An abridged plagiarism of Sir Walter Scott’s 1823 novel Quentin Durward, this chapbook follows the grotesque adventures of Scottish cavalier Quentin Durward and his romance with the beautiful Countess Isabelle.
Material History
Durward and Isabelle appears to be a flimsy few scraps of paper being held together by what looks like a piece of twine. The full title is simply Durward and Isabelle. The book is bound together with another chapbook, Mary, the Maid of the Inn, which precedes Durward and Isabelle. It appears as though the back of Mary, the Maid of the Inn, was ripped out, since there are remnants of torn paper at the last page. The paper of Durward and Isabelle is not as yellow compared to Mary, the Maid of the Inn, and the two texts are printed in different fonts. This suggests that Durward and Isabelle was likely bound to Mary, the Maid of the Inn at a later time.
The origins of this chapbook remain a mystery,
as there is no listed author. However, the publisher is listed at the bottom of
the final page as “Dean and Munday, Threadneedle-Street, London.” Mary, the
Maid of the Inn has a title page with a different publisher listed. The
cover of Mary, the Maid of the Inn does have some handwriting on it, but
it is impossible to know if this was written before or after the chapbooks were
bound together.
The first page for Durward and Isabelle, notice the binding that attaches it to the recitation at the end of the previous chapbook, Mary, the Maid of the Inn.
The dimensions of the book are about 11cm x 16
cm, so it is fairly small. Durward and Isabelle is thirty-six pages
long, while the previous story is twenty-five pages, making for a total of sixty-one
pages bound together by a single piece of fraying string. The last page of Durward
and Isabelle has fallen off but is still kept with the book in the library.
The pages are very brittle and dry, and are also very frail and yellowed,
likely due to the wear and tear that the book has been subject to over the
years. The margins are decently sized while the font is relatively small but
not difficult to read. There is a surprisingly large amount of spacing between
paragraphs. The margins are uneven: there is little to no space at the top at
the top of the book, while there are much larger side margins.
While Mary, the Maid of the Inn contains
a fold-out illustration, there are no illustrations in Durward &
Isabelle. There are some words handwritten on the cover: in the top right
corner, the word “romance” is written in pencil and “1822” (the year Mary,
the Maid of the Inn was published) in ink. On the bottom of the cover,
there is a series of numbers and letters without clear meaning.
Textual History
Durward and Isabelle is a chapbook that is a plagiarized and abridged version of Quentin Durward, a novel written by Sir Walter Scott published in 1823. The author of Durward and Isabelle is not known. At only thirty-six pages, the chapbook is much shorter than the original novel and brushes over many of the major plot points. While the original novel is focused on Quentin Durward and his adventures, the chapbook is more focused on Durward’s adventures that involve his relationship with Isabelle, hence the title Durward and Isabelle. The plagiarized chapbook was published by Dean and Munday, as printed on the last page of the book. Dean and Munday was a popular publishing institution established in 1810 that published many other chapbooks. The Dean and Munday families lived together and raised their children together in their home behind the shop on Threadneedle Street. Two cousins, Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday, became apprentices, then later became partners in the firm. This partnership lasted until 1838, when it was permanently dissolved (Potter 86). According to Franz Potter, “During these early years at Dean & Munday, the firm also reissued a number of well-known gothic pamphlets originally published by other booksellers” (87). Durward and Isabelle is listed as one of the one-shilling pamphlets published by Dean and Munday in a book titled The French Revolution of 1830: Being a Succinct Account of the Tyrannical Attempt of Charles X. to Overturn the French Constitution. Interestingly, Mary, the Maid of the Inn is also on this list of Dean and Munday pamphlets printed with The French Revolution of 1830, though the copy of Mary, the Maid of the Innbound with the Sadleir-Black Collection’s copy of Durward and Isabelle was published by Orlando Hodgson not Dean and Munday.
This page of sample text shows the wide spacing between paragraphs.
Given Sir Walter Scott’s significance, there is an abundance of
information about his original novel Quentin Durward by contrast with
the dearth of information on the plagiarized and abridged Durward and
Isabelle. In a late nineteenth-century edition of Quentin Durward edited
by Charlotte M. Yonge, Yonge includes a historical introduction in which she
writes that Scott “held that it was lawful for art to throw together historical
characters and facts with more regard to effect than to accuracy or detail, and
thus to leave a stronger impression on the mind. And there can be no doubt that
the tale he has given us has fixed on thousands of minds a strong and definite
impression of the characters of Louis XI” (14). In writing this, Yonge
identifies the significant impact that the characters of Quentin Durward
had on the public point of view.
There are other notable adaptations of Scott’s novel, including Quentin
Durward; a dramatic adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s novel, in three acts and
three scenes, by Charles Andrew Merz and Frank Wright Tuttle.This
adaptation was published in 1914 and is associated with the Yale University
Dramatic Association. There are digital copies of the original Quentin
Durward and its adaptations available on ProQuest One Literature and the
HathiTrust Library. The novel was even adapted into a film called The
Adventures of Quentin Durward, released in 1955.
Narrative Point of View
Durward and Isabelle is narrated in the third
person, and the narrator is never named nor are we given any context on how
they learned of the story. The story is told in a very straightforward fashion,
yet still manages to incorporate feelings of characters. The narration is
filled with expansive sentences, with an emphasis on depicting events and with minimal
dialogue.
Sample Passage:
The young and beautiful Isabelle had fled from Burgundy, to avoid being married to one of the Duke’s favourites; and whether she was really under King Louis’s protection, was not certainly known. Durward could not help conjecturing, from circumstances, that the young lady he had seen in the morning, and with whose charms he had been smitten, was, in fact, the young countess. While the knowledge of her rank and misfortunes interested him yet more strongly in her fate, it tended to damp any presumptuous hopes which love might have induced him to form. (8)
As seen here, in Durward and Isabelle the
narration is succinct and descriptive, and effectively explains the characters’
thoughts and feelings at certain moments. This can be seen when Durward deduces
that the woman he saw is the countess, and the narration presents not only what
he knows but how he feels with his subsequently lowered “hopes.”
Summary
Durward and Isabelle tells the tale of a fifteenth-century Scottish cavalier, Durward,
and Isabelle, a Countess. The story begins when Durward is met by King Louis XI
of France by chance. Durward introduces himself as a cadet of Scotland, who
came to France to seek fortune. It is later revealed that his father and
remaining family members were killed by a rivaling clan, and this caused his
mother to die of grief. Upon Durward’s introduction, the King also discovers
that he knows Durward’s uncle, Lesie, who comes to the castle to meet him and
the king. The king eventually decides to recruit this young cavalier as one of
his men, after consulting with his astronomer, Martius Galeoletti, who says
that Durward has good intentions. Durward has multiple encounters with Isabelle
throughout the beginning of the story, as she is residing at the castle where
the king lives.
One day while Durward is strolling through the garden, he comes
across a man hanging from a tree. Appalled by this circumstance, he immediately
climbs up the tree and cuts the rope, onlooking Bohemians react badly to this
action. The king’s right-hand man, Provost Marshall, takes them all prisoner.
Durward thinks he is going to be hanged along with the Bohemians but then
proceeds to defend himself, claiming he is from Scotland which is an allied
country. His life is spared.
It is revealed that the reason Isabelle is under the king’s
protection is because she fled from Burgundy after discovering that she was to
be married to one of the duke’s men. A count sent by the Duke of Burgundy
appears while searching for the ladies (Isabelle and her Aunt). The king
refuses to give them up and, after the count threatens to wage war on the
kingdom, the king decides to send Isabelle and her aunt away to Liege to be
under the protection of the bishop. The king appoints Durward in charge of
taking Lady Isabelle and her aunt to Liege with three soldiers and a guide.
Throughout their journey they encounter many men who want to claim possession
of Isabelle, including William de la Marck, a feared man from the area, and the
Duke of Orleans, who is to be wed to Isabelle’s sister but would rather marry
her instead.
The final page of Durward and Isabelle
William de la Marck, in a fit of rage, decides to take over the city of Liege and murders the bishop in cold blood. Durward and Isabelle must escape together. During the siege, Durward presents himself to Willam de la Marck and says that if they are to be allied with France, they must not present themselves with this sort of conduct, so William de la Marck complies, and they all leave. De la Marck then threatens to return because he hears word that Isabelle is still hiding in the city. Isabelle at this point is willing to sacrifice herself to the Duke of Burgundy and decides she will offer to give up her patrimonial estates and ask permission to retire in a convent. They make it back to the Duke of Burgundy and the same day, the king decides to visit him too. The Duke of Burgundy hears about William de la Marcks violent tactics and believes that this is King Louis’ doing. He imprisons the king and plans for his execution.
After days of trials and Durward’s statement is given, the duke
determines that the king is innocent and decides they are to combine forces to
capture William de la Marck. Who will receive Isabelle’s hand in marriage
remains in question, so as incentive, the duke says that whoever is successful
in killing de la Marck wins Isabelle’s hand in marriage. Upon hearing this,
Durward searches for de la Marck, and finds him decapitated. In defeat, he
returns to the castle only to discover his uncle Lesie standing with William de
la Marck’s head, which he brought on Durward’s behalf. Durward and Isabelle are
both pleased with the arrangement and end up married together happily ever
after.
Bibliography
Durward and Isabelle. London, Dean & Munday, n.d.
The French Revolution of 1830:
Being a Succinct Account of the Tyrannical Attempt of Charles X. to Overturn the French
Constitution, Etc. [With a Plate.]. Dean & Munday, 1830.
Merz, Charles Andrew, and Frank Wright Tuttle. Quentin
Durward: a Dramatic Adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Novel, in Three Acts
and Three Scenes.New
Haven, Yale University
Dramatic Association, 1914.
Potter, Franz J. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks
and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830. University of Wales Press, 2021.
Yonge, Charlotte M.
“Introduction.” Quentin Durward, by Sir Walter Scott. Boston, Ginn & Co, 1895.
A tale of romance, resentment, and revenge, this 1804 chapbook tells the story of a noble family living in France as one brother’s evil corrupts the lives of those around him.
Material History
Maximilian and Selina, Or, The Mysterious Abbot. A Flemish Tale can be found in two collections in the Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Fiction at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. One copy is bound inside the collection Marvellous Magazine (volume III). Pencil notes (perhaps from Sadleir himself) on the inside cover of this copy indicate that this story can also be found in a volume called The Entertainer I, also in the Sadleir-Black Collection.
The title page for Maximilian and Selina, which is identical in both The Entertainer and Marvellous Magazine bound copies.
The printing of Maximilian and Selina bound in The Entertainer appears identical to the version bound in Marvellous Magazine; both sharethe same frontispiece and title page. The frontispiece shows a scene in which a man is being pushed out of a tower by someone else, while a woman watches in horror from behind. Each copy of Maximilian and Selina was published by Tegg and Castleman, but no author is indicated in either volume.
Marvellous Magazine appears very old and worn; the cover and first page are entirely detached from the rest of the book. The binding is plain and cracked. The cover is spotted leather with decorative swirling gold patterning on the spine and gold dots around the edge of the binding. The paper is medium- to lightweight and yellowed, displaying relatively small text. Before each story in the collection appears a black and white frontispiece illustrating a scene from the following pages. The entire book is 512 pages long and contains seven stories: six are exactly seventy-two pages long (including Maximilian and Selina), and one is eighty. The book is rather small, measuring only 4.3 x 10.4 x 18.1 cm.
Textual History
Maximilian and Selina is available in several different editions at the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. The copies in the larger volumes The Entertainer and Marvellous Magazine are identical and will be discussed first. The story was first printed in 1804 for Tegg & Castleman. Thomas Tegg was a well-known printer who lived from 1776 to 1846. According to an obituary, the bookseller struggled in his childhood and early career, but he eventually established his own successful business and began to amass his fortune printing, buying, and selling books. He was elected Sheriff of London in 1846 but did not serve in that position due to failing health. After his death, his sons continued in their father’s path. Interestingly, Tegg’s youngest son was so stricken with grief at his father’s death that he died as well shortly after, and their bodies were buried in the family plot together on the same day (The Gentleman’s Magazine 650). There is an intriguing (albeit unintended) parallel in Maximilian and Selina: the Duke of Anjou arrives at the convent just as the death knell tolls for his daughter, and he immediately dies of the shock. Their bodies are carried back to the chateau together, where the sight of his dead father and sister drive Godfrey to madness.
The frontispiece depicts the chapbook’s culmination where Edward pushes his brother off of the tower.
The 1804 version of Maximilian and Selina is available within multiple collections of stories. The two held by the University of Virginia are Marvellous Magazine and The Entertainer. Maximilian and Selina appears identical in both volumes, with the same title page and frontispiece. The other printing is for Dean & Munday in 1820. The edition printed by Dean & Munday that is housed at the University of Virginia Library is disbound and has significant brown spotting on the title page. It looks similar to the Tegg & Castleman version, but the publishing information is different and the frontispiece is in color. Also, it is only thirty-six pages instead of seventy-two. The shorter length is because this version is an abridged version of the 1804 edition. The overall plot is similar but most of the frame narrative has been cut out, several characters are entirely deleted, the sequence in which the reader learns about events is different, and in abridging the text many plot points are deleted in a confusing way, without any transitions being added. The Dean & Munday printing has a catalogue slip in it which gives some basic publishing information, a description of the physical object, and part of an assessment by scholar Frederick Frank: “A confusing patchwork of obscure and opaque plots … Complexity and lucidity are not necessarily incompatible elements of style in horror fiction, but in this chapbook, the style is so dense as to render even the basic facts of the story a matter of hazardous speculation” (The First Gothics 233). The explanation on the slip for the frontispiece does not relate to the story. The scene shown is Edward pushing Godfrey out of the tower while Elgiva screams in horror, but the slip describes “ruffians throwing a screaming boy from the top of a tower.”
Another incorrect description of the frontispiece is found in Frederick Frank’s article “Gothic Gold.” The year and publishing information match the Tegg & Castleman version, but the article says that the chapbook is thirty-six pages, like the Dean & Munday printing. The frontispiece is shown in black and white above a brief description of the book: “About to be hurled from the turret by his malicious brother, Adolphus de Monvel, Maximilian’s doom seems sealed as a pathetic mother figure murmurs an ineffectual prayer unheard in the fallen and godless universe. The scene is the chapbook’s initial spectacular incident in a series of unremitting crises” (“Gothic Gold” 309). This description mentions real characters from the story, but neither Adolphus nor Maximilian were a part of this scene, and the female figure is most likely Elgiva, Godfrey’s wife. This is also one of the last events in the chapbook, not the first.
Frank gives another critical synopsis of Maximilian and Selina in his book The First Gothics. It lists the publishing information of the unabridged 1804 version. However, this synopsis also contradicts the events of both versions of the chapbook (the Tegg & Castleman printing, and the abridged one for Dean & Munday). It is also different than the description given for the frontispiece in Frank’s “Gothic Gold.” In The First Gothics, the frontispiece is said to show ruffians throwing Godfrey off a tower, instead of Maximilian being thrown by de Monvel, his “brother.” This synopsis covers the rest of the chapbook, with references to real characters and similar plot points, but multiple inaccuracies which completely change the story.
Maximilian and Selina is mentioned more briefly in several other scholarly works (Potter History of Gothic Publishing 75, Mayo 551, Hoeveler). Mayo explains that Marvellous Magazine and similar anthologies generally featured stories of a specified length. For example, the volume of Marvellous Magazine containing Maximilian and Selina contains stories all seventy-two pages in length, save one exception. This length limit often resulted in the butchering of Gothic classics as they were edited and amended to reach a precise page count (Mayo 367). This is one possibility to account for the incoherency of the shorter Dean & Munday printing compared to the original, which was twice as long.
Narrative Point of View
The main story within Maximilian and Selina is narrated by Maximilian, the Abbott, as he recounts his life to Sancho Orlando. He uses first-person narration which focuses on his own thoughts and feelings as the plot progresses. Since Maximilian is older when he is telling this story, he occasionally inserts future knowledge. Part of the story is the packet that Maximilian wrote based on Nerina’s deathbed explanation. This part is told in the third person, with a somewhat omniscient narrator. The final section is the tale told by Guiscardo to Sancho, in first-person narration from Guiscardo’s point of view. The language is similar in all three: archaic and formal. The packet is perhaps a bit more flowery in its prose than the oral stories.
Sample Passage:
To discover who this was, became at length the predominant desire of my soul, since, could I but confront him, I knew my innocence must triumph; but where to seek for information, which Selina only could give, and had refused, almost to distraction. At length a light seemed to break on my bewildered senses, and I fancied the whole discovery lay clear before me. On revolving the whole affair, as stated by the Duke, I was forcibly struck with that part where Selina charged me with neglect during her father’s absence; at the same time praising the kindness of her eldest brother, by whose attention she was wholly sustained, whilst Edward and myself chose to amuse ourselves apart. I had once been told by Edward, that Godfrey was my foe, and I now believed it; he alone could have poisoned his sister’s mind against me, and made her notice, a long past and seemingly forgotten act of prudence, as a want of affection for her, —Wild as this idea was, it became conclusive, and I madly formed the resolution of following the Duke and his son, and of accusing the latter. (28)
This paragraph is from the section narrated in Maximilian’s point of view. By describing his past self’s inner thoughts about Selina’s change of heart, Maximilian emphasizes his own perspective. At the time, Maximilian did not have any doubts about his conviction that Godfrey was sabotaging his relationship with Selina, which is why he rashly rode out into the night to follow him. However, now knowing that it was Edward who really betrayed him, he uses words including “I fancied,” “wild,” and “madly.” The narrator’s hindsight creates the feeling of an omniscient point of view, even though it is simply Maximilian in the future, narrating retrospectively.
Summary
The story begins with a wise old abbot named Maximilian. A Spanish knight named Sancho Orlando comes to seek his advice after killing his friend in single combat. After the Abbot listens to his story, he assures the knight that his friend’s death was not his fault, and that he has no need for such guilt. The knight asks the Abbot how he came to be a monk, and the body of the tale is what the Abbot tells Sancho in reply.
Godfrey, Duke of Anjou, is a kind and generous nobleman visiting his chateau in the countryside with his children. Maximilian is the same age at that point as the Duke’s younger son, Edward, and because his uncle, the prior at a local convent, is close friends with the Duke, Maximilian spends a lot of time with his children. Godfrey, the Duke’s elder son, is friendly, noble, and admirable, while Edward is horrible, jealous, and cruel, but Maximilian does not notice Edward’s faults until too late because of their friendship. Selina, the Duke’s daughter, is beautiful and kind, and Maximilian falls in love with her, but Edward is the only one who knows of their relationship.
The bookplate for Maximilian and Selina, featuring a coat of arms, Latin text which translates to “Friendship and diligence restored,” and the name “Richardson Harrison.”
Three years later, the Duke leaves the chateau to visit a dear friend on his deathbed. While he is gone Godfrey is in charge, and Edward advises his friend not to let Godfrey see him with Selina, since he would disapprove. When the Duke returns, he is accompanied by Elgiva de Valmont, his friend’s daughter, who is now his ward. She is even more beautiful than Selina, with whom she becomes close friends. Maximilian’s heart already belongs to Selina, but the two brothers compete fiercely for Elgiva’s affections. Godfrey proposes to Maximilian and Edward that they should all stop pursuing her, since over time without the pressure of their attention she would form her own opinion of which brother she loved. Edward agrees readily.
A few weeks pass in relative peace. Edward asks Maximilian to find out from Selina whether Elgiva prefers him or his brother, but Maximilian refuses because that would be dishonorable when Edward had already agreed to Godfrey’s proposal. Soon after, Maximilian realizes that since no one is aware of his love for Selina, she could be courted by other suitors, and decides to ask his uncle to speak with the Duke. It is decided by his uncle and the Duke that Selina should be promised in marriage to him in several years, if they still love each other, since they are so young to make such a commitment. Maximilian is overjoyed with this outcome. Godfrey is also happy about his sister and Maximilian’s union, meaning that Edward had lied about his disapproval.
Maximilian speaks with Edward while walking home. Edward believes that Godfrey has broken their agreement and said something to Elgiva to turn her against him, but Maximilian does not think he would do that. Edward is distraught and wishes to do something to repair Elgiva’s opinion of him, but Maximilian advises him to keep his distance and not to act rashly. After this conversation, Maximilian is troubled by the situation and his friend’s conduct.
Soon after, the Duke invites Maximilian to come to his other chateau with his family, but just before they leave, Maximilian’s uncle falls ill so he stays behind. The plan is for Maximilian to spend a month with the Duke’s family at the chateau as soon as his uncle recovers, to visit his father’s estate to settle some affairs, then return to the chateau.
When she must leave without him, both Maximilian and Selina are distraught. He takes care of his uncle for over two months, then departs to join them at the chateau. However, Selina is not happy to see him. She says that she has changed her mind after so much time apart; that she has forgiven him, but they should be friends. Maximilian leaves, troubled, and speaks with Edward. He discovers that while he was away, a suitor named de Monvel visited Selina, so Maximilian asks her about him. She insists that she has loved only Maximilian, but that she cannot forgive his perjury. He is confused because he has only been faithful. Maximilian goes to his paternal home as he had planned, where he is soon visited by a stranger, Adolphus de Monvel. Adolphus had come to him to find out if he had broken his engagement to Selina, which he vehemently denies. Adolphus easily accepts this, and leaves.
Now, king Philip of France is preparing to marry, so the Duke and Godfrey go to court for the wedding. Maximilian receives a letter from the Duke saying that Selina is angry with him because she was under the impression that he was gone so long because he was in love with a peasant girl and had eloped with her. She refused to tell anyone where she heard this, but the Duke asks Maximilian to return to the chateau in a month so they can explain the truth. Maximilian convinces himself that it was Godfrey who turned Selina against him, so he goes to court to confront him. He challenges Godfrey to single combat, but Godfrey refuses the fight without due cause. The two men scuffle, and Godfrey stabs Maximilian in the chest.
Sample of text from page 17.
Maximilian wakes up in bed in the Duke’s apartments at court, where he finds out that the Duke and Godfrey have hastened to the country on account of important news. He is worried because he has no idea what has happened. Godfrey visits while Maximilian is recovering and the two reunite as friends with all forgiven. He lies about the news that made them leave, and Maximilian later finds out that they had really received word from Edward that Selina had disappeared but they hid it from him so his anxiety would not impede his recovery. Shortly after Godfrey’s visit, they find out that Selina had run away to join a convent, in secret because she knew her father would disapprove. Now she is seriously ill and has asked the nuns at the convent to notify her father so that he could see and forgive her before she dies. The Duke, Edward, and Elgiva set out for the convent while Godfrey is still out searching for his sister, but they arrive just after she dies. The Duke immediately dies as well from grief. Godfrey is plunged into madness when he arrives back at the chateau at the precise moment when a procession is carrying the bodies of his sister and father through the gates. It is presumed that Edward and Elgiva will marry, and that Edward will become duke since the older son is indisposed.
Elgiva remarks once that Selina had died because of “hypocrisy,” so Maximilian is set upon exacting revenge upon whoever was responsible (33). He visits the chateau to question Elgiva privately, but Edward spends the whole day with Maximilian so he does not have the chance to speak with her alone. After speaking with his uncle, he decides to join the Christian army on their crusades, and he is renewed by his conviction. He fights successfully with many other knights, crusading from Constantinople from Jerusalem. They lay siege to Jerusalem and defeat the city. After the crusades are over, he joins an organization called the knights of Saint John and spends twelve years in Jerusalem.
One day, he sees a man dressed as a pilgrim being dragged to the church to perform devotions and realizes that it is Edward. Edward confesses that he has committed heinous crimes including murder and is now trying to atone for his sins. His wife is living, but she is now the mistress of king Philip. Elgiva married Godfrey, but she has died, and Edward refuses to explain further. He remains in Jerusalem for some time, and Maximilian manages to piece together some of the story. Godfrey had regained his sanity and married Elgiva, but they both died and left Edward as the guardian of their child. Edward had married a noblewoman and they had a son, but she left him to become the concubine of king Philip.
Edward leaves Jerusalem without saying goodbye. Several years later, Maximilian returns to France on business for the knights of Saint John. While there, he decides to visit the duke’s old chateau, where he finds only servants. They tell him that Edward had been dead for some time, and that his son (now the Duke) was in the country with his wife. Maximilian is confused, because he had heard from Edward that Godfrey had left an heir to the title. A few days later Edward’s son comes to visit Maximilian, saying that he had heard that someone had come to the chateau looking for his father. The new Duke explains that Godfrey had a daughter, but she had descended into madness and died, so he was now the lawful successor. Maximilian then accompanies him to his palace to meet the duchess and stays with them for a month.
Late one night, a woman knocks on his door, requesting that he come to give religious comfort to a dying servant until a confessor can arrive from a distant convent. The dying woman recognizes him as Selina’s lover because she is Nerina, Elgiva’s old servant. She tells him about Edward and Selina’s past, and Maximilian writes all of it down in a packet when he returns to his room. She dies the next morning before he can speak with her again. He learned from her that Godfrey’s daughter (named Elgiva, after her mother) was alive and well, and certainly not an imbecile as the Duke had told him. The Duke had illegally married her (his cousin) but because of their close relation it was not an official union, and he had no claim to the estate unless she died.
When the Duke enters the room, Maximilian horrifies him by immediately asking where he had hidden Elgiva. The Duke begs Maximilian not to expose him, saying that he had fallen in love with his cousin, and they had married in secret. He had been planning on suing for a dispensation and met his current wife while on his way to do so. He fell in love with her and proposed, instead of returning to Elgiva. When he broke off his engagement with her, she went insane and died of a broken heart. Maximilian pronounces him guilty of her murder, and they agree upon appropriate penance for him to perform in exchange for Maximilian’s silence. Maximilian leaves the Duke and Duchess to visit his uncle’s old convent, where he decides to join the brothers. When the prior dies two years later, Maximilian succeeds him.
Maximilian then decides to return to the chateau to find out from Nerina’s brother Conrad, the servant in charge of its care, what truly happened to Elgiva. Conrad relates that after her parents died, Edward had raised Elgiva in ignorance of her right to the estates so that she would believe that she was dependent upon him. Therefore, Nerina and Conrad did as much as they could to advance her marriage to Edward’s son, the current Duke, believing that this was the only way in which she could claim her birthright. Nerina passed away while recovering from a broken leg and when Elgiva heard the news, she went mad with grief and died. Maximilian is convinced, because Conrad has confirmed the Duke’s story.
After finishing his story, the Abbot tells Sancho that even all these years later justice can still prevail, so he plans to tell the king the whole story. He gives Sancho the packet he wrote after Nerina’s deathbed explanation containing everything that happened to him, asking Sancho to read it then come back to visit him. The Abbot believes that Elgiva is alive, and that she may now receive her rightful inheritance when the matter comes to light. Sancho takes the packet home and in it he reads the story of Maximilian and Selina once more, starting from the point where Selina, Edward, Elgiva, Godfrey, and the former Duke all left for a different chateau without Maximilian. Here, the point of view stays with Maximilian, but it’s based on his written packet, no longer on his conversation with the knight.
The family is all together at the chateau. Selina mourns Maximilian’s absence, but she cheers up in a few days. Adolphus de Monvel visits and is instantly attracted to Selina, who is completely unaware. When he confesses his feelings to her, she is flattered that he chose her over the more beautiful Elgiva, but gently denies him. However, Adolphus takes her mild denial as encouragement and continues to pursue her. The second time that he declares his affections, she tells him about her engagement. Edward overhears this and does his best to convince his sister that Maximilian is being unfaithful. He tells Selina that Maximilian has run off with a peasant girl, and she is incredibly upset. The Duke resolves to have the matter investigated, which Edward knows would expose his lies, but he does not have a chance to look into it before he and Godfrey leave for the king’s wedding. Edward hears Elgiva trying to convince Selina not to become a nun and he realizes that this would be very advantageous for him, so he persuades her over time to run away and join a convent without telling their father and helps her leave the chateau unnoticed.
Once she reaches the convent, Selina falls ill from distress since she knows that she has caused her family worry. When she explains her situation to the nuns and asks for their help, the abbess sends a messenger to the chateau to inform the Duke of his daughter’s whereabouts and her regret. He immediately sets out to see her with Elgiva and Edward. Selina writes a letter to Elgiva explaining everything and asking her to beg the Duke to forgive her. Selina and the Duke both die, and Godfrey goes mad with grief. However, after ten years he recovers and marries Elgiva. Edward is bitter and upset because he has lost his chance to have everything he wanted. Elgiva and Godfrey live happily together in the chateau with Edward and Elgiva gives birth to their daughter. One day in a rage while Elgiva and Godfrey are on a walk, Edward attempts to murder the couple. When Godfrey discovers him, Edward begs his brother to kill him, but Godfrey says that he forgives Edward and they all return to the chateau. However, Edward is even more upset by their kindness. He plans on joining the army and prepares to leave.
One night, the three of them are sitting by a window when the two brothers decide to climb a tower for a better view. When they reach the top, Edward pushes his brother off the battlements. Elgiva dies of shock when she sees his corpse. Edward is left as the guardian to the young Elgiva and marries the Duchess. After his wife leaves him for the king, he becomes penitent, and he suffers much in the name of atonement. Eventually, he passes away, still trying to pay for his sins.
After he reads the packet, Sancho is travelling when he sees his friend Guiscardo sitting by a forest, deeply upset. Guiscardo tells Sancho that he is upset because he is now a criminal and explains why. Guiscardo and his wife Maddalena visited one of Guiscardo’s castles for a reprieve but when they arrived the servants said that the new inhabitant of the neighboring property, an Italian named Prince Appiani, was infringing upon Guiscardo’s land and treating Guiscardo’s servants horribly. Soon, Appiani sent a letter apologizing for his conduct and promising to visit the next day. In person, the prince was apologetic, kind, and charming, but Maddalena seemed distressed by his visits, although she was unsure why. One day while Guiscardo was out riding with Appiani, a group of masked men come to the castle and kidnap Maddalena. Guiscardo believes that they were hired by Appiani, so he rushes into the prince’s castle and draws his sword. The prince denies any involvement and orders his servants to search for her. The two men leave together to look for her, but they are unsuccessful.
One morning a stranger comes to see Guiscardo, saying that a woman had given him a letter to deliver to Guiscardo. It is from Maddalena, telling her husband that she plans to kill herself with opium but wanted Guiscardo to know that she was imprisoned in Appiani’s castle and that the prince was the one who kidnapped her. Guiscardo immediately goes to Appiani’s castle and stabs him while he sleeps. However, Guiscardo is now consumed with guilt over having killed a helpless man. Sancho promises that after he returns from a pilgrimage, he will speak with the Pope to obtain absolution for his friend.
Bibliography
Barnes, James J., and Patience P. Barnes. “Tegg, Thomas (1776–1846), publisher.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27102.
Frank, Frederick S. The First Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel. Garland Publishing, 1987.
——. “Gothic Gold: The Sadleir-Black Gothic Collection.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 26, 1997, pp. 287–312.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. The Gothic Ideology: Religious Hysteria and Anti-Catholicism in British Popular Fiction, 1780–1880. University of Wales Press, 2014.
Maximilian and Selina: Or, The Mysterious Abbot. A Flemish Tale. London, Tegg & Castleman, 1804.
Mayo, Robert Donald. The English Novel In the Magazines, 1740–1815: With a Catalogue of 1375 Magazine Novels And Novelettes. Northwestern University Press, 1962.
Potter, Franz J. The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800–1835: Exhuming the Trade. Macmillan UK, 2005.
——. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830. University of Wales Press, 2021.
“Thomas Tegg.” Collections Online | British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG48140.
“Thomas Tegg, Esq.” The Gentleman’s Magazine: and historical review. June 1846: 650.
In Issac Crookenden’s 1806 chapbook, characters face betrayal, secret identities, romantic intrigues, incest, and other sinful subjects. The drama of these Sicilian nobles’ story prompts the narrator to interject with frequent lectures on morality.
Material
History
Fatal Secrets is a small volume, only eighteen centimeters in length and eleven
centimeters in width. As the sole chapbook included in the rebinding, it is
quite slim. The cover is a solid tan paper, and the exterior is not decorated
by anything but the title of the chapbook. The title is found on a rectangle of
maroon leather with gold leaf stamping. “FATAL SECRETS / Issac Crookenden
/ 1806” is stamped into the leather. The material and quality of the cover
indicate the chapbook was rebound following its first publishing. Comparison to
other novels in the Sadleir-Black collection reveals that Sadleir likely
rebound the chapbook in a similar style with several other books of his before
selling his personal collection.
Handwritten cover preceding the title page
Upon opening the
book, the reader sees the creamy, relatively unworn paper that appears to have
been inserted during the rebinding. After turning these opening pages, the
first page of the original chapbook is revealed. It is in much worse condition
than the paper included in the rebinding. The first and last original page is
suede-colored with gray stains. In ink, someone has written “Fatal Secrets; Or,
Etherlinda de Salmoni” in a cursive script at the top of the page. The next
page is distinctively lighter than that of the first, but is made of a similar
thin, soft paper. The pulpy pages are worn, and in some cases have small tears
along their edges. They have the same grey stains as the darker pages, which
are absent on the pages inserted during the rebinding. Both types of pages have
signature marks. The original signature marks are printed onto the page, while
the newer pages have the signature marks penciled on. On a few of the 26
numbered pages, there are holes near the spine where they were threaded
together. The thread was likely removed during the rebinding.
After turning to the printed pages, the reader sees the first of two illustrations in the chapbook. The frontispiece is in black and white and depicts a dramatic scene from the story. Included in the illustration is a plaque on which is written “Fatal Secrets.” The caption also reveals the publishing date as November 1, 1806. The title page lists the author as “Issac Crookenden, Author of The Mysterious Murder, &c. &c.” This page also lists the complete title of the chapbook: “Fatal Secrets; Or, Etherlinda de Salmoni. A Sicilian Story.”Turning past the title page begins the story. The print is small but clear with the pages numbered at the top. The last of the two illustrations is on the final page of the story and is more of a closing drawing than an illustration of a scene. At the end of the original pages, there are several fly leaves which are the same as those added from the rebinding.
Textual
History
The title page ofFatal Secrets
Fatal Secrets; Or,
Etherlinda de Salmoni. A Sicilian Story has four publicly
known copies according to WorldCat. At least three of these copies appear to be
of the same edition, namely those in the University of Virginia, Duke
University, and University of California, Los Angeles libraries. All available
sources refer to the edition published in 1806, so there was likely only one
edition. This edition was published by J. Lee, a publishing house on 24 Half
Moon Street, Bishopgate. Isaac Crookenden’s only works published by J. Lee, Fatal
Secrets and The Mysterious Murder; or, The Usurper of Naples, were
both published in 1806 (Potter 91). J. Lee published authors other than
Crookenden, including Sarah Wilkinson, another prolific chapbook author, and he
also published sensationalist pamphlets and other literature outside of gothic
chapbooks (Potter 91)
Fatal Secrets is just one of many of Crookenden’s works. He wrote at least ten gothic chapbooks, all under his name. Both his unabashed use of his own name and his frequent writings were very unusual in the world of gothic publishing (Potter 26). In fact, Crookenden was only second to Sarah Wilkinson in the number of gothic chapbooks published under his name (Potter 26). Over the course of twenty years, he regularly published his sensationalist chapbooks, all of them thirty-six pages each (Nevins 67). As the amount of money to be made from writing chapbooks was likely quite small and Crookenden was employed as a schoolteacher for part of his literary career, it is unlikely that he pursued this path with a mind for profit (Potter 26, 71–72). His work, however, was hardly original.
Scholarly analysis of Crookenden’s works largely focuses on one aspect of them: their plagiarism. He is accused of being “the most notorious counterfeiter of legitimate Gothic novels,” the “master counterfeiter of long Gothics,” and a plagiarist of “better-known English and German Gothics” (Tymn 59, Frank 19, Nevins 67). Crookenden was in no way unusual among his peers for abridging and even stealing more famous novels’ plots. What did make him notable, however, was the fact that he published this stolen work under his own name (Frank 143).
A sample page of Fatal Secrets
Fatal Secrets itself may be a plagiarized combination of Ann Radcliff’s A Sicilian Romance and The Italian (Frank 133). It certainly shares many popular Gothic tropes with the novels, including an imprisoned mother, evil father, hidden parentage, and possible fratricide (Nevins 303–5). Still, it is unclear whether Crookenden’s contemporaries recognized Fatal Secrets as plagiarism or cared whether it was so. There is little evidence for Fatal Secrets’s advertisement or subsequent reception. There do not appear to be any reprintings or adaptions. As of 2021, it is listed under both Amazon and AbeBooks, but neither website seems to sell any copies, digital or otherwise. Other than references to Crookenden’s plagiarism, Fatal Secrets is only mentioned in scholarship within lists of Gothic texts (Tracy 30). Fatal Secrets appears to have had neither significant scholarly nor cultural significance beyond its publishing. It blends into the fabric of the hundreds of gothic chapbooks published over several decades that briefly entertained their audience.
Narrative
Point of View
Fatal Secrets is narrated in an omniscient third-person point of view, except
for a letter written in the first person. The narration is highly dramatic and
emotional, but clear. Sentences are lengthy and segmented. The narrator changes
between the present and backstory multiple times. The narrator frequently
interjects into the storytelling various direct addresses to the reader about
the morality of the characters’ choices and human nature. The narrator clearly
condemns some characters’ actions and portrays others as faultless heroes. The
dedication at the beginning of the chapbook states that these addresses are
meant to guide the reader’s personal morality.
Sample Passage of Third-Person
Narration:
In the mean time, the degeneracy of his son, had a visible effect on the Marquis’s happiness; and at last precipitated him into those very vices for which the former had been excluded his paternal home. So inconsistent is human nature; and “so apt are we to condemn in others what we ourselves practise without scruple.”
The Marquis, as we have before observed, collecting his scattered property retired to a seat he had recently purchased in the vicinity of Beraldi Castle; but they lived such a secluded life, that altho’ Ricardo found them out by means of seeing Alicia accidentally, yet he little imagined it was his own parents who resided there. (35)
Sample Passage from the Letter:
I look round in vain to see my beloved Count? ah, how often do I fix my eye on the vacant spot where you used to sit, and strive to collect your every attitude, and those dear engaging features which shed such tender benevolence when I applied you to be my friend in my helpless state.—I told you that I had been the victim of a villain’s perfidy, you pitied my situation, and sheltered me in your castle.—Ah ! why did you so? for it was this kindness that begot gratitude in my soul, and gratitude soon ripened into love !—How often have you told me that you loved me, and not even Theodora herself should rival me in your heart*. (31)
Fatal Secrets’ narration fits the story it tells. The narrator’s
knowledge of all the characters’ motivations and past actions both make the
story clearer and serve its theatrical nature through the inclusion of dramatic
irony. Full of twists that evoke horror and disgust in the characters, the
black-and-white narrative descriptions simplify the quandaries it creates. The
clear narrative division between the heroes and the sinners provides the story
with a neat ending. The constant moralizing from the narrator is in clear
conflict with the shocking and obscene story it tells but allows for the story
to claim both sensationalist and righteous audiences.
Summary
Before the story
begins, Crookenden dedicates the chapbook to a “Madam *******.” Here he accounts his anonymization of her to
her assumed unwillingness to be associated with the story, but assures her that
he will use the depravity of his story to teach the reader of morality.
The frontispiece of Fatal Secrets
Fatal Secrets starts with Theodora de Beraldi worried about her husband’s delay
at one of his estates. She is comforted by Ricardo, the cousin of Count
Beraldi, who is staying with her and his cousin after being disowned by his
father for debauchery. While Ricardo comforts Theodora, she squeezes his hand
and he begins to believe that she is in love with him. He lusts after her and
is about to declare his intentions when her husband returns. Theodora, ignorant
of Ricardo’s feelings, is overjoyed at her husband’s return, but Count Beraldi
seems troubled.
Ricardo later
finds a letter in the Count’s library that reveals Count Beraldi is having an
affair. He leaves the letter for Theodora to find, and when she does, she falls
ill. At this time, Count Beraldi is away. Ricardo leaves under the guise of
finding the Count to make him return to his ill wife. In reality, he tasks a
group of robbers to capture the Count and leave him in the dungeon of one of
the Count’s estates. Having replaced all the servants of the estate with people
loyal to him, Ricardo takes control of the Count’s land and rules while his
wife is ill. Ricardo confesses his feelings for Theodora, who is horrified and
refuses him. He imprisons her and separates her from her son, Ormando. She
again falls ill, and, after being separated from her son for the final time,
dies having never granted Ricardo’s wishes.
Ricardo takes in
his lover’s daughter, Etherlinda, and raises her as the heir to Count Beraldi’s
estate. He also raises Ormando, but as an orphan under his care rather than the
true heir. Eventually, the two fall in love with each other. Ormando confesses
his feelings and Etherlinda returns them. Ricardo sends Ormando off to serve
him with the understanding that, if he returns and still loves Etherlinda, he
will have Ricardo’s blessing.
The final page of Fatal Secrets and its accompanying illustration
Etherlinda is the daughter of Alicia whom Ricardo seduced and bore Etherlinda out of wedlock. Alicia is the daughter of the Marquis Salmoni, but she concealed this from Ricardo out of shame. The Marquis lost much of his wealth to debauchery and moved to his only remaining land with his wife and daughter. Ricardo eventually stole Etherlinda away from Alicia and stopped providing for the mother of his child. Alicia then went to Count Beraldi (before he was imprisoned) and implored his assistance. The two began an affair, the same one that was revealed in the letter. Ricardo discovered that Alicia was the mistress of Count Beraldi after he imprisoned the Count. He was enraged by this and imprisoned her in a separate dungeon.
On Ormando’s
journey, he stops at a convent and is welcomed by a monk. This monk is Marquis
Salmoni, although Ormando does not know it. The Marquis became a monk after his
wife died of the grief caused by her missing daughter. When Ormando departs, he
accidentally leaves behind the letter Alicia wrote Count Beraldi. This letter
had been misplaced by Ricardo and was hidden for seventeen years before Ormando
found it. Ormando did not get a chance to read it before he dropped it, so he
is unaware of its contents. The Marquis died shortly after reading the letter
and learning of his daughter’s sin.
Later in his journey, Ormando is kidnapped by Ricardo’s robbers and taken to a castle. Here Ricardo reveals himself to Ormando, having closely watched him the entire time. Ricardo leads Ormando into the dungeon and tells him that if he does what he says he will be entitled to Etherlinda and Ricardo’s estates. Ormando is horrified when Ricardo commands him to kill Alicia, who has been kept in the dungeon for all these years. She reveals that she is Etherlinda’s mother and that Ormando is Count Beraldi’s son. She and Ricardo argue, and she reveals her last name to be de Salmoni. Ricardo realizes that Alicia is his sister and dies of shock. Alicia believed her brother to have been dead and is horrified by the revelation.
Ormando releases
both Alicia and Count Beraldi from captivity. He is announced as the true heir
and marries Etherlinda. Etherlinda never finds out her true ancestry and bears
Ormando many children. Alicia is reunited with her daughter but then spends the
rest of her life at a convent, repenting.
Bibliography
“‘The Absolute Horror of Horrors’ Revised: A Bibliographical Checklist of Early-Nineteenth-Century Gothic Bluebooks.” Romantic Textualities, 29 Jan. 2013, http://www.romtext.org.uk/reports/cc09_n03/.
Crookenden, Isaac. Fatal Secrets: Or,
Etherlinda De Salmoni. A Sicilian Story. J. Lee, 1806.
Frank, Frederick S. Gothic
Writers: A Critical and Bibliographical Guide, edited by Douglass H.
Thomson, and Jack G. Voller, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2001.
Nevins, Jess. The
Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana. Monkeybrain, 2005.
Potter, Franz J. Gothic
Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830, University of Wales
Press, 2021.
Tracy, Ann B. The Gothic Novel 1790–1830: Plot Summaries and Index to Motifs, University Press of Kentucky, 2014.
Tymn, Marshall B. Horror
Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide. Rr Bowker Llc, 1981.
This abridged version of Percy Shelley’s 1811 novel, St. Irvyne, tells of a man high in the Alps, entangled with a pack of bandits and then with the occult, forced to learn first-hand the cost of devaluing life.
Material
History
Wolfstein is presented in a now-unbound pamphlet.
It is light, being twenty-eight pages in length, 10.7cm x 17.9cm in dimension,
and lacking in a back cover. The untethered, yet remaining front cover is
composed of a marbled, and half-leather binding. This marbling effect was a
popular design of the period, and it was achieved by filling a container with
water and oil paint and dipping the cover in the swirling colors. The cover’s
corners and spine are leather, but the rest is made of faded, dark green decorative
marble paper, which appears to have once been a shade of deep blue, yellowed
with time. No indication of the author is given on the front, nor anywhere
inside the book.
Notes written by Michael Sadleir in the very front of the book. Information on the original volume, including a list of the stories it contained, is jotted down in pencil on these pages.
Immediately upon opening the cover, the viewer will be greeted with several notes written in the handwriting of Michael Sadleir, the original curator of this collection. These reveal that there was once a “Coloured Frontispiece” and seven stories in this volume; of these, Wolfstein is the first and the only remaining. The stories are listed exactly as follows:
Wolfstein or The Mysterious Bandit / a Terrific Romance. To which is added The Bronze Statue, a pathetic tale. J. Bailey.
The Ruffian Boy or the Castle of Waldemar. A Venetian Tale. Based on Mrs. Opie’s stay of the same name. by J.S. Wilkinson. J. Bailey
Glenwar, The Scottish Bandit by an Evonian (Dean and Munday)
The White Pilgrim or the Castle of Olival trans from the Le Pelerin Blanc by Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson (Dean & Munday)
Theodore and Emma or the Italian Bandit by an Etonian. (J. Bailey)
The rips between these notes and the title page of Wolfstein indicate that the frontispiece may have been removed, perhaps along with the other six stories. The current curator of the Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library, David Whitesell, hypothesizes that these stories were likely removed in the early days of the collection, possibly when it was first moved to the library. Another mysterious note on the back of the front cover reads, “43 O.R.” What this pen-written memo means is unknown, but it was likely written in the early twentieth century.
Thus, Wolfstein’s forced isolation commands all our attention to it. The title page, though badly torn up, boldly introduces the title in three successive lines, as “Wolfstein; OR, THE MYSTERIOUS BANDIT. A Terrific Romance.” Farther down, the page reads, “TO WHICH IS ADDED, THE BRONZE STATUE. A Pathetic Tale.” The title page arranges the above text in slightly different font variations and vertical lines per each phrase. The page is without pictures or other notable visual features. Further into the chapbook, the titles appear at the top of almost every page as either Wolfstein; OR, THE MYSTERIOUS BANDIT. or THE BRONZE STATUE. The first story takes up pages four through nineteen, while the second story goes from page twenty to the final, twenty-eighth page.
Throughout the book, the
pages are yellowed and tattered. The margins are a uniform 1.5 cm on every
page, and the printing is generally clean and well done. Occasionally, letters
are displaced; this is a result of the moveable type that was used to print the
book. Some seemingly random letters—A, A2, A3, A6, and B—can be found on
different pages near the beginning of each story. These are signature marks, a
common technique of traditional bookmaking: since books were printed on large
sheets of paper that had to be folded and cut, signature marks helped
bookbinders to order the pages correctly.
The page where the first chapter of Wolfstein begins. The repairing patch on the left side and the text it ripped off, the word “blue,” on the right side, are visible.
Another interesting
feature near the beginning of the book is on the backside of the cover page. A
patch, roughly page-colored and a little over an inch in size, is stuck on the
page; looking closely, one can see that its application tore the word “blue”
from the body of the text where the first chapter starts on the following page.
This patch was applied long ago to repair a rip in the title cover, conceivably
when the volume was being moved to the library, but its current presence
appears somewhat ironic, as the title page is now badly torn up. As such, it
seems that the book may have been tattered for quite some time.
Textual
History
Information on Wolfstein;
or The Mysterious Bandit’s textual history is sparse and sometimes
contradictory, especially when it comes to the publication date. In Montague
Summers’s extensive, usually detailed Gothic Bibliography, the entry on
this story is a one-liner, reading, “Chapbook. n.d. [c. 1800]” (561). Indeed,
the circa 1800 publication date is the definite, albeit vague, consensus
amongst all sources, though some sources specify the year of 1822, noting one
crucial detail: Wolfstein is not an original work. Unlike its publishing
companion, The Bronze Statue, published by Anna Jane Vardill, who signed
her work as “V”, Wolfstein is not marked anywhere with any indication of
an author. Instead, the credit for the work is given to author Percy Bysshe
Shelley, as Wolfstein is a condensed, sixteen-page version of Shelley’s
1811 novel St Irvyne; or The Rosicrucian.
Herein the problem is introduced: which came first, The Rosicrucian or The Mysterious Bandit? Frederick S. Frank writes that Wolfstein is a “plagiarized abridgment of various Räuber-roman” and that “P. B. Shelley may have obtained the name of his morose hero in Saint Irvyne … from this lurid little shocker” (“The Gothic Romance” 173). Other sources, however, seem to indicate the opposite. The frontispiece of the chapbook, as found in the New York Public Library, lists the date issued as “1822 (Questionable).” The WorldCat library catalogue, too, describes Wolfstein as “a slightly altered and much abridged version of P. B. Shelley’s 1811 novel, St. Irvyne … published shortly after J. Stockdale’s 1822 re-issue of St. Irvyne.” Finally, in discussing gothic literature’s “fetishisation and moralisation of the formulaic,” Franz J. Potter asserts, “There are multiple redactions and adaptations of what are now viewed as trade novels,” among them, “Percy Shelley’s juvenile novel … was deftly converted into Wolfstein” (The History of Gothic Publishing 54).
Shelley’s St. Irvyne,
at its comparatively whopping length of about two-hundred pages, contains many
plot points common to Wolfstein, while having mostly different character
names. Wolfstein’s breakneck pace, then, can be justified through its
impressive inclusion of many of St. Irvyne’s plot points. The abridgment
is not perfect, though; Wolfstein spends almost no time on Shelley’s
female characters, who, in St. Irvyne, have characterization, dialogue,
and plot lines of their own. Wolfstein’s Serena, the only notable woman
in the chapbook, pales in comparison to Shelley’s Olympia, who, while still
being portrayed primarily as a sexual object, does more than just get captured
and murdered (Finch). Wolfstein goes from barely skimming St. Irvyne’s
waters to totally diving in, even directly copying the text, as in the
“mouldering skeleton” and “terrible convulsions” of the final scene (Wolfstein
19, Shelley 236). The unique similarities of the plots suggest that Wolfstein
was published after Shelley’s novel, possibly in 1822.
The title page of Wolfstein and its partner story, The Bronze Statue. The price, sixpence, is listed at the bottom.
Plagiarized chapbooks like Wolfstein were not an irregularity. The printer and publisher of Wolfstein, John Bailey, published many adaptations and abridgements of popular novels as it was “a financially sound investment for printers and publishers exploiting the readers’ appetite for entertainment” (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 89). However, the author, or rather abridger, of Wolfstein is nowhere to be found, whether due to the popularity of anonymity at the time or the fact that the story was a plagiarism. Oftentimes, details like authors and dates remain absent; in total, Bailey dated only five of his thirty-eight pamphlets, these dates ranging from from 1808 to 1823 (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 89). Bailey established himself as a publisher on Chancery Lane by 1800, and his overall contribution to Gothic literature was momentous, finding “market value … in the sensationalism and horror that readers craved” (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 90). Throughout his career, Bailey published and priced a broad range of works at sixpence—very cheap—thus targeting “the general reader whose interest varied by age and need” (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 91).
John Bailey’s gothic pamphlet publications usually contained a frontispiece—which Wolfstein did have, albeit separated—and is now available through the New York Public Library Digital Collections. As described by the WorldCat library database,Wolfstein’s frontispiece was a “folding engraved hand-colored frontispiece with caption beginning, ‘Deeper grew the gloom of the cavern,’ depicting the final scene: a giant skeleton, a lightning bolt, the terrified Wolfstein.” Bailey often commissioned frontispieces from artist George Cruikshank (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 90). Overall, the Bailey family contributed at least seventy-six pamphlets to the “gothic pamphlet marketplace,” making up 19 percent of the total number of Gothic chapbooks (Potter Gothic Chapbooks 91). Their contribution was essential to the genre. Wolfstein is but a singular example of the Bailey family’s gothic legacy.
According to WorldCat,
five known copies of Wolfstein exist. One of them is in the University
of Virginia’s Special Collections Library; one is at the University of
California, Los Angeles; one is in New Jersey, at Princeton University; one is
in the New York Public Library; and one is across the seas at the University of
Birmingham.
Narrative
Point of View
Wolfstein is narrated in the third person,
including both an objective and an omniscient point of view. Although the
narrator is anonymous and physically absent from the story, they sometimes
offer omniscient insight into the characters. Mainly, though, the focus is on
the fast-moving plot, following the terrific story of Wolfstein as he delves
into a life of crime. The narration is almost jarringly engaging, with each
page or two seeming to start a new arc of the story, and sprawling,
multi-clause sentences describing settings and streams of consciousness. While
the narration does pause to zoom-in on specific descriptions, its mere
fifteen-page length requires quick movement through the many beats of action it
contains. This action ranges from murder, thievery, and poisoning to suicidal
contemplation, dreams, and phantasmal appearances. The narration also centers
primarily on Wolfstein, informing us always of his perspective and emotions.
Sample Passage:
As Pietro concluded, a universal shout of applause echoed through the cavern; and again the goblet passed round, when Wolfstein eagerly seized an opportunity to mingle the poison. The eyes of Barozzi, which had before regarded him with so much earnestness, were intentionally turned away; he then arose from the table, and, complaining of a sudden indisposition, retired.
Stiletto raised the goblet to his lips. “Now, my brave fellows, the hour is late, but before we retire, I here drink success and health to every one of you.” Wolfstein involuntarily shuddered as Stiletto drank the liquor to the dregs, when the cup fell from his trembling hand, and exclaiming, “I am poisoned!” he sank lifeless on the Earth. (11)
Wolfstein’s narrative style frequently deals with
action, but by no means does it lack description or other, slower modes of
fiction. Action verbs in sentences are always surrounded by expressive,
carefully chosen adverbs and adjectives, so that every action is afforded some
reason or emotion. Additionally, the dynamic characters guarantee that the
reasoning and feelings surrounding each action are also dynamic, making the
narration riveting and surprising throughout the tale. For the Alpine Bandits,
power is obtained and maintained through stealth, strength, and wit, so
intelligence is a crucial quality. Taking this into account, the selectively
omniscient point of view aids in the fortune of some characters and expedites
the downfall of others, including Stiletto. The main characters, Wolfstein and
Barozzi, are favored by the narrator in terms of detail and perspective, and
since their thought processes are presented most thoroughly, the book depicts
them as the only characters who are thinking deeply. In a world where success
is based on cunning, they make all other characters seem static and unthinking
in comparison, and those characters’ lives are treated as unimportant and
easily discarded. The narrative’s marking of Wolfstein and Barozzi as
intellectually superior sets them up to search for eternal life and heightens
the irony of their eventual defeat and ruin.
Summary
High in the Alps, a terrible thunderstorm “borne on the wings of
the midnight whirlwind” is raging (4). Against a rock, a man named Wolfstein
watches the storm. Wolfstein is tormented by sadness, and he “curse[s] his
wayward destiny… [seeing no point in a life both] useless to himself and
society” (4). Overcome by emotion, he rushes to jump off the cliff, but instead
faints and falls to the ground. His body is quickly found by a group of
traveling monks. They initially suppose him to be dead, but when he wakes up
and lashes out at them, they try to comfort him. Abruptly, the group is
ambushed by the Alpine Bandits, who attack and rob the monks. They threaten
Wolfstein, who says that he has nothing to lose and nothing to fear. Upon
hearing this, they invite him to join their group, and he agrees with little
thought. The banditti take Wolfstein to the “summit of a rocky precipice,”
where they enter a cavern that serves as the bandits’ base camp (5). In the
cavern, they enjoy a banquet made by a woman kept there and eventually retire
to bed. Before going to bed himself, Wolfstein recounts the sorrows of his
life, having been “driven from his native country” by an unnamed force that
presents an “insuperable barrier to ever again returning” (6). Eventually, he
goes to sleep.
As he “inure[s] more and more to the idea of depriving his
fellow creatures of their possessions,” Wolfstein becomes a courageous bandit
(6). His new lifestyle is tested when an Italian count comes to the Alps, and
he goes out to scout alone. While scouting, he discovers that a detached party
of the banditti has already overtaken and killed the count, now dragging a
woman’s “lifeless … light symmetrical form” out of their carriage (7).
Immediately, Wolfstein becomes infatuated with her; but the bandit chief,
Stiletto, seems to desire her for himself.
That night, the woman, whose name is Serena, is invited to the
banquet and seated at the right side of Stiletto, much to Wolfstein’s
displeasure. Filled with “indignation,” he determines to “destroy his rival”
(8). He slips a white powder into Stiletto’s goblet and later proposes a toast.
Just when Stiletto is about to drink, another robber, Barozzi, “dashe[s] the
cup of destruction to the earth” (8). Barozzi is a reserved, cryptic man. He
tells nothing about himself to anyone, and he has never “thrown off [his]
mysterious mask” (9). The interference enrages Wolfstein further, and he
decides to attempt the murder once more, reasoning that he is not worthy of
“the celestial Serena, if [he] shrink[s] at the price… for her possession” (9).
The day after, the bandits are drunk and merry again. Stiletto asks Pietro, a
robber who knows many poems, to tell an old German story to pass the time.
Pietro recites a poem about Sir Eldred the bold, a crusader who died in battle
in Palestine. At his death, his lover wept, “raised her eyes to the banner’s
red cross, / And there by her lover she died” (11). After the story was told, a
goblet was passed around, and Wolfstein again slipped poison into it. At this,
Barozzi “intentionally turn[s] away,” then rises from the table and retires
(11). Stiletto raises the drink, toasting to the “success and health to every
one of you” (11). He drinks it and immediately becomes ill, crying, ““I am
poisoned!” and collapsing (11).
The devastated banditti begin to search for the culprit, but the
search distresses Wolfstein, and he confesses. They are about to kill him when
Barozzi intervenes, insisting that they leave him unhurt on the condition that
he immediately leaves. Wolfstein does. In “half-waking dreams,” he hears
Stiletto’s ghost cry out for justice (12). As he ventures out from the cabin,
he spots Serena lying on the ground. Seeing her as the reason he “forfeited all
earthly happiness,” he takes his sword and stabs her in the breast (12). He
continues on his way, finds an inn to stay in, and Barozzi shows up. In
exchange for saving him from the banditti, Barozzi demands Wolfstein’s
protection and commands that Wolfstein listen to his story. Feeling indebted, Wolfstein
swears to do so, and Barozzi takes his leave. In dreams, Wolfstein sees himself
on the edge of a precipice, being chased by a dreadful figure. Barozzi saves
him, but then the monster throws Barozzi off.
One evening, Wolfstein wanders outside late at night,
“shudder[ing] at the darkness of his future destiny” (14). As he is going back
inside, Barozzi grabs his arm. Jolted, Wolfstein asks if Barozzi is there to
make good on his promise. Barozzi replies: “‘I am come to demand it, Wolfstein,
(said he) art thou willing to perform?’” (14). Wolfstein gathers his strength
and proclaims that he is ready, conducting Barozzi inside. Inside, Barozzi says
it “neither boots [Wolfstein] to know nor [him] to declare” about his past, but
he plans to do so anyway (15). He tells Wolfstein that every event in his life
has been known and guided by his machinations, and tells him to not interrupt,
regardless of how horrifying the tale might be.
At seventeen years old, Barozzi set out on a journey from his
city of Salamanca. The sky that night was completely black and covered by
clouds, and Barozzi “gazed on a torrent foaming at [his] feet” (15). He then
planned to commit suicide. Right before jumping, he heard a bell from a
neighboring convent that “struck a chord in unison with [his] soul” (16). It
made him give up the plan, and he fell to the foot of a tree, crying. In sleep,
he dreamed he stood on a cliff high above the clouds. Amid the mountain’s dark
forms, he felt an earthquake and saw “the dashing of a stupendous cataract”
(16). Suddenly, he heard sweet music, and everything became beautiful; “the
moon became as bright as polished silver; pleasing images stole imperceptibly
upon my senses … louder swelled the strain of seraphic harmony” (16). It calmed
his violent passions. Then, the sky divided, and “reclining on the viewless
air, was a form of most exact and superior symmetry” (16). Speaking “in a voice
which was rapture itself,” it asked, “Wilt thou come with me—wilt thou be
mine?” (16). Barozzi, upset by the proposition, firmly declined. Upon this, he
heard a deafening noise, and his neck was grasped by the phantom, who turned
hideous. It mocked Barozzi, saying, “‘Ah! Thou art mine beyond redemption,’”
and asked him the same question again (17). Frenzied and terrified, he replied
yes, and awoke. From that day forward, a “deep corroding melancholy usurp[ed]
the throne of [his] soul,” and he dived into philosophical enquiries. There he
found a method for eternal life “connected [with his] dream” (17). He lamented to
Wolfstein that this secret may not be shared with anyone else. Barozzi tells
Wolfstein to meet him at midnight in the ruined Abbey St. Pietro—there, he
says, he will reveal the secret to eternal life.
In the still night, Wolfstein ventures there and descends into
the vaults. He trips over a body, and in horror, finds it to be the body of
Serena. On her face, there was a “laugh of anguish” still remaining, and it was
accompanied by wild, knotted hair. Wolfstein “dashe[s] [her body] convulsively
on the earth” and, consumed by almost-madness, runs into the vaults. Thirsting
for knowledge, he waits patiently, and at the midnight bell, Barozzi appears at
last. Desperation alone pushes Barozzi on. His figure thin and his cheek sunken
and hollow, he greets Wolfstein, saying they must get to work. Barozzi throws
his cloak to the ground, shouting, “I am blasted to endless torment!!!” (19).
The cavern grows darker, and lightning flashes in it. From thin air, “the
prince of terror” emerges. He howls and shouts, “‘Yes… yes, you shall have
eternal life, Barozzi!” (19). Barozzi’s body “moulder[s] to a gigantic
skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glazed in his eyeless sockets” (19).
Wolfstein convulses and dies over him.
The tale ends with a statement from the narrator: “Let the
memory of these victims to hell and to malice live in the remembrance of those
who can pity the wanderings of error” (19). The voice remarks that endless life
should be sought from God, the only one who can truly offer eternal happiness.
Bibliography
Finch, Peter. “Monstrous Inheritance: The Sexual Politics of Genre in Shelley’s ‘St. Irvyne.’” Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 48, Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc., 1999, pp. 35–68, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30213021. Accessed 15 November 2021.
Frank, Frederick S. “Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks, and Short Stories in the Magazines (1790–1820).” Gothic Writers: A Critical and Bibliographical Guide, edited by Douglass H. Thomson et al., Westport, Conn, Greenwood Press, 2001, pp. 133–146, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uva/detail.action?docID=3000461. Accessed 15 November 2021.
——. “The Gothic Romance 1762–1820.” Horror Literature: A Core
Collection and Reference Guide, edited by Marshall B. Tymn., New York &
London, R.R. Bowker Company, 1981. Accessed 15 November 2021.
Potter, Franz J. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830, University of Wales Press, 2021. Accessed 15 November 2021.
——. The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800–1835: Exhuming the
Trade. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. EBook Collection (EBSCOhost).
Accessed 15 November 2021.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley. St. Irvyne, Or, the
Rosicrucian: A Romance. London, J.J. Stockdale, 1811.
Summers, Montague. A Gothic Bibliography. London, The Fortune Press, 1941.
“Vardill, Anna J, John Bailey, John Bailey, and Percy B. Shelley. Wolfstein; Or, the Mysterious Bandit: A Terrific Romance … to Which Is Added, the Bronze Statue, a Pathetic Tale. London: Printed & published by J. Bailey, 116, Chancery Lane, 1822.” Entry in WorldCat. http://uva.worldcat.org/oclc/7130368. Accessed 15 November 2021.
Wolfstein; Or, the Mysterious Bandit: A Terrific Romance … To Which Is Added, the Bronze Statue, a Pathetic Tale. J. Bailey, n.d.
In this 1799 chapbook set in England during the Middle Ages, a conflict over religion between a priest and a baron, and an enchanted suit of armor result in betrayal, exile, and magic.
Material History
Kilverstone Castle, or, The Heir Restored: A Gothic Story is the second of twelve stories, bound together in the same volume. The name of the author does not appear on any of the story’s thirty-three pages.
The title page of Kilverstone Castle
The cover is stained, and has completely detached from the book pages, but the binding on the side is still intact. The pages are very fragile, and the cover has detached. The book is bound with leather, and has an endband made of red thread at the top and bottom for decorative purposes.
The book’s paper is very brittle and has yellow stains covering it. The binding along the side of the book has the word “tracts” carved into it. A “tract” signifies a chapter or short story, which suggests that someone specifically chose to bind these stories together, either due to similar themes or simply to have them all in one place. The word “Prethy” is also written in elaborate cursive on the opening page, which suggests a previous owner signed their copy.
There are illustrations on the title and final page of the book, with the one on the title page depicting two men dueling in front of a woman fainting, and the one on the final page depicting a tree. The title page also contains the name of the book’s printer and publisher.
One of the most unique characteristics of this volume, however, is the typeface. The margins and type are both very small. Within the text, the letter “s” appears frequently shaped like a letter “f” (this was known as a long S or medial S), except in words that have two “s” in a row, in which case only the first “s” is a long S while the second “s” is the round s that has since become standard.
Textual History
According to the WorldCat database, there are ten different editions of Kilverstone Castle. The editions slightly vary in title, with most including the phrase Kilverstone Castle, or, the Heir Restored, a Gothic Story and some also including Founded on a Fact which happened at the dawn of the Reformation.
The frontispiece of Kilverstone Castle
WorldCat lists all of these editions as having been published in 1799, except for one which is listed as having been published in 1800. The edition of the text in the University of Virginia Special Collections library does not have a publishing date inscribed on it, and the call number lists publication as 1802. However, in his Gothic Bibliography, Montague Summers claims that the text was published in 1799. Franz Potter’s Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks, and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830 gives the same year (21). An edition of the text on Google Books has “1799” printed on the title page.
While the text has no known author, Kilverstone Castle was published by Ann Lemoine. Lemoine was a prolific publisher of gothic texts, and Potter states that Kilverstone Castle was the first work she published, a collaboration with Thomas Hurst. He goes on to note, “Lemoine effectively dominated the chapbook market by publishing at least 99 Gothic chapbooks over thirteen years, 28 percent of the whole number” (Gothic Chapbooks 21). Potter also says that Kilverstone Castle “capitalised on the widespread success of The Castle of Lindenberg and the continued interest in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto” (Gothic Chapbooks 47). In The History of Gothic Publishing, Potter notes that Kilverstone Castle was one of the Gothic bluebooks available at William Booth’s Circulating Library in Norwich (70). Though no advertisements for the text have been found in newspapers from the nineteenth century, this suggests that it was not in total obscurity either.
Narrative Point of View
Kilverstone Castle uses a third-person omniscient narrator, who knows the inner thoughts of all the characters. The narrator provides a lot of description of the setting and the material objects the characters interact with. However, the narrator does not explain all characters’ thoughts and motivations. The narrator uses long sentences, and refers to aristocratic characters by their title more often than their actual name, with the exception of Mervil.
Sample Passage:
He prefaced it with the most solemn asseverations of truth, respect, and esteem for his patron. “My regard for you, my lord, makes me jealous of every injury done to your honor; and it becomes a duty in me to apprise you of every danger which besets you. Be not shocked, my friend, by a discovery in which your happiness is in imminent peril. Your Jessalind is inconstant!” (12)
The omniscient narrator not revealing each character’s motivation adds to the mystery of the story. If the narrator of this passage had been able to state that Polydore was lying about Jessalind committing adultery, significant tension during the scene in the bathhouse would have been lost. Polydore in this passage also puts more emphasis on Mervil’s title than the narration usually does, suggesting that they are not really friends. In other passages throughout the story, when the narrator describes objects in great detail, such as the onyx cross, this is done to humanize the objects and give them a role in the story.
Summary
Kilverstone Castle begins by telling the reader about Lord Audley, Baron of Kilverstone in Lincolnshire. He is a virtuous man who is getting older, but he has a son, Mervil, who will be a great successor. Audley lives before the Reformation but holds ideas contrary to those of the Church. This brings him into conflict with Father Peter, who is the Abbot of Croyland and runs the monastery in the village. Peter has many opportunities to take revenge on Audley, due to the supreme influence of the Church at the time. Father Peter goes to Lord Wentworth, in a place where Audley holds lands, with a forged order from the Monastery of St. Crowle to prosecute a claim on the estates.
Audley soon dies, and his son is called away from his travels at the news of his father’s death. The trial about his father’s lands is still happening at the King’s court, and he walks around his mansion considering it. He soon hears his ancestor’s armor rumble, and, when he walks over to it, sees a light from inside. He finds a small onyx cross and puts it on; the cross then starts to bleed, and the armor shakes.
A sample page of text from Kilverstone Castle
Father Peter shows up, planning to assassinate Mervil. Peter pretends to mourn Audley, and Mervil believes him. Soon the amulet starts to bleed again. Peter is shocked, and briefly feels guilt for attempting to kill Mervil, but it soon fades. As Peter turns to leave, the dagger which he planned to kill Mervil with falls onto the floor. Mervil is shocked, and realizes the amulet was warning him about Peter’s treachery.
It is revealed that Wentworth has led a wild life, and that the churchmen manipulated him. He has made large donations to the monastery. He had gifted Father Peter’s monastery with Audley’s lands. Even with Audley dead, Peter still wants his lands. Since Mervil is so young, and Peter’s whole claim is based in forgery, Peter wants to kill Mervil before he has an heir who could challenge Peter for the Audley lands.
One day, while out hunting, Mervil meets a strange hermit. The hermit says he knows Mervil, and warns him that bad things await him.
Mervil eventually gets married to a local nobleman’s daughter, Jessalind. One day, however, his friend Polydore tells him she is being unfaithful with his friend, Ironside. Polydore tells Mervil to catch Jessalind and Ironside at the bath. Mervil goes there, and though he does not want to doubt his wife, he trusts his friend and the amulet had predicted disaster. He sees Jessalind and Ironside meet, and in a rage stabs Ironside. However, Ironside tells him that nothing was going on and that his and Jessalind’s meeting was accidental.
Mervil realizes that Polydore has lied to him, and that this was instigated by the church. As a murderer, Mervil’s lands are given to Wentworth. Mervil also reveals that Jessalind is pregnant. He decides to run into the woods and live as an unknown. Jessalind wakes up after fainting, sees Ironside dying, and calls out for her husband who has run away.
Some peasants carry Ironside to a shepherd, who says it is possible his wound is not fatal. Soon Wentworth’s officers show up at Audley’s estate after hearing what happened, and force Jessalind out. On the same night, a horrible storm is happening, and Wentworth’s officers flee the Audley castle because they think the storm was caused by evil spirits.
Jessalind befriends a shepherd who knew old Lord Audley. She is able to sell some jewels and go home to Normandy, but her father has left for a war.
The monks celebrate Mervil’s downfall, but Father Peter does not want to risk going near the enchanted armor again. Polydore, who was working for Father Peter, is now stuck with him while Peter shuts himself up in his cell.
Mervil eventually meets an old man at a shepherd’s house. He tells him everything, and the old man tells him that sometimes good things can come from bad. Eventually, Mervil tells the shepherd he is going to leave and find a place to retire and do penance. The shepherd tells him that the Hermitage of Norban is close to them, and Mervil seems to recognize the name and panics. The shepherd tells Mervil to stay the night, and his son will walk the six-hour journey with Mervil in the morning. Mervil then asks the shepherd to tell him the story of the hermit.
The hermit was from Normandy and was a member of Croyland Abbey. He did not leave the world entirely, but was famous for his ability to heal, to prophesize, and for his wisdom. He went into the mountains because he was upset at the sins of others in Croyland. Towards the end of his life, he gets a visitor, and on his deathbed, tells the herdsmen that it is his brother, and his coming means the hermit will die. He leaves a crucifix and says his heir will wear it in the seventh generation, and he will be the guardian of his friends for seven ages to come.
The amulet on Mervil’s neck is glowing once the story finishes. In the morning, he goes looking for where the hermit lived. Mervil finds the hermit’s remains, and decides to stay until he can give the hermit last rites. Mervil stays for some months in the Hermitage, with the shepherd and his sons often visiting.
The final page of Kilverstone Castle, which includes an illustration
Mervil eventually becomes famous, and fears he will be discovered. One night, he has a vision of Ironside’s ghost, giving him information about Jessalind. One day, a man shows up, and he realizes it is Ironside. Ironside tells him everyone believes Mervil committed suicide, and that while searching for him, a storm took out Wenthorth. Wentworth’s son refused to give Audley’s lands to the monastery. Ironside then tells him how he was tricked by Polydore, and that Father Peter poisoned Polydore because he knew Peter’s secrets. He then tells him that Jessalind is with her father in Normandy.
Ironside then tells him that Geoffrey, Wentworth’s son, is in open rebellion against the crown. He says Jessalind’s father might come with them to ask about his daughter’s possessions. Mervil says he cannot go until he has fulfilled the hermit’s last request. They leave with the hermit’s urn, and Mervil places it in the vault of his ancestors.
Mervil and Ironside eventually join up with the royal army. Ironside is shot in the arm and forced to retreat during a battle, and Mervil follows to help him. The crucifix Mervil is wearing helps to save the king when he is surrounded by rebels. Ironside dies of his wounds after asking Mervil to look after his daughter.
Mervil reaches the monastery of Crowle, and finds it in ruins. It had been destroyed by royal mandate, and all its possessions confiscated. His own mansion is mostly destroyed, except for the gallery where he first got the amulet.
A wedding is going to take place in a few days. During the wedding, Mervil’s amulet catches the eye of the bride. The bride faints, and the dagger she was going to use to stop the marriage falls out of her hair. It is revealed that the bride is Jessalind. The strange youth, referred to as the Bloody Knight, is revealed to be their son. In the end, Leo, the Bloody Knight, marries Ironside’s daughter Elvira.
Bibliography
Kilverstone Castle. London. Printed for Ann Lemoine. 1799.
Potter, Franz J. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830. University of Wales Press, 2021.
——. The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800–1835 : Exhuming the Trade. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Summers, Montague. A Gothic Bibliography. The Fortune press, 1941.
This early nineteenth-century chapbook by Emilia Grossett is a Scottish tale featuring various encounters with the mythical White Maid of Avenel. The story is believed to be plagiarized from The Monastery by Walter Scott.
Material
History
The Monastery of St. Mary by Emilia Grossett is a short text, only twenty-four pages
in length. The size of the pamphlet is only 17.4 by 10.8 centimeters. The pages
are yellowed with age and relatively thin. The font appears to be one that is
standard to today’s texts, similar to Times New Roman. The pamphlet is not
bound by any sort of cover, though pamphlets from this era were frequently
bound with a leather cover or bound with other similar pamphlets together as a
bunch.
The title page for The Monastery of St. Mary
Since this copy of the pamphlet is unbound, the first thing
that the viewer sees is the label that reveals that it is from the
Sadleir-Black Collection at the University of Virginia. On the backside of that
page is the only illustration that can be found in this pamphlet. The
illustration is in color, and it shows a man in a kilt and a woman wrapped in a
white sheet. The man’s brightly colored pink socks have bled through the page,
and the ink can be seen on the previously mentioned cover page. The pink
marking caused by the bleeding of the sock color seems irregular and is likely
not visible in most other copies of this pamphlet. After the illustration comes
the pamphlet’s title page, which states the full title, The Monastery of St.
Mary: Or, the White Maid of Avenel. A Scottish Tale,followed by the
author’s name and the publishing information. On this title page, a faint mark
of the previous illustration can be seen as though it was printed onto the page
like a watermark. This mark is most likely sun damage or staining, and not an intentional
addition to the text.
One noticeable and possibly confusing part of the book to
the untrained eye is the page numbers. The standard page numbers, which number
up to twenty-four on the final page, are in the top corner of the text. There
is a second set of numbers, however, that appears at the bottom of the first
five odd-numbered pages. These numbers have the letter A in front of them (A2,
A3, etc.) and are useless to the reader, but very important to the printer of
the text. When pamphlets like these were printed in large sheets and then
folded and cut into the order that they were meant to be read in, the printer
used these numbers to ensure that the pages were configured correctly.
Some final details that one might notice when looking
through the pamphlet include the publishing information and the price. The
price is listed on the title page as sixpence. The publishing information
appears on the title page below the price, and on the final page below “The
End.” This reveals that the pamphlet was published in London, despite its
advertisement as a Scottish tale.
Textual
History
One of the most important things
to note about Emilia Grossett’s chapbook, The Monastery of St. Mary, is
that it was almost certainly plagiarized from Walter Scott’s 1820 novel, The
Monastery. Both the novel and the chapbook have the same characters as well
as the same plotlines, except for the chapbook being a simplified version of
the plot due to its brevity in length. This makes it difficult to find
information about the chapbook specifically, because any mention of the
character names or locations in the chapbook almost always lead to mentions of
Scott’s novel.
The frontispiece for The Monastery of St. Mary
There is a beautiful frontispiece
in The Monastery of St. Mary, but unfortunately the illustrator’s name
is either unlisted or illegible. The illustrations of similar scenes such as
one titled Halbert Glendinning’s First Invocation of The White Maid of
Avenel in an 1821 London edition of Walter Scott’s The Monastery
were done by a man named Richard Westall, but they are clearly not by the same
illustrator as the chapbook version because Westall’s work looks much more
polished and professional than the frontispiece in The Monastery of St. Mary
(Font 130).
Under the caption of the
frontispiece, the publisher of the chapbook is listed as “J. Bailey.” This was
a publisher who operated out of London at 116 Chancery Lane. According to E. W.
Pitcher, Bailey was active at that address from the years 1809 to 1815, however
there is also evidence pointing to Bailey publishing before 1809 and after
1815, including this chapbook which, though undated, was presumably published
after the 1820 novel that it plagiarizes (Pitcher 78, Koch 75). According to
the British Museum’s archives J. Bailey was active in publishing from 1799 to
1825 when the press was eventually shared with at least one other man by the
same surname, William Bailey, suspected to be his son (“J Bailey”). J. Bailey
is listed as the publisher for many gothic chapbooks and pamphlets from the
early nineteenth century, among other small literary works and informational
handbills (Bonnets 41).
Emilia Grossett is a fairly
mysterious author with not much credited work in the literary field. There are
a couple texts that have her listed as the author, however, including The
Spirit of The Grotto from 1799, and The Freebooter’s Wife from 1819
(Summers 56). The latter title is listed as a book, not a chapbook, published
as one volume. Montague Summers’s Gothic Bibliography and several
library catalogues, including WorldCat, spell the author’s surname as “Grosett”
as opposed to “Grossett” as it appears on the title page of The Monastery of
St. Mary. Grossett’s other known texts were not published by J.
Bailey.
Narrative
Point of View
The Monastery of St. Mary is written in the third person by an anonymous narrator who
is not a character in the text. The narrator mostly focuses on the dialogue and
events that transpire throughout the world of the story, but they occasionally
exhibit omniscience by describing the characters’ thoughts or feelings that are
unvoiced in the story. The language used by the narrator is modern enough that
it reads very easily, with the exception being the dialogue, which sounds a
little more antiquated than the general writing style in the text. As would be
expected, the text uses British spelling which is noticeable in instances such
as writing “pedlar” instead of “peddler.”
Sample Passage:
Father Philip, eager to acquaint the Abbot of the discovery he had made, rode homeward as quick as his mule would carry him ; and in spite of the haste he made, the moon had risen before he reached the banks of the river, which it was necessary for him to cross to reach the Monastery. As the Monk came close to the water’s edge, he saw a female sitting under the remains of a large broken oak tree, looking on the current, and weeping most piteously ; surprised to see a female there at that time of night, yet supposing her grief arose from her wish to cross the river. Father Philip politely addressed her, and offered to carry her across on his mule. (5)
This excerpt demonstrates the
narrator’s use of the third person, the description of scenery and events in
the story, and insight into the characters’ (in this case Father Philip’s)
thoughts and emotions in response to events or other characters in the text.
This description of the internal reaction that the woman causes in the monk
offers a clearer idea of how the character feels about the White Maid of Avenel
than just a description of her appearance would. In the description of the
woman, the narrator also offers an interpretation of her emotional state, that
she is “weeping most piteously,” which seems to be the way that Father Philip
perceives the woman and not necessarily just a description of what she is
doing.
Summary
The Monastery of St. Mary is set on the border of Scotland, where the magnificent
Monastery of St. Mary sits on the bank of a river. Simon Glendenning and his
family live in the Tower of Glendearg, which is located a few miles from the
monastery in a hidden glen. Despite the tower’s inaccessible nature, Simon is
called to war and dies at the battle of Pinkie. His widow Elspeth surrenders
her tower and is pitied by the Englishmen.
The widow of Sir Walter Avenel,
whose husband was killed in the same manner as Simon Glendenning, has been
forced from her home by the Englishmen and is roaming helplessly around the
country with her children. They find shelter in the home of a shepherd, Martin,
and his wife, Tibb, but their cattle have been killed and they will soon starve
if they stay there. The group decides to take a chance and go to the Tower of
Glendearg, hoping that Elspeth will welcome them due to Lady Avenel’s high
status, which she does.
Text from The Monastery of St. Mary
Lady Avenel intends to return to
her mansion once the country is more peaceful, but Julian Avenel seizes
possession of the mansion. Therefore, Lady Avenel stays at Glendearg where her
health gradually declines due to the death of her husband. Elspeth sends Martin
to fetch the priest at the monastery so that Lady Avenel can confess before she
dies. The priest emerges from her chamber after a long wait and is in a foul
mood. He says that he suspects the house to “be foul with heresy” (5). Elspeth
is alarmed but admits that Lady Avenel often reads out of a black book. Father
Phillip is horrified when he sees that it is a book of holy scriptures, which
is a sin when possessed by anyone but a priest. He takes the book from them.
On his way back, the priest
reaches the river and sees a woman weeping on the bank. He calls out to help
her. She leaps on the back of the mule and leads it into the water, then dunks
the priest in the water thrice and throws him on the bank where he lies
unconscious. Once he is found, the book of scriptures is gone. His jumbled
story is questioned by many people, including Father Eustace, who goes to
Glendearg to enquire about the priest’s visit.
Father Eustace is informed of a
strange figure who returned the book, which he again confiscates. On his way
back, the priest’s mule stops suddenly at a turn in the road and hears an
unbodied female voice whispering to him. He is then thrown from his mule,
unconscious, and wakes up in the dark. Upon returning to the monastery, the
priest learns that a trooper had gone to confession after seeing a white woman
on the path where he intended to murder Father Eustace that night. The trooper,
named Cristie of the Clinthill, accepts a gold cross from the father before
departing. The priest realizes that the book is once again gone.
Days later, Halbert Glendenning
goes out alone and summons the White Maid. She helps him retrieve the book,
then disappears. Halbert returns to the Tower with the book, and finds a miller
and his daughter, Mysie. Soon after their arrival, Cristie of the Clinthill and
Sir Piercie Shafton arrive, hoping to find hospitality there since the knight
is fleeing death in England. Halbert and the knight clash with one another, due
to their mutual superiority complexes.
The next day, Halbert is once
again offended by Sir Piercie, and goes to summon the White Maid. She gives no
advice but hands him a token to use when Sir Piercie boasts again. Upon
returning to the tower Halbert is once again offended by Sir Piercie, so he
presents the token. It works, and the knight is immediately calmed, but
realizes Halbert’s power over him and says that it will cost the boy his life.
They agree to duel in the woods the following morning. When the morning comes,
they go to the site of the enchanted fountain to fight. They find in its place
a neatly dug grave and shovel, which Halbert denies preparing.
They duel, and despite the knight
being a more skilled fighter than Halbert, the latter stabs Sir Piercie,
apparently killing him. Halbert tries to summon the White Maid, but nothing
happens, and he screams curses at her for putting him in this position. Fleeing,
Halbert finds a man in the valley who he drags back to the site of the duel,
hoping to save the knight. They find the grave filled, but the only trace of
the knight is his doublet that was laid down before the duel. The stranger,
named Henry Warden, listens to the story and advises Halbert to find shelter at
the castle of Julian Avenel instead of returning home.
At the castle they find Julian
accompanied by a young woman, Catherine, who is unmarried although pregnant.
This offends Henry because he is a preacher, and he advises Julian to marry the
woman. Julian is enraged by his advice and throws Henry in the dungeon. Halbert
is locked in a bedroom to stop him from interfering. Halbert escapes his room
through a window.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of
Glendearg are alarmed that Halbert and Sir Piercie have yet to return, and they
send Martin out to look for them. Martin finds the grave, the bloodstains, and
the doublet. Martin returns and is telling the others what he found, when Sir
Piercie walks into the apartment wearing blood-stained clothes. This leads them
to believe that Halbert is dead, and Edward decides to get revenge for his
brother’s death. He confines the knight to a guarded room until the grave can
be searched the following morning. Father Eustace arrives at the castle and
requests a private meeting with Sir Piercie, who admits that Halbert wounded
him and he fell unconscious, before waking up with the realization that his
wound had miraculously healed.
The final page for The Monastery of St. Mary
It is forgotten that Mysie’s bedroom
is within the larger room in which the knight is being held, and she overhears
his conversation with Father Eustace. Mysie takes pity on the knight and
decides to save him. She goes to the door and whispers to Edward that she is
trapped. Edward opens the door and Mysie and the knight exit the apartment,
undiscovered by Edward due to the lack of light in the stairwell. The knight
flees with Mysie on a horse but is almost immediately seen and shot at by
Edward. They manage to escape, and they eventually stop in a village to rest.
Mysie disguises herself as a man.
Meanwhile, Halbert has found an
inn in which to stay and there he meets a pedlar who knows where to find the
recipient of Henry Warden’s letter, Lord Moray. The two men agree to travel
together the following morning, and they find themselves before the Earl of
Moray. The Earl is informed that the Monastery of St. Mary is surrounded by
English troops who are searching for Sir Piercie Shafton. Halbert is instructed
to lead the men to the monastery and advise the two sides to wait until the
Earl arrives to fight. The Earl and Sir John Foster arrive simultaneously, and
the former announces that his purpose was fulfilled, since they had captured
Sir Piercie. Upon closer inspection, they discover that the person they
captured is in fact Mysie.
All of the troops arrive in
procession at the monastery, in search of Sir Piercie. The knight advances from
the crowd and says that he is leaving England with his bride, Mysie. Halbert
and Mary Avenel marry and regain possession of the Castle of Avenel. They live
there with Elspeth, Martin, and Tibb happily ever after. Edward joins the
Monastery of St. Mary and beholds the last sight of the White Maid of Avenel,
whose fountain eventually dries up and is never seen again.
Bibliography
Koch, Angela. “‘The Absolute
Horror of Horrors’ Revised: A Bibliographical Checklist of
Early-Nineteenth-Century Gothic Bluebooks.” Cardiff Corvey: Reading the
Romantic Text 9 (Dec 2002), pp. 45–110.
BONNETS. 1819. The British Stage and Literary Cabinet 4, (35) (11): 41–2.
Font, Lourdes M. “Five Scenes
from a Romance: The Identification of a Nineteenth-Century Printed Cotton.” Metropolitan
Museum Journal, vol. 22, 1987, pp. 115–132.
Grosett, Emilia. The
Freebooter’s Wife: Or, the Hag of Glenburne; A Scottish Romance. W. Mason,
1819.
Grossett, Emilia. The
Monastery of St. Mary: Or, the White Maid of Avenel. A Scottish Tale. J.
Bailey, 1820.
Pitcher, E. W. “Pirates and
Publishers Reconsidered: a Response to Madeline Blondel.” The Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 75, no. 1, 1981, pp. 75–81.
Summers, Montague. A Gothic Bibliography. The Fortune press, 1941.
The Affecting History of Louisa, the Wandering Maniac, or, ‘Lady of the Hay-Stack;’ So called, from having taken up her Residence under that Shelter, in the Village of Bourton, Near Bristol, in a State of Melancholy Derangement; and supposed to be a Natural Daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Germany. A Real Tale of Woe.
This 1804 chapbook, a shorter version of George Henry Glasse’s English translation of L’Inconnue Histoire Véritable, connects the life of Louisa, a deranged wanderer of Bourton, England, to her greatest loss—the social denial of her identity as the natural daughter of Francis I, Emperor of Germany.
Material History
The title page for The Affecting History of Louisa.
The Affecting History of Louisa, the Wandering Maniac, or, ‘Lady of the Hay-Stack;’ So called, from having taken up her Residence under that Shelter, in the Village of Bourton, Near Bristol, in a State of Melancholy Derangement; and supposed to be a Natural Daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Germany. A Real Tale of Woe. If you are still here after reading this vehement title, congratulations—you have what it takes to dive into this 1804 gothic chapbook.
This “shilling shocker” is more popularly known as The Affecting History of Louisa. Though an unsung art by many, this novel does possess a special role at the University of Virginia by existing as an individualized, treasured lens of history in the Sadleir-Black Collection presented by Robert K. Black. The Sadleir-Black Collection’s version of the novel is a fragile, well-worn 10cm by 17cm. A beautiful yet dreary illustration adorns the primary page of the coverless and boundless novel. There is evidence of past stitching and binding of the pages, which possibly suggest that the novel was removed from a larger accumulation of gothic novels.
The pages of Robert Black’s The Affecting History of Louisa are brittle, yellow, and stained, yet they hold many secrets to the publishing and history of the unique novel. Throughout a series of 36 pages (the pages are numbered; however, the numbering begins six pages in with 8, and ends with 38), there are details including catchwords (a repeated/prewritten word located on the following page of a subsequent paragraph) and signature marks (numerical/alphabetical markings) which were used to assist the bookbinders and printers and to ensure correct book assembly on their part.
The frontispiece for The Affecting History of Louisa.
The precision and care that went into the assembling of the book is also reflected in the structured form of the printed words. With 1.5 cm side margins and a 2.5 cm bottom margin, the dainty 2 mm letters with their didonesque font are able to flow across the page and make an impact through their meaning more so than through their appearance. Several of the letters do attempt to make their own statements by being unconventional compared to current norms. Throughout the novel, the character “s” is depicted in multiple forms; sometimes taking on the conventional “s” form, but also sometimes being printed as a long S that looks more like an “f.” This printing trend began to dwindle following theeighteenth century. Between the cultural switch, there were some words where the flow of calligraphy followed the shape of a modern day “s,” and several words still followed that of an “f.” The printing of this novel simply adhered to those social norms of orthography.
Not only does the interior of this chapbook portray the textual effects of social change, but the exterior does as well. On the cover page of the novel, there is a small, handwritten “5” on the top-left corner. This handwritten “5” could represent several things: perhaps a monetary value, or perhaps a set volume in a more mass pamphlet. Either way, it is evident that this novel has had its experiences with society. The Affecting History of Louisa appears to have been worn and appreciated by previous readers.
Textual History
The Affecting History of Louisa is a petite chapbook with an extensive title within its first pages: The Affecting History of Louisa, the Wandering Maniac, or, “Lady of the Hay-Stack;” So called, from having taken up her Residence under that Shelter, in the Village of Bourton, near Bristol, in a State of Melancholy Derangement; and supposed to be a Natural Daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Germany. A Real Tale of Woe. There is no author listed for this chapbook.
This image presents an advertisement for a drama by James Boaden titled The Maid of Bristol, which inspired the reiteration of its story via this chapbook.
The initial ambiguity of the chapbook’s authorship stems from the fact that the original work was a French text titled L’Inconnue Histoire Véritable; moreover, English translations included many different titles and forms. George Henry Glasse, a scholar and clergyman, first translated this text into English as A Narrative of Facts. A second edition of Glasse’s translation appeared in 1801 as Louisa: A Narrative of Facts, Supposed to Throw Light on the Mysterious History of “The Lady of the Haystack.” This book was popular enough that it “quickly reached a third edition” (Vian and Ellis). There exists another edition of Glasse’s translation with yet another title, A Narrative of Facts: Supposed to Throw Light on the History of the Bristol-Stranger; Known by the Name of the Maid of the Hay-stack. Translated From the French, which includes an introduction signed by Philalethes.
Glasse’s translations also inspired a three-act play called The Maid of Bristol, dramatized by James Boaden. Boaden was a dramatist whose works revolved around the gothic genre. While The Maid of Bristol is not well-known for its popularity today, the play is still accessible and available for purchase online. The Affecting History of Louisa, the Wandering Maniac is a shorter chapbook version of Glasse’s translation and was, in particular, “induced” by the popularity of Boaden’s play; the advertisement in this chapbook states, “Mr. Boaden having, with so much success, dramatized the following interesting Tale, under the title of ‘The Maid of Bristol,’ induced us to present the Public with the original Narrative; which we are enabled to do, from the most authentic documents” (Affecting History 6). The Affecting History of Louisa, then, arrived on the publication scene after many translations and iterations of the original French text that aims for a genuine, historically accurate account of the mystery at the center of the story: the true natural daughter of Francis I.
Narrative Point of View
The Affecting History of Louisa is narrated from a third-person perspective. The frame narration opens and closes with an anonymous third-person narrator who presents part of Louisa’s history with an objective and occasionally empathetic tone.
Sample of Third-Person Frame Narration:
Some few years ago, a young woman stopped at the village of Bourton, near Bristol, and begged the refreshment of a little milk, There [sic] was something so attractive in her whole appearance, as to engage the attention of all around her. (7)
This third-person frame narration also introduces two other embedded narratives. The first embedded narrative is an oral account by a man from Bristol who spoke with Louisa directly. The chapbook’s narrator explains that the “respectful gentleman in Bristol … has favoured us with some authentic memoirs” and then includes this oral account for several pages (15). The narrative demarcates the Bristol man’s oral narrative with quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph.
Sample of Bristol Man’s Oral Narrative about Louisa:
“I should have conceived her,” says the writer, “to be about five-and-twenty; and notwithstanding the injuries which her situation and mode of life must inevitably have occasioned in her looks, she had still a very pleasing countenance. Interesting it certainly was in a high degree; but it is not easy to say how much this impression was to be attributed to the previous knowledge of her story. She had fine, expressive, black eyes and eye-brows; her complexion was wan, but not fickly; her under jaw projected a little, and I fancied I could distinguish something of the Austrian lip; but it was not decidedly marked. Her nose had nothing particular; her hair was very dark, if not black, and in length about a year and a half’s growth, not being thick, but coming down on her forehead; her arm and hand were delicate, with small long fingers.” (9)
The Bristol man’s oral narrative ends without additional commentary from the chapbook’s frame narration. Then there is a line indicating a break in the narrative, and then an italicized description of how a French narrative was found that suggests Louisa is La Fruëlen, and that the chapbook will now include the translation of this narrative. This translated narrative is presented in the third person and focuses on La Fruëlen’s tale for the next twenty-two pages.
Sample of Translated French Narrative of La Fruëlen’s Tale:
When the priest came to take her from her house in Bohemia, he told her, that he was going to conduct her to a convent in France. Ignorant as she was, the little which Catharine and her mama had told her of a religious life, taught her to consider a convent as an horrible prison, from which there was no escape: and this idea had so disturbed her mind, that from the moment of her quitting her habitation in Bohemia, she had formed the project of flying, as soon as possible, from such captivity. (28)
By addressing the story with a frame narrative that includes two separately sourced tales (one an oral memoir, and one a translation from a French text), the story of Louisa becomes a type of reality or history that the reader is discovering. The frame narrative works well to connect the woman who claims to be La Fruëlen to the story of the late Emperor, as well as connecting that woman to Louisa, which ultimately connects their stories in a complete manner, defining the tragic, affecting history of Louisa.
Summary
The first page of this chapbook.
The Affecting History of Louisa is introduced as a recent tale of woe, as the narrative begins, “Some few years ago” (7). The reader is introduced to a woman of the past, in the village of Bourton, England, who is begging for milk. She is described as being young, attractive, and elegant despite her begging state. While she is beautiful, it is evident that over the years, she has experienced hardship, sickness, exposure to the natural elements, and misery. Due to the fact that no one is aware of the nature of her origin, they call her Louisa. She is infamous for her obsessive connection to sleeping in an old haystack rather than a home. As a woman who has experienced multiple episodes of insanity, there have been multiple times when Louisa has been relocated to different hospitals and villages. Despite being relocated, she always manages to find her way back to the haystack. Louisa did not put her worth in items, but spent her days interacting with the village children and going about on her own.
After a while in the village, she is finally relocated to the village of Bitton in Gloucestershire, England, to be supported by Miss Hannah Moore and her sisters. It seemed evident that Louisa is a foreigner, so Miss Moore attempts to find out which country she is from. Miss Hannah Moore arranges for a Bristol man to visit and speak with Louisa in different languages. First, when the man speaks French, Louisa seems confused—but when he speaks German, she becomes over-emotional. When she can finally gain her composure, she denies knowing the language. The chapbook’s third-person narrator explains that this Bristol man “favoured us with some authentic memoirs” and goes on to include several pages of the Bristol man’s account of Louisa (9). The Bristol man describes Louisa as having fine, expressive black eyes, a pale complexion, a slight jut of the jaw, dark hair, delicate features, and lips that were perhaps Austrian. The Bristol man speaks to Louisa in the way a man speaks to a child. She is not dumb, but slow. He wants to know more of Louisa’s origin. While she is very guarded, he discovers that she responds well to kindness, and he learns that she is fixated on two people called mama and papa, that she understands French, that she is amused at his German, and that she has a large mark or wound on the lower part of her head behind the ear.
This page shows the introduction to the narrative translated from French.
In the next section, the chapbook begins with italicized narration explaining that a “Narrative made its appearance on the Continent” showing “so many striking coincidences” that suggest that Louisa is actually La Fruëlen, the natural daughter of Francis I, the late Emperor of Germany (15). The narrative goes on to include the entirety of the supposed translation of this originally French narrative, which begins in 1768. The narrative first introduces the Count M. de Cobenzel, the imperial minister at Brussels. He receives a letter stating that he should not be surprised if his advice and friendship are sought after. The letter is written in French, and signed La Fruëlen from Bourdeaux. He receives other letters encouraging him to support La Fruëlen, from people such as Le Comte J. de Weissendorff from Prague and Le Comte Dietrichstein from Vienna. Cobenzel begins to write with La Fruëlen, offering his support. At the beginning of 1769, the Court of Vienna informs Versailles that La Fruëlen should be arrested and taken to Brussels to be examined by Cobenzel and the First President, M. de Neny, for being an imposter. The Court of Vienna had discovered Fruëlen’s existence because the King of Spain had received a letter encouraging him to defend her, which he then shared with the Emperor, who shared it with the Empress, who called for her arrest.
As La Fruëlen arrives in Brussels, she is met with an unsigned letter encouraging her that there is an attempt to save her so she should not despair. Cobenzel and M. de Neny question her and her origin. They describe the woman who goes by La Fruëlen as being tall, elegantly formed, with simple and majestic brown hair, fair skin, and fine dark eyes. She also speaks French with a German accent. The two men dive into the story of her childhood. She explains how she is uncertain of her birthplace, but knows she was educated in Bohemia, and grew up in a sequestered house in the country under the care of mama, Catherine, and the priest – who opposed her learning to read and write for unstated religious reasons. She describes how a stranger in huntsmen clothes would visit periodically, and while he was a stranger to her, he seemed to know her. On one visit, she noticed a red mark on his neck, and when she questioned him about it, he explained that it was the distinction of an officer, and implied that she is the daughter of one. After their conversation, the man had to depart again, but promised to return soon. This promise was broken thereafter because he had fallen ill and could not travel. The novel goes on to explain how this is historically accurate to the life of the late Emperor. On his final visit, he leaves her with a photo of himself, the Empress, and her mother. On his departure, he makes her promise to never marry and that she will be and taken care of and happy.
After this story, the woman called Louisa describes her departure from Bohemia. First, because she is scared to share her story in front of everyone, she conjures a grand lie that seems too good to be true. Cobenzel catches her in her lie, and she is forced to tell the truth in hopes of regaining his trust. The truth behind her departure from Bohemia is that her priest had planned for her to move to a convent, but she decided to run away instead out of fear of the stories she had heard about convents. She hid in the barn of a generous farmer who provided her with the necessities she required. She still needed to gain distance from Hamburgh, though, so she journeyed to Sweden. On this journey, she injured her head with a nasty cut and required a surgeon to heal it. She then joined a compassionate Dutch family who was journeying to Sweden as well. Once she reached Stockholm, she left the travelers and stayed in the house of a German woman. She became great friends with this woman, but one day, she overheard from her hairdresser that the imperial minister of Stockholm was wondering about an escaped girl. Her fear of poverty overcame her fear of the Convent, so she turned herself in to M. de Belgioioso. He took good care of her. He first gave her housing and money, and then he invited her into his own house for safety. Within those walls, she saw a portrait of the late Emperor Francis, and fainted. They struggled to wake her and she had a bad fever, which was almost fatal.
The final page to this “real tale of woe.”
La Fruëlen’s story becomes tragic as she explains how her supply of financial aid was cut off suddenly, and she accumulated a great amount of debt. In order to gain support, she herself wrote the letters to the people addressed at the beginning of this explanation, including Cobenzel and the King of Spain. She claimed, however, that not all the letters were forged by her, and that several had truly been sent.
Ultimately, M. de Neny is in denial that she is in fact the daughter of the Emperor. He believes that she is truly just a merchant’s runaway daughter. M. de Neny declares that she should return to her city and face her debtors as a punishment for her lies and sins. Cobenzel disagrees, however, he is near death. The day before Cobenzel dies, he receives an anonymous letter saying not to dismiss La Fruëlen, however, the note is burned and dies with him. Four days after Cobenzel’s death, La Fruëlen is released from prison, given a little bit of money for travel, and abandoned to her wretched destiny.
At this point, the translation of the French narrative ends and the original chapbook narration resumes. This narration explains that “poor Louisa is no more” with her death on December 19, 1801 (37). The final resolution to this tale is announced in the simple fact that Louisa was discovered under the haystack in the year 1776.
Bibliography
The Affecting History of Louisa, the Wandering Maniac. London, A. Neil, 1804.
Boeden, James. The Maid of Bristol: A Play in Three Acts. New York, Printed and Published by D. Longworth, 1803.
Glasse, G. H. A Narrative of Facts: Supposed to Throw Light on the History of the Bristol-Stranger; Known by the Name of the Maid of the Hay-stack. Translated From the French. Printed for Mr. H. Gardner, Mr. Bull, Mr. Lloyd, Messrs. Evans and Hazell, and Mr. Harward.
In this 1837 three-volume novel, set in multiple countries across Europe, Shelley grapples with the issues of one man’s guilt and his attempt to resolve it by adopting a young orphan girl.
Material
History
The title page of Falkner, with Rebow’s signature in the upper right corner
Falkner is a lesser-known novel by the famed Mary Shelley. The version held in the Sadleir-Black Collection is the first edition of the text, which was published in 1837 and presents the novel in three volumes, which was a common means of publication at the time. While the spine lists the title as solely the word Falkner, the title page of the novel calls it Falkner: A Novel. We know that this was written by Mary Shelley; however, her full name is not stated in any of the three volumes. The title page in each volume simply says, “By the author of ‘Frankenstein;’ ‘The Last Man,’ &c.”. This is followed by a quote from “Rosalind and Helen” by Percy Shelley (1819). It reads,
“there stood
In record of a sweet sad story,
An altar, and a temple bright,
Circled by steps, and o’er the gate
Was sculptured, ‘To Fidelity!’”
Each volume in this set measures
approximately 12 centimeters by 19.4 centimeters and is approximately 2.3
centimeters deep. The volumes are half-bound with leather; this means that the
spine and corners are bound in leather, but the rest of the book is not. The
leather on the spine is decorated with gold gilding. The cover is covered with
blue marbled paper that is noticeably faded around the center on each volume.
The edges of the pages within the volumes are also marbled blue.
A bookplate from the personal library of John G. Rebow
The pages within these volumes are of
medium thickness; they are not thick, but they are also not extremely thin.
Volume I consists of 322 pages, volume II is 312 pages, and volume III is 319
pages, which add up to a total of 953 pages in all. While this sounds like a lengthy
read, it feels surprisingly short. There is a lot of white space on the pages,
and the margins are wide, which makes each page a quick, short read. The font
is not too large or too small, adding to the ease with which the novel can be
read. Some pages throughout these volumes have letters or letter/number
combinations at the bottom. These are printer notes, used to help the printers
print, fold, and order the pages correctly. It should also be noted that in the
back of Volume I, there is a front and back page of advertisements from the
publisher.
These particular volumes are interesting
because they each have a personal bookplate in the front, indicating that they
once belonged to John Gurdon Rebow. His signature can be found on the title
page of each book as well. The bookplates have call numbers, “D. 2.” written on
them that most likely indicate their shelving location in Rebow’s personal
library. This can be interpreted as the book being shelved on shelf 2 of
bookcase D.
Overall, these particular copies of the
volumes of Falkner are unique in their own ways. While clearly a
matching set in the color of their marbling, the volumes are worn to varying
degrees. The pages are slightly yellowed from time. The volumes clearly show
their age, particularly the first volume due to some tearing where the spine
was originally bound, but they seem to be in relatively nice condition for
books that are centuries old.
Textual
History
Falkner is the final novel written
by Mary Shelley before her death. Shelley was born in August 1797 and died in
February 1851. Her two most well-known works of her career are Frankenstein
and The Last Man, both of which are mentioned on the title page of Falkner.
A page of advertisements from Saunders and Otley, printed in the back of Falkner volume 1
Falkner was first published in 1837
by Saunders and Otley in London. This edition was published in three volumes
and was printed by Stevens and Pardon, Printers. In the same year, Falkner was
published in one volume by Harper & Brothers in New York. (The Sadleir-Black
Collection also houses a copy of this one-volume edition.) In addition to these
versions, Falkner is also contained in various collections of Mary
Shelley’s works, including The Novels and Collected Works of Mary Shelley
(1996), edited by Pamela Clemit. In 2017, Falkner was translated into an
Italian version, titled Il Segreti di Falkner, or Falkner’s Secret.
There are also online editions of this novel. The 1837 edition published by
Harper & Brothers has been archived online on the HathiTrust website.
Many advertisements and reviews of
Shelley’s Falkner can be found in periodicals published near the time of
its first publication. There is a brief advertisement combined with a brief
review that can be found in The Standard, in an issue from March 1837.
There is a shorter advertisement in an April 1837 issue of John Bull.
Overall, the reviews of Falkner seem to be positive. It is ambiguous
whether overall positivity is due to the actual success of Falkner or
Shelley’s fame from her prior works. The Metropolitan Magazine, in a
March 1837 issue, states, “The only fault that we can find with [Falkner]
… is, that its tone is too universally sombre” (67). The Literary Gazette
in London references “the talent of the writer” in its review of the novel
(66). A combination advertisement and review in The Athenæum gives a
short, concise summary of the plot of the novel without giving away the ending.
At the end of the summary, it explains, “we have thus imperfectly shadowed out
the mystery of the novel, but we must leave the unraveling of it to Mrs.
Shelley,—satisfied, that if you put yourself under her guidance, you will own
that your labour has not been in vain” (75). Many of the reviews show that the
novel was often well-received in its time, yet there are some reviews that are
not so kind to Shelley’s work. The Examiner contains a much less
favorable review of Falkner in February of 1837: “The story of Falkner,
faulty as it is, makes a small part of the book, which is swollen out with
tedious reflections, and prosing explanations of motives and feelings. It will
practice the reader in the art of skipping” (101).
Falkner has been discussed and
written about by scholars in regard to varying subjects. Scholars have
discussed Falkner both on its own and in the context of Shelley’s works,
beginning in the late twentieth century and leading into the twenty-first
century.
Narrative
Point of View
The story of Falkner is
predominantly recounted by an unnamed third-person narrator. The narration is
third-person omniscient as the narrator gives insight into the characters’ thoughts
and feelings. The narrator also withholds some information. Sentences largely
vary in length; some are short and brief, while others are lengthy and feel
quite winded. There are moments throughout the novel when the narrator also
invokes a first person plural perspective. In these instances, the narrator
switches to using a “we” pronoun, rather than the third-person perspective that
is used in the majority of the novel.
Sample Passage:
We are all apt to think that when we discard a motive we cure a fault, and foster the same error from a new cause with a safe conscience. Thus, even now, aching and sore from the tortures of remorse for past faults, Falkner indulged in the same propensity, which, apparently innocent in its commencement, had led to fatal results. He meditated doing rather what he wished, than what was strictly just. He did not look forward to the evils his own course involved, while he saw in disproportionate magnitude those to be brought about if he gave up his favourite project. What ills might arise to the orphan from his interweaving her fate with his — he, a criminal, in act, if not in intention — who might be called upon hereafter to answer for his deeds, and who at least must fly and hide himself — of this he thought not; while he determined, that, fostered and guarded by him, Elizabeth must be happy — and, under the tutelage of her relations, she would become the victim of hardhearted neglect. These ideas floated somewhat indistinctly in his mind — and it was half unconsciously that he was building them a fabric for the future, as deceitful as it was alluring. (Volume I, 78–79)
In this passage, the narrator begins
using the first person “we.” This allows a generalization—“We are all apt to
think”—that relates Falkner to people as a whole. As the narration moves from
the first person plural to third person, the opening generalization also paves
the way for the narrator’s access into Falkner’s mind. The narrator goes into
Falkner’s head and follows his train of thought. This passage is quite long,
but it is composed of a mere six sentences. The statement in the middle of the
passage, “What ills might arise … the victim of hardhearted neglect,” is one to
note because it is the longest sentence given. The third-person point of view
allows this sentence to feel akin to stream of consciousness. The dashes
between the different parts of the sentence break it up and make it possible to
see how each of Falkner’s thoughts connect to one another as he debates what to
do with his new charge. The thoughts that do not cross his mind can also be
learned through the narrator, in the sentence that notes, “of this he thought
not.”
Summary
The marbled cover of Falkner
Falkner
follows the story of a young girl named Elizabeth and begins in the town of
Treby. Struck with consumption, her father passes away, and her mother dies a
few short months later. Just before her death, Elizabeth’s mother begins
writing a letter to a woman named Alithea entreating her to take in her
daughter and explaining that she does not want Elizabeth to be taken in by her
late husband’s family. She dies before she can finish the letter, so it is
never sent. The landlord, Mrs. Baker, reads the letter, and takes in Elizabeth,
hoping that the girl’s family will one day come looking for her and will reward
Mrs. Baker for her kindness. While staying with Mrs. Baker, Elizabeth often
goes to her mother’s grave to play, study, and pray, all while feeling close to
her mother.
One day, a stranger by the name of John Falkner shows up in
Treby and spends a lot of time out of town by himself. He feels guilty because
he killed someone, so he goes to the graveyard to kill himself. He makes the
mistake of sitting on Elizabeth’s mother’s grave to kill himself, and the young
girl stops him. He worries for a young girl out by herself and opts to walk her
home. When he meets Mrs. Baker, she tells him Elizabeth’s story and shows him
the letter. He is struck by the realization that the woman he killed is the
same woman that Elizabeth’s mother was writing to. Upon realizing this, he
feels guilty and decides to take Elizabeth with him on his travels, so they
leave together for London. Elizabeth begins calling Falkner “papa.” Falkner
feels that Elizabeth will be happier with him than with her distant relations,
so he chooses to keep her with him. They meet a friend of Falkner’s who tells
them that Mr. Neville’s wife has run off with a mysterious lover, and that Mr.
Neville is going after them.
Elizabeth and Falkner balance each other’s personalities
well: he makes her feel safe, and she is always able to calm his temper. They
have been traveling together for years when Falkner decides to hire Miss
Jervis, who serves as a governess for Elizabeth. While in Baden, Germany, Elizabeth
meets a sad young man, Mr. Neville; his mother was the same Mrs. Neville that
ran away from her husband and eloped. Realizing that this boy is the son of
Alithea weakens Falkner. He feels guilty for what has become of the boy’s life.
He feels that he does not deserve to live, but he no longer wants to kill
himself; he decides to join the war in Greece with the goal of dying in battle
and wants Elizabeth to return to her family. Elizabeth refuses to leave him, so
she stays nearby, and they part from Miss Jervis. Elizabeth desires to save
Falkner, but she misses the Neville boy.
While a soldier in Greece, Falkner does not take care of
himself because he is still trying to die. He falls ill and is injured in
battle by a musketball. The surgeon recommends that he be taken to a place with
less dingy air, so they take him to a coastal town. Elizabeth stays by his side
until he begins to get better. Falkner decides that since she has saved his
life twice, he no longer wishes to die but wants to live for Elizabeth and her
happiness. He tells her that he has written of his crime so that she can learn
of it in his words after his death.
The pair travels to Italy and meets a group of English
people, including Lady Cecil, for whom Miss Jervis is the governess. Falkner
and Elizabeth then travel to a different part of Italy where they happen across
the young Mr. Neville, which causes Falkner more stress. When they arrive in
London, Elizabeth gets sick from the stress of worrying about Falkner. Hearing
of the girl’s illness, Lacy Cecil comes to invite her and Falkner to stay with
her for two months. Elizabeth goes, but Falkner declines; he promises to join
them later. Lady Cecil tells Elizabeth about her brother, Gerard, because she
believes they would get along quite well. Elizabeth returns to health while she
is staying with Lady Cecil and soon learns that Gerard is none other than her
beloved Mr. Neville. He begins to share the supposedly scandalous story of his
mother’s disappearance, but relinquishes that duty to Lady Cecil.
Lady Cecil tells Elizabeth the story of the young and
beautiful Alithea Neville. She was young when she married Boyvill—formerly Mr.
Neville—, but she did her wifely duties well. The two had a son and daughter
together; Alithea doted upon the boy, while her husband loved the little girl.
Sir Boyvill left for two months for business, and when he returned, his wife
and son were out of the house. A storm came that night, and the pair had not
returned. Upon searching, they found young Gerard ill in the road, and he said
that mamma had been taken off in a carriage with a man named Rupert. It was
determined that Alithea had been kidnapped or may be dead. Sir Boyvill,
however, believed his wife to have left willingly with the man; Gerard
disagreed. He believed that she was either dead or in prison. Sir Boyvill and
Alithea’s daughter died less than a year after her mother’s disappearance.
Boyvill felt that his wife’s affair had hurt his honor, so he filed for divorce
from the missing woman. This meant that Gerard had to testify against his
mother; he did but did not want to. The boy ran away to search for his mother,
but his father found out and brought him home. Gerard continued to believe his
mother was innocent but dead, so he was determined to find her grave. During
this time, Sir Boyvill met and married Lady Cecil’s mother.
Now, Gerard is still searching for the truth behind his
mother’s disappearance. He leaves Lady Cecil’s home when a man from America
claims to have knowledge of his mother. Lady Cecil believes his goal is futile,
but Elizabeth supports him in his search. When he comes back from his meeting
with Hoskins, the American, he announces that his mother is dead. Hoskins told
him about an Englishman named Osborne, who helped a man bury his lover twelve
years ago after she drowned in a river, so he wants to go to American to meet
Osborne. Elizabeth writes to Falkner about the situation, and he asks her to
come home at once.
This page shows how a chapter is denoted and begins
Falkner learns that Lady Cecil desires Gerard and Elizabeth
to marry. He believes this to be a good union, but he wants to distance himself
from Elizabeth and seek out her biological family. He finds them, but he learns
that her father brought dishonor to the family by leaving the church and
marrying a poor woman, so her grandfather does not want her. When Elizabeth
returns home to Falkner, he worries about what she will think of him
considering her new love for Gerard and wonders how much she has changed, but
she approaches him with the same love and admiration as before. Gerard comes to
say goodbye before he leaves for America, but Falkner tells him not to go
because the man he is looking for is standing in front of him. Falkner admits
that his name is Rupert Falkner and that he killed the boy’s mother. He gives
his written account of the event to Elizabeth and tells her to read it and
share it with Gerard.
Falkner’s story tells of his abusive father and his mother’s
death when he was a young boy. His father developed a drinking problem and
died, so he was taken in by his uncle. His parents called him Rupert, but his
uncle called him John, so he mostly went by the latter. He began to visit a
woman named Mrs. Rivers and her daughter, Alithea. Mrs. Rivers was distantly
related to his mother, and the two women grew up together, but they lost touch
when they got married. He spent a lot of time with Mrs. Rivers and her
daughter, and the former was always impressing upon him the need to be a good
person. In spite of this, Falkner had a temper at school and ended up getting
in a fight. He was sent off to the East Indian military college, where he
stayed for two years. Alithea wrote to him to let him know that her mother was
dying, so he ran away from school to visit and was present when Mrs. Rivers
passed. He desired to marry Alithea but was rejected by her father, so he
stayed in India as a soldier for ten years. He received word that his uncle and
cousin had both passed away, which meant their inheritance became his. When he
returned to England, he learned that Alithea’s father had died, but she married
in the time he was away. He met her husband, Mr. Neville—now Sir Boyvill—and
hated him.
A man by the name of Osborne knew of Falkner’s newly
acquired wealth and asked him to assist with his passage to America. Falkner
agreed and decided to go to America with him. Before they left, he met with
Alithea and learned that she did not love her husband, so he asked her to come
to America with them. She said no because she was married and had two children.
Falkner thought he could convince her to run away with him, and he asked
Osborne to drive the carriage and gave him the instruction not to stop driving
until they reached their destination. He went to her house, and walked with her
and her young son toward his carriage. Upon talking with Alithea, he changed
his mind and decided Alithea should stay with her family. Once they reached the
carriage, however, he swept her into it, and Osborne drove them away. She
started having convulsions and looked unwell, but Osborne followed his
instruction and would not stop. They reached the hut Falkner planned to stop
at, and Alithea appeared to recover. He laid her on a couch and stepped outside
with Osborne to ready the carriage to return her home with her family. He found
Alithea’s body shortly after, drowned in the river. He surmised she had woken
up and, in a moment of terror, attempted to cross the stream and return home.
The men buried her body, Osborne went off to America, and Falkner ended up in
Treby, where he met Elizabeth so long ago.
Elizabeth finishes reading this account and sends it and a
letter to Gerard so he can finally learn the truth of his mother’s
disappearance. She begs him to be kind to her father, for although he did bad
things, he did not kill his mother. Falkner, certain that Gerard will kill him
for his crimes, sends proof of Elizabeth’s birth to her family and tells her
that they will take her in soon.
Gerard reads Elizabeth’s letter, but he gives Falkner’s
written account to his father to read first. Believing that Falkner killed his
mother, Gerard contemplates killing the man, but worries about the pain it
would cause Elizabeth. Upon reading the letter and finding his wife innocent,
Sir Boyvill has Gerard promise that he will avenge her death. Boyvill then
leaves home, and Gerard follows soon after to find him. When he finds his
father in their old home of Dromore, he is with a group of men from town, and
they are uncovering Alithea’s remains. Sir Boyvill plans to have his wife’s
remains formally interred and wants a trial for Falkner.
This page of text shows an example of printer notes, located at the bottom of the page
Elizabeth is out of the house when men come to escort
Falkner to prison, so she does not know what has happened. Lady Cecil arrives
at their home with another woman, who turns out to be Elizabeth’s aunt. The
ladies entreat Elizabeth to go home with them, but she insists on visiting her
father because she has just learned of his imprisonment. Her aunt offers her a
place in her home as a member of the family, but Elizabeth rejects the offer,
stating that she is not a part of their family. She is and will forever be
Elizabeth Falkner. Gerard returns and pleads with Elizabeth to go with her
family and not to go see Falkner. He admits his love to her, but even this is
not enough.
Falkner misses the girl while he is in prison, but he cannot
bring himself to write to her. He is surprised when Elizabeth shows up at the
prison, but her arrival makes him feel suddenly free. Elizabeth spends most of
her time with him in the prison; when they are not together, neither of them
feel happy or well. The grand jury decides that Falkner will go to trial for
his crimes, but the trial is postponed until they can get Osborne back to
England. Someone goes to get Osborne, but he has not yet arrived, and people
are getting impatient. During this time, Elizabeth, who has not heard much from
Gerard, catches him following and watching her. Falkner learns that Osborne is
refusing to come to his trial.
On learning this, Elizabeth wants to travel to America to
convince Osborne to come. Gerard decides to go in her place, creating more
tension with his father. Gerard finds Hoskins in an attempt to learn of
Osborne’s whereabouts and learns that he is already in England under a false
name. The appearance of Gerard scares Osborne away, and Gerard assumes the man
has boarded a ship to return to America. He plans to follow the man. Osborne
visits Falkner and Elizabeth in the prison under his false name. He does not
plan to testify in the trial and help Falkner, but Elizabeth changes his mind,
and he agrees to come forward. Elizabeth writes a letter to Gerard about the
situation, so he does not leave for America.
Gerard writes another letter to Elizabeth to let her know
that his father is dying. This means the trial may be delayed again. Sir
Boyvill soon dies. Gerard tells them that before he died, his father declared
that Falkner is actually innocent. Elizabeth cannot enter the trial with him,
so they are forced to separate for a while. The trial begins, and Gerard
declares in his testimony that Falkner is innocent. Elizabeth spends her time
at home crying and waiting for the results of the trial until her aunt comes to
visit and give her support.
Finally, Falkner is found to be innocent and is released.
Elizabeth’s aunt offers her home as a place for Falkner and Elizabeth to stay,
and they graciously accept. During this time, Elizabeth and Gerard miss each
other dearly, but neither knows how to approach the situation, due to their
circumstances and Elizabeth’s loyalty to Falkner. Gerard writes to the pair of
them, asking if Elizabeth can be his and stating that he will take her and
Falkner as a pair of sorts. Falkner writes back to say that if Gerard will come
and take his daughter, he will remove himself from their lives. Gerard does not
wish to tear Elizabeth from this man whom she loves, so he marries her and
makes the best amends he can with Falkner. They all stay together for the rest
of their time. Gerard and Elizabeth have a happy life and children of their
own, but Falkner never forgives himself for his faults.
Bibliography
“Falkner: A Novel.” The
Athenaeum, 484 (1837): 74–75.
“Falkner.” Examiner, 1515 (1837):
101.
“Falkner.” The Literary Gazette: A weekly journal of literature, science, and the fine arts. 1046 (1837): 66–68.
“Falkner.” The Metropolitan magazine,
1833–1840 18.71 (1837): 65–67.
John Bull
(London, England), Issue 853 (Monday, April 17, 1837): pg. 191. New
Readerships.
Shelley, Mary. Falkner: A Novel.
London, Saunders and Otley, 1837.
Shelley, Mary. Falkner: A Novel.
New York, Harper & Brothers, 1837. Print.
This 1800 chapbook by John Mitchell begins with a mysterious murder within Rovido castle and explores revenge, true love, and crime as the ghost of the slain woman visits characters in the story.
Material
History
The Spectre
Mother: Or the Haunted Tower is
a short novel of 30 pages. It measures 18 centimeters in length and 10.7 centimeters
in width. There is no cover attached to the book. The pamphlet was likely torn
out of a larger collection of short Gothic chapbooks that were sold
individually to maximize profits for the bookseller. On the spine are remnants
of its leather binding and the adhesion used to keep the binding attached. The
book was sewn together and threads are still visible sticking out between its
pages.
The title page with accompanying illustration and a visible marking
The title page is
instantly visible due to the lack of cover and is the reader’s first impression
of the chapbook. It has a colored ink sketch of a scene within the book that
covers about a third of the page. Below the ink drawing is a quote from a scene
on page 12. The quote reads, “I cannot step by that child, said Moresco.” The
colors yellow, green, red, and blue dominate the watercolor drawing, causing
the illustration to stand out distinctly on the weathered, slightly browned
title page. Above the ink drawing at the top of the page is the title of the
book. It is printed in several different fonts with swooping lines surrounding
the title, creating a pleasant and artistic look. Below the title is printed,
“By the author of Midnight Horrors, Female Pilgrim.” The bottom of the title
page contains the publisher information. The book was published in London and
was printed and sold by Dean & Munday at 35 Threadneedle Street. At the top
left corner of the title page is a pencil-written note that says “Ghosts.” The
note was likely written by a bookseller to categorize the novel and label it
for readers interested in ghost stories.
There are no
decorations or illustrations within the text of the book. The paper is thin and
delicate. The pages are soft like cotton and the fibers of the paper are
clearly visible. Each page is a yellow-brown color that gives the novel an aged
look.
The page numbers are
at the top corner of each page and there are letters at the bottom of several
pages throughout the book. These letters, “B, B3, C, C3,” were printed to
assist the person responsible for binding the book. The pages were all printed
out on large sheets of paper that had to be folded and oriented in a certain
way to create the finished product. This was common practice at the time, and
the method was used until around 1900.
The book
has an overall elegant and classic look. Its average size ensures that the font
and type in the novel are not too small. There is not a lot of empty, white
space within the text and the margins are of average size so the pages do not
feel cluttered. The sentence structure used by the author, John Mitchell, is
varied and the paragraph sizes are fairly consistent throughout the book.
Textual
History
There is limited
information to be found about The Spectre Mother: Or the Haunted Tower and
its author, John Mitchell. It left little to no impression on British journals,
though another more popular story by Mitchell—The Female Pilgrim—was
reviewed several times. The Spectre Mother was originally published by
Dean & Munday in London in 1800. Subsequent editions were published in 1820
and 1823. The 1820 edition was also printed by Dean & Munday and the 1823
edition by an American publisher, W. Borradaile, based in New York. In addition
to Gothic novels, Dean & Munday also published historical and children’s
books, like The History of Germany, and the German Empire, and The
Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast.
The printers, Dean and Munday, are listed at the bottom of the chapbook’s final page
There seem to be a
few versions of the 1800 edition of The Spectre Mother available today.
Some contain two watercolor ink illustrations, while others contain only one on
the title page. A digital copy of this edition can be found on the Cleveland
Public Library Digital Gallery. The 1820 edition of the story printed by Dean &
Munday is identical to the first edition and changes no aspects of the original
story, though it does include an additional watercolor and ink frontispiece
opposite the title page. A digital copy of this edition can be found on Google
Books. The later edition of The Spectre Mother was published in May of
1823 by W. Borradaile in New York City, which proves that there was enough
interest in the story for it to be marketable in the United States. The title
page of this edition contains the publisher information as well as the fact
that it was sold “wholesale and retail, at his book-store, 130 Fulton-Street.”
This version was printed as a pamphlet and threaded together with a red paper
cover displaying prices for various chapbooks. The copy was advertised to cost
12.5 cents. It contains the exact story of the first edition, but has a
different watercolor illustration, title page, and layout within the pamphlet.
Its pages are slightly larger and the paragraphs are formatted differently.
Two works of John
Mitchell’s are featured within The
Spectre Bridegroom and Other Horrors edited by Robert Reginald and Douglas Menville. This anthology of
reprinted horror and ghost stories was originally published in 1976 and
includes The Spectre Mother and Midnight Horrors: Or the Bandit’s
Daughter. They are both attributed to an anonymous author rather than John
Mitchell. Another edition of the book was published in 2006.
There is little
information available about John Mitchell, the author of The Spectre Mother.
He wrote several other stories, including The Female Pilgrim and
Midnight Horrors: Or the Bandit’s Daughter. While no reviews of The
Spectre Mother were found, The Female Pilgrim received mixed
reviews, one of which stated that the story was “an unequal imitation of the
celebrated Pilgrim’s Progress, which is, perhaps, inimitable” (Griffiths 219).
This could be similar to the case of The Spectre Mother, as many lesser
known chapbooks were imitations of works of previous authors.
The Spectre
Mother is listed in Franz Potter’s
The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800–1835: Exhuming the Trade. Potter
states that the author was “confined by the restrictions of the bluebook” and
therefore the reader is immediately immersed in the “contrived, gloomy
atmosphere, often by forcing the location, such as a castle, to reflect the
antagonist” (72). Following this analysis is a sample of the text from the
first paragraph of the story, exemplifying the mysterious and ominous tone of
the first several pages of the book. The author, however, is again stated as
unknown and there is no mention of John Mitchell within the book.
Narrative
Point of View
The narrator of The Spectre Mother is unknown and
utilizes third-person narration. The narrator unveils the emotions of each
character and shares their thoughts and concerns while also driving the plot
forward. The story is narrated with ample descriptions that highlight the
actions and eccentricities of each character. The sentences are long and the
language evokes strong images and feelings.
Sample Passage:
The dark spirit of Moresco shrank from the presence of innocence thus forcibly delineated, and wanted courage to perpetrate a deed so horrible; but at the moment, the mother moved in her sleep, and with instinctive fondness pressed the babe closer to her bosom, as though to save it from the blow that hovered over it. —The transient beam of benevolence that had broken on the guilty soul of Moresco, vanished before his apprehensions of personal safety, and his thirst of gold; and with a nervous and well-aimed blow, he pierced her virtuous heart, who had never known even a thought injurious to his welfare or his happiness. —One faint and quivering sigh alone told the departure of the pure spirit from its mortal habitation! (8)
The style of narration in The Spectre Mother provides the reader with enough insight into the characters to understand their motivations and thoughts, but not too much to give away key plot points. In the beginning of the text, the narrator explains Moresco’s conflicting feelings about murdering Julia and her child, yet the reason that he was tasked with this mission is not disclosed until later in the story. The narrator uses the emotions of the characters to add to the dark melancholy tone of the story. Angela’s feelings of solitude and gloominess are described in detail by the narrator and they set the mood for her encounter with the ghost of Julia. As Angela tries to sleep, for instance, the narrator exposes that “she mused with terror and curiosity of the incidents of the night” and that “her distressed mind wandered to a no less painful, though a far different subject of meditation” (12).
These descriptions also bring to light the distinctions amongst the characters. While Angela pines for the life she lost when she was taken by banditti, and later worries about the safety of Julia’s baby, Moresco is primarily concerned with pleasing his boss and making money. The narrator also uses long, descriptive sentences to depict how characters react to surprises and supernatural visits. This configuration draws the reader in and builds tension as the narration follows the actions of the characters. Additionally, the narrator’s language—utilizing adjectives and adverbs frequently while describing the settings—evokes a strong sense of visuality.
Summary
The Spectre
Mother: Or The Haunted Tower
begins with the clock of Rovido castle striking midnight. A man emerges from
the shadows of the dark halls and sneaks to the inhabited area of the castle.
He carries a lantern and a concealed weapon as he makes his way through the
castle, pausing frequently to quiet his guilty mind and ensure no one is awake.
He enters a secret door and ascends a flight of steps to a gloomy gallery. The
novel now exposes him to be a murderer as he removes a marble statue, presses a
hidden panel behind it, and enters the chamber of his intended victims.
The opening scene in Chapter One of The Spectre Mother
Moresco finds the
woman he plans to kill, sleeping with her baby in her arms. He watches her
sleep and experiences a moment of hesitation before stabbing her. She lets out
a final sigh and dies. He points the knife at the baby and it smiles at him.
Moresco snatches the child and is about to kill it when a blue light flashes
and he sees the pale figure of the mother standing in front of him. She points
to the corpse and bloody letters form over the body’s head. They read, “Let the
life of the innocent be spared, to plead for the guilty soul of the murderer”
(9).
Moresco drops the
dagger and sinks to the floor in terror. He holds the child and vows to protect
the infant. The spirit vanishes and he flees from the castle. He decides that
he will not inform his employer that he failed to kill the child, and instead
throws its bloody clothes into the river. He returns home and tells his wife,
Angela, to take the child and raise it as her own. He angrily refuses to tell
her who the mother is and she relents to abate his temper. Moresco makes her
swear to keep it a secret. She recounts to him that earlier that night, the
flames of the candles were extinguished and she heard a soft and dismal sigh in
her ear. Moresco lashes out over this news and declines to address it. They go
off to bed.
It is revealed that
Angela Modeni was orphaned and destitute at an early age. The Marchioness di
Montmorenci took her in and provided her with an education. When she was twenty
years old, the Marquis di Montmorenci returned home from traveling abroad. They
both had feelings for one another and he expressed his openly to Angela. She
felt guilty about depriving the marchioness of a daughter in law of equal birth
for her son, so she resisted his affections. When the marchioness found out
about her son’s interest in her, she had Angela removed and induced her to
secretly move to a distant convent. En route to the convent, Angela and her
attendants were surrounded by banditti. Two of them, Ludovico and Moresco, were
drawn to Angela immediately.
Moresco was the
youngest son of a Neapolitan nobleman and was to inherit an estate, but his
extravagant lifestyle caused him to lose everything. He desperately tried to
win back his inheritance, but did so dishonorably. This resulted in him being
forced to leave Naples. He met Ludovico’s men and joined their group and rose
in their ranks to second-in-command.
Upon meeting Angela,
Moresco wanted her for himself. He convinced her to rely on him to help her
escape the banditti, and she reluctantly agreed. In order to appear more
deserving of her favor, he proposed to her. Angela accepted and they got
married and moved to a dilapidated tower in a deserted area in Italy. Soon
after, Moresco started working for a man named Count Ruvello. The Count was
third in line to inherit a family member’s fortune, after the man’s wife and
child. Once the man tragically died in battle, the Count discovered his
proximity to the man’s fortune. Greedily, he could not resist the temptation of
wealth, and consequently hired Moresco to murder Julia and her child.
The day after the
murder, Moresco wakes up, dresses as a friar, and leaves to meet with Count
Ruvello. The Count begins to question him about the absence of the child’s
body. Moresco becomes frantic as he believes he hears Julia’s sigh in the room,
but the Count hears nothing. Moresco makes an excuse for the child’s missing
body and explains that he dropped it in the river. The Count offers him a
reward and asks Moresco to stay for a few days.
Angela wakes up soon
after Moresco’s departure. Though she hates when he is around, she is lonely in
the gloomy ruin when he is not there. She takes comfort in the baby and stays
close to it. Late that night, a flash of lightning wakes her up. She goes to
where the baby is sleeping and is greeted by a bleeding form surrounded by pale
blue vapor. Angela is terrified and watches as it glides towards the bed and
bends over the sleeping baby. It turns to Angela, raises one hand towards
heaven and points the other toward the wound. It motions for Angela to follow,
which she does not comply with. Then, a surprising enthusiasm takes over Angela
and she grows courageous. She believes that she is being selected for something
important. Angela picks up the sleeping baby and follows the spirit.
This page describes the first visit from the ghost of Julia
The ghost glides in
silence to the end of the apartment, a concealed door flies open, and they make
their way through a dark passage. The spirit pauses, turns to Angela, sighs,
and sinks into the ground. Where it disappears, there is now a chasm. Angela
experiences an irresistible force compelling her to descend the ruined steps
down into the abyss. After doing so, a loud rumbling sound above her head
causes her to look up and she sees the chasm close above her. Shadowy hands
beckon her forward and she musters the courage to continue through the
underground chambers. The ghost that brought her down is now standing by an
altar of black marble stained with blood and adorned with human bones. It
beckons her forward and motions to a crack in the marble containing a bloody
dagger. The ghost points one hand to her bosom and the other she points to the
weapon and traces the name of Moresco carved on the hilt. The spirit tells her
to save the innocent from the guilty, explains that the Count hired Moresco to
commit the murder, and says that she must restore to the child the inheritance
that he has taken away from her. The ghost tells Angela not to fear acting with
firmness as her virtue will produce her happiness.
Angela wakes up on a small bank near her house, ready to obey the spirit’s request. On Angela’s return home, it begins to rain and she decides to approach a building to ask for shelter for the night. No one answers her call. Angela, tired and desperate, ascends a staircase nearby and takes cover in a gallery and soon falls asleep. The baby crawls away from her and cries until a man finds it.
Angela wakes up and panics when she realizes the child is missing. She searches the area until she finds the baby resting on a couch in a nearby room. The man reenters, and she is shocked to discover that it is Di Montmorenci. They have a joyful reunion until he sees her wedding ring and is reminded of her unavailability. He throws himself on the floor and she begins to calm him, explaining the situation she is in. She decides to leave out Moresco’s involvement in the story but feels conflicted. She does not know how to carry out the mission that the spirit set for her without exposing the Count and endangering the life of Moresco. Angela requests to speak with a holy monk about the important matter, and move with the child to a convent temporarily. She confesses everything to Father Bernada, who urges the necessity of bringing the Count Ruvello to justice, while only revealing Moresco’s guilt if necessary.
The next morning,
Angela and the baby leave for the convent, much to Di Montmorenci’s sadness.
During their stay, Angela’s attachment to the baby grows stronger and stronger.
She then receives a letter from Father Bernado. He and a party of officials
went to Count Ruvello’s home to confront him. The Count and Moresco were seated
together upon their arrival. After inquiring about Moresco’s religious dress,
the Count instantly implicated Moresco in order to divert suspicion away from
himself. Both men were confined to guarded rooms, where Moresco committed suicide.
Count Ruvello was brought to trial, found guilty, and banished. Father Bernado
tells Angela that the child must be returned to her family home for her
existence to be universally acknowledged. Since there is no guardian for the
child, Angela can take on that role. He tells her that he recounted her actions
to the Pope, and the Pope decided to bestow two thousand crowns on her for her
misfortunes.
Di
Montmorenci visits Angela at her new home with the child and they get married
after her twelve months of widowhood are complete. Father Bernado officiates
the wedding and the couple soon sets off for Venice, where Angela is received
with respect and esteem due to her new rank.
Mitchell, John. “The
Spectre Mother, or, The Haunted Tower.” Cleveland Public Library
Digital Gallery,
https://cdm16014.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4014coll9/id/18519.
Mitchell, John. The Spectre Mother:
Or the Haunted Tower. London. Dean & Munday, 1800.
Mitchell,
John. The Spectre Mother: Or the Haunted Tower. New York City. W.
Borradaile, 1823.
Potter, Franz J. The History of Gothic Publishing: 1800-1835: Exhuming the Trade. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Reginald, Robert, and Douglas Menville, editors. The Spectre Bridegroom and Other Horrors. Wildside Press, 2006.
Somerset Castle; or the Father and Daughter. A Tragic Tale. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. To which is added, Ghost and no Ghost; or The Dungeon
Published with Ghost and No Ghost, this 1804 chapbook tells how a young couple’s forbidden love leads them down a path of death and despair, ending with the demise of some characters as well as the prosperity of others.
Material History
Somerset Castle is the first story within Somerset Castle; or the Father and Daughter. A Tragic Tale. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. To which is added, Ghost and no Ghost; or The Dungeon, published in 1804 by IRoe and Ann Lemoine. This full title is printed on the fourth page of the book, but a shortened version is printed two pages earlier: Somerset Castle; or the Father and Daughter. This shorter title is printed on the original exterior of a pamphlet in which these stories were published. Now with a new binding, the old cover page becomes the second page. Also on the title page and underneath the publisher information, the price of the novel is revealed to be a sixpence, indicating it was made very cheaply. No author is mentioned for Somerset Castle or Ghost and no Ghost on any page within the book.
The book’s new binding is a tan colored paper over boards, which gives it a more sturdy feeling. On the spine, the words Somerset Castle / 1804 appear in gold lettering over a maroon strip of fabric. Because the original pamphlet that these stories were published in was quite thin (only 28 pages), the book binder elected to place additional blank pages around the original ones to make the book thicker and therefore easier to bind. One new page is placed before the original cover; the final page with text is followed by eight pages of added paper; then, the original back cover appears, followed by one more newly added page. In total, the new binding of this book includes 38 pages front and back. The original pamphlet pages are made of a darker colored, more visibly worn paper, and the newer pages are made of white cotton that is thicker than the originals, producing a new book that is double the size of the original. These newer pages also have no writing or markings of any sort on them, revealing that they were not used for note taking but result from a choice made by the book binder.
This page shows the difference between the old cover page and the new pages which have been added.
The binding of the book measures 11.5 centimeters wide and 18 centimeters tall. When looking at one of the original pages with text, the font appears rather small with closely set margins and page numbers that are printed on the top outside corners of each page. The first story, Somerset Castle, is printed on the pages numbered 5 through 29, and the second story, Ghost and no Ghost, appears on pages 30 through 38. In addition to page numbers at the top, some pages have numberings on the bottom in the middle of the page, such as A1, A2, B1, etc. These numbers serve to aid the book binder when printing the pages. Starting out with a large grid of pages printed on one sheet, the book binder would have to fold the pages until the grid was turned into the shape of a book; these numbers were printed strategically on the original grid to ultimately progress in a logical manner when the pages were folded. This technique allowed the book binder to be certain that the pages of the final product had been folded in the correct order.
On the inside cover of the original pamphlet, the novel’s only image appears. A scene of a woman and a child is depicted; they appear to be in a cave containing objects of death, such as a coffin and a skull. Surrounded by architectural decorations continued from the picture above, the title Somerset Castle is printed with the phrase page 22 to indicate the events of this scene occur on page 22. Underneath the title, the words Alais Sc. are printed, revealing the name of the artist of the image. There are no images within the novel that reference the story of Ghost and no Ghost.
Revealing elements of the novel’s history, pages 11 and 12 in the Somerset Castle story have a stain of some liquid. In Ghost and no Ghost on pages 31 and 33, there is tearing on the bottom of the pages, and on pages 33 through 38, there is a hole that continues through the bottom corner of these pages. Two small pencil markings are also found near the back of the book. The number “402” or “702” is written on the last page of text of Ghost and no Ghost near the printing of finis. While this number may have meant something to a previous owner, the meaning is unknown now. On the back of the original pamphlet’s cover, the letters L. and E. are written in pencil, possibly noting the initials of one of this book’s previous owners. Even though this book lacks many personal written additions from previous owners, the condition of the original pages shows that the pamphlet was well used and appreciated in its past life.
Textual History
Somerset Castle and Ghost and No Ghost were published anonymously by Ann Lemoine and J. Roe in 1804. Because the authorship is unknown to this day, the two stories could have been written by the same author or different ones. Ann Lemoine was a very famous publisher of the time and worked closely with J. Roe. Lemoine began publishing in 1795 after her husband was imprisoned, and over the course of the next twenty-five years, she published over four hundred chapbooks (Bearden-White 299). Thomas Maiden printed Somerset Castle as well as many other chapbooks for Ann Lemoine. By 1796, Maiden was Lemoine’s primary printer, helping her give her chapbooks a more consistent and expensive appearance (Bearden-White 310).
Title page for Somerset Castle and Ghost and no Ghost with frontispiece.
Other than the copy of Somerset Castle in the Sadleir-Black Collection at the University of Virginia, there are four copies in collections around the world. Yale University and The University of Illinois both have copies of the 1804 publication in their libraries. The National Library of Wales and the British Library also have copies. The British Library’s copy is slightly different from the version in the Sadleir-Black Collection. At the end of the British Library’s copy, there is a second illustration with the title, Subterraneous Passage, and a date of July 23, 1804 underneath. This additional page suggests that Somerset Castle and Ghost and no Ghost were at one time printed in a collection that also included Sarah Wilkinson’s story, Subterraneous Passage. Many of Wilkinson’s stories were also published by Ann Lemoine and J.Roe, and because the publishing date of the two is so close, it is possibly the two were printed together at one point (Wilkinson; Bearden-White 299, 316).
Although little is known about this text, some scholarly work does reference the story and the illustration it contains. A Gothic Bibliography cites Somerset Castle and Ghost and No Ghost exactly the same as the Sadleir-Black Collection, including the lack of an author, both stories printed together, and with a date of 1804 (Summers 509).The Women’s Print History Project has an entry for this chapbook with the publication date as 1800. In Angela Koch’s article entitled “‘The Absolute Horror of Horrors’ Revised,” she includes this chapbook as part of a list of nineteenth-century gothic bluebooks, mentioning the copy in the University of Virginia and Yale libraries. As part of a collection of gothic images, Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression by Kenneth W. Graham includes a photo of the frontispiece with a description of “the skull, the rib cage, and carelessly tossed sarcophagus” that help develop the gothic mood of the story. This reference only cites a title of Somerset Castle; or, The Father and Daughter with no mention of the second story in the chapbook, suggesting the two were not always published together (Graham 271).
When looking for contemporary references to this story, there is not much information that has survived to today. This lack of knowledge about its reception among readers can tell us that this story was not immensely popular or appreciated by its contemporary readers.
Narrative Point of View
Somerset Castle is narrated in the third person omniscient style by an unknown narrator who never appears in the text. Switching from the story of Harriet to the story of the father back at the castle, the narrator has knowledge of both stories, informing the reader of events in both as they become necessary. The narrator writes in a refined tone, using language that is respectful of the family in the text. Only referring to the main character as “Lady Harriet” and the father as “Earl” or “Lord Somerset,” the narrator keeps a feeling of sophistication throughout the story. Through the use of many exclamation points and vivid descriptions of the characters’ feelings, the narration style easily conveys the emotions of the characters and how their emotions change throughout the story.
Sample Passage:
VIRTUE and discretion, while they require that young persons should maintain a strict guard against the dangerous influence of passions, impose obligations equally strong upon parents. The foibles of youth, a season incapable of reflection, and denied the grand lesson of experience, ought to be corrected with a gentle hand. The authority of a father, they tell us, is an image of that of the Divine Being upon earth. Surely then man cannot, in his imperfect state, make a more near approach to the dignity of that Being, than by restraining every idea that borders upon rigour, than by giving an unbounded scope to the dictates of lenity and benevolence. Besides, the soothing remonstrances of a father or mother, leave more deep impression on the hearts of children, than, threats and severity; severity, which by rendering them desperate, frequently hurries them from one fault, which might be soon repaired into another, ‘till they are at length lost in a labyrinth of infamy and guilt.
Of these truths the story of Lady Harriet Somerset exhibits a striking instance… (5)
The narration in this paragraph highlights the cautionary tone that continues throughout the story. Beginning with these instructions to preserve “virtue and discretion” and to be conscious of the actions of “a father or mother,” the narrator foreshadows the story’s morals. The narrator also includes the readers in an “us,” implying that these lessons are applicable to all and that every reader should be aware of how these elements of character and influences of religion play out in their lives. The narrator’s reference to the power of the “Divine Being” also connects to the moral instruction exemplified through the lives of these characters. This introduction easily transitions to the presence of judgements about the characters’ actions that appear later in the story.
Summary
The story begins with a backstory of the main character, Lady Harriet of Somerset. Lady Harriet was born to a mother who idolized her, but unfortunately her mother died when Harriet was just a child. Since then, Harriet’s father, the Earl of Somerset, has taken on the role of raising her. The loving relationship previously shared between Harriet and her mother is not reflected in her relationship with her father. The Earl only speaks to Harriet in a rigid tone, focusing solely on her education and setting high expectations for her academically and socially.
Sample page of text with heading for Somerset Castle.
When Harriet grows up, she begins to like one of the merchants’ sons who comes around the castle often, Charles Belford. Belford is handsome but not from a rich family like Harriet. Due to his family’s status, Harriet expects her father to not approve of their love, so she keeps her love for him secret. Unknown to her, Belford also has strong feelings of love for her, but he is scared to reveal them. One day while no one is around in the garden, Belford is professing his love out loud, and Harriet happens to be sitting near him in the garden where he cannot see, hearing his whole confession. She decides to reveal herself and her love for him, but because of their different statuses, they both know they cannot be together. Soon the couple begins to regret their confessions as they realize the consequences they could face if their families found out. Their solution to this problem is to keep seeing each other but only in secret. These secret meetings escalate quickly; soon they cannot resist having sex. After this, both Harriet and Belford consider killing themselves, but since Harriet already thinks she is pregnant, she stops them both from committing suicide for the sake of their child. Harriet hopes she can tell her father without him being too upset, but after overhearing one of his conversations where he condemns other women for being in her position, she decides to leave town without telling him.
After trying to get help from Belford’s uncle with no success, the couple goes to a clergyman for help. The clergyman, Doctor Willis, brings in the Earl of Somerset and tells him of Harriet’s pregnancy and relationship with Belford. The Earl is angered by her confession and goes to stab Belford, but Harriet steps in front of him, making her father put down his sword. The Earl tells Harriet he is not her father anymore so she must leave the castle. In response to his words, Harriet almost faints, so the Earl allows her to come back to the castle. While on their way there, the Doctor is suspicious of the Earl’s intentions for bringing her and Belford back to the castle, so he gives them a letter to a woman he knows in Norwich and tells them to escape to the woman’s house. They find out her name is Mrs. Crofts, but she does not like the couple. After only a few days, Harriet and Belford are forced to leave her house as well. By this time, Harriet is about to have her child, so the couple finds a cottage on a farm to settle in. This farm is owned by a nice man named Norris who hears their story and decides to treat Belford like a son by not making him do hard labor.
Back in Somerset, the Earl is trying to forget his daughter and focus on his ambition. His sister is there comforting him and helping take his mind off of her. On the farm, Harriet has a baby boy, named Charles. The family’s situation is good for a while until Norris gets sick. With Norris unable to run the farm, his son Richard takes over and makes Belford do physical, harsh work to earn his stay. Even after Harriet goes to Richard and begs him to be kinder to her husband, Richard does not change his mind. When it becomes clear that this work is killing Belford, Harriet goes to tell Norris of her situation. Norris gets very angry at Richard for the way he has been acting, saying Richard will die in poverty for what he has done. After this confrontation with Richard, Norris dies. Belford has to keep working hard on the farm, and one day he pushes too far. Harriet finds Belford where he is dying, and he tells her that she should go to her father and ask him to pardon her after he dies. Harriet leaves to get help, but one of the servants comes to tell her Belford has died and Richard has said she cannot stay there anymore. Leaving the farm with her son, Harriet has nowhere to go. She comes to a cottage and writes a letter to her father telling him what has happened and asking for forgiveness.
In Somerset, her father has become sad without his daughter, thinking about her often. His sister receives Harriet’s letter, but she does not show it to the Earl because she wants him to move on. The sister leaves the castle soon after. The Earl confesses to Doctor Willis that he would forgive his daughter now and treat her husband like a son. Still wandering without a home, Harriet is forced to beg for food, now thinking her father will not forgive her because he has not returned the letter. One day, she sits down to rest and begins to hear voices. With nowhere left to go, Harriet thinks death is surrounding her, so she considers killing herself and her son. When she grabs her son to kill him, she snaps out of her trance and focuses on getting out of this place. She runs to where the voices have been coming from and finds a dying man calling out to her. Quickly, Harriet finds some water for this man. Once he has drank the water, she realizes this man is Richard. Richard tells her his farm was taken from him and as he was escaping from the farm, a gang of robbers attacked him and left him with nothing. Now, he wants to ask her for forgiveness, but he dies before she can respond.
Harriet continues to wander the street for food, asking God if her son will forever be cursed like she is. In a village, she finds a woman who will give her a pen and paper to write to her father again. She is on her deathbed, but she cannot think about dying until she knows her son will be taken care of. When the Earl receives this letter, he immediately sets out to find his daughter and help her. Harriet does not give up hope that her father will come, and the woman who gave her the paper is taking care of her. Harriet prays to God that he will let her see her father before she dies. She writes one last letter to her father in case she cannot stay alive telling him to love and take care of her son. Just before her father arrives, Harriet dies with her son in her arms. When the Earl comes, he is devastated to see his daughter dead. As they continue to live their lives, the Earl’s grief never goes away, but he dedicates himself to religion and his grandson. He raises his grandson with love and kindness, and when Charles grows up, he establishes a hospital over the site where his mother died to take care of women who are less fortunate. Much later, Charles dies as a model of virtue and benevolence.
Bibliography
Bearden-White, Roy. “A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks and the Lemoines.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 103, no. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 283–318. doi:10.1086/pbsa.103.3.24293816.
Graham, Kenneth W. Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression. AMS Press, 1989.
Koch, A. ‘“The Absolute Horror of Horrors’ Revised: A Bibliographical Checklist of Early-Nineteenth-Century Gothic Bluebooks’, Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text 9 (Dec 2002). http://www.romtext.org.uk/reports/cc09_n03/
Somerset Castle: Or the Father and Daughter. A Tragic Tale … To Which Is Added, Ghost and No Ghost: Or, the Dungeon. London, Printed by T. Maiden, for Ann Lemoine, and J. Roe, 1804.
“Somerset Castle; or the Father and Daughter. A Tragic Tale. If You Have Tears, Prepare to Shed Them Now. To Which Is Added, Ghost and No Ghost; or, the Dungeon.” Edited by Kandice Sharren, The Women’s Print History Project , dhil.lib.sfu.ca/wphp/title/13465.
Summers, Montague. A Gothic Bibliography. The Fortune press, 1941.
Wilkinson, Sarah Scudgell. The Subterraneous Passage; or, Gothic Cell. A Romance. London: J. Roe, Ann Lemoine, 1803.
