal" (turns his back on immortal
glory)
231 "Reineche" changed to "Reinecke" (the German Reinecke Fuchs)
297 "aweful" changed to "awful" for consistency (with a loathly
effect more awful than)
300 "of" added (the woman of fifty-two)
311 "or" changed to "of" (Ancient Records of the Abbey)
317 "347" changed to "247" (Gnomes, 247)
319 "Magnetizeur" changed to "Magnetiseur" (---- _Magnetiseur_, 58)
326 "Tchekhov" changed to "Tchekhoff" for consistency
329 "340" changed to "240" (---- _Land of Heart's Desire,
The_, 56, 240, 306),
and in footnote
39 "Doppelganger" changed to "Doppelgänger" (In the _Doppelgänger_)
44 "Reconcilie" changed to "Réconcilié" (_Melmoth Réconcilié_)
87 "Panghorne" changed to "Pangborn" (By Georgia Wood Pangborn)
140 "Connecticutt" changed to "Connecticut" (_The Recent Carnival
of Crime in Connecticut_)
140 "Amphitryton" changed to "Amphitryon" (in Kleist's _Amphitryon_)
153 "Bisclaverat" changed to "Bisclavret" (In her lay of
_Bisclavret_.)
171 "Straford" changed to "Stratford" (by Stratford Jolly).
If necessary, these same words were also corrected in the index.
Otherwise the original was preserved, including unusual, archaic or
inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. The index was not checked for
errors in alfabetisation or page numbers. The subtitle of Chapter III
was formatted different from the others in the original, this has not
been changed. Some of the lemma's in the index appear to be identical,
but they are probably meant to refer to different books with the same
title.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Supernatural in Modern English
Fiction, by Dorothy Scarborough
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