Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (351 page)

These remarks apply, in their fullest effect, only to “
The Mysteries of Udolpho
,” and “
The ïtalian
in which alone the chief peculiarities of Mrs. Radcliffe’s genius are decidedly marked. In her first work, “
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
” it is scarcely possible to discover their germ. Its scene is laid “ in the most romantic part of the Highlands of Scotland,” yet it is without local truth or striking picture. It is at once extravagant and cold. Except one scene, where the Earl of Athlin pursues two strangers through the vaults of his castle, and is stabbed by one of them in the darkness, nothing is delineated; but incredible events foliow each other in quick succession, without any attempt to realize them. Those, who complain of the minuteness of Mrs. Radcliffe’s descriptions, should read this work, where every thing passes with headlong rapidity, and be convinced of their error. In some few instances, perhaps, in “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” the descriptions of external scenery may occur too often; but her best style is essentially pictorial; and a slow development of events was, therefore, necessary to her success.

The “
Sicilian Romance
” is a work of much more “mark and likelihood and, very soon after its first appearance, attracted a considerable share of public attention. Here the softer blandishments of our author’s style, which were scarcely perceptible in her first production, were spread forth to captivate the fancy. Transported to the “sweet south,” her genius, which had shrunk in the bleak, atmosphère of Scotland, caught the luxurious spirit of a happier clime. Never was a title more justly applied than to this romance; it reminds the reader of “Sicilian fruitfulness.” In tender and luxurious description of natural scenery, it is surpassed by none of Mrs. Radcliffe’’s productions. The flight of her heroine is like a strain of “lengthened sweetness long drawn out — as one series of delicious valleys opens on us after another; and the purple light of love is shed over all. Still she had not yet acquired a mastery over her own power of presenting terrific incidents and scenes to the eye of the mind, and awakening the throbs of suspense by mysterious suggestions. The light seen through the closed windows of the deserted rooms — the confession of Vincent stopped by death — the groans heard from beneath Ferdinands prison — and the figure perceived stealing among the vaults, are not introduced with sufficient earnestness, and lose all claim to belief, by the utter incredibility of the incidents, with which they are surrounded. Escapes, recaptions, encounters with fathers and banditti, surprising partings, and more surprising meetings, follow each other as quickly as the changes of a pantomime, and with almost as little of intelligible connexion. One example may suffice. — Hippolitus enters a ruin by moonlight, for shelter; hears a voice as of a person in agony; sees, through a shattered casement, a group of banditti plundering a man, who turns out to be Ferdinand, his intended brother-in-law; finds himself, he knows not how, in a vault; hears a scream from an inner apartment; bursts open the door and discovers a lady fainting, whom he recognizes as his mistress; overhears a quarrel and combat for the lady between two of the banditti, which ends in the death of one of them; fights with the survivor, and kills him; endeavours to escape with Julia; finds his way into a “dark abyss,” which is no other than the burial-place of the victims of the banditti, marked with graves, and strewed with unburied carcases; climbs to a grate, and witnesses a combat between the robbers and officers of justice; escapes with the lady through a secret door into the forest, where they are pursued by her father’s party; but, while he fights at the mouth of a cavern, she loses her way in its recesses, tili they actually conduct her to the dungeon where her mother, who had been considered dead for fifteen years, is imprisoned; — and all this in a few pages! There are, in this short story, incidents enough for two such works as “ The Mysteries of Udolpho,” where, as in that great romance, they should not only be told, but painted; and where reality and grandeur should be given to their terrors.

In “
The Romance of the Forest
,” Mrs. Radcliffe, who, since the dawn of her powers, had been as one “moving about in worlds unrealized,” first exhibited the faculty of controlling and fîxing the wild images which floated around her, and of stamping on them the impress of consistency and truth. This work is, as a whole, the most faultless of all her productions; but it is of an inferior order to “The Mysteries of Udolpho” and “ The Italian and can only be preferred by those, who think the absence of error of more importance than original excellence. There is a just proportion between all its parts; its mysteries are adequately explained; it excites and gratifies a very pleasant degree of curiosity; but it does not seem to dilate the imagination, nor does it curdle the blood. Its opening after a sentence of marvellous commonplace, is striking; the midnight journey of La Motte and his family they know not whither, and the introduction of the heroine, under extraordinary circumstances, to their care, rivet attention to all that is to follow. The scenes in the forest where they take up their abode are charming. This seems the most delicious asylum for the persecuted outlaw; its wood-walks and glades glisten before us with the morning dew; and there is something in the idea of finding a home in a deserted abbey, which answers to some of the wildest dreams of childhood, and innocently gratifies that partiality for unlicensed pleasure, or repose, which is so natural to the heart. The whole adventure of La Motte and the Marquis is sufficiently probable and interesting; and the influence, which it ultimately enables the more resolute villain to exercise over the weaker, is managed with peculiar skill, and turned to great account in the progress of the story. There is here scarcely any hint of the supernatural; but the skeleton in the chest of the vaulted chamber; the dagger, spotted with rust; the manuscript of the prisoner, which Adeline reads by the fitful light of her lamp, and which proves to be written by her own father, possess us with the apprehension of some secret crime, which acquires importance from its circumstances and its mystery. There are some highly-finished scenes; as that where Adeline, in her solitary chamber, dares not raise her eyes to her glass, lest another face than her own should meet them; her escape with a man whom she supposes to be the servant she had trusted, and who startles her with a strange voice; the luxurious pavilion of the Marquis, to which we are introduced after afrightful journey through a storm; and, above ail, the conversation, in which the Marquis, after a seriés of dark solicitations, understood by La Motte, as pointing to Adeline’s dishonour, proposes her death. This last, as a piece of dramatic effect, is perhaps equal to any passage in the author’s works. The closing chapters of the work are inferior in themselves to its commencement; but they gratify by affording a worthy solution of the intricacies of a plot, which has excited so deep an interest in its progress.

“
The Mysteries of Udolpho
” is by far the most popular of Mrs. Radcliffe’s works. To this preeminence it is, we think, justly entitled; for, although “
The Italian
” may display more purely intellectual power, it is far less enchanting. Of ail the romances in the world, this is perhaps the most romantic. Its outline is noble, it is fîlled with majestic or beautiful imagery; and it is touched throughout with a dreamy softness, which harmonizes all its scenes, and renders its fascination irrésistible. It rises from the gentlest beauty by just gradations to the terrific and the sublime. Nothing can be fancied more soothing to the mind, fevered with the bustle of the world, than the picture of domestic repose, with which it opens. We are dwellers in the home of the good St. Aubert, who has retired to a beautiful spot, once the favourite scene of his youthful excursions; and sharers in its elegant and tranquil pleasures. Next come the exquisite journey of the father and daughter through the heart of the Pyrenees, where we trace out every variety of mountain grandeur; the richly-coloured scene of vintage gaiety among the woods of the chateau; and the death of St. Aubert in the neighbourhood of a place, which we und erstand to be connected with his destiny, and where strains of unearthly music are heard in sad accordance with human sorrow. When Emily’s aunt, to whose care she is consigned, marries the desperate Montoni, we feel that the clouds are gathering round her progress, and we shudder at the forebodings of approaching péril. A little interval is given among the luxuries of Venice, which are painted with exquisite delicacy and lightness; and then the work of terror begins. Nothing can be more picturesque than the ascent of the Apennines; mountain seems to rise above mountain in gloomy stateliness before us, tili we skirt the inmost valley, far shut out from the world, and Montoni, breaking a long silence, utters the charmed words, “There is Udolpho!” The ideas of extent, of massiveness, and austere grandeur, conveyed in the description of the castle, have matchless force and distinctness, and prepare the mind for the crimes and wonders, of which it is the silent witness. Every thing beneath “these dark battlements” is awful; the slightest incidents wear a solemn hue, and “Fate in sullen echoes” seems to “tell of some nameless deed.” Not only the mysterious appearances and sounds appal us, but the rushing wind, a rustling curtain, the lonely watchword on the terrace, have power to startle, and keep curiosity awake. The whole persecution and death of Madame Montoni seem prodigious, as though they were something out of nature; yet they derive ali this importance from the circumstances, with which they are invested; for there is nothing extraordinary in the fate of a despicable woman, worried into the grave by her husband, because she will not give up her settlement. The mysteries of Chateau le Blanc are less majestic than those of Udolpho, but perhaps they are even more touching; at least, the visit of Emily to the chamber where the Marchioness died, twenty years before, not without suspicion of poison, and which had been shut up ever since, is most affecting and fearful. The faded magnificence of the vast apartment; the black pall lying on the bed, as when it decked the corpse; the robe and articles of dress remaining as they had been carelessly scattered in the lifetime of their owner; her veil, which hand had never approached since, now dropping into pieces; her lute on the table, as it was touched on the evening of her death; would be solemn and spectral, even if the pall did not move and a face arise from beneath it. This scene derives a tenderer interest from the strange likeness, which Emily seems to bear to the deceased lady, and which is artfully heightened by the action of the old housekeeper throwing the black veil over her, and by her touching the long-neglected lute. Such are some among the many striking features of this romance; its defects are great and obvious. Its mysteries are not only resolved into natural causes, but are explained by circumstances provokingly trivial. What reader would bear to be told that the black veil, from which his imagination has scarcely been allowed to turn for three volumes, conceals a waxen image; that the wild music, which has chanced to float on the air, in all the awful pauses of action, proceeded from an insane nun, permitted to wander about the woods; and that the words, which startled Montoni and his friends, at their guilty carousals, were uttered by a man wandering through a secret passage almost without motive; unless the power and sweetness of the spell remained after it was thus rudely broken?

“
The Italian
” has more unity of plan than “The Mysteries of Uldopho and its pictures are more individual and distinct; but it has far less tenderness and beauty. Its very introduction, unlike the gentle opening of the former romance, impresses the reader with awe. Its chief agent, Schedoni, is most vividly painted; and yet the author contrives to invest him with a mystery, which leads us to believe, that even her image is inadequate to the reality. Up to the period, at which he unnaturally melts from demon to man, he is the always chief figure when he is present; and, where we do not see him, his spirit yet seems to influence all around us. The great scenes of this romance stand out in bold relief as in compartments; of which the chief are the adventures in the vaults of Pallozzi; the machinations of Schedoni and the Marchioness, for the destruction of the heroine; her confinement in the monastery of San Stephano, and her escape with Vivaldi; her terrible sojourn in Spalatro’s cottage on the seashore; and the whole representation of the Inquisition, which fills the mind when Schedoni’ s supremacy ceases. Of these, perhaps the very finest is the scene in the church, where the Confessor makes palpable to the Marchioness the secret wishes of her heart for Ellena’s death: the situation is essentially fearful; and all the circumstances are contrived with admirable effect to heighten, vary and prolong the feeling of curiosity and terror. The dreary horrors of the fisherman’s cottage are admirably painted; but the effort to produce a great theatrical effect is very imperfectly concealed; and we cannot help being somewhat dissatisfied with the process of bringing a helpless orphan to such a distance, merely that she may be murdered with éclat; with the equally unaccountable delay in performing the deed; the strange relentings of the ruffian; and the long preparation, which precedes the attempt of Schedoni to strike the fatal blow. There is great art in the scene, to which all this is introductory; and the discovery of the portrait is a most striking
coup de theatre;
but the art is too palpable, and the contrast between the assassin and the father too violent — at least, for a second perusal. Not so, the graphic description of the vast prisons of the Inquisition; they are dim, prodigious, apparently eternal; and the style is solemn and weighty as the subject. Mrs. Radcliffe alone could have deepened the horror of this gloom by whispers of things yet more terrible; and suggest fears of the unseen, which should overcome the present apprehensions of bodily torture.

Of the tale and the poems now first presented to the world, it would scarcely become us particularly to speak. The verses, scattered through ail the romances, are so inartificially introduced, that they have little chance of being estimated by an impatient reader; but, when examined, they will be found replete with felicitous expression and with rich though indistinct imagery.