Ann Radcliffe: A Sicilian Romance (1790)

View of the Castello di San Giuliano, near Trapani, Sicily by Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont (c. 1824-26)

[Image source: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/belmont-sicily-c1824-louise-josephine-sarazin-de-belmont.html . The painting is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.]


A Sicilian Romance was Ann Radcliffe's second novel (2 volumes, 1790). It trembles on the brink of the massive popular success that arrived with her third novel, The Romance of the Forest (3 volumes, 1791). All the essential components of her vision are here. I touched on some of them when I wrote about The Mysteries of Udolpho.

There's a strangely compulsive quality to Radcliffe's writing which displays itself as acts of reiteration. At times we are utterly unable to keep track of the number of gloomy corridors, rusted-up doors that may or may not yield to force, or mysterious midnight sounds and lights. Or patriarchal tyranny, or storms, or flight from pursuers, or banditti,  or dungeons, cells and ruins. The reader becomes both strangely lulled and strangely intrigued by the incessant recurrence, by the nearly identical. For example:

The confusion of Julia may be easily imagined
an agony not to be described
a state of anxious expectation not to be described
The effect of this event upon Louisa was such as may be imagined
The effect which the latter part of this sentence had upon the prisoners in the vault, may be more easily imagined than described
During this exclamation, the emotions of Julia, who sat in her closet adjoining, can with difficulty be imagined
a kind of anguish known only to those who have experienced a similar situation
The sensations of Ferdinand, thus compelled to remain in the dungeon, are not to be imagined
innumerable acts of kindness, such as the heart can quickly understand and acknowledge, although description can never reach them
The whole castle was immediately roused, and the confusion may be more easily imagined than described
The transitions of various and rapid sensations, which her heart experienced, and the strangely mingled emotions of joy and terror that agitated Hippolitus, can only be understood by experience
his grief may easily be imagined
it is not easy to imagine their horror on discovering they were in a receptacle for the murdered bodies of the unfortunate people who had fallen into the hands of the banditti
a state of mental torture exceeding all description
the joy of that moment is not to be described
his sensations on learning she was his mother cannot be described

Most of what matters in life eludes being described in words, but what a book cannot describe it can still convey, if the readers undertake, what is both so easy and so difficult, to look in their own hearts. The characters in the story are like ourselves, or the tyrants in our own lives, or its rescuers or comforters: Radcliffe rarely shows her characters displaying unexpected or counter-intuitive responses. The highly-coloured events of a story set formally in sixteenth-century Sicily; the desperate predicaments that entangle ordinary people; these are a way of inducing us to recognize the landscape of our own emotional lives.

The uncanny, after all, is best embodied not so much in the exceptional as in eruptions from the commonplace; night, doors, walls, forests. In Radcliffe's highly charged version of the world, the eerie potential in these everyday facts of our existence is constantly being unleashed. Prolonging an evening stroll beyond its usual bounds is apt to be fraught with consequences.

Julia accustomed herself to walk in the fine evenings under the shade of the high trees that environed the abbey. The dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. The innumerable roseate tints which the parting sun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic scene beneath, softly fading from the eye, as the nightshades fell, excited sensations of a sweet and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a temporary forgetfulness of her sorrows.
   The deep solitude of the place subdued her apprehension, and one evening she ventured with Madame de Menon to lengthen her walk. They returned to the abbey without having seen a human being, except a friar of the monastery, who had been to a neighbouring town to order provision. On the following evening they repeated their walk; and, engaged in conversation, rambled to a considerable distance from the abbey. The distant bell of the monastery sounding for vespers, reminded them of the hour, and looking round, they perceived the extremity of the wood. They were returning towards the abbey, when struck by the appearance of some majestic columns which were distinguishable between the trees, they paused. Curiosity tempted them to examine to what edifice pillars of such magnificent architecture could belong, in a scene so rude, and they went on.
   There appeared on a point of rock impending over the valley the reliques of a palace, whose beauty time had impaired only to heighten its sublimity. An arch of singular magnificence remained almost entire, beyond which appeared wild cliffs retiring in grand perspective. The sun, which was now setting, threw a trembling lustre upon the ruins, and gave a finishing effect to the scene. They gazed in mute wonder upon the view; but the fast fading light, and the dewy chillness of the air, warned them to return. As Julia gave a last look to the scene, she perceived two men leaning upon a part of the ruin at some distance, in earnest conversation. As they spoke, their looks were so attentively bent on her, that she could have no doubt she was the subject of their discourse. Alarmed at this circumstance, madame and Julia immediately retreated towards the abbey. They walked swiftly through the woods, whose shades, deepened by the gloom of evening, prevented their distinguishing whether they were pursued. They were surprized to observe the distance to which they had strayed from the monastery, whose dark towers were now obscurely seen rising among the trees that closed the perspective. They had almost reached the gates, when on looking back, they perceived the same men slowly advancing, without any appearance of pursuit, but clearly as if observing the place of their retreat. (A Sicilian Romance, beginning of Chapter 10)

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

I listened to A Sicilian Romance on Librivox, an excellent reading by Betsie Bush:

https://librivox.org/a-sicilian-romance-by-ann-radcliffe/

Marianne Dashwood

Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Elinor (Emma Thompson)

 [Image source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2017/7/15/15955872/movie-of-week-sense-sensibility-jane-austen . From Ang Lee's 1995 movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.]


Two sisters; the sweet-tempered elder one is fond of drawing, the passionate younger one plays the pianoforte. That's the premise of Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance (1790). But contrasted sisters feature in many other novels of the 1790s, too.

In Radcliffe's novel the lead role in the story is very definitely taken by the younger sister Julia; after the first couple of chapters Emilia is given nothing further to do, and is finally consigned to a future in the shadows, a premonition of Sonya's fate in War and Peace. Anyway, Jane Austen reverses the emphasis. She presented Sense and Sensibility (1811) principally from the viewpoint of the elder sister, Elinor Dashwood. A balanced view of the book should probably focus much more on Elinor. Yet it's Marianne who asks the questions, who bothers us, and who gives this Jane Austen novel its distinctive flavour.

Marianne's sensibility, or rather her belief in the sensibility valorized by novels, is extreme. For Marianne is doctrinaire on these points; "her opinions are all romantic", Elinor tells Colonel Brandon (Ch 11). In that respect Sense and Sensibility, specifically Marianne's part in it, continues the critical examination of current literary values that was played out by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey (written 1798-99).

The practical difference between the sisters is perhaps better stated without using the words of the title. The sisters aren't enormously different in either sense or sensibility. But Elinor, we are told at once, has a "coolness of judgment" that contrasts with the "eagerness" and "imprudence" manifested both by Marianne and their mother (Ch 1). In a precisely similar situation, i.e. an agreeable admirer who doesn't declare himself, the sisters behave in opposite ways. Elinor, re Edward Ferrars, doesn't allow her feelings full rein (Ch 4). Marianne, re Willoughby, does just that (Chs 9 - 16).

"I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him -- that I greatly esteem, that I like him."
   Marianne here burst forth with indignation --
   "Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again and I will leave the room this moment."
   Elinor could not help laughing. (Ch 4)

And we laugh too, at this early juncture. A younger sister (Marianne isn't yet seventeen) may harmlessly give vent to vehement opinions, prejudices that are essentially literary, particularly in a matter where her own heart isn't engaged and she isn't called on to act.

Those literary prejudices continue to operate in her early opinion of Willoughby: "His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story" ... "that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue" (Ch 9).

There's still some laughter in the next dialogue of values between the sisters, but it's getting more strained. Sarcasm? Reductiveness? Neither sister can be quite exonerated from those charges.

"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for one morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary dispatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask." --
   "Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull and deceitful: -- had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared." (Ch 10)*

Elinor's unprompted comment, offered under the guise of playfulness, contains at least two grains of sand. One of them Marianne doesn't notice; the implication that Willoughby's expressed opinions chime in all too neatly with Marianne's own, that he follows her lead and, in consequence, shouldn't be taken on trust. (And, in fact, we soon see that he's loose with the truth; he "does not dislike" Colonel Brandon, and almost immediately afterwards claims the privilege of continuing to dislike him as much as ever (Ch 10).)

 The other is an older sister's mockery of the limited range of a younger sister's preoccupations. (It's the same kind of joke about the young that the narrator (or Elinor?) makes re Sir John's entertainments: "in winter his private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not suffering under the insatiable appetite of fifteen". After all, Marianne isn't so much beyond that age.)

In Marianne's reply, perhaps the word "reserve" is the key term here. For Marianne it's plainly pejorative, like the other three adjectives she uses, "spiritless, dull and deceitful". But "reserve" might also describe Elinor's behaviour throughout the novel, and particularly, of course, in regard to the undeclared Edward Ferrars of that earlier conversation.

Yet Elinor too sees "reserve" as a word with a negative valency. This is a joint judgment by the sisters, on Lady Middleton:

Her manners had all the elegance which her husband's wanted. But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to detract something from their first admiration, by shewing that though perfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark. (Ch 6)

Later, Elinor reflects on the nature of Lady Middleton's reserve: "Elinor needed little observation to perceive that her reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do" (Ch 11).

Reserve must not be cold; frankness and warmth are positive goods; but reserve arising from sense (prudence, discretion, sensitivity to others' feelings, propriety) is a practical good, a necessity. Thus, Elinor and Colonel Brandon, the moral grown-ups of the novel, both in their beliefs and in their behaviour. Here they are talking about Marianne's "romantic" opinions:

". . . A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by any body but herself."
   "This will probably be the case," he replied; "and yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."
   "I cannot agree with you there," said Elinor. "There are inconveniences attending such feelings as Marianne's, which all the charms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage." (Ch 11)

To which Colonel Brandon makes this enigmatic addendum:

". . . but a change, a total change of sentiments -- No, no, do not desire it, -- for when the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous! I speak from experience. I once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like her, but who from an inforced change -- from a series of unfortunate circumstances" -- Here he stopt suddenly . . .  (Ch 11)

The story he refers to is eventually narrated in Vol II Ch 9. But to dread youthful romanticism being succeeded by misery and even by "falling" (as happened to the not-very-similar Eliza) is scarcely an argument in favour of that romanticism.

But still, for all her bad manners, for all her wilful wrongness, for instance about the weather (twice with very fateful effects), there's some deep things to be said for Marianne's ardour, though Brandon doesn't quite manage to say them. Without her emotional candour and her eagerness, what is life for? It cannot be just a matter of prudence and reserve, of crossing the Ts, of negotiation and maintenance, of avoiding a mess. Marianne's imprudence and refusal to hold back gives meaning as well as trouble to the lives of those around her, and when she looks back on it from her own respectable married existence it may continue to give meaning to that, too.


*

* The subjects of literary discussion between Marianne and Willoughby are men: Pope, Cowper, and Scott. Scott is an interesting inclusion; he couldn't have been a topic of general conversation until 1805 at the earliest, so Austen is stretching the chronology of a tale that was originally composed and set in the late 1790s. Perhaps Austen was bent on including a current author; Cowper had died in 1800. 

After Northanger Abbey, Austen tended not to name woman authors. (The play Lovers' Vows is immensely important to Mansfield Park, but we never hear of Elizabeth Inchbald.) It's as if Austen formally cedes the traditional claim that creation is an essentially male affair. But the concession is subversive. It, so to speak, clears the decks for the real literary debate to which Sense and Sensibility contributes; a debate taking place between woman authors. The irony in Elinor's reductive report cuts not only at Marianne's youthfully limited interests but also, I sense, at the male authors under review. The gentle implication is that these official bastions of the world of letters, precisely because they are men, don't actually have much to contribute to the deeper concerns of Austen's novels. If they did, she wouldn't name them. 

Fake away

Cuckfield Park (formerly Cuckfield Place), Ainsworth's model for Rookwood Place

[Image source: https://www.scribd.com/document/16751248/The-Bevans-of-Horsgate . Cuckfield Park is in W. Sussex, 17 miles from Rottingdean, where Ainsworth wrote much of Rookwood. The fictional Rookwood Place, however, is in Yorkshire's West Riding.]

What to make of William Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood (1834)? It's an outrageous farrago, a historical romance without serious intent, as the author confessed. Ainsworth had an admirable lack of care for what he was writing. He based little of it on experience and most of it on his incredibly miscellaneous reading. It was a great popular success but in a way it's more fruitful to compare it with experimental texts, or with genre fiction, than with mainstream novels. It is emphatically not "marvellously about life", in Leavisian phrase.

Most of this post consists of extracts that try to suggest the variety of registers in Rookwood. But first let's delve into the geology.

Ainsworth said he adopted Ann Radcliffe's form of gothic romance but relocated the setting from southern Europe to northern England. The Radcliffe influence is quite apparent, for instance in the chapter epigraphs, the copious inset poems, and the general topgraphy of underground vaults, secret chambers and passages, with ghostly knockings and appearances. And on appropriate occasions Ainsworth gives us Radcliffe phrases like "I will not pain you with the recital..." and "Farewell, perhaps forever..." (this is in Book I Chapter X, which with its Garonne setting is a kind of Radcliffe pastiche/tribute).

But Rookwood as a whole is very unlike the novels of Radcliffe, who writes penetratingly from a woman's point of view and has a lot of insight into psychology and into a woman's experience within a patriarchal society. Ainsworth takes no interest in character except as picturesque, none in character development. Men predominate, though he needs women for the operatic sextets that crown his actions. They are proud, madly beautiful or hideous creations, without sensibility or reflection, only the annotations of passion and will.

Ainsworth had a lot of fun with chapter epigraphs, drawing on his reading of dark Jacobean drama (he likes Webster), but without the thematic enlargement that we sometimes find in Scott's epigraphs. The inset poems are his own (as Radcliffe's were) but they are ballad-like rather than lyrical, mostly in triple-time. A reader is tempted to skip them, but they do add -- not depth, but -- lively ramification to the furious progress of Rookwood .

Scott's novels, inevitably, are an influence too -- notably the excitement about highwaymen in the early chapters of Rob Roy -- , but they aren't a very deep one. Rookwood is firmly set in 1737 

-- Ainsworth's Dick Turpin might have run into Scott's Jeanie Deans on the Great North Road! --

but it isn't particularly interested in history, certainly not as regards politics or society or manners. The ways of the Rookwoods are defined by the uniquely gothic nature of the noble family in question; nor do Ainsworth's gypsies and rogues add up to any kind of social picture of 1737. He gives us a flood of often barely comprehensible thieves' cant (all taken from books) but we enjoy it not as an evocation of a specific period but as a strangely timeless image of the possibilities of deviant language on the edges of civilization and its conventions, just as vigorous today as in Shakespeare's time. (Among his rogues of 1737, Ainsworth sunnily incorporates the Knight of Malta, a bizarro of the 1830s.)

Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (English translation, 1833) must surely have been an influence too. (Ainsworth quotes from other Hugo works.) Like Rookwood, it was to some extent a book inspired by architecture. The extreme compulsions of Hugo's characters are surely plundered to build the not quite comprehensible turns of Rookwood's action.

Finally there's the influence of the fiction of roguery (from Gay or even earlier, via Smollett*, to the recent specimens of what came to be called the "Newgate novel", to which category Rookwood to some extent belongs, particularly in regard to the character of Dick Turpin, who divides our interest with the gothic plot of the Rookwood family (and, as many readers considered, seizes most of it to himself). [Ainsworth's own  Jack Sheppard (1839) would bring the Newgate novel controversy to its head.]

[*Smollett seems to have originated the jocular expression to "discuss" a side of beef, bottle of claret, etc. Scott used it too. Ainsworth uses it, like everything else, to excess.]

The plot of Rookwood is so complicated and incredible that few readers will trouble to keep track of it. It involves multiple generations of family history, phantoms, prophecies, omens, secrets, disguises, assumed names, documents that must only be opened after someone's death, curses and oaths of vengeance; but it all comes down to the initially likeable Luke Rookwood's descent into deadly hatred of his rival and half-brother Ranulph. The how and why scarcely matter.

*

"And how came you not to try your pace with him, if you were there, as you boasted a short time ago?" asked Coates.

"So I did, and stuck closer to him than any one else. We were neck and neck. I was the only person who could have delivered him to the hands of justice, if I'd felt inclined."

"Zounds!" cried Coates; "If I had a similar opportunity, it should be neck or nothing. Either he or I should reach the scragging-post first. I'd take him, dead or alive."

"You take Turpin?" cried Jack, with a sneer.

"I'd engage to do it," replied Coates. "I'll bet you a hundred guineas I take him, if I ever have the same chance."

"Done!" exclaimed Jack, rapping the table at the same time, so that the glasses danced upon it.

"That's right," cried Titus. "I'll go you halves."

"What's the matter—what's the matter?" exclaimed Small, awakened from his doze.

"Only a trifling bet about a highwayman," replied Titus.

"A highwayman!" echoed Small. "Eh! what? there are none in the house, I hope."

"I hope not," answered Coates. "But this gentleman has taken up the defence of the notorious Dick Turpin in so singular a manner, that——"

"Quod factu fœdum est, idem est et Dictu Turpe," returned Small. "The less said about that rascal the better."

"So I think," replied Jack. "The fact is as you say, sir—were Dick here, he would, I am sure, take the freedom to hide 'em."

Further discourse was cut short by the sudden opening of the door, followed by the abrupt entrance of a tall, slender young man, who hastily advanced towards the table, around which the company were seated. His appearance excited the utmost astonishment in the whole group: curiosity was exhibited in every countenance—the magnum remained poised midway in the hand of Palmer—Dr. Small scorched his thumb in the bowl of his pipe; and Mr. Coates was almost choked, by swallowing an inordinate whiff of vapor.

"Young Sir Ranulph!" ejaculated he, as soon as the syncope would permit him.

"Sir Ranulph here?" echoed Palmer, rising.

"Angels and ministers!" exclaimed Small.

"Odsbodikins!" cried Titus, with a theatrical start; "this is more than I expected."

"Gentlemen," said Ranulph, "do not let my unexpected arrival here discompose you. Dr. Small, you will excuse the manner of my greeting; and you, Mr. Coates. One of the present party, I believe, was my father's medical attendant, Dr. Tyrconnel."

"I had that honor," replied the Irishman, bowing profoundly—"I am Dr. Tyrconnel, Sir Ranulph, at your service."

"When, and at what hour, did my father breathe his last, sir?" inquired Ranulph.

"Poor Sir Piers," answered Titus, again bowing, "departed this life on Thursday last."

"The hour?—the precise minute?" asked Ranulph, eagerly.

"Troth, Sir Ranulph, as nearly as I can recollect, it might be a few minutes before midnight."

"The very hour!" exclaimed Ranulph, striding towards the window. His steps were arrested as his eye fell upon the attire of his father, which, as we have before noticed, hung at that end of the room. A slight shudder passed over his frame. There was a momentary pause, during which Ranulph continued gazing intently at the apparel. "The very dress, too!" muttered he; then turning to the assembly, who were watching his movements with surprise; "Doctor," said he, addressing Small, "I have something for your private ear. Gentlemen, will you spare us the room for a few minutes...."

(Book I, Chapter IX)

*

If I can suggest, not a theme, but a modus operandi, Rookwood is characterized by incessantness. It is there in the big images of a family that cannot escape dark fatality (all the Rookwood wives are murdered), or of Turpin's barely motivated insistence on riding from London to York in a single night. But it's also there throughout the book in the never-refused rehashing of stage clichés (The reader is slyly told that Jack Palmer is Dick Turpin about a dozen times in the chapter I quoted from), and in a breakneck action that allows no time for taking stock. Luke, from the opening pages, is always off-balance. Having been thrown the revelation that he is the true heir of Rookwood Place, he can't even venture into the park for a moment of reflection before he gets dragged into a fight and flight for his life. We can't fully conceive how he ends up where he does, but we can see that he's on a rocket's trajectory that can only end explosively.

That for the men love is apt to turn into killing is, I suppose, an underlying trope. Luke causes or attempts to cause the death of  both the women he loves, and by a strange but similar illogic Dick Turpin, in the book's most famous episode, decides to ride his beloved Black Bess to death.

*

"They are jewels of countless price. Take them, and rid me," she added in a whisper, "of him."

"Luke Bradley?"

"Ay."

"Give them to me."

"They are yours freely on those terms."

"You hear that, Luke," cried he, aloud; "you hear it, Titus; this is no robbery. Mr. Coates—'Know all men by these presents'—I call you to witness, Lady Rookwood gives me these pretty things."

"I do," returned she; adding, in a whisper, "on the terms which I proposed."

"Must it be done at once?"

"Without an instant's delay."

"Before your own eyes?"

"I fear not to look on. Each moment is precious. He is off his guard now. You do it, you know, in self-defence."

"And you?"

"For the same cause."

"Yet he came here to aid you?"

"What of that?"

"He would have risked his life for yours?"

"I cannot pay back the obligation. He must die!"

"The document?"

"Will be useless then."

"Will not that suffice; why aim at life?"

"You trifle with me. You fear to do it."

"Fear!"

"About it, then; you shall have more gold."

"I will about it," cried Jack, throwing the casket to Wilder, and seizing Lady Rookwood's hands. "I am no Italian bravo, madam—no assassin—no remorseless cut-throat. What are you—devil or woman—who ask me to do this? Luke Bradley, I say."

"Would you betray me?" cried Lady Rookwood.

"You have betrayed yourself, madam. Nay, nay, Luke, hands off. See, Lady Rookwood, how you would treat a friend. This strange fellow would blow out my brains for laying a finger upon your ladyship."

"I will suffer no injury to be done to her," said Luke; "release her."

"Your ladyship hears him," said Jack. "And you, Luke, shall learn the value set upon your generosity. You will not have her injured. This instant she has proposed, nay, paid for your assassination."

"How?" exclaimed Luke, recoiling.

"A lie, as black as hell," cried Lady Rookwood.

"A truth, as clear as heaven," retained Jack. "I will speedily convince you of the fact." Then, turning to Lady Rookwood, he whispered, "Shall I give him the marriage document?"

"Beware!" said Lady Rookwood.

"Do I avouch the truth, then?"

She was silent.

"I am answered," said Luke.

"Then leave her to her fate," cried Jack.

"No," replied Luke; "she is still a woman, and I will not abandon her to ruffianly violence. Set her free."

"You are a fool," said Jack.

"Hurrah, hurrah!" vociferated Coates, who had rushed to the window. "Rescue, rescue! they are returning from the church; I see the torchlight in the avenue; we are saved!"

"Hell and the devil!" cried Jack; "not an instant is to be lost. Alive, lads; bring off all the plunder you can; be handy!"

"Lady Rookwood, I bid you farewell," said Luke, in a tone in which scorn and sorrow were blended. "We shall meet again."

"We have not parted yet," returned she; "will you let this man pass? A thousand pounds for his life."

"Upon the nail?" asked Rust.

"By the living God, if any of you attempt to touch him, I will blow his brains out upon the spot, be he friend or foe," cried Jack. "Luke Bradley, we shall meet again. You shall hear from me."

"Lady Rookwood," said Luke, as he departed, "I shall not forget this night."

(Book II, Chapter VI)

*

Jerry Juniper was what the classical Captain Grose would designate a "gentleman with three outs," and, although he was not entirely without wit, nor, his associates avouched, without money, nor, certainly, in his own opinion, had that been asked, without manners; yet was he assuredly without shoes, without stockings, without shirt. This latter deficiency was made up by a voluminous cravat, tied with proportionately large bows. A jaunty pair of yellow breeches, somewhat faded; a waistcoat of silver brocade, richly embroidered, somewhat tarnished and lack-lustre; a murrey-colored velvet coat, somewhat chafed, completed the costume of this beggar Brummell, this mendicant macaroni!

Jerry Juniper was a character well known at the time, as a constant frequenter of all races, fairs, regattas, ship-launches, bull-baits, and prize-fights, all of which he attended, and to which he transported himself with an expedition little less remarkable than that of Turpin. You met him at Epsom, at Ascot, at Newmarket, at Doncaster, at the Roodee of Chester, at the Curragh of Kildare. The most remote as well as the most adjacent meeting attracted him. The cock-pit was his constant haunt, and in more senses than one was he a leg. No opera-dancer could be more agile, more nimble; scarcely, indeed, more graceful, than was Jerry, with his shoeless and stockingless feet; and the manner in which he executed a pirouette, or a pas, before a line of carriages, seldom failed to procure him "golden opinions from all sorts of dames." With the ladies, it must be owned, Jerry was rather upon too easy terms; but then, perhaps, the ladies were upon too easy terms with Jerry; and if a bright-eyed fair one condescended to jest with him, what marvel if he should sometimes slightly transgress the laws of decorum. These aberrations, however, were trifling; altogether he was so well known, and knew everybody else so well, that he seldom committed himself; and, singular to say, could on occasions even be serious. In addition to his other faculties, no one cut a sly joke, or trolled a merry ditty, better than Jerry.  ....


JERRY JUNIPER'S CHANT

In a box of the stone jug I was born,
Of a hempen widow the kid forlorn.
                                             Fake away,
And my father, as I've heard say,
                                             Fake away,
Was a merchant of capers gay,
Who cut his last fling with great applause,
                             Nix my doll pals, fake away.

Who cut his last fling with great applause,
To the tune of a "hearty choke with caper sauce."
                                               Fake away, 
The knucks in quod did my schoolmen play,
                                               Fake away,
And put me up to the time of day;
Until at last there was none so knowing,
                              Nix my doll pals, fake away.
 ....

(Book III, Chapter V)

*

"Ha, ha! Are you there, my old death's-head on a mop-stick?" said Turpin, with a laugh. "Ain't we merry mumpers, eh? Keeping it up in style. Sit down, old Noah—make yourself comfortable, Methusalem."

"What say you to a drop of as fine Nantz as you ever tasted in your life, old cove?" said Zoroaster.

"I have no sort of objection to it," returned Peter, "provided you will all pledge my toast."

"That I will, were it old Ruffin himself," shouted Turpin.

"Here's to the three-legged mare," cried Peter. "To the tree that bears fruit all the year round, and yet has neither bark nor branch. You won't refuse that toast, Captain Turpin?"

"Not I," answered Dick; "I owe the gallows no grudge. If, as Jerry's song says, I must have a 'hearty choke and caper sauce' for my breakfast one of these fine mornings, it shall never be said that I fell to my meal without appetite, or neglected saying grace before it. Gentlemen, here's Peter Bradley's toast: 'The scragging post—the three-legged mare,' with three times three."

Appropriate as this sentiment was, it did not appear to be so inviting to the party as might have been anticipated, and the shouts soon died away.

"They like not the thoughts of the gallows," said Turpin to Peter. "More fools they. A mere bugbear to frighten children, believe me; and never yet alarmed a brave man. The gallows, pshaw! One can but die once, and what signifies it how, so that it be over quickly. I think no more of the last leap into eternity than clearing a five-barred gate. A rope's end for it! So let us be merry, and make the most of our time, and that's true philosophy. I know you can throw off a rum chant," added he, turning to Peter. "I heard you sing last night at the hall. Troll us a stave, my antediluvian file, and, in the meantime, tip me a gage of fogus, Jerry; and if that's a bowl of huckle-my-butt you are brewing, Sir William," added he, addressing the knight of Malta, "you may send me a jorum at your convenience."

(Book III, Chapter V)

*

Ascetic to the severest point to which nature's endurance could be stretched, Cyprian even denied himself repose. He sought not sleep, and knew it only when it stole on him unawares. His couch was the flinty rock; and long afterwards, when the zealous resorted to the sainted prior's cell, and were shown those sharp and jagged stones, they marvelled how one like unto themselves could rest, or even recline upon their points without anguish, until it was explained to them that, doubtless, He who tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb had made that flinty couch soft to the holy sufferer as a bed of down. His limbs were clothed in a garb of horsehair of the coarsest fabric; his drink was the dank drops that oozed from the porous walls of his cell; and his sustenance, such morsels as were bestowed upon him by the poor—the only strangers permitted to approach him. No fire was suffered, where perpetual winter reigned. None were admitted to his nightly vigils; none witnessed any act of penance; nor were any groans heard to issue from that dreary cave; but the knotted, blood-stained thong, discovered near his couch, too plainly betrayed in what manner those long lone nights were spent. Thus did a year roll on. Traces of his sufferings were visible in his failing strength. He could scarcely crawl; but he meekly declined assistance. He appeared not, as had been his wont, at the midnight mass; the door of his cell was thrown open at that hour; the light streamed down like a glory upon his reverend head; he heard the distant reverberations of the deep Miserere; and breathed odors as if wafted from Paradise.

(Book III, Chapter X)

*

"I will not stir. I will kneel here forever. Stab me as I kneel—as I pray to you. You cannot kill me while I cling to you thus—while I kiss your hands—while I bedew them with my tears. Those tears will not sully them like my blood."

"Maiden," said Sybil, endeavoring to withdraw her hand, "let go your hold—your sand is run."

"Mercy!"

"It is in vain. Close your eyes."

"No, I will fix them on you thus—you cannot strike then. I will cling to you—embrace you. Your nature is not cruel—your soul is full of pity. It melts—those tears—you will be merciful. You cannot deliberately kill me."

"I cannot—I cannot!" said Sybil, with a passionate outburst of grief. "Take your life on one condition."

"Name it."

"That you wed Sir Luke Rookwood."

"Ah!" exclaimed Eleanor, "all rushes back upon me at that name; the whole of that fearful scene passes in review before me."

"Do you reject my proposal?"

"I dare not."

"I must have your oath. Swear by every hope of eternity that you will wed none other than him."

"By every hope, I swear it."

"Handassah, you will bear this maiden's oath in mind, and witness its fulfilment."

"I will," replied the gipsy girl, stepping forward from a recess, in which she had hitherto remained unnoticed.

"Enough. I am satisfied. Tarry with me. Stir not—scream not, whatever you may see or hear. Your life depends upon your firmness. When I am no more——"

"No more?" echoed Eleanor, in horror.

"Be calm," said Sybil. "When I am dead, clap your hands together. They will come to seek you—they will find me in your stead. Then rush to him—to Sir Luke Rookwood. He will protect you. Say to him hereafter that I died for the wrong I did him—that I died, and blessed him."

"Can you not live, and save me?" sobbed Eleanor.

"Ask it not. While I live, your life is in danger. When I am gone, none will seek to harm you. Fare you well! Remember your oath, and you, too, remember it, Handassah. Remember also—ha! that groan!"

All started, as a deep groan knelled in their ears.

"Whence comes that sound?" cried Sybil. "Hist!—a voice?"

"It is that of the priest," cried Eleanor. "Hark! he groans. They have murdered him! Kind Heaven, receive his soul!"

"Pray for me," cried Sybil: "pray fervently; avert your face; down on your knees—down—down! Farewell, Handassah!" And breaking from them, she rushed into the darkest recesses of the vault.

(Book III, Chapter XII)

*

This troop of horsemen, for such it was, might probably amount in the aggregate to twenty men, and presented an appearance like that of a strong muster at a rustic fox-chase, due allowance being made for the various weapons of offence; to-wit: naked sabers, firelocks, and a world of huge horse-pistols, which the present field carried along with them. This resemblance was heightened by the presence of an old huntsman and a gamekeeper or two, in scarlet and green jackets, and a few yelping hounds that had followed after them. The majority of the crew consisted of sturdy yeomen; some of whom, mounted upon wild, unbroken colts, had pretty lives of it to maintain their seats, and curvetted about in "most admired disorder;" others were seated upon more docile, but quite as provoking specimens of the cart-horse breed, whose sluggish sides, reckless alike of hobnailed heel or ash sapling, refused to obey their riders' intimations to move; while others again, brought stiff, wrong-headed ponies to the charge—obstinate, impracticable little brutes, who seemed to prefer revolving on their own axis, and describing absurd rotatory motions, to proceeding in the direct and proper course pointed out to them.

(Book III, Chapter XIV)

*

The place of refreshment for the ruralizing cockney of 1737 was a substantial-looking tenement of the good old stamp, with great bay windows, and a balcony in front, bearing as its ensign the jovial visage of the lusty knight, Jack Falstaff. Shaded by a spreading elm, a circular bench embraced the aged trunk of the tree, sufficiently tempting, no doubt, to incline the wanderer on those dusty ways to "rest and be thankful," and to cry encore to a frothing tankard of the best ale to be obtained within the chimes of Bow bells.

Upon a table, green as the privet and holly that formed the walls of the bower in which it was placed, stood a great china bowl, one of those leviathan memorials of bygone wassailry which we may sometimes espy—reversed in token of its desuetude—perched on the top of an old japanned closet, but seldom, if ever, encountered in its proper position at the genial board. All the appliances of festivity were at hand. Pipes and rummers strewed the board. Perfume, subtle, yet mellow, as of pine and lime, exhaled from out the bowl, and, mingling with the scent of a neighboring bed of mignonette and the subdued odor of the Indian weed, formed altogether as delectable an atmosphere of sweets as one could wish to inhale on a melting August afternoon.

(Book IV, Chapter I)

*

Complete text of Rookwood:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23564/23564-h/23564-h.htm#BOOK_II

Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

Title-page of the first edition, 1794

[Image source: Biblio.com, where it's for sale at £4,750]

Born Ann Ward, in Holborn 1764, d. 1823.

When I was young, the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho was still usually known as "Mrs Radcliffe", but I'm not sure why, because here, loud and proud, is the name on the 1794 title page: Ann Radcliffe.  (Her earlier books had been unattributed. The first time she named herself was in the second edition (1792) of The Romance of the Forest.)

So she used her first name ("Ann" was already a very common spelling, in case you were wondering) and her husband's surname.

Her critical reputation in the 1790s grew, but not without controversy. Coleridge, for example, slated Udolpho on two occasions, though he later spoke up for The Italian. (Wordsworth despised the "Radcliffe school" altogether.) But she was admired by Hazlitt, Barbauld, Scott and Hunt.

After her death, she began to be named, when formally introduced in a title, as "Mrs Ann Radcliffe". This was the form used by her obituary-writers and also by Scott ('Prefatory Memoir to Mrs Ann Radcliffe' for Ballantyne's Novelist's Library series, 1825; reprinted in Miscellaneous Prose Works vol III, pp. 337-90). Subsequent to that first introductory mention, the writers then refer to her as "Mrs Radcliffe", e.g. throughout the text of Scott's brilliant essay. This is perfectly  in accord with the conventions of that time;  living or recently-deceased authors should be named "Mrs Smith" or "Mr Collins". Only once an author had been firmly established in the canon did they become unprefixed authorities: e.g. "Dryden", or "Fielding". But in 1825, shocking as it is to say, there were as yet no recognized canonical works of English literature by woman authors.

By 1905, when her work was seriously out of fashion, Andrew Lang's influential essay in Adventures Among Books was playfully titled "Mrs Radcliffe".  That's in effect an allusion to Scott and Hazlitt, to  the erstwhile reputation that defined an era. (Just as, today, an essay titled "Mr Eliot" would allude to F.R. Leavis.)

Lang's title struck a chord. Though his essay is in fact perceptive and enthusiastic about the novels, yet the primary meaning connoted by "Mrs Radcliffe" in early twentieth century usage is "a sensational author, once astonishingly popular, now deservedly unread".

No doubt it added a bit of extra spice that the forgotten author was a woman. As Germaine Greer pointed out in Slipshod Sybils, woman authors were particularly prone to become the sensation of one season and the jest of the next. That's merely the shape of misogyny.   "past reason hunted... past reason hated..."

*

Disparagement of Radcliffe may, perhaps, be considered a sport authorized by Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

It still shows up in Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?" (1969), where he contrasts the undoubtedly seminal Radcliffe with Marx and Freud. Foucault claims that Radcliffe's work yielded a rich legacy of motifs that could be redeployed by other writers, but Marx and Freud, the "founders of discourse", created possibilities that went far beyond their own achievements: the seeds, even, of the arguments that would eventually refute them.

Foucault's argument doesn't stand up to much scrutiny, but it's interesting that he chose Radcliffe to make it, rather than, say, Flaubert. It was a choice that meant he didn't have to spend too much effort arguing the literary toss; Radcliffe was already accepted as typifying the author who is influential without being great.

[Information about this came from Robert Archambeau's essay "The Future of Genius" in Body: 

http://bodyliterature.com/2016/03/04/the-future-of-genius/ ]


*

I found this Chawton House Library introduction by Ruth Facer useful:
http://www.chawtonhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ann-Radcliffe.pdf

There was some agreement that Radcliffe had founded a "school". She's without doubt the key influence in Scott's conception of what a romantic novelist can be. If he was the "wizard of the north", she had been "the enchantress".

The Mysteries of Udolpho is set well back in the past (1584) but its concern with history is impressionistic. As editors have pointed out, the lifestyle of Emily is pretty much that of the late 18th century. Nevertheless, there's enough here of the potential excitements of a historical setting (e.g. the armies criss-crossing Italy) to have inspired Scott.

And it should be said, Radcliffe writes remarkably strong dialogue for her colourful rough types like soldiers and banditti. (Gil Blas in the background maybe?) Emily's conversations with the sentries on the battlements of Udolpho are excellent. Best of all is the menacing conversation of Ugo and Bertrand during Emily's scary journeys away from and back to the castle.

Of course Radcliffe influenced many authors besides Scott,  both major and minor, in the heyday of romanticism.  Listening to Udolpho, Byron was another name that soon came to mind.

*

Radcliffe's scenery of southern France and Italy is superb, though it has some puzzles. (At the time she wrote Udolpho she had never been outside Britain, apparently.)

In her descriptions of the Pyrenees, cedars are mentioned several times (not native to mainland Europe); so are larches (not native W. of the Alps). Palms are mentioned too, growing high up on mountains - this cannot mean the shrub-size palmito, Europe's only native palm. It's clear that here as in some of her mentions of the local flora Radcliffe is using her imagination. Putting together a description of Mediterranean scenery, she uses tree-names like counters: cork-oak, cedar, chestnut, larch... The latter is also used for panelling and furniture: she mentions "black larch" several times  (I suppose this describes the finish, like the "black oak" in Waverley); I'm not perfectly convinced that she knew what a larch looked like. But other Mediterranean descriptions, e.g. of the ruddy autumnal vines in the valleys, and the sub-montane chestnuts, the fragrant thyme and other mountain herbs, the summer thunderstorms, etc. carry plenty of conviction.

In the same year that Udolpho was published, Ann and her husband finally went on their travels, but not to Gascony or the Pyrenees. She published an account of them, which is well worth a look: A journey made in the summer of 1794, through Holland to the western frontier of Germany: with a return down the Rhine: to which are added Observations during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland (online text). 

*

Scott, with the acuteness of an interested fellow-practitioner, has much to say about Radcliffe's rational and often disappointing explanations for the numerous mysteries that pepper her story. Sometimes these explanations appear so insufficient to account for the uncanny and terrifying experiences we have shared with the heroine,  as to seem like cheating.

Scott argues that the problem with Radcliffe's approach is that her novels don't bear re-reading: no-one is going to feel the thrill of Udolpho's uncertainties when they recall that the resolutions, some of them anyway, are so mundane. (I'm just finishing re-listening to Udolpho, and of course Scott is right about the mystery-elements losing their grip, but there are significant compensations.) As I argued recently, Fielding's Tom Jones is an enriched (though very different) reading experience second time around. Radcliffe's concerns are different from Fielding's. What matters in Udolpho is the initial impression, the experience of the uncanny and terrifying. The ultimate explanations are comparatively unimportant.

The sense of disappointment is perhaps less for a modern reader, who isn't likely to feel violently agitated by Radcliffe's mysteries in the first place. Speaking for myself, I didn't object much to the paltry explanations, the occasional lack of explanation (through oversight, I suppose), or even the eventual realization that the whole castle of Udolpho section has been nothing but a gigantic digression from Emily's main story-line, and that Signor Montoni once at the castle has only very fitful designs on her.

None of these things really matter. There is still plenty of real story with real distress (think of the death of St Aubert, the attempts by Montoni and Morano to bully Emily into a marriage against her will, and the more-or-less-murder of Emily's aunt).  But more interesting still than these meaty plot-lines is how Radcliffe's atmospheres and terrors are a kind of extended image of the life of any young woman under arbitrary patriarchy.

*

Radcliffe's writing abounds in often-repeated motifs and phrases.

For example, in the opening chapters  (those opening chapters that in many ways remain for me the most affecting part of the novel, up to the death of St Aubert)  we keep coming up against the idea of leaving (or parting) "perhaps for ever".  In Radcliffe's novel, such presentiments tend to be false.  [In 1857, George Eliot used "perhaps for ever" in the same way at the climactic moment of "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton" (in Scenes of Clerical Life).]

Another example, during the Venice chapters, is "to indulge one's melancholy feeling". Emily longs to be left alone in order to etc..  A page or two later, Valancourt's letter shows him doing the same at La Vallée. To "indulge" (feelings or reveries) is a very central part of Radcliffe's language.

Soon after, the peremptory Montoni says (more than once) that he is not to be trifled with. You might describe it as his catch-phrase, he says it so often. But it's rather strange to hear (not long afterwards) Emily begging a loquacious Annette not to trifle with her.

The point is that in Radcliffe's world these important motifs transcend individuals. We see that the same motifs recur throughout society. What we have to do with here is, to a surprising extent, a social novel.


*

Most people, designing a tale of terror such as Udolpho, would probably think of the master of the castle (Montoni) rapaciously pursuing his wife's pretty protégé (Emily).

That's a story-line that Radcliffe resolutely resists. She portrays Montoni as immoveable, heartless, and entirely indifferent or hostile to all women. His cutting short of old Carlo's attempts to talk about his dead wife is characteristic. He shows no sign of being attracted to Emily. He does, it turns out, have a regular mistress of his own, but that seems to be mainly a matter of drunken revels, of unspeakable things that Emily is terrified of witnessing. We have no sense of the way Montoni and his mistress might talk with each other.

For Emily, Montoni is simply the ultimate nightmare of a peremptory patriarch. Risen to a complete power over Emily that is founded on no tie of affection, nor even long acquaintance, Montoni commands her, menaces her, and otherwise demands complete silence. Most of the time she spends in the castle is spent in isolation. Most of the rest with female company.

But if Montoni's is the nakedest of tyrannies, yet it only amplifies  the normal experience of Emily and her peers. For this isolation, this world of reading, imagination and indulgence of melancholy, is essentially Emily's normal life as a dependent female writ large.  Before coming to Udolpho, she had no power outside her own room.  Travel, for example. Where, and when, and in what vehicle, and in whose company she travels: this is all determined for her by others. Even her own beloved father. Where and when she speaks to a man of her own class depends on the man approaching or summoning her. If he doesn't do either, she simply has to wait. (When Montoni orders her to attend to be married to Count Morano, Emily reflects that she can't be married if she refuses to say the words of the marriage ceremony. Such a refusal seems to her possible: Emily has an ingrained habit of silence. But the idea of simply declining to attend when summoned by Montoni is, apparently, inconceivable to her. Montoni's commands are absolute.)

At Udolpho, the disquieting second entrance into Emily's bed-chamber emphasizes that she now has no power even there. Curiously, this perception is eventually liberating. Chiefly because it brings her into closer intimacy with the irrepressible maid-servant Annette. Annette is, definitively, a talker; when Annette starts to occupy centre-stage, the reader experiences a palpable sense of relief.

*

I must talk! (Annette)

The most important of Radcliffe's repeated motifs is non-communication. We've seen one aspect of that in Montoni's tyrannous demands for silence.

The fire was now lighted; Carlo swept the hearth, placed chairs, wiped the dust from a large marble table that stood near it, and then left the room.

Montoni and his family drew round the fire. Madame Montoni made several attempts at conversation, but his sullen answers repulsed her, while Emily sat endeavouring to acquire courage enough to speak to him. At length, in a tremulous voice, she said, 'May I ask, sir, the motive of this sudden journey?'—After a long pause, she recovered sufficient courage to repeat the question.

'It does not suit me to answer enquiries,' said Montoni, 'nor does it become you to make them; time may unfold them all: but I desire I may be no further harassed, and I recommend it to you to retire to your chamber, and to endeavour to adopt a more rational conduct, than that of yielding to fancies, and to a sensibility, which, to call it by the gentlest name, is only a weakness.'

Emily rose to withdraw. 'Good night, madam,' said she to her aunt, with an assumed composure, that could not disguise her emotion.

In fact, Montoni can even command silence at a distance. Many are the whispered warnings (chiefly to the loquacious Annette) that such-and-such a piece of talk would make Montoni angry.

But non-communication is often self-imposed, too. How often do we hear such phrases as "It is unnecessary for me to add", "I need not say", "Spare me the necessity of" etc etc. You wonder if there's an element of willed non-communication in the convention that strong emotion (chiefly Emily's and Valancourt's) leads to inarticulate states of faintness and tears, resistant to coherent speech.

This reluctance or inability to say things is of course very useful to the author because it leads to mix-ups such as  Emily's written submission to M. Quesnel, or the misunderstanding with Valancourt near the end. During the latter scene, Emily shuts up Valancourt with the words:

This explanation is now unnecessary

And soon afterwards shuts herself up thus:

Spare me the necessity of mentioning those circumstances of your conduct, which oblige me to break our connection forever.

In such moments the deeply interested reader becomes simply infuriated with Emily, and maybe dismisses her words as merely Radcliffe manufacturing mysteries. (She's pretty shameless about it. Think e.g.  of the conversation between Emily and Sister Francis, where Radcliffe manages to hint that Sister Agnes might be the Marchioness de Villeroy and also that she might be a close relative of Emily: both hints being entirely unjustified.)

But I think there's much more to it. The obsessive throttling of free dialogue rings decidedly true as an essential habit of Emily's way of life, where scrupulous observation of conventions is a substitute for the power of self-determination. And where, in any case, it's an understood thing that the deepest feelings resist statement. No book lays more emphasis on feelings of delicacy, the pain of statement and the shunning of "intelligence" (i.e. conveyed information).

One specific aspect of those conventions is not talking too much to the lower orders. When the virtually imprisoned Emily has a distinctly interesting talk with the sentries on the ramparts, there's still a part of her that feels discomfort: "she thought the conversation somewhat too much". And when a day or so later she has another conversation with the friendly Antonio, she's careful to bring it to a definite close:

'I commend your prudence,' said Emily. 'Good night, and accept this from me,' she added, throwing him a small piece of coin, and then closing the casement to put an end to the discourse.

It takes a long while for Emily to trust Annette and then Ludovico openly, though they are her salvation.

The point is that Radcliffe shows us that the imposed limitations of a woman's life under patriarchy tend to become, after a while, self-imposed limitations.

Emily is, after all, extremely loyal to her first patriarch, her lovable father M. St. Aubert.  Yet in a way the book is an extended critique of his benevolent rule. That he means the best towards Emily, we know. He's earnest in trying to check her excessive sensibility to impressions. It's unsettling that Montoni frequently levels the same charge against her; doesn't this male accord raise some questions, in hindsight?  (Emily, unsurprisingly, has internalized this language of reproof and at one point orders Annette, in her own turn, not to indulge in fancies.)

(It's a surprising thing, too,  that the "bad" patriarch Montoni, sometimes acts like a good one: for example, in sending Emily away from Udolpho when a siege approaches.)

What about the rest of St Aubert's legacy? In life he has always controlled the flow of information to his daughter, and on important matters he's been extremely secretive; she has imbibed this to such an extent that she considers it quite normal and feels guilty if she ever finds anything out. Dying, he extorts from her a promise to burn papers unread, thus leaving her in an ignorance that does nothing for her peace of mind. He also places her under the protection of her aunt Mme. Cheron, which is a catastrophic error.  These are not Emily's judgments; she would be shocked by them. But the novel makes you think about it.

No sooner escaped from Udolpho, than Emily finds herself under the wing of her third patriarch, the admirable and well-meaning Count de Villefort, who does his honest best to wreck Emily's relationship with Valancourt, and to "remonstrate gently" in favour of the unfortunate M. Dupont, who's thus kept hanging on to no purpose. (The Count, even when apprised of his error, fails to learn its lesson and keeps Emily in ignorance, thus precipitating the painful though happily short-lived misunderstanding that begins the final chapter.) Again, you feel that neither Emily nor probably her creator really object to the idea of nestling under the wing of a benevolent patriarch; in fact, this is the life in which they feel most comfortable. Shakespeare's idealization of the father-daughter relationship continues to resonate particularly strongly in Radcliffe's writing. (It's only the shallow, selfish female characters - like Mme. de Cheron and the Countess de Villefort - who put up a determined resistance to patriarchy.)

Late in the book, Emily does a bit of quasi-patriarching of her own, hearing Annette (whose beloved Ludovico has just reappeared as from the dead) with "extreme impatience", and peremptorily ordering a visitor to be turned away on no other basis than her own (mistaken) assumptions.

*

As a pioneer of the mystery story Radcliffe tried out various things that subsequent authors mainly eschewed. There's a particular kind of indirection that comes out in e.g. the planet that appears each evening at the time of the music. Radcliffe sees no need to name the planet, and its behaviour doesn't sound right in the long term, though of course the recurrence of a planet at the same time of night  (-ish) is something we often experience over a period of a few days or weeks.

Similar to this is the motif of hearing a distant voice or groan, yet the text not telling us whether the voice appears to be male or female.

And the distant music where, for all the text informs us, no specific musical instrument is distinguishable. (In fact, we never learn the name of the instrument.)

This intentional cloudiness operates in unexpected ways: it transforms described experience into a subjective material. It puts us in touch with a mystery deeper than any that Radcliffe explains.

At a great distance, it's like the magical contradictions of the Kalevala:

Flee away, thou moose of Juntas,
Flee away, thou Hisi -reindeer,
Like the winds, thou rapid courser,
To the snow-homes of the ranger,
To the ridges of the mountains,
To the snow-capped hills of Lapland,

*

It wouldn't be ridiculous to claim Radcliffe as the inventor of the poetic novel. She initiated the use of poetic quotations as chapter-epigraphs, which Scott refined further. Unique to Radcliffe is the liberal use of original inset poems. At its best, as for instance in the marvellous final chapter of Udolpho (vol 4 ch 18), the patterns made by this intermixture compose a structure that we notice and contemplate, in which the narrative is only one strand. Scott at his best can do that, too.


*

Annette is a variant on the well-established literary type of a loquacious and materialistic servant, though I think Radcliffe's novel allows some questioning of that convention.

Annette's attempt to convince Emily of the ghost on the battlements by showing her the very cannon beside which it appeared, is a stock joke: the irrelevant evidence joke. It appears in Shakespeare (2H6 4.2.141 -- Cade's supposed parentage testified by a brick chimney). Dickens thought it good enough to use on the first page of Barnaby Rudge.


*

The Librivox rendering of  The Mysteries of Udolpho is a fine thing. Many readers, mostly excellent; notable work by Michelle Crandall, Martin Geeson, Anna Simon, "redabrus", Andrew Drinkwater, Lucy Burgoyne and Sheila Morton among others.

*

Stephen Gallagher's 2002 proposal for an Udolpho movie is fascinating and full of insight. Interesting to see how his proposed screenplay enhances the sexual threat of the castle, and also how he develops the character of Du Pont.

librivox splurge

I moved house. As the drive to the office is now ten minutes not five, and as I've been making a few round trips to Frome and elsewhere, I thought it was worth downloading a bunch of Librivox audiobooks. (The splurge is, of course, free.)

Here's what I've listened to so far:

Marlowe, both parts of Tamburlaine the Great. A bit of a trudge through Marlowe's incessantly mighty line. It's not the fault of the readers - David Goldfarb and a good supporting cast. It's just that the uncut text needs something more than reading aloud to spark it into dramatic life. Listening to this, you are made aware that none of the participants are in the same location, and that each has recorded their speeches separately.  (As often in my own silent readings of Tamburlaine, I found the most lively part is the digressive episode at the beginning of Part 2 when the Christians under Sigismond betray their alliance with Orcanes.)

Benito Perez Galdos, Electra.  (see other post)  Here's proof that Librivox readings of plays can be very involving indeed. This is a proper performance. Brilliant production, recommended.

Balzac, Eugenie Grandet.  Absolutely wonderful. (I'd read it before, but a very long time ago). I am now at the age when everything in Balzac at last makes sense. Well, perhaps not all the financial details: I still don't entirely grasp how Grandet makes such a good thing of his brother's bankruptcy. The story (with its infinitely slow opening chapter) has me wide-eyed and gripped: it all seems real and unexpected, as if described events unfolding within my own family circle. Terrific reading by the great Bruce Pirie. (The only thing I'd comment on is that he somehow makes me really take to old Grandet, even in the face of all his selfishness, self-interest and tyranny.)  

Dostoyevsky, The Gambler - Good reading (mostly by Bill Boerst) - the book is entertaining and empty-headed. Doesn't really make me want to go back to this author whose books I so devoured as a teenager, though I realize The Gambler is not by any means a fair sample.

Chekhov The Lady with the Dog and other stories. A surprisingly disappointing experience. I'm a massive fan of Chekhov's short stories, but listening to these one after another doesn't show them off to best advantage. The downbeat endings tend to come as shocks or mere stops; unable to see the page, I had little sense of them arriving. And then there was no opportunity to reflect, to look back over the text and to admire the artistry: instead, I was straight off on another jaunt to some usually inconclusive destination. The details blur. The doctor who doesn't marry the pianist. The kiss on the theatre stairs. The pistol-shot. The jealous husband at the army dance.

Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Here's an author who is really new to me - at least, I've never read any of her books, though I imagined I knew something about them, I supposed I could "place" her. Now, all my thoughts are being revised. "Love the scenery of S. France  - the author must have remembered her travels well"; so I comment at this early stage.   (I was still near the beginning of vol 2). I've since discovered that she had never been on any travels. Her only trip abroad, later in life, was to Belgium.