CHAPTER V
Supernatural Life
The fiction dealing with immortal life shows, more than any otheraspect of the subject, humanity's deep hunger for the supernatural.Whether it be stories of continuance of earthly existence without deathas in the legends of the undying persons like the Wandering Jew; or ofsupernaturally renewed or preserved youth as described in the tales ofthe elixir of life; or of the transference of the soul after death intoanother body; or of life continued in the spirit in other worlds thanthis after the body's death,--all show our craving for something aboveand beyond what we know here and now. Conscious of our own helplessnesswe long to feel ourselves leagued with immortal powers; shrinkingaffrighted from the grave's near brink we yearn for that which wouldspare us death's sting and victory. Sadly knowing with what swift,relentless pace old age is overtaking us we would fain find somethingto give us eternal youth. But since we cannot have these gifts in ourown 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 alife beyond.
"Oh world unknowable, we touch thee! Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!"
We somehow snatch a strange comfort from these stories of a life beyondour own. We are comforted for our mortality when we see the tragedythat dogs the steps of those who may not die, whether Swift's loathsomeStruldbrugs or the Wandering Jew. Our own ignorance of the futuremakes us credulous of any man's dream of heaven and at the same timesceptical of anybody else's hell. We are such indestructible optimiststhat we can take any sort of raw material of fiction and transmute itinto stuff that hope is made of.
=The Wandering Jew.= There is no legend more impressive than that ofthe Wandering Jew, and none save the Faust theme that has so influencedliterature. The story is as deathless as the person it portrays andhas wandered into as many lands, though it is impossible to trace withcertainty its origin or first migrations. There is an Arabian legend ofone Samiri who forever wanders, crying, "Touch me not!" as there is aBuddhist account of a man cursed for working miracles for show, to whomBuddha said, "Thou shalt not attain Nirvana while my religion lasts."There are similar Chinese and Indian versions and the idea occurs inEnglish folk-tales, where the plovers are thought to be the souls ofthose 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 inthe Chronicles of Roger of Wendover, who reports the legend as beingtold at the monastery of St. Albans by an Armenian bishop, in 1228, butto hearers already familiar with it. There are two distinct versionsof the story appearing in English literature. One relates that thewanderer is a certain Cartapholus, a servant in Pilate's palace, whostruck Jesus a brutal blow as He was led forth to death, and to whom Hesaid, "Thou shalt wander till I come!" The other is of German origingiving the personality of Ahasuerus, a shoemaker of Jerusalem, whomocked the Savior as He passed to Golgotha. Bowed under the weight ofthe cross, Christ leaned for a moment's rest against the door of thelittle shop, but Ahasuerus said scornfully, "Go faster, Jew!" With onelook of deep reproach, Christ answered, "I go, but tarry thou till Icome!"
The Wandering Jew story is cosmopolitan, used in the literature of manylands. In Germany it has engaged the attention of Berthold Auerbach,Kingemann, Schlegel, Julius Mosen, and Chamisso, in France that ofEdgar Quinet and Eugene Sue. Hans Christian Andersen has used it whileHeijermans has written a Dutch play on it and Carmen Sylva, late Queenof Roumania, made it the basis for a long dramatic poem.
The theme has appeared in various forms in English literature, besidesin fiction where it has been most prominent. A comedy[155] waspublished in 1797, by Andrew Franklin, though the wanderer is hereused only as a hoax. Wordsworth has a poem entitled The _Song of theWandering Jew_, and Shelley was fascinated by the legend, as we seefrom the fact that he used it three times. One of his first poems, along dramatic attempt, written at eighteen, is _The Wandering Jew_,a fevered poem showing the same weaknesses that his Gothic romancesreveal, yet with a hint of his later power. The Wandering Jew appearsas a definite character in both _Queen Mab_ and _Hellas_, in the firstAhasuerus being summoned to testify concerning God, while he appears inthe latter to give supernatural vision of events. In both poems he isvery 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 isdescribed 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 uptorn 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 ofimmortality if only he would repent, but he will not. He renews hisyouth every forty years, growing suddenly from a decrepit man to ahandsome, gifted youth, which naturally suggests complications of humanlove-affairs. Other elements of supernaturalism are used, as angels,demons, and so forth while the AEons and the Intermedii (whoever theyare!) appear as chorus.
[156] _The Curse of the Wandering Jew._
_The Wandering Jew, a Christmas Carol_,[157] retells the story withvariations and with some power. The Jew here is shown to be very oldand feeble, clad in antique raiment, with stigmata of the wounds onhands 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 aburning cross imprinted, appears and is spoken of as the WanderingJew. He is unable to stay more than fourteen days in any one place butmust forever hurry on. Rev. T. Clark[158] gives a bird's-eye view ofhistory such as a person of the long life and extensive migrations ofthe 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 playswith the theme in various passages in his works and notebooks. In_A Virtuoso's Collection_, where Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, isdoor-keeper and where the collection includes a letter from the FlyingDutchman to his wife, together with a flask of the elixir of life, thevirtuoso himself is none other than the Wandering Jew. He speaks ofhis destiny and says that human prayers will not avail to aid him. Thetouch of his hand is like ice, conveying a sense of spiritual as wellas 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 andappearing at the beck of every entertainer that he could hardly bedeemed a proper guest in an exclusive circle." This bit of satireillustrates how common the theme had become at that time in fiction.
There are various threads of narration tangled up with the WanderingJew motif. He is said by some writers to have supernatural power toheal disease, while by others he is thought to be the helpless bearerof evil and death. Eugene Sue in his novel represents him as carryingthe plague, knowing his awful destiny, yet, while wildly regretting it,powerless in the clutch of fate. Here he appears as a voluntary agentof good toward the Rennepont family and an involuntary minister of evilin other ways. An anonymous story[159] uses the same idea of the plagueassociation but carries it further, for here the wanderer is not apersonality 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 definitereligious message. The idea of the immortal wanderer is represented asthe concept of a part of humanity urged by an earnest longing whichdominates their whole life and thought, the desire that a new kingdomof God might come. The book is a social satire, an appeal for thecoming of a real democracy, real justice and genuine spirituality.George Croly[161] has for his purpose the proving that Christ's secondcoming is near at hand. Lew Wallace, who himself uses the theme ofthe Wanderer, thought this book one of the half dozen volumes whichtaken alone would constitute a British literature. We are likely tofind ourselves questioning Wallace's judgment in the matter, forwhile the novel is interesting and has a sermon impressed with someinterest, it is by no means a great piece of literature. Salathiel ispictured as a young, enthusiastic, passionate Jew striving to defendhis country against the woes that threaten her. His life is given indetail immediately following his unpardonable sin, and his definitecareer ends with the destruction of Jerusalem, though his immortalityis suggested at the close. The book describes many supernaturalhappenings, the miraculous phenomena accompanying the death of Christand 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 appearsagain. In the beginning of the story he enters a vault from which heremoves the treasure from mummy cases, remarking that the place hasnot been visited since he was there a thousand years before. He hasnumerous impressive experiences, such as seeing a monk that seems thereincarnation of Jesus, and hearing again the centurion's call tohim. Wallace pictures the Jew as old, a philosopher, in contrast toSalathiel's impetuous youth. He is striving to bring the sons of meninto closer spiritual truth with each other and with God, as Salathieltries to prevent the material destruction of the city. The sense ofresponsibility, the feeling of a mission toward others, expressed inthis novel, may be compared with that of Eugene Sue's Wandering Jew whoacts as a friend to the Rennepont family, protecting their interestsagainst the wily Jesuits.
The Wandering Jew has been represented in many ways, with stressplaced on various aspects of his life and character. He has beendepicted psychologically, as a suffering human being, mythologically toillustrate the growth and change in life, religiously to preach certaintenets and beliefs, and symbolically to show forth the soul of man. Heappears symbolically as the creature accursed of God, driven foreverin the face of doom. Shelley and others show him as vainly attemptingsuicide, but living on, anguished yet deathless, in the face of everyeffort to take his own life as in the teeth of torture from others. Hestands at once for the undying power of God's plan, and, as in RobertBuchanan's version, for the typified failure of Christ's mission. He isused to prove that Christ's second coming is near, and to prove alsothat He will never come. To the Christian he stands for the evidenceof Christ's power of divinity, while to the Jew he is a symbol of thatunhappy race that wanders ever, with no home in any land.
Besides those mentioned, other English and American writers who havemade use of the legend are Kipling; Bram Stoker, who discusses himin his assembly of Famous Impostors; M. D. Conway, who gives variousversions 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 ofa woman who bore the curse of eternal wandering. One version bringsin 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 isnot correctly told in _Parsifal_. As Sharp tells it, it is a piece oftragic symbolism. Kundry, a gypsy woman of evil life, mocks Christ onGolgotha and demands of Him a sign, to whom He says, "To thee and thineI bequeath the signs of my Passion to be a shame and horror among thypeople forevermore!" Upon her hands and feet appear the stigmata of Hiswounds, never to fade away, and to be borne by her descendants in everythird generation. Various ones of her descendants are crucified, andwherever the wanderers go on earth they bear the marks of horror. Thecurse would be lifted from them only when a Gypsy Christ should be bornof a virgin; but then the Children of the Wind should be dispersed andvanish from among men. In the last chapter Naomi prophesies that she isto give birth to the Gypsy Christ.
The theme of the Wandering Jew, while rivalling the Faust legend inimpressiveness and in the frequence with which it has been used inliterature, yet is different in having had no adequate representation.No truly great poem or drama or novel has been written concerningthis tragic, deathless character. Perhaps it may come yet. Onlyhints of his personality have appeared in very recent fiction,such as the reincarnation in the character of the young Jew inA. T. Quiller-Couch's story, _The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem_, or thehumorous reference to him in Brander Matthews's _Primer of ImaginaryGeography_, or _The Holy Cross_ by Eugene Field, where the wanderer ispitied by a Spanish priest in Cortez's train in Mexico. His prayers winforgiveness and the tortured Jew dies. After his death an earthquakesupernaturally splits a gulf on each side of the grave and a cross ofsnow appears there, to remain forever. Perhaps the theme is fading outnow in fiction and drama, to disappear completely, or perhaps it islying forgotten for a while, waiting the master hand that shall give itadequate treatment.
=Elixir of Life.= Immortality that proves such a curse in the caseof the Wandering Jew forms the basis for various other stories.The elixir of life was a favorite theme with the Gothicists, beingused by Maturin, Godwin, and Shelley, and has continued to furnishcomplication for fiction since that time. The theme has been popular onthe continent as well as in England, Balzac and Hoffman being the mostimpressive users of it.
Bulwer-Lytton, in _A Strange Story_, introduces the elixir of lifetogether with other forms of supernaturalism, such as mesmerism, magic,spectral apparitions, invisible manifestations, awful bodiless Eyes, agigantic Foot, and so forth. Margrave attempts to concoct the potionthat shall give him endless life, but after mysterious preparations,incantations, and supernatural manifestations, at the crucial moment astampede of maddened beasts, urged forward by the dreadful Foot, dashesthe beaker from his lips. The irreplaceable liquid wastes its force onthe desert sands, where a magic richness of herbage instantly springsup in contrast to the barrenness around it. Flowers bloom, myriadsof insects hover round them, and all is life, but the man who soughtthe elixir with such pains lies dead. The author suggests a symbolicmeaning for his story, hinting that the scientist's laboratory holdsmany elixirs of life, that all growth and life are magical, that allbeing is miraculous.
Rider Haggard, in _She_ and _Ayesha_, its sequel, describes awonderful woman who possesses the secret of eternal life and has livedfor thousands of years, ever young and beautiful, supernaturallyenchanting. Her magic potion not only gives her length of days butprotection against danger as well, for her rival's dagger glancesharmlessly away from her, and she is proof against chance and fate.She gains her immortal life partly by bathing in a secret essence orvapor whose emanations give her mystic force and immortal beauty.There are many other elements of supernaturalism in association withthe not impossible She,--magic vision, reincarnation, a mystic lightthat envelops her body, the power to call up the dead, to reanimatethe skeletons in the desert and raise them to dreadful life. She is aninteresting but fearsome personality.
In _Ahrinziman_, by Anita Silvani, we have magic chemistry yielding upthe elixir of life. Jelul-uh-din has lived for five hundred years andlooks forward to a still more protracted existence. His magic drug notonly gives him prolonged life but will do anything he wishes besides,since he has hypnotized it. Yet he is found dead. "On his wrists weremarks of giant fingers, scorched and burnt into the flesh like marksof hot iron. And on his throat were marks of a similar hand which hadevidently strangled him." It is apparent that his master, th
e De'il,got impatient and cut short the leisurely existence that he feltbelonged to him.
Hawthorne was greatly interested in the theme of the elixir of life. Hegives us two brews of it in _Septimius Felton_, one an Indian potionconcocted by an old sachem. The red man gets so old that his tribefind him a great nuisance and obstacle to progress so they gravelyrequest permission to kill him. But his skull is so hard that the stonehammers are smashed when they try to brain him, his skin so toughthat no arrows will pierce it, and nothing seems to avail. Finallythey fill his mouth and nostrils with clay and put him in the sun tobake, till presently his heart bursts with a loud explosion, tearinghis body to fragments. This brew of his is matched by one made by anEuropean scientist after long endeavors. Here the ultimate ingredientis supposed to be a strange herb that grows from a mysterious grave.At last, just when the youth thinks he has the right combination, thewoman 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 grownfrom the grave of her lover, whom the young scientist has murdered.
In _The Dolliver Romance_, that pathetic fragment Hawthorne leftunfinished at his death, we find another treatment of the theme. Itseems symbolic that in his old age and failing powers, he shouldhave been thinking of immortal youth, of deathless life. In thisstory various magical elements are introduced. The herbs grown in oldGrandsir Dolliver's garden have a strange power, for when a woman laysa flower from one on her breast, it glows like a gem and lends a bloomof youth to her cheeks. The old man seeks the one unknown essence, theincalculable element necessary to make up the elixir of life, as didthe youth in _Septimius Felton_. He drinks occasional mouthfuls of astrange cordial that he finds in an old bottle on the shelf, and seemsto 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 growsviolently young, but dies in convulsions.
In _Dr. Heidigger's Experiment_ Hawthorne gives us another sad symbolicstory of the quest of the elixir of youth. The old physician invitesfour aged friends to make an experiment, to drink of a cordial whichshall restore youth, but which he himself is too wise to share. Thestrange potion proves its power by restoring to beauty and perfume arose that has been dead for over fifty years. When the old personsdrink they become young and happy and beautiful once more. Age dropsfrom them like a mantle discarded and the world glows again withpassion and color and joy. But alas! it is only ephemeral, for theeffects soon pass away and senility is doubly tragic after one snatchedhour of joy and youth. There is a sad philosophy of life expressed inthese symbolic allegories such as Hawthorne alone knows how to tell.
Elsewhere Hawthorne shows his deep interest in the theme. In _TheBirthmark_ the scientist intimates that he could brew the life elixirif he would, but that it would produce a discord in nature such asall 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 theprecious, dreadful elixir is one of the treasures in the Virtuoso'scollection. In a note concerning his use of the theme in _The DolliverRomance_ Hawthorne states that he has been accused of plagiarizing fromDumas, but that in reality Dumas plagiarized from him, since his bookwas many years the earlier.
[162] In _Dr. Bullivant_.
H. G. Wells[163] uses this theme combined with the transfer ofpersonality. An aged man bargains with a youth to make him his heir oncertain conditions. The purpose, unknown to the young fellow, is torob him of his youth to reanimate the old man. A magic drink transfersthe personality of the octogenarian to the body of youth and leavesthe young man's soul cabined in the worn-out frame. But the drug ismore powerful than Mr. Elvesham supposed, for it brings death to bothwho drink it and the bargain has a ghastly climax. Barry Pain has asomewhat similar situation of the tragic miscalculation, in _The WrongElixir_, the story of an alchemist who brews the life-giving potion butmeans to keep it all to himself. On a certain night he will drink itand 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 thetime he planned, but instead of eternal life, the draught brings himswift-footed death. Does he drink the wrong elixir, or have all hiscalculations been wrong?
[163] In _The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham_.
An example of the way in which the magic of the old fiction ofsupernaturalism has been transferred into the scientific in moderntimes, is seen in _The Elixir of Youth_, by Albert Bigelow Paine. Aman in an upper room alone is wishing that he had the gift of immortalyouth, when a stranger in black enters and answers his thought. Hetells him that to read the mind is not black magic, but science; thathe is not a magician, but a scientist, and as such he has compoundedthe elixir of youth, which he will give to him. This drug will enablea 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 onewho wished for immortal life decides that after all God must know best,and, though his decision not to drink has not crystalized, he is notgreatly sorry when the flask is shattered and the liquid spilled. Thisis symbolic of the real wisdom of life.
The frequent use of the theme of the elixir of life, of deathlessyouth, illustrates how humanity clutches at youth with pathos andshrinks from age. Red Ranrahan, the loved singer of Ireland, whom W. B.Yeats creates for us with unforgettable words, makes a curse againstold age when he feels it creeping on him.
Various other stories of supernatural length of years appear in Englishfiction, besides those based on the definite use of the life elixir._The Woman from Yonder_, by Stephen French Whitman, shows us therevived, reanimated body of a woman who has been buried in a glaciersince Hannibal crossed the Alps, till she is dug out and miraculouslyrestored, by blood-transfusion, by an interfering scientist. Thewriter queries, "If the soul exists, where had that soul been? Whatregions did it relinquish at the command of the reviving body?" Ahumorous application of the idea of the deathless man is seen in A.Conan Doyle's _The Los Amigos Fiasco_, where the citizens of a frontiertown, wishing to kill a criminal by some other method than the triterope, try to kill him by putting him in connection with a big dynamo.But their amateur efforts have a peculiar effect. They succeed onlyin so magnetizing his body that it is impossible for him to die. Theytry shooting, hanging, and so forth, but he has gained such an accessof vitality from electricity that he comes out unscathed througheverything, resembling the ancient sachem in Hawthorne's novel.
The Flying Dutchman forms the theme for stories in folklore, of awanderer 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, inthe Virtuoso's collection, and John Kendrick Bangs has furnished theinevitable parody in his _Pursuit of the Houseboat_. _The Dead Ship_of Harpwell is another story of a wandering, accursed ship. There is asimilar legend told by C. M. Skinner,[164] of a man, who, for a cruelmurder of a servant, was condemned to wear always a halter round hisneck and was unable to die.
[164] In _Myths and Legends of Our Land_.
Bram Stoker furnishes us with several interesting specimens ofsupernatural life, always tangled with other uncanny motives. Thecount, in _Dracula_, who has lived his vampire life for centuries, issaid to be hale and fresh as if he were forty. Of course, all vampireslive to a strange lease on life, but most of them are spirits ratherthan 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 snakethousands of years old. The snake is so large that, when it goes out towalk, it looks like a high white tower, and can gaze over the tops ofthe trees.
Bulwer-Lytton's _The Haunters and the Haunted_ tells the story of amysterious being who passes through untold years with a strange powerover life and the
personality of others. He appears, no man knowswhence nor why, and disappears as strangely, while about his wholecareer is a shroud of mystery. Thackeray, in his _Notch on the Axe_,burlesques this and similar stories in playful satire, yet seems toenjoy his theme. It is not wholly a burlesque, we may suppose. Headds a touch of realism to his humorous description by the fact that,throughout his hero's long-continued life, or series of lives--onedoesn't know which--he retains always his German-Jewish accent. AndrewLang describes[165] the person who may have been the original of thesestories in real life. Horace Walpole has mentioned him in his lettersand he seems to have a teasing mystery about his life and career thatmakes him much talked-of.
[165] In _St. Germain the Deathless_.
Edwin Lester Arnold[166] tells a story of continued life with anOriental setting and mystery. Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_,by the introduction of a magic sleep makes a man live far beyond thenatural span and be able to see into the distant future, while theyouth in Mark Twain's _A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court_ hasa magic length of life, living a dual existence, in Arthurian Englandand in present-day America. H. G. Wells[167] uses something of the sameidea, 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 anotherstory of the magic accelerator that makes a man live fast and furiouslywith tenfold powers at crucial moments. The story of Peter Rugg, theMissing Man, is that of another immortal wanderer, whose story is toldin _Myths and Legends of Our Land_, and utilized by Alfred Austin. Hegoes out into a storm, saying, "I will see home to-night or I willnever see it!" He flies forever pursued by the storm, never resting,and never seeing his home. This is symbolic of the haunted soul pursuedby 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 ofsupernaturalism retained in modern fiction. The conventional alchemisthas given place to a more up-to-date investigator in the chemicallaboratory, yet the same thrill of interest is imparted by the thoughtof a magic potion prepared by man that shall endow him with earthlyimmortality. The theme has changed less in its treatment and symbolismthan most of the supernatural elements in fiction, for though we seethe added elements of modern satire and symbolism, its essentialaspects remain the same.
=Metempsychosis.= The idea of metempsychosis, the thought that atdeath the soul of a human being may pass into another mortal bodyor into a lower stage, into an animal or even a plant, has beenused considerably in English fiction. This Oriental belief has itsbasis in antiquity, in animistic ideas in primitive culture. Oneof the earliest appearances of the theme in English fiction is thatmiddle-eighteenth-century story of Dr. John Hawkesworth's,[168] anaccount of a soul that has not behaved itself seemly, so descends inthe spiritual scale till it ends by being a flea. The German Hoffmannused the theme repeatedly, and Poe, who was to a certain extentinfluenced by his supernaturalism, employs it in several stories. In _ATale 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 thetemple by a poisoned arrow. He is recognized by an elderly man as theexact counterpart of a Mr. Oldeb who perished in the manner dreamed ofin a battle in Benares. Mr. Bedlo, while wandering in the mountains ofVirginia, contracts a cold and fever, for the cure of which leechesare applied, but by mistake a poisonous sangsue is substituted forthe leech, and the patient dies of a wound on the temple, similarto that caused by a poisoned arrow. Poe's concept in other storiesis not that of the conventionally easy passage of the soul into thebody of a new-born babe that wouldn't be expected to put up much ofa fight, but he makes the psychic feature the central horror, sayingin that connection that man is on the brink of tremendous psychicaldiscoveries. In _Morella_ the theme is used with telling power, wherethe wife, once greatly loved but now loathed, on her deathbed tells herhusband that her child will live after her. The daughter grows up intosupernatural likeness of her mother, but remains nameless, since herfather, for a reason he cannot analyze, hesitates to give her any name.But at last, as she stands before the altar to be christened, someforce 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 ownhands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed, with a long and bitterlaugh, as I found no traces of the first in the charnel where I laidthe 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 princessenters into the body of a baby born to one of the explorers who rifleher tomb. The child grows into the perfect duplicate of the princess,even showing on her wrists the marks of violence that cut off themummy's hand. The Egyptian's familiar, a mummified cat, comes to lifeto revenge itself upon the archaeologists who have disturbed the tomb.When by magic incantations and scientific experiments combined, thecollectors try to revivify the mummy, the body mysteriously disappears,and the young girl is found dead, leading us to suppose that thereanimated princess has stolen the girl's life for her own.
In _Ligeia_, another of Poe's morbid studies of metempsychosis, thetheme is clearly announced, as quoted from Joseph Glanville: "Mandoth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly save onlythrough the weakness of his own feeble will." The worshipped Ligeiadies, and in an hour of madness her husband marries the Lady Rowena.The bride soon sickens and as the husband watches alone by her bedat midnight, he sees drops of ruby liquid fall from some mysterioussource, into the wine he is offering her. When the Lady Rowenapresently dies, the husband, again alone with her, sees the corpseundergo an awful transformation. It is reanimated, but the body thatlives is not that of Rowena, but of Ligeia, who has come back to lifeagain by exerting her deathless will over the physical being of herrival. The climax with which the story closes has perhaps no parallelin fiction. As for the ruby drops, are we to think of them as an elixirof life for the dead Ligeia struggling back to being, or as poison toslay 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 comesto oust her supplanter, but in this instance the interloper does notdie, but without dying merely _becomes_ the person and the personalityof the first wife. The change is gradual but incontrovertible, felt bythe woman herself before it is complete, and noticed by the husbandand 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" asPatience Worth would say?
A similar transfer of soul, effected while both persons are livingbut caused by the malignance of an evil dead spirit, is found inBlackwood's _The Terror of the Twins_. A father, who resents the factthat instead of a single heir twins are born to him, swears in hismadness before he dies, that before their majority he will bring it topass that there shall be only _one_. By the help of powers from thePit he filches from the younger his vitality, his strength of mind andsoul and body, his personality, and gives this access of power to theelder. The younger dies a hopeless idiot and the elder lives on witha double dower of being. Ambrose Bierce carries this idea to a climaxof horror,[169] when he makes an evil spirit take possession of a deadmother's body and slay her son, who recognizes his loved mother'sface, knows that it is her eyes that glare fiend-like at him, her handsthat are strangling him,--yet cannot know that it is a hideous fiend inher corpse.
[169] In _The Death of Halpin Frazer_.
&nbs
p; The theme of metempsychosis is found tangled up with various othermotives in fiction, the use of the elixir of life, hypnotism,dream-supernaturalism, witchcraft and so forth. Rider Haggard hasgiven a curious combination of metempsychosis, and the supernaturalcontinuance of life by means of the elixir, in _She_ and its sequel,_Ayesha_. The wonderful woman, the dread She-who-must-be-obeyed whokeeps her youth and beauty by means of bathing in the magic fluid,recognizes in various stages of her existence the lover whom she hasknown thousands of years before. Not having the advantage of theTurkish bath or patent medicine, he dies periodically and has to beborn all over again in some other century. This is agitating to thelady, so she determines to inoculate him with immortality so thatthey can reign together without those troublesome interruptions ofmortality. But the impatient lover insists on kissing her, which provestoo much for him, since her divinity is fatal to mere mankind, so hedies again.
The close relation between metempsychosis and hypnotism is shown invarious stories. Several cases of troublesome atavistic personality orreincarnation are cured by psychotherapy. Theodora, a young woman in anovel by Frances Fenwick Williams, bearing that title-name, realizesherself to be the reincarnation of a remote ancestress, an Orientalist,a witch, who has terrorized the country with her sorceries. She iscured of her mental hauntings by means of hypnotism. Another novel bythe same author,[170] gives also the reincarnation of a witch characterin modern life, with a cure effected by psycho-analysis. The youngwoman discovers herself to be the heiress of a curse, which is removedonly after study of pre-natal influences and investigations concerningthe subconscious self.
[170] _A Soul on Fire._
As is seen by these examples, the relation between witchcraftand metempsychosis is very close, since in recent fiction thewitch characters have unusual powers of returning to life in someother form. In Algernon Blackwood's _Ancient Sorceries_, we havewitch-metempsychosis on a large scale, the population of a wholevillage being but the reanimations of long-dead witches and wizardswho once lived there. I know of no other case of mob-metempsychosisin English fiction, but the instances where several are reincarnatedat once are numerous. Algernon Blackwood's recent novel, _Jules LeVallon_, is based on a story of collective reincarnation, the chiefcharacters in the dramatic action realizing that they have livedand been associated with each other before, and feeling that theymust expiate a sin of a previous existence. Another recent novel byBlackwood, _The Wave_, has for its theme the reincarnation of theprincipal characters, realized by them. Blackwood has been much drawnto psychic subjects in general and metempsychosis in particular, forit enters into many of his stories. In _Old Clothes_ he gives us aninstance of a child who knows herself to be the reborn personality ofsome one else and suffers poignantly in reliving the experiences ofthat long-dead ancestress, while those around her are recognized asthe companions of her life of the far past, though they are unaware ofit. The fatuous remark of lovers in fiction, that they feel that theyhave lived and loved each other in a previous existence, is a literarybromide now, but has its basis in a recurrence in fiction. AntonioFogazzaro's novel, _The Woman_, is a good example in Italian,--for thewoman feels that she and her lover are reincarnations of long-deadselves who have suffered tragic experiences together, which morbid ideaculminates in tragic madness.
_The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem_, by A. T. Quiller-Couch, is astriking story of dual reincarnation. A young Jew in England and ahalf-witted girl, a farmer's daughter, recognize in each other andin themselves, the personalities of a young Jew led to the lionsfor becoming a Christian, and a Roman princess who loved him. Theyrecall their successive lives wherein they have known and loved eachother, to be separated by cruel destiny each time, but at last theydie a tragic death together. The character of the man here is givenadditional interest for us in that he is said to be a reincarnation ofCartapholus, Pilate's porter, who struck Jesus, bidding Him go faster,and who is immortalized as the Wandering Jew. Here he lives successivelives rather than a continuous existence. Somewhat similar to thisis another combination of hypnotism and metempsychosis in _The Witchof Prague_, by F. Marion Crawford, where Uorna makes Israel Kafka gothrough the physical and psychical tortures of Simon Abeles, a youngJew killed by his people for becoming a Christian. By hypnotism theyoung man is made to pass through the experiences of a dead youth ofwhom he has never heard, and to die his death anew.
There is a close relation between dreams and metempsychosis, as is seenin certain stories. Kipling's charming prose idyll, _The BrushwoodBoy_, may be called a piece of dream-metempsychosis, for the youth andgirl when they first meet in real life recognize in each other thecompanions of their childhood and adolescent dream-life, and completetheir dual memories. They have dreamed the same dreams even to minutedetails of conversation, and familiar names. Du Maurier combines thetwo motives very skillfully in his novels, for it is in successivedreams that the Martian reveals herself to Barty Joscelyn telling himof her life on another planet, and inspiring him to write--or writingfor him--books of genius, before she takes up earthly life in oneof his children. She tells him that she will come to him no more indreams, but that she will live in the child that is to be born. And indual dreams Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess of Towers live over againtheir childhood life together, are able to find at will their goldenyesterdays, and know in happy reality the joys of the past, while thepresent keeps them cruelly apart. They are able to call back to shadowylife their common ancestors, to see and hear the joys, the work, thegriefs they knew so long ago. They plumb their sub-consciousness, dreamover again their sub-dreams, until they at last not only see theselong-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 transportthese dead ancestors of his to his present and let them share in hislife, so that Gatienne, a French woman dead for generations, livesover again in an English prison as Peter Ibbetson, or travels as MaryTowers, seeing things she never had dreamed of in her own life.
H. G. Wells in _A Dream of Armageddon_ gives a curious story of thedream-future. A man in consecutive visions sees himself killed. He thendreams 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 thatafterwards you remember little details you had forgotten." He sufferstortures of love and grief, so that his dream-life of the future isinfinitely 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 thedream-future, or the business man of the present telling the story tohis friend?
A different version of metempsychosis is shown in _The ImmortalGymnasts_, by Marie Cher, for here the beloved trio, Pantaloon,Harlequin and Columbine are embodied as human beings and come to liveamong men. Harlequin has the power of magic vision which enables him tosee into the minds and hearts of mortals by means of "cloud-currents."This question of--shall we say transmigration?--of fictive charactersinto actual life is found in various stories, such as Kipling's _TheLast of the Stories_, John Kendrick Bangs' _The Rebellious Heroine_,and others. It illustrates the fantastic use to which every serioustheme is sooner or later put. There is no motif in supernaturalliterature that is not parodied in some form or other, if only bysuggestion.
The symbolic treatment of metempsychosis is strongly evident inrecent fiction, as the theme lends itself particularly well to theallegoric and symbolic style. Barry Pain's _Exchange_ shows aspectsof transmigration different from the conventional treatment, for hedescribes the soul of the old man as giving up its right to peace thatit might purchase ease for a soul he loved. He passes into the body ofa captive bird beating its hopeless wings ag
ainst the bars and torturedwith pain and thirst, as a mark of the witch woman's wrath, while thesoul of the young girl goes into the body of a snow-white lamb thatlives a day then is set free. As she passes by, in the state of a freedsoul, she sees the piteous bird, and says to herself, "I am glad I wasnever a bird."
Algernon Blackwood, in _The Return_, gives a peculiar story ofmetempsychosis, where the selfish materialist finds himself suddenlyreinforced with a new personality from without. His eyes are openedmiraculously to the magic and beauty of the world, and he knows beyonddoubt that his friend, the artist, who promised to come to him when hedied, 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, twosouls into one, is found in Granville Barker's _Souls on Fifth_. Here aman suddenly acquires, or recognizes, the power to see the souls thatlinger earth-bound around him, and comes to have a strange sympathywith that of a woman, whom he calls the "Little Soul." When he speaksof going away, after a time, she begs him not to leave her since sheis very lonely in this wilderness of unbodied souls. She asks that ifhe 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 areluctant consent for her to enter into his life. He presses the littlesymbolic figure to his heart, then feels a new sense of being, ofpersonality, and knows that her soul has become forever a part of his.
Lord Dunsany, who lends a strange, new beauty to every supernaturaltheme he touches, has a little prose-poem of symbolic metempsychosis,called _Usury_, where Yohu, one of the evil spirits, lures the shadowsto 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 modernSpiritualism and Psychical Research on the literature of supernaturalismhas been marked, especially of late years. It would be inevitable thatmovements which interest so many persons, among them many of morethan ordinary intelligence, should be reflected in fiction. These twoaspects of the subject will be treated together since they are closelyallied. For though Spiritualism is a form of religion and PsychicalResearch a new science,--and so-called religion and so-called scienceare not always parallel--the lines of investigation here are similar.While Spiritualism endeavors to get in touch with the spirits of thedead that the living may be comforted and enlightened, and PsychicalResearch attempts to classify the supposedly authentic cases ofsuch communication, and in so much their methods of approach aredifferent,--yet the results may be discussed together.
Hawthorne was interested in Spiritualism as literary material, sincea discussion of it is introduced in _Blithedale Romance_ and variouspassages in his notebooks treat of the matter showing the fascinationit had for him. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, in addition to herfictional treatises of heaven, takes up Spiritualism as well. In _TheDay of My Death_ she gives a satiric account of the return of a spiritwho says he is a lost soul tortured in hell. He doubtless deservesit, for he sticks the baby full of pins and ties it to a tree, andfolds the clothes from the wash in the shape of corpses. He is stillinterested in this life, however, since he requests a piece of squashpie. In _Kentucky's Ghost_ she depicts a spirit actuated by definitemalice. In the previous story seven mediums tell a man that he will dieat a certain day and hour, but he lives cheerfully on.
William Dean Howells has given a study in his usual kindly satireand sympathetic seriousness, of the phenomena of Spiritualism andmesmerism, in _The Undiscovered Country_. Dr. Boynton, a mistakenzealot, holds seances assisted by his daughter, a delicate, sensitivegirl who is physically prostrated after each performance and begs herfather to spare her. She acts as medium where the usual effects ofrapping, table levitation, and so forth take place, where spirit handswave in the air and messages, grave and jocular, are delivered. Thecharacterization is handled with skill to bring out the sincerity ofeach person involved in the web of superstition and false belief, andHowells shows real sympathy with each, the scoffers as well as themisguided fanatics. It is only when the doctor looks death in the facethat he realizes his error and seeks to know by faith in the Bible thetruths of the far country of the soul.
Hamlin Garland has shown considerable interest in Spiritualism in hisfiction. He refuses to commit himself as to his own opinion of thequestion, but he has written two novels dealing with it, _The Tyrannyof the Dark_ and _The Shadow World_. The former is considerably likeHowells's novel, for here also a young girl is made the innocent victimof fanatics, her mother and a preacher who has fallen in love with her.She is made to take part in spiritualistic manifestations, whether asa 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 comeinto closer communication with her after death than he has been ableto do in life. Richard Harding Davis has contributed a volume with asimilar plot, the exploitation of an innocent and, of course, beautifulgirl by fanatics, in _Vera the Medium_. Here the girl is more than halfaware that she is a fraud and in her last seance, at the conclusionof which she is to be carried triumphantly away by her lover, the NewYork district attorney, she dramatically confesses her deception. As asympathy-getter, she pleads that she was very lonely, that because hergrandmother and mother were mediums, she had been cut off from society."I used to play round the kitchen stove with Pocahontas and Alexanderthe Great, and Martin Luther lived in our china closet."
David Belasco's _The Return of Peter Grimm_, drama and novel, is basedupon spiritualistic manifestations. We are told that the "envelope"or shadow-self of a sleeper has been photographed by means ofradio-photography. When a certain part of the shadow body is prickedwith a pin, as the cheek, the corresponding portion of the sleeper'sbody is seen to bleed. Peter Grimm comes back from the other world todirect the actions of the living, and though at first only a child seeshim,--for children are the best sensitives save animals,--eventuallythe adults recognize him also and yield to his guidance. Spiritualismenters directly or indirectly into many works of fiction of late years.Whether people believe in it or not, they are thinking and writingabout it. The subject receives its usual humorous turn in variousstories, as Nelson Lloyd's _The Last Ghost in Harmony_, the story ofa specter who complains of the scientific unimaginativeness of hisvillage, saying that though he had entreated the spooks to hold out fora little while as he had heard Spiritualism was headed that way andwould bring about a revival of interest in ghosts, the spirits all gotdiscouraged and quit the place. And we recall Sandy's mournful commentto Mark Twain's Captain Stormfield, that he wished there was something_in_ that miserable Spiritualism, so he could send word back to thefolks.
The Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society have a twofoldassociation with literature, for not only have various modern novelsand stories been inspired by such material, but the instances recordedare similar in many cases to the classical ghost stories. LacyCollison-Morley in his _Greek and Roman Ghost Stories_ says, "Thereare a number of stories of the passing of souls which are curiouslylike some of those collected by the Psychical Research Society, inthe Fourth Book of Gregory the Great's _Dialogues_." The doublesource of many modern stories may be found by a comparative study ofCollison-Morley's book and Myers's _Human Personality_, while G. H.Gerould's volume, _The Grateful Dead_, introduces recent instances thatare like classical stories. The inability of the soul to have rest inthe other world if its body was unburied, as held by the ancients,is reflected in Gothic romance, Elizabethan drama as well as in theclassics. The ghost of Jack, whom Peele tells us about, is a case of aghost coming back to befriend his undertaker. From these comparisonsit would appear that there is something inherently true to humanityin these beliefs, for the revenge ghost and t
he grateful dead haveappeared all along the line. Perhaps human personality is largely thesame in all lands and all times, and ghosts have the same elementalemotions however much they may have acquired a veneer of modernity.
There are many instances of the compact-ghost, the spirit who returnsjust after death in accordance with a promise made in life, to manifesthimself to some friend or to some skeptic. Algernon Blackwood givesseveral stories based on that theme, one a curious case where the ghostis so lifelike his friend does not dream he is not the living man,and assigns him to a bedroom. Later he is invisible, yet undoubtedlypresent, for his heavy breathing, movements of the covers, and impresson the bed are beyond dispute. _Afterwards_, by Fred C. Smale, shows aghost returning to attend a neighborhood club. When his name is calledby mistake, he takes part on the program, speaking through the lips ofa young man present, who goes off in a cataleptic trance. During thiscoma the youth, who is ignorant of music, gives a technical discussionof notation, analyzing diatonic semi-tones and discussing the note anightingale trills on. When he wakes he says he has felt a chill anda touch. Alice Brown relates a story of a lover who promised to cometo his sweetheart at the moment of death, but who, like Ahimeas in theBible, runs before he is ready, and keeps his ghostly tryst while therescuers bring him back to life. He hasn't really been drowned at all.
A recent novelette by Frances Hodgson Burnett, called _The WhitePeople_, has psychical phenomena for its central interest. A littlechild, born after her father's tragic death and when her dying motheris conscious of his spiritual presence, grows up with a strangesensitiveness to manifestations from the other world. Her home ison a lonely estate in Scotland, so that her chief companionship iswith the "white people," the spirits of the dead, though she does notso recognize them. Her playmate is Wee Brown Elsbeth, who has beenmurdered hundreds of years before, and she is able to see the deadhover near their loved ones wherever she goes. So when she comes torealize what a strange vision is hers, she has no horror of death, andwhen her lover dies she does not grieve, but waits to see him standsmiling beside her as in life. The theme of the story is the nearnessof the dead to the living, the thin texture of the veil that separatesthe two worlds.
Basil King tells a poignant story of a soul trying vainly to return inbody to right a wrong done in life but unable to accomplish her purposeby physical means. At last she effects it by impressing the mind ofa living woman who carries out the suggestion psychically given. Oneof the most effective recent accounts of a spirit's return to earthto influence the life of the living, to give messages or to controldestiny, is in Ellen Glasgow's _The Shadowy Third_. Here the ghost ofa child, a little girl whom her stepfather has done to death for hermoney, returns to cause his death in an unusual way. She throws herlittle skipping-rope carelessly on the stairway where he must trip upin it when he sees her phantom figure in front of him in the gloom, soto fall headlong to his death. This is an impressive revenge ghost.
Henry James based his ghost story, _The Turn of the Screw_, on anincident reported to the Psychical Society, of a spectral old womancorrupting the mind of a child. The central character in ArnoldBennett's novel, _The Ghost_, is a specter, one of the most rabidrevenge ghosts in literature, who is eaten up with jealousy lestthe woman he loved in life shall care for some one else. AlgernonBlackwood uses much psychical material in his numberless stories of thesupernatural, often mentioning the work of the Society, and Andrew Langhas contributed much to the subject. Arthur Machen has just published acollection of stories of war-apparitions that are interesting psychicalspecimens, called _The Bowmen_. In one story in the volume he shows ushow a contemporary legend may be built up, since from a short piece offiction written by him has evolved the mass of material relating to theangels at Mons. One tale is a story of the supernatural intervention ofSaint George and his army to drive back the Germans and save the hourfor the Allies, while another describes the vision of a soldier woundedin battle defending his comrades, who sees the long-dead heroes ofEngland file past him to praise him for his valor. The minister giveshim 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 toaid the English. He thinks they are some of the tribesmen that Britainemploys, but from his descriptions the minister knows that they are thelong-dead Greeks who have arisen to take part in the struggle whichtheir modern descendants are reluctant to share. These stories are onlya few among the many instances of supernaturalism in fiction traceableto the influence of the war.
Certain volumes of ghost stories have appeared, claiming to be notfiction but fact, accounts of actual apparitions seen and snap-shotted.This sort of problematic fiction is not new, however, since Defoe longago published one of the best of the kind, the story of Mrs. Veal, whoappeared to her friend Mrs. Bargrave, and conversed with her, gravelytelling her that heaven is much like the descriptions in a certainreligious book written shortly before that. She seems very realistic,with her dress of newly scoured silk, which her friend rubs betweenher fingers, and her lifelike conversation. This story has usuallybeen regarded as one of Defoe's "lies like truth," but recent evidenceleads one to believe that it is a reportorial account of a ghost storycurrent at the time, which missed being reported to the Society forPsychical Research merely because the organization did not exist then.The modern stories that stridently claim to be real lack the interestin many instances that Mrs. Veal is able to impart, and in most casesthe reader loses his taste for that sort of fiction because it isrammed down his throat for fact. They don't impress one, either as factor as fiction.
One of the most interesting aspects of the literature relating topsychic matters in recent years is the number of books that claim tobe spirit-inspired. These instances of psychography are not what wemight expect immortals to indite, but it appears that there must be amarked decrease of intelligence when one reaches the other world. Themessages sent back by dead genius lack the master style, even lackingthat control over spelling and grammar which low, earth-bound editorsconsider necessary. But perhaps the spirits of the great grow tiredof being made messenger boys, and show their resentment by literarystrikes. Anita Silvani has published several volumes that she claimswere written while she was in a semi-trance,--which statement no readerwill doubt. Her accommodating dictator furnishes illustrations forher stuff, as well, for she says she would have inner visions of thescenes described, "as if a dioram passed" before her. These romancesof three worlds are quite peculiar productions. The inner voices askedher in advance not to read any literature on theosophy or Spiritualismor the supernatural since they wished her mind to be free from anyprevious bias. Mrs. Elsa Barker is another of these literary mediums,for she has put out two volumes of letters in narrative form, whichshe makes affidavit were dictated to her by a disembodied spirit, theghost of the late Judge Hatch, of California. She states that whileshe was sitting in her room in Paris one day, her hand was violentlyseized, 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 includedin a literary anthology. These spirit-writers tell us of life afterdeath, but nothing that is a contribution to existing ignorance on thesubject. According to Judge Hatch, whose post-mortem pen-name is X, thepresent war has its parallel in a conflict of spirits, and the astralworld is in dire confusion because of overcrowding, so that the soulsof the slain must go through torments and struggle with demons.
The most recent instance of psychography comes to us by way of theouija-board from St. Louis, the authenticity of which is vouched forby Mr. Casper Yost, of t
he editorial staff of the _Globe-Democrat_.But if the ouija-board dictated the stories and plays, giving the nameof Patience Worth as the spirit author, and if Mrs. Curran took themdown, why does Mr. Yost appear as the author? Patience Worth saysthat she lived a long time ago. Mr. Yost insists that her language isElizabethan, but it seems rather a curious conglomeration, unlike anyElizabethan style I am familiar with. She has written stories, lyrics,a long drama, and other informal compositions, a marvelous output whenone considers the slow movements of the ouija-board. The communicationsseem to have human interest and a certain literary value, though theybring 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 thespirit from Mars causes Barty Joscelyn in his sleep to write booksimpossible to him in his waking hours. The type has been parodied byJohn Kendrick Bangs in his _Enchanted Typewriter_, which machine workedindustriously 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 printthese days. And after all, what do the poor things get out of it? Noroyalties, scant praise, and much ridicule when their style fails tocome up to specifications.
Interesting psychical material is found in a new volume of plays byTheodore Dreiser.[172] He gives curious twists to the unearthly, asin _The Blue Sphere_, where a shadow and a fast mail are among the_dramatis personae_, typifying the fate idea of the old drama. Theshadow lures a child monstrosity out on to the railway track, afterhe has caused the elders to leave the gate open, and the train, madevery human, kills the child. The psychic effects in _In the Dark_are even more peculiar, the characters including various spirits, awraith, and a ghost with red eyes, who circle round the human beingsand force them to discover a murder that has been committed. The effectof supernatural manifestation on animals is brought out here, in thebellowing of the bull and the howling of the dogs as the ghosts passby. In _A Spring Recital_ troops of nymphs and hamadryads, fauns,clouds of loathsome spirits of hags and wastrels, "persistences" offish, birds, and animals, "various living and newly dead spiritswandering 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 threepriests of Isis of 2840 B.C. enter to hear the organist play. He isunaware that anybody is hearing his music save the four human beingswho have happened in. These dramas of course are purely literaryplays, impossible of presentation on the stage, and in their curiouscharacter show a likeness to some of the late German supernaturalism,such as the plays of August Stramm. They show in an extreme form thetendency toward psychic material that the American and English dramahas evidenced lately.
[172] _Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural._
=Life after Death.= Mankind is immensely interested in heaven andhell, though he knows but little concerning these places. But man isa born traveler and gives much thought to distant countries, whetherhe definitely expects to go there or not. This interest is no newthing, for classical mythology is full of doleful accounts of theafter life. The early English stage represented heaven and hell inaddition to the earth, and Elizabethan drama shows many references tothe underworld, with a strong Senecan influence. There are especiallyfrequent allusions to certain famous sufferers in Hades, as Ixion,Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Tityus. Modern English fiction has likewisebeen influenced by the epic supernaturalism, reflecting the heaven andhell of Dante and Milton. Yet as in his own thinking each person laysout a Celestial City for himself and pictures his own inferno to fithis ideas of mercy and justice, peopling them with appropriate beings,changing and coloring the conceptions of Bunyan, for instance, to suithis own desires, so it is in fiction. Some think of heaven and hell asdefinite places, while to others they are states of mind. To some thedevil 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 andhell have been treated in every conceivable way in Englishfiction--conventionally, symbolically, humorously, and satirically, sothat one may choose the type he prefers. There are enough kinds to goaround.
Among the portrayers of the traditional heaven and hell Mrs. ElizabethStuart Phelps Ward is prominent. Her works on contemporary immortalityare said to have had a tremendous vogue in the period followingthe Civil War, when death had claimed so many that the living werethinking of the other world more than of this. Her pictures of heavenin _Gates Ajar_ are comforting, for she assures to each person his owndearest wish in fulfillment, to the ambitious youth his books, to theyoung girl her piano, and to the small child her ginger-snaps insteadof earthly bread and butter. In _The Gates Between_ the physician,suddenly killed, finds himself embarrassed by immortality. He doesn'tknow how to adjust himself to eternity and at first brings many ofearth's problems with him. In the third of the series, _The GatesBeyond_, she describes a very material yet spiritual heaven. Bodies aremuch like those on earth, not vaporous projections; there are museums,hospitals, universities, telephones, concerts and all up-to-dateimprovements and conveniences. The dead woman discovers that sheremembers what she read on earth, takes pleasure in simple things suchas the smell of mignonette, hears the birds sing a Te Deum, while abrook and a bird sing a duet, and the leaves are also vocal. There is aUniversal Language which must be learned by each soul, and heaven holdsall sorts of occupations, material, mental, and spiritual. She saysthat near earth are many earth-bound spirits occupied in low and coarseand selfish ways, who lack "spiritual momentum to get away." "Theyloved nothing, lived for nothing, believed in nothing, they cultivatedthemselves for nothing but the earth,"--which may be compared with thestate of the souls on Fifth Avenue, described by Granville Barker.
Mrs. Ward's pictures of heaven may seem sentimental and conventional tous to-day, yet to be appreciated they must be considered in relation tothe religious thought of her time. She represented a reaction againstthe rigid theology, the stern concepts of an older generation thanher own, and she wished to make heaven more homelike. She did have aninfluence in her day, as may be illustrated by a remark from a sermonrecently delivered by a New York pastor, that the reading of her bookshad exerted a great influence over him, that they made heaven over forhim.
Mrs. Oliphant is another of the conductors of fictive Cook's toursthrough heaven and hell, after the fashion started by Dante and Milton,and modernized by Mrs. Ward. She devotes volumes to describing thefuture worlds in their relation to mortal destiny. One story[173]tells of a soul that comes back from purgatory to be comforted by theold minister and sent away happy; another[174] is the account of aspirit returning from heaven to right a wrong that her husband is doinganother. Still another[175] gives the experiences of a woman who isdistressed when she finds herself in heaven, because she has hidden herwill and her young niece is thereby left penniless, but she asks adviceof various celestial authorities and finally succeeds in returning toearth
and righting matters. _A Beleaguered City_ is a peculiar storyof a French town besieged by the dead, who drive out the inhabitantsbecause of their cruelty toward some nuns. A strange gloom pervadesthe place, the cathedral bells ring of themselves, and flaming signsappear on the church doors, till after much penance the citizens areallowed to return and the invading hosts from eternity withdraw. Inone story,[176] Mrs. Oliphant gives her ideas of heaven, as a place oflight, of rest, of joy, of service, where the great angel Pain helpsthe souls to wisdom. In a counter-picture,[177] she shows hell, theworld of the unhappy dead, where are cruelty, selfishness, suffering,a world filled with tears that drip from earth. Yet it is a hell aswell-regulated, as thoroughly disciplined as a German municipality,with various punishments,--the most terrible being a lecture platformfrom 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 thereader cold, after Dante and Milton, however much one may feel thesincerity of the authors. Heaven and hell are such vast provinces thatone cannot chart them in imagination sufficiently to grasp somebodyelse's concept in story.
Other stories of life after death, given from the spirit-angle ratherthan from the mortal point of view as in most ghost stories, are amongthe recent types of supernaturalism. Alice Brown has several stories ofthe kind, in one showing a woman who comes to tell her friend not to beafraid of dying, because There is much like Here, and another symbolicof the power of love to come back even from the pit of blackness afterdeath. Olivia Howard Dunbar's _The Shell of Sense_ gives the psychosisof a woman who cannot go to heaven because she is jealous of herhusband. She _sees_ the form of the wind, _hears_ the roses open in thegarden, and senses many things unknown to human beings, yet is actuatedby very human motives. Katherine Butler[178] suggests that death mustbe a painless process and the after life much like mortality, sincethe man doesn't realize that he is dead but attempts to go about hisaffairs as usual.
[178] In _In No Strange Land._
The symbolic treatment of the theme of life after death is moreeffective and shows more literary art than the conventional picturesof Mrs. Ward's and Mrs. Oliphant's. No human vocabulary is able todescribe immortality of glory or despair, hence it is more effectivemerely to suggest the thought by allegory or symbolism. Hawthornegives us a symbolic morality in _The Celestial Railroad_, where hepictures the road between heaven and hell, drawing on Bunyan's imageryto describe the landscape and characters. Apollyon is engineer andemits realistic blasts of smoke. Eugene Field[179] tells of a motherjust entering heaven who asks an angel where she may find her littlebaby, 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 goesin search of the beloved he lost long before. He sees her on the farslope of a heavenly hill, but before he can reach her the devil appearsto him in his own double, "the Satan of mine own self, the part of mewherein 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 tocome. In the Inferno of the Dark Star the soul sees the attendant geniiof his life, each symbolizing some passion of his nature. There arehorrible astral birds and beasts and combinations unknown to mortalbiology, while vultures hover overhead and a foul astral odor fillsthe air. The spirits are of peculiar substance, for they fight andslay each other, some being torn to pieces. The soul is supposed toprogress toward the Silver and later the Golden Star. Marie Corelli's_Romance of Two Worlds_ is a queer production, preaching the doctrineof psychical electricity, which is to be a sort of wonder-workingmagician, and in other novels she gives theories of radio-activity, atheosophical cure-all for this world and the next.
_A Vision of Judgment_, by H. G. Wells, is a satire on man's judgmentof sin and character and of destiny after death, showing the pettinessand folly of Ahab, proud of his sins, and the hypocrisy of a so-calledsaint, conceited over his self-torture. "At last the two sat sideby side, stark of all illusions, in the shadow of the robe of God'scharity, like brothers." The picture of God and the throne vanishand they behold a land austere and beautiful, with the enlightenedsouls of men in clean bodies all about him. This symbolic allegorysetting forth the shallowness of human judgment as set against God'sclarity of vision and charity of wisdom is like Oscar Wilde's _TheHouse of Judgment_, a terrible piece of symbolism expressed in a fewwords. A soul who has been altogether evil comes at last before Godto be judged. God speaks to him of his vileness, his cruelty, hisselfishness, 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 broughtout in a recent book, _The Case of John Smith_, by Elizabeth Bisland,where the central character receives a revelation while working at histypewriter one day. The message says, "Oh, Peevish and Perverse! Howknow you that you have not died elsewhere and that this is not theHeaven which there you dreamed? How know you that your Hell may not lieonly in not recognizing this as Heaven?"
In many recent examples of allegory and symbolism we get suggestiveimpressions of the other life, of the soul's realities. Some of thesehave the inevitable words, the fatal phrases that seem to penetrateinto the real heaven and hell for us. The most remarkable instanceof symbolic treatment of the after-life is in _Souls on Fifth_, byGranville Barker, where the spirits of the dead are represented asunable to rise above the level of the ideals they had held in life, anddrift endlessly up and down the Avenue, some in the form of tarnishedgilt, some with white plague spots of cowardice, or blisters ofslanderous thoughts, some horny with selfishness, some with lines ofsecret cruelty. There are few squares but mostly irregular shapes ofsin.
The purely humorous treatment of life after death, the comic picturesof heaven and hell, are of a piece with the humorous treatment of otherphases of supernaturalism, and are distinctly modern. The flippant wayin which sacred subjects are handled is a far cry from the heaven andhell of Dante and Milton. Modern writers slap the devil on the back,make fun of the archangels and appeal to the ridiculous in one-timesacred situations, with a freedom that would have made the Puritansgasp. For instance, St. Peter has been the butt of so many jokes thathe is really hackneyed.
The Flying Dutchman, whom Brander Matthews introduces in his _Primer ofImaginary Geography_, and who says that the Wandering Jew is the onlyperson he can have any satisfactory chats with now, speaks of knowingCharon, "who keeps the ferry across the Styx. I met him last month andhe 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 putin all the modern improvements. John Kendrick Bangs, in his _House-boaton the Styx_, brings together the shades of many illustrious persons;Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh, So
crates, Xantippe, Captain Kidd, andmany others. From them we get pictures of the life after death and oftheir characteristic attitudes toward it and each other. He continuesthe situation in _The Pursuit of the House-boat_, as the redoubtableCaptain Kidd makes off with the ship and the ladies, leaving all themen behind. But they follow the bold buccaneer and after excitingadventures reaching from the Styx to Paris, they recapture the fair.Carolyn Wells has recently given us a Styx River Anthology. In modernstories we visit the comic devil on his native heath, see him inhis own home town, as in previous chapters we discussed him in hisappearances on earth. Kipling's _The Last of the Stories_ shows us theHades of literary endeavor, the limbo of lost characters, presided overby a large and luminous devil of fluent tongue. Kipling recognizes manypersons from fiction, and sees various tortures in process. All doobeisance to the shade of Rabelais, the Master. Kipling is terrified bythe characters he himself has brought into being and begs to hide hisface from them. F. Marion Crawford gives us another glimpse of literaryeternity,[180] where the spirits of learned personages meet anddiscuss life. A recent poem describes a meeting and dialogue in Hadesbetween Chaucer and Cressida.
[180] In _Among the Immortals_.
It is possibly Bernard Shaw who would be most liable to prosecution bythe devil for lese-majeste, for in _Man and Superman_, Mine Host ofthe Pit is represented as an affable gentleman who tries to make hellattractive to his guests, and exercises not the least constraint ontheir movements. They are free to leave him and go to heaven if theylike,--he only warns them that they will find it tiresome. He converseswith Don Juan and a couple of other blase mortals, uttering Shavianiconoclasms with an air of courteous boredom. He is very different fromthe sinister personage of conventional fiction.
Mark Twain has given humorous views of heaven in his _Extract fromCaptain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven_. A bluff, hearty old salt findsthe celestial regions very different from the traditional descriptionsof them. The heavenly citizens are a polite set, wishful for him to dowhat he likes, yet he tires of the things he thought paradise consistedof, lays aside his harp and crown, and takes his wings off for greaterease. He finds his pleasures in the meeting of an occasional patriarch,or prophet, and the excitement of the entry of a converted bartenderfrom Jersey City. He changes his views on many points, saying forinstance, "I begin to see a man's got to be in his own heaven to behappy," and again, "Happiness ain't a thing in itself,--it's only acontrast with something that ain't pleasant." Again Sandy, his friend,says, "I wish there was something _in_ that miserable Spiritualism sowe could send the folks word about it."
Something of the same combination of humor and earnestness is found inNicholas Vachell Lindsay's poem, _General William Booth Enters intoHeaven_.
"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 withcelestial symbolism, is also seen in another recent poem, _The Man withthe Pigeons_, by William Rose Benet, who shows us two pictures, thefirst of a tramp in Madison Square Garden, who loves the pigeons andhas them ever clustering around him in devotion. The next is of heaven,with the celestial gardens, where among the goldhaired angels the oldtramp stands at home, still wearing his rusty shoes and battered derbyhat. The quaint commingling of fancy and fact reminds us of Hannele'sdreams of heaven, in Hauptmann's _Hannele_, where the schoolmaster isconfused with the angels, and heaven and the sordid little room aresomehow united.
H. G. Wells, in _A Wonderful Visit_ shows us another side of thepicture, for he draws an angel down and lets him tell the citizensof the earth of the land he comes from. I make no attempt in thisdiscussion to decide concerning the personality of angels, whetherthey are the spirits of the just made perfect or pre-Adamite creaturesthat never were and never could be man. For the present purpose, theyare simply angels. This book of Wells's is an example of the satirictreatment of heaven and earth that constitutes a special point ofimportance in the modern supernaturalism. It is a social satire, anda burlesque on the formal and insincere manifestations of religion.A vicar takes a pot shot at what he supposes is a rare bird, seeinga rainbow flash in the sky,--but instead, an angel comes tumblingdown with a broken wing. This thrusts him upon the vicar as a guestfor some time, and introduces complications in the village life. Theparishioners do not believe in angels save in stained glass windowsor in church on Sunday, and they make life difficult for the vicarand his guest. The angel shows a human sense of humor, that quaintphilosophy of the incongruous which is the basis of all true humor,and his naive comments on earthly conventions, his smiling wonder atthe popular misconceptions in regard to his heaven--to which he issurprised to learn that mortals are thought to go, since he says he hasnever seen any there--make him a lovable character. But village customcompels him to fold his shining wings under a coat till he looks like ahunch-back, put boots on so that he "has hoofs like a hippogrif," as heplaintively says to the vicar, and he finds conformity to convention apainful process. The novel ends sadly, symbolizing the world's stupidharshness, for the angel is sent away from the village as unworthy tolive 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 heavenpreviously published, which depicts a preliminary skirmish in heavenover a coin a corpse has had left in his hand and has taken to eternitywith him. In each novel several angels come tumbling down fromheaven and take up earthly life as they find it, engaging in affairsnot considered angelic. Stephens, in addition to the two fightingcelestials, gives us an archangel, a seraph, and a cherub. There isin both stories a certain embarrassment over clothes, the fallen onesarriving in a state of nudity. The necessity for donning earthlygarments, the removal of the wings, and the adaptation to human lifefurnish complication and interest, with the added feminine element,though Stephens's novel is not marred by the unclean imaginings ofAnatole France.
The revolters in the French novel take up Parisian life, whileStephens's angelic trio join an itinerant tinker and his daughterwho are journeying aimlessly about, accompanied by a cart and asad-eyed philosopher, an ass. They engage in activities and joys notconventionally archangelic, such as smoking corn-cob pipes, eating coldpotatoes, and, when necessary, stealing the potatoes. The contrastsbetween heavenly ideas and Irish tramp life are inimitable. At lastwhen the three, having decided to go back to heaven, don their wingsand crowns and say good-bye, the cherub turns back for one more wordof farewell with Mary. Seeing her tears over his going, he tears hisshining wings to shreds and casts them from him, electing to stay onearth with the tinker's cart, for the sake of love. It is really quitea demi-god-like thing to do.
Unlike France's book, which is a blasting satire on religion, thesetwo English novels are amusing, with a certain measure of satire, yetwith a whimsicality that does not antagonize. France's angels remain onearth and become more corrupt than men, and Wells's wonderful visitoris banished from the village as an undesirable alien. Stephens'sarchangel and seraph go back to heaven after their vacation, whilethe cherub turns his back on immortal glory rather than break awoman's heart. In all three of these boo
ks we notice the same levelingtendency shown in characterization of the angels that we have observedheretofore in the case of ghosts and devils, werewolves, and witches.The angels are human, with charming personality and a piquant senseof humor, whose attempts to understand mortal conventions reveal theessential absurdity of earthly ideas in many instances. The threetaken together constitute an interesting case of literary parallelismand it would be gratifying to discover whether France was influencedby Wells and Stephens, or Stephens by Wells and France,--but in anyevent Wells can prove a clear alibi as to imitation, since his novelappeared a number of years before the others. The possible inspirationfor all of these in Byron's _Heaven and Earth_ suggests an interestinginvestigation. A more recent story, _The Ticket-of-Leave Angel_,brings an angel down to a New York apartment, where he has peculiarexperiences and illustrates a new type of angelic psychology. Thetendency to satirize immortality has crept even into poetry, for in arecent 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 thetrivial messages attributed to them, and another, _Heaven_, is avitriolic thrust at the hope of a better life after death, sneering atit with unpleasant imagery.
One of the recent instances of satiric pictures of the hereafter isLord Dunsany's _The Glittering Gate_, a one-act drama, where Billand Jim, two burglars, crack the gate of heaven to get in. Sardoniclaughter sounds while they are engaged in the effort to effect anentrance, and wondering what heaven will be like. Bill thinks that hismother 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 entereagerly, they find nothing--absolutely nothing but empty space, and thesardonic laughter sounds in their ears. Bill cries out, "It is justlike 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 wefind the purpose in reality to be to image this life by illustrationof the other. Eternity is described in order that we may understandtime a little better. Angels and devils are made like men, to showmortal potentialities either way. The absurdities of mankind areillustrated as seen by angel eyes, the follies as satirized by devils.The tendency now is to treat supernatural life humorously, satiricallyor 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 orhell seems flat after Dante and Milton.
In considering these various types of stories dealing with supernaturallife, whether continued beyond the mortal span on earth, renewed byreincarnation, or taken up in another world after death, we find thatseveral facts seem to appear with reference to the type chosen fortreatment by men as distinct from women, and _vice versa_. So far as mysearch has gone, I have found no instance in English literature where awoman has used either the motif of the Wandering Jew or the Elixir ofLife. I do not say that no such instances exist, but I have not foundthem. Carmen Sylva is the only woman I know of at all who has taken upthe characterization of the Wandering Jew. On the other hand, womenwrite often of heaven, most of the stories of conventional ideas ofheaven being by women. Where men have pictured heaven or hell they havedone it for the most part humorously, satirically or symbolically. Theyseem to curve round the subject rather than to approach it directly.Yet where it is a question of continuing life here in this world, bymeans of an elixir or other method, or as an ever-living being like theJew, men have used the theme frequently. Since fiction does reflectour thought-life and our individual as well as racial preferences, theconclusions that might be drawn, if one were sure of their basis, wouldbe interesting. Can it be that men are more deeply interested in thislife on earth and cling to it in thought more tenaciously than women,and that women are more truly citizens of the other world? Are menskeptical of the existence of any but a satiric or symbolic heaven, ormerely doubtful of reaching there?
The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction Page 6
