The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance

  CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.

  In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking thecirculating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloaknovels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twentyyears later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lostfrom all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-bookthe "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, themysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in theintroductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes inreview the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to besupplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:

  "Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited, and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps about the middle of the second volume were doomed to guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title page? and could it have been possible to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's _fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds means of transporting from castle to cottage, though she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a two-pair-of-stairs window and is more than once bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without any guide but a blowsy peasant girl, whose jargon she can scarcely understand? Or again, if my _Waverley_ had been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal ... a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow Street Office?"

  Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths ofromance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refersto "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the styleof _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters andsupernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment ofthe story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, areprinted as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base hisstory on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discoveryof Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas ofHercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by amysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a longrange of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and byevery horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn swordin his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out ofmarble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like thehalls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancienttable, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage,warning him that much depended upon his first choosing either thehorn or the sword. Dick, whose stout heart quailed before thesupernatural terrors of the hall, attempted to blow the hornbefore unsheathing the sword. At the first feeble blast thewarriors and their steeds started to life, the knights fiercelybrandishing their weapons and clashing their armour. Dick made afruitless attempt to snatch the sword. After a mysterious voicehad pronounced his doom he was hurled out of the hall by awhirlwind of irresistible fury. He told his story to theshepherds, who found him dying on the cold hill side.

  Regarding this legend as "an unhappy foundation for a prosestory," Scott did not complete his fragment, which in style andtreatment is not unlike the Gothic experiments of Mrs. Barbauldand Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn andsword might have been told in the simple words that occurnaturally to a shepherd, "warmed to courage over his thirdtumbler," like the old peasant to whom Stevenson entrusts theterrible tale of _Thrawn Janet_, or to Wandering Willie, whodeclared:

  "I whiles mak a tale serve the turn among the country bodies, and I have some fearsome anes, that mak the auld carlines shake on the settle, and bits o' bairns skirl on their minnies out frae their beds."

  The personality of the narrator, swayed by the terror of histale, would have cast the spell that Scott's carefully framedsentences fail to create. Another of Scott's _disjecta membra_,composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening ofa story called _The Lord of Ennerdale_, in which the family ofRatcliffe settle down before the fire to listen to a story"savouring not a little of the marvellous." As Lady Ratcliffe andher daughters

  "had heard every groan and lifted every trapdoor in company with the noted heroine of Udolpho, had valorously mounted _en croupe_ behind the horseman of Prague through all his seven translators, had followed the footsteps of Moor through the forests of Bohemia,"

  and were even suspected of an acquaintance with Lewis's _Monk_,Scott was setting himself no easy task when he undertook tothrill these seasoned adventurers. After this prologue, whichleads one to expect a banquet of horrors, only a very brieffragment of the story is forthcoming. Though he gently deridesLady Ratcliffe's literary tastes, Scott, too, was an admirer ofMrs. Radcliffe's novels, and had been so entranced by Burger's_Lenore_ that he attempted an English version.[111] It was afterhearing Taylor's translation of this ballad read aloud that heuttered his dismal ejaculation: "I wish to heaven I could get askull and two crossbones"--a whim that was speedily gratified.He, too, like Lady Ratcliffe, had read _Die Raeuber_; and hetranslated Goethe's _Getz von Berlichingen_. He delighted inLewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops throughhorrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblindramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, asLewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latincall-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis orHarrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of thedead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually addedto his store of quaint and grisly learning both from populartradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the nameof the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and thehorse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History ofApparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He wasfamiliar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he coulddistinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demonsand spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactlyhow a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him ingood stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology andWitchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectralworld. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life heconfessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, whichwas said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, andonce when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way homein the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaksof the supernatural. He
was interested in tracing the sources ofterror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.

  The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:

  "Ghosts should not appear too often or become too chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is not capable of endowing with manners and language corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps, to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret mode of securing a certain necessary degree of credulity from the hearers of a ghost story... The chord which vibrates and sounds at a touch remains in silent tension under continued pressure."[113]

  Scott's ghost story, _The Tapestried Chamber, or the Lady in theSacque_[114] which he heard from Miss Anna Seward, who had anunexpected gift for recounting such things at country houseparties, gives the impression of being carefully plannedaccording to rule. As a human being the Lady in the Sacque had ablack record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, hermanners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer'sindependence of character are so firmly insisted upon that itseems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. _My AuntMargaret's Mirror_ was told to Scott in childhood by an ancientspinster, whose pleasing fancy it was to read alone in herchamber by the light of a taper fixed in a candlestick which shehad formed out of a human skull, and who was learned insuperstitious lore. She describes accurately the mood, when "thefemale imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story":

  "All that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the milder feeling of supernatural awe is that you should be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps over you when you hear a tale of terror--that well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary lore, selects and produces, as having something in it which he has been always obliged to give up as inexplicable. Another symptom is a momentary hesitation to look round you, when the interest of the narrative is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your chamber, for the evening."[115]

  In her story "Aunt Margaret" describes how, in a magic mirrorbelonging to Dr. Baptista Damiotti, Lady Bothwell and her sisterLady Forester see the wedding ceremony of Sir Philip Forester anda young girl in a foreign city interrupted by Lady Forester'sbrother, who is slain in the duel that ensues. Scott regardedthese two stories as trifles designed to while away a leisurehour. On _Wandering Willie's Tale_--a masterpiece of supernaturalterror--he bestowed unusual care. The ill fa'urd, fearsomecouple--Sir Robert with his face "gash and ghastly as Satan's,"and "Major Weir," the jackanape, in his red-laced coat andwig--Steenie's eerie encounter with the "stranger" on horseback,the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described sofaithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willieshould remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I wasthere mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." Thepower of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end andwhich can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, dependspartly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on theemotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, healways uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses thosedetails that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of hisscenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue of thespeakers. He begins in a tone of calm, unhurried narration, withonly a hint of fear in his voice, but, at the death of SirRobert, grows breathless with horror and excitement. The uncannyincident of the silver whistle that sounds from the dead man'schamber is skilfully followed by a matter-of-fact account ofSteenie's dealings with the new laird. The emotion culminates inthe terror of the hall of ghastly revellers, whose wild shrieks"made Willie's gudesire's very nails grow blue and chilled themarrow in his banes." So lifelike is the scene, so full of colourand movement, that Steenie's descendants might well believe thattheir gudesire, like Dante, had seen Hell.

  The notes, introductions and appendices to Scott's works arestored with material for novels of terror. The notes to_Marmion_, for instance, contain references to a necromanticpriest whose story "much resembles that of Ambrosio in the_Monk_," to an "Elfin" warrior and to a chest of treasurejealously guarded for a century by the Devil in the likeness of ahuntsman. In _The Lady of the Lake_ there is a note on theancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in _Rokeby_ there is anallusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse fromharbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poemsor his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, butthe imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the naturalbaseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs intothe kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _TheMonastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawnin the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:

  "The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed either the power or the inclination to do more than inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always subjected by those mortals who ... could assert superiority over her."

  The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided hiswraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios ofwhat is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggestedby the Undine of De La Motte Fouque. In his next novel, _TheFortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and themagical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum ofTedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watchin the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightlyfrom his imagination. Apparitions--such as the Bodach Glas whowarns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in _Waverley_, orthe wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on thebattlefield in _The Legend of Montrose_--had appeared in hisearlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In _TheBride of Lammermoor_--the only one of Scott's novels which mightfitly be called a "tale of terror"--the atmosphere of horror andthe sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our mindsfor the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears tothe master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressive. Buteven more terrible is the description of the three hags layingout her corpse. The appearance of Vanda with the Bloody Finger inthe haunted chamber of the Saxon manor in _The Betrothed_ isskilfully arranged, and Eveline's terror is described withconvincing reality. In _Woodstock_, Scott adopted the method ofexplaining away the apparently supernatural, although in his_Lives of the Novelists_ he expressly disapproves of what hecalls the "precaution of Snug the joiner." Charged by Ballantynewith imitating Mrs. Radcliffe, Scott defended himself byasserting:

  "My object is not to excite fear of supernatural things in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents of the story--one a man in sense and firmness, one a man unhinged by remorse, one a stupid, unenquiring clown, one a learned and worthy but superstitious divine."[116]

  As Scott in his introduction quotes the passage from a treatiseentitled _The Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_,which reveals that the mysteries were performed by one JosephCollins with the aid of two friends, a concealed trap-door and apound of gunpowder, he cannot justly be accused of deceiving hisreaders. There are suggestions of Mrs. Radcliffe's method inothers of his novels. In _The Antiquary_, before Lovel retires tothe Green Room at Monkbar, he is warned by Miss Griselda Oldbuckof a "well-fa'urd auld gentleman in a queer old-fashioned dresswith whiskers turned upward on his upper lip as long asbaudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls intoan uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled tosee a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the"well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In _OldMortality_, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for hisapparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might havedone. In _Peveril of the Peak_, Fenella's com
munications with thehero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of aspirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain,who appears in _Marmion_ and _Rokeby_, may be distinguished byhis scowl, his passion-lined face and gleaming eye. Rashleigh, in_Rob Roy_, who, understanding Greek, Latin and Hebrew, "need notcare for ghaist or barghaist, devil or dobbie," and whosesequestered apartment the servants durst not approach atnightfall for "fear of bogles and brownies and lang-nebbit thingsfrae the neist world," is of the same lineage. Sir RobertRedgauntlet, too, might have stepped out of one of Mrs.Radcliffe's romances. His niece is not unlike one of herheroines. She speaks in the very accents of Emily when she says:

  "Now I have still so much of our family spirit as enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my sex, and upon two occasions in the course of our journey--a threatened attack by banditti, and the overturn of our carriage--I had the fortune so to conduct myself as to convey to my uncle a very favourable idea of my intrepidity."

  Jeanie Deans, the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn ofScott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine ofromance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrinkinto insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual lifeportrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises,vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by amotley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow withsensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folklike "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty andPeter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our ownworld. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting andsubstantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some ofScott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiomof simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keenwinds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world onlyfill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance outof the stuff of real life.