The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance

by Edith Birkhead

  CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.

  For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole,Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.Before the close of the century we may trace, in theconversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in_Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignantexcitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after thepublication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from thefield. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdainthe vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators,who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as thecontents of a witch's cauldron. Until the appearance in 1820 ofMaturin's _Melmoth_, which was redeemed by its psychologicalinsight and its vigorous style, the Gothic romance maintained adisreputable existence in the hands of those who looked uponfiction as a lucrative trade, not as an art. In the meantime,however, an easy device had been discovered for pandering to thepopular craving for excitement. Ingenious authors realised thatit was possible to compress into the five pages of a short storyas much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of aGothic romance. For the brevity of the tales, which were issuedin chapbooks, readers were compensated by gaudily colouredillustrations and by double-barrelled titles. An anthology called"Wild Roses" (published by Anne Lemoine, Coleman Street, n.d.)included: _Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers, The Monks ofCluny, or Castle Acre Monastery, The Tomb of Aurora, or TheMysterious Summons, The Mysterious Spaniard, or The Ruins of St.Luke's Abbey_, and lastly, as a _bonne bouche_, _Barbastal, orThe Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_.[127] There aremany collections of this kind, some of them dating back to 1806,among the chapbooks in the British Museum. It is in these brief,blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the shorttale of terror, which became so popular a form of literature inthe nineteenth century. The taste for these delicious morsels haslingered long. Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted in _BrigandTales, Tales of Chivalry, Tales of Wonder, Legends of Terror_;and it was in search of such booty, "a penny plain and twopencecoloured" that, more than fifty years later, Robert LouisStevenson and his companions ransacked the stores of a certainsecluded stationer's shop in Edinburgh.

  It was probably the success of the chapbook that encouraged theeditors of periodicals early in the nineteenth century to enliventheir pages with sensational fiction. The literary hack, who, ifhe had lived a century earlier, would have been glad to turn aTurkish tale for half-a-crown, now cheerfully furnished a"fireside horror" for the Christmas number. In his search afternovelty he was often driven to wild and desperate expedients.Leigh Hunt, who showed scant sympathy with Lewis's bleeding nunand scoffed mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munchinghearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute hisquota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of therepublic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear adeath's head as part of his _insignia_, he included in _TheIndicator_ (1819-21) a supernatural story, entitled _A Tale for aChimney Corner_. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of vealor a German sausage," he unfortunately dismissed from hisimagination the nightmarish hordes of

  "Haunting Old Women and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean Hands, and Empusas on one leg, and Ladies growing Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through Keyholes; and Plaintive Heads and Shrieking Statues and Shocking Anomalies of Shape and Things, which, when seen, drove people mad,"

  and in their place he conjured up a placid, ladylike ghost from alegend quoted in Sandys' commentary on Ovid. Leigh Hunt's storyhas the air of having been written by one who cared for none ofthese things; but there were others who wrote with more gusto.

  Many of the tales in such collections as _The Story-Teller_(1833) or _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ (1839-42) showthe persistence of Gothic story. In these periodicals the graveand the gay are intermingled, and when we are weary of darkintrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighterreading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors thatwe cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of somesort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, asa Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many ofthe stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room forall the old machinery:

  "A novel now is nothing more Than an old castle, and a creaking door, A distant hovel, Clanking of chains--a galley--a light-- Old armour, and a phantom all in white, And there's a novel."

  In _The Story-Teller_, a magazine which reprinted many populartales, we find German legends like _The Three Students ofGoettingen_, a "True Story Very Strange and Very Pitiful"; _TheWood Demon; The Wehr-Wolf; The Sexton of Cologne, or Lucifer_, astriking story of an Italian artist who was haunted by a terriblefigure he had painted in the church at Arezzo. Yet the first talein the collection, _The Story-Haunted_, which describes the sadfate of a youth brought up in a solitary library reading romancesto his mother, was intended, like _The Spectre-Smitten_, in_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_,[128] as a solemnwarning against over-indulgence in fictitious terrors. The motherdies in an agony of horror, as her son reads aloud the account ofthe Gentleman of Florence, who was pursued by a spectre ofhimself, which vanished with him finally into the earth, as thepriest endeavoured to bless him. The son, left alone, enters theworld, and judges the people around him by the standard of books.The story-haunted youth falls in love with the phantom of his ownimagination, whom he endows with all the graces of the heroinesof romance. He finds her embodied at last, but she dies beforethey are united. _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_, in tenvolumes, contains a comprehensive selection of tales of terror bythe "best authors." Walpole, Miss Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"Lewis, Maturin, Mrs. Shelley, and Charles Brockden Brown are allrepresented; and there are many translations of tales by Frenchand German authors. We may take our choice of _The SpectreBarber_ or _The Spectre Bride_, or, if we are inclined toincredulity, see _The Spectre Unmasked_. The entertainmentoffered is of bewildering variety. Some of the stories, such asD.F. Hayne's _Romance of the Castle_, seem like familiar,well-tried friends, and conceal no surprises for the readers ofGothic romance. Others, like _The Sleepless Woman_, by W. Jerdan,are more piquant. The hero is warned by his dying uncle to bewareof women's bright eyes. In spite of this he marries a lady, whoseeyes unite the qualities of the robin and the falcon. After thewedding he makes the awful discovery that she is of too noble alineage ever to sleep. Turn where he may, her eyes are alwaysupon him. At last, we find him pallid, haggard, and emaciated,wandering alone in an avenue of cedar trees beside a silent lake:

  "At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside--a sunbeam fell upon the baron's face; he took it for the eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly before him, the still, the profound, the shadowy lake. De Launaye took one plunge--it was into eternity."

  The writer foolishly ruins the effect of this climax bysuper-imposing an allegorical interpretation.

  Like the _Story-Teller, The Romancist and Novelist's Library_should be read

  "At night when doors are shut, And the wood-worm pricks, And the death-watch ticks, And the bar has a flag of smut,-- And the cat's in the water-butt-- And the socket floats and flares, And the housebeams groan, And a foot unknown Is surmised on the garret stairs, And the locks slip unawares."

  But "tales of terror" lose some of their power when read oneafter another; they are most effective read singly inperiodicals. _Blackwood's Magazine_ was especially famous for itstales, the best of which have been collected and publishedseparately. The editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_ showsa marked preference for tales of a supernatural or sensationalcast. Le Fanu, who claimed that his stories, like those of SirWalter Scott, belonged to the "legitimate school of Englishtragic romance," was one of the best-known contributors. _All theYear Round_ and _Household Words_, under the editorship ofDickens, often found room for the occult and the uncanny. WilkieCollins' fascinating serial, _The Moonstone_, was published in_Al
l the Year Round_ in 1868; _The Woman in White_ had appearedsix years earlier in _Blackwood_. The stories included in thesemagazines are of various types. The old-fashioned spook graduallydeclines in popularity. He is ousted in a scientific age by morerecondite forms of terror. Before 1875, with a few belatedexceptions:

  "Ghosts, wandering here and there Troop home to churchyards, damned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone."

  The "explained supernatural" is skilfully improved and developed.Le Fanu's _Green Tea_ is a story from the diary of a Germandoctor, concerning a patient who was dogged by a black monkey.The creature, "whose green eyes glow with an expression ofunfathomable malignity," is medically explained to be anillusion; but it is so vividly presented that it fastens on ourimagination with remarkable tenacity. Wilkie Collins' shortstory, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _AfterDark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous womanappears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of theface of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the authordeliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears byaccounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazinglypopular type. It reappears continually in different guises.Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _DieGeistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _DublinUniversity Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which themysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that acow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope wasmended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes astrong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of theterrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimatelybe reassured.

  Another group of short tales of terror consists of those whichpurport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simplepeople. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _TraditionalTales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which firstappeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).Cunningham has the tact to preserve the legends of elves,fairies, ghosts and bogles, as they were passed down from onegeneration to another on the lips of living beings. Later heattempted, in a novel, _Sir Michael Scott_ (1828), a kind ofGothic romance; but there is no trace in the _Traditional Tales_of the influence of the terrormongers with whose works he wasfamiliar. Perhaps the finest story of the collection is _TheHaunted Ships_, in which are embodied the traditions associatedwith two black and decayed hulls, half immersed in the quicksandsof the Solway. Lewis would have dragged us on board ship, andwould have shown us the devil in his own person. Cunninghamwisely keeps ashore, and repeats the tales that are toldconcerning the fiendish mirth and revelry to be heard, when, atcertain seasons of the year, they arise in their former beauty,with forecastle and deck, with sail and pennon and shroud. JamesHogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who was a friend of Cunningham, wassteeped in the same folk-lore. _The Mysterious Bride_, printedamong his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady,dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, afterthe night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, ablackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of amaiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. Shereturns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of herwelfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, hauntsher lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to hislegends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the verystretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seemsungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's mostmemorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted withreligious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by amysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations andweird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seenat daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsburyhas suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand inthis story. "Christopher North" was another member of the_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of theunearthly.

  The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift forstory-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, likethose of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was alwaysattracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected astore of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervousladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly downDarkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short talesis perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmasnumber of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happygift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days._The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's_Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--theunforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the ladyand her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, butthe conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor,pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the livingchild, is delicately wrought. The tale is told in the rambling,circumstantial style, suitable to the fireside and the longleisure of a winter's evening. Dickens tells a very differentnurse's story in one of the chapters of _An UncommercialTraveller_. The tone of Mrs. Gaskell's nurse is kindly andprotective; that of Dickens' nurse severe, admonitory andemphatic. She, who told the grim legend of Captain Murderer,meant, clearly, to scare as well as to entertain her hearer. Sheleads up to the climax of her story, the deadly revenge of thedark twin's poisoned pie, with admirable art. The nurse's namewas Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him.Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightfulstories, he himself, like the fat boy in _Pickwick_, sometimes"wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd traitof the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety,and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs,besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us _The Monkey'sPaw_; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, _Told in the Dark_, areas forcible as any of his humours to be read in the daylight.Dickens, in his excursions into the supernatural, does not,however, always cast off his mood of jocularity. His treatment ofMarley's ghost lacks dignity and decorum. Clanking its chains ina remote cellar of the silent, empty house, it has the power todisturb us, but we lose our respect for the shade when we gazeupon it eye to eye. Applied to the spirit world, there is muchtruth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. Theaccount of the thirteenth juryman, in _Dr. Marigold'sPrescriptions_, is much more alarming. The story of thesignalman, No. 1 Branch line, in _Mugby Junction_, is indefinablyhorrible. The signalman's anguish of mind, his exact descriptionof the Appearance, his sense of overhanging calamity, are allstrangely disquieting. The coincidence of the manner of hisdeath, with which the story closes, is wisely left to make itsown inevitable impression.

  Some of the stories in _Blackwood_ are the more striking becausethey depend for their effect on natural, not supernatural,horror. We may feel we are immune from the visits of ghosts, butthe accident in _The Man in the Bell_ (1821) is one which mighthappen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightfulimages that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended inthe belfry, are described with an unflinching realism thatreminds us of _The Pit and the Pendulum_. To the same classbelongs the skilfully constructed _Iron Shroud_ (1830), byWilliam Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal,"loves to play at cherry-pit with Satan." The suspense isingeniously maintained as, one by one, the windows of the irondungeon disappear, until, at last, the massive walls andponderous roof contract into the victim's iron shroud. WilkieCollins' story, _A Terribly Strange Bed_, which describes thestratagem of a gang of cardsharpers for getting rid of those whohappen to win money from them, is in the same vein. The canopyslowly descends during the night, and smothers its victim. Asimilar motive is used, with immeasurably finer effect, by JosephConrad in his story of the disappearance of the sailor at thelonely inn in the mountains of Spain. The experience of Byrne in_The I
nn of the Two Witches_[129] is a masterpiece in thepsychology of terror. The dense darkness, in which the youngnaval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind,"the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in thecandlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil,slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are afitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpseof the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pass withByrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until,completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner inwhich Tom Corbin was done to death, we feel "the hot terror thatplays upon the heart like a tongue of flame that touches andwithdraws before it turns a thing to ashes."

  In the short stories of the latter half of the nineteenthcentury, it is hard to escape from the terrible. We light upon itsuddenly, here, there and everywhere. We find it in Stevenson's_New Arabian Nights_, in his _Merry Men_, and his stories of theSouth Seas, as indeed we should expect, when we recall thetapping of the blind man's stick in _Treasure Island_, the scenewith the candles in the snow after the duel between the twobrothers in _The Master of Ballantrae_, or David Balfour'sperilous adventure on the broken staircase in _Kidnapped_.Kipling is another expert in the art of eeriness, and has a widerange. His Indian backgrounds are peculiarly adapted for tales ofterror. The loathsome horror of _The Mark of the Beast_, with itsintangible suggestion of mystery, the quiet restraint of _TheReturn of Imray_, in which so much is left unsaid, are twoadmirable illustrations of his gift.

  The tale of terror wins its effect by ever-varying means.Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentiethcentury will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves.The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with aphantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeysand wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold,and it is impracticable here to do more than pick up a fewthreads in the tangled skein. Terror becomes inextricablyinterwoven with other motives according to the bent of theauthor. It is allied with psychology in James' sinister _Turn ofthe Screw_, with scientific phantasy in Wells' _Invisible Man_.It may enhance the excitement of a spy story, add zest to thestudy of crime, or act as a foil to a romantic love interest.