Some time, however, after this disappearance of Melmoth, unexpected events again throw these ill-fated lovers together. Donna Clara receives a letter from her husband, who has landed in Spain and is slowly making his way homewards, to the effect that he intends to bring with him the destined bridegroom of Isidora, a Spanish nobleman called Montilla. Isidora learns this piece of news with great despair—but the same night Melmoth reappears beneath her balcony. Isidora assures him that she will be the bride of the grave rather than of Montilla, and that her love is unaltered; whereupon Melmoth, ‘bringing out the words with difficulty,’ proposes that she should be ready to wed him the following night. She consents, and the scheme is carried out in a scene which has been called one of the greatest in the book[139] and which indeed is saturated with the keenest suspense. The episode is typically ‘Gothic;’ it is like a ballad of Lenore in prose. In the darkness they set out and travel with supernatural rapidity towards a neighbouring mountain where, Melmoth informs Isidora, a holy hermit is dwelling near a ruinous monastery. Arriving at a mountain river they hear foot-steps pursuing them, and a figure is indistinctly seen approaching. After a short struggle the pursuer, whom Isidora, by his voice, recognizes to be an ancient domestic of the family, is flung into the river. The lovers continue their way and Isidora is dragged up into the ruins, where a hand places hers into that of Melmoth. Almost unconscious as she is from terror, she feels the hand to be cold as death; and afterwards it is discovered that the hermit really had died the previous night. This is one of the few supernatural incidents in the story that does not directly relate to the personality of Melmoth.—The same night Donna Clara and the priest sit brooding over a new letter from Aliaga, in which he hints at some terrible and mysterious tidings he has learned—it appears later that he has met Melmoth, who, beset by pangs of conscience, has warned him that his daughter is in danger. They are roused by a noise in the house, and discover that Isidora’s casement is open and her room empty. Her mother passes the night in frantic anxiety, but in the morning Isidora is found sleeping heavily in her bed. What has happened to her nothing can induce her to disclose, and Donna Clara and the priest prudently determine also to keep the matter secret. It takes Aliaga rather a long time to get home, in spite of the warning he has received. In the meantime Melmoth keeps on visiting his wife, but cannot be prevailed upon to appear before the family. Otherwise his tenderness towards Isidora increases, as there is evidence of her becoming a mother. The night before the event is expected to take place, Melmoth has the news that her father and Montilla will arrive that very day, and in the evening a great masquerade is to be held in honour of the betrothed. Melmoth promises to be there at midnight to take her away. The news appears to be true, and Isidora is forced to take part in the feast. The costume of the time fortunately conceals her altered figure, as the mask covers her pale and haggard countenance. When the clock strikes twelve Melmoth is beside her. They prepare to leave the assembly, but are detected by Don Fernan, who steps into their way. A fight ensues which ends with the death of Don Fernan, whereat the dreaded figure of Melmoth the Wanderer is disclosed to all the guests, some of whom recognize him with a terror unspeakable. Isidora throws herself upon the corpse of her brother, and Melmoth departs alone and unmolested, nobody daring to lift a hand against him. The house is rapidly deserted and its horrified inmates left alone. The same night Isidora is delivered of a daughter, and, on admitting that she is married to Melmoth, conveyed into the prison of the Inquisition. Her parents shortly afterwards die of grief, but the good priest is allowed to visit her, and to him she makes a full confession of her marriage. The Holy Office condemns her to lifelong imprisonment, but she dies, after having strangled her child when the officials have come to take it from her. Before expiring she yet confesses to Fra Jose that Melmoth has been with her in the prison and offered to effect her liberation on a fearful and unutterable condition. With her last strength she has rejected it, although her love for him is unabated.—
The end of the Tale of the Indians calls for a few remarks from a logical point of view—if logic is to be applied to a composition like this. It never becomes quite clear why Melmoth brings Isidora back to her home after their wedding, all the world being open to him; nor it is easy to understand why he should delay the second elopement until the house is full of guests and the disappearance of Isidora most difficult to bring about. As he, after the failure of this enterprise, completely loses his human character and only appears in that of the tempter, it might be inferred that Isidora’s last calamity is of his own contrivance; but this, again, is contradicted by what he says after the duel with Don Fernan: ‘Would that breathless fool had yielded to my bidding, not to my sword—there was but one human chord that vibrated in my heart—it is broken to-night, and for ever!’ Those critics that derided the clumsiness with which the schemes of Melmoth are, in general, executed, were not entirely wrong in this instance; the lack of plausibility in these incidents—the supernatural power of Melmoth once taken for granted—is here of a character injurious to the tale as a work of art.—In the descriptions of everyday life in Aliaga’s house Maturin does not give of his best, in spite of his having recourse to his humorous vein. The personages themselves are depicted in rather a conventional fashion, and the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of Donna Clara, and the confessor’s excessive fondness for food and drink, can bear no comparison with the humorous passages in Women. Only the characterization of Isidora is carried out with the same unfailing power to the very last.
The end of the Tale of the Indians, especially the unravelling of the plot, contains, no doubt, some hints from Goethe’s Faust.[140] The parallels are but details of secondary importance, yet too distinct to be quite overlooked. Margarete and Isidora are equally anxious about their respective lovers’ relations to church and religion, and propose the same questions to them. Margarete:
Nun sag, wie hast du’s mit der Religion?
— — — — — —
Du ehrst auch nicht die heil’gen Sacramente.
— — — — — —
Zur Messe, zur Beichte bist du lange nicht gegangen.
Isidora expresses her fear that Melmoth does not believe in what the Holy Church requires, and asks, further: ‘Do you ever visit the church? — — Do you ever receive the Holy Sacrament?’—Faust fights a duel with Margarete’s brother under similar circumstances and with the same consequence as Melmoth with Don Fernan; Margareta, like Isidora, dies in prison, after having put her child to death in a state of partial insanity, and both refuse to follow their lovers out of the prison.—With Mephistopheles, Melmoth has in common the power of arresting, with a look, the hands raised to seize him.
The Tale of the Indians is once interrupted by two other tales of considerable length. While Aliaga is travelling homeward he passes a night at a wretched inn, where a fellow-traveller reads to him the Tale of Guzman’s Family, to the following effect.
Guzman is an old merchant of Seville, who has made an enormous fortune out of nothing, and risen from an obscure birth to a position of respect. As he lives alone, the question of his eventual heirs excites much curiosity; his circumstances are carefully investigated, and it is discovered that he has a sister in life. This sister has, in early youth, married a German musician of the name of Walberg, turned a Protestant, been rejected by her brother, and since then lived in Germany. This appears to be true; for once when Guzman is seized with a dangerous illness and even given over by his physicians, he remembers his sister and sends for the family of Walberg, that he might be reconciled to his only relatives. At the same time he alters his will in favour of the family. Contrary to all expectation, he recovers before they arrive, yet the will remains as he has fixed it, in spite of the efforts of the priests to have it cancelled.[141] The only point in which Guzman accedes to their representations, is that he determines to refrain from all personal intercourse with his heretical relations. This intelligence is brought to the family, at their arrival in Seville, by Guzman’s confessor, who acts as his agent and afterwards proves to be a man of kindness and honour. The family consists of Walberg, his wife Ines, and four children; later they are joined by Walberg’s aged parents, whom he has summoned from Germany to pass the remainder of their life with them. Sinister forebodings fill the mind of Ines when she learns her brother’s resolution never to see her or any member of the family. As they are, however, amply provided for and generally considered the sole heirs of Guzman, the displeasing resolution makes but a slight impression on Walberg, who will not listen to his wife’s advice that the children should be taught some profession. So they live on in ease and comfort, until Guzman dies—and then it is announced that he has left everything to the church. This a blow that completely changes the conditions of the family; their fine house is sold, and they move into a humble abode in the suburbs, where Ines and her daughter once more resume the domestic duties. The good priest, who feels certain that a fraud has been committed, does everything in his power to help them. Through his means the matter is brought to legal arbitration, but though the best advocates are resorted to, Walberg loses the case. The family is gradually plunged deeper and deeper into misery, and soon hovers on the brink of starvation. Being strangers and heretics they can obtain no work, but are solely reduced to what the children can get together by begging. The eldest son, Everhard, hits upon the expedient of selling some of his blood to a surgeon, and well-nigh expires; the daughters are beginning to be accosted by strangers in the street; the old grandmother dies for want of food, and the grandfather loses his reason from the same cause. When the family has been reduced to this stage of wretchedness, Walberg, every night he goes out to supplicate relief from passers-by, is addressed by a stranger,
a middle-aged man, of a serious and staid demeanour, and with nothing remarkable in his aspect except the light of two burning eyes, whose lustre is almost intolerable. He fixes them on me sometimes, and I feel as if there was fascination in their glare. Every night he besets me, and few like me could have resisted his seductions. He has offered, and proved to me, that it is in his power to bestow all that human cupidity could thirst for, on the condition that—I cannot utter! It is one so full of horror and impiety, that even to listen to it, is scarce less a crime than to comply with it!
The same night Walberg relates this to his wife, he is seized with a fit of insanity and proceeds to kill his children, when, at the last moment, the priest enters with the news that the right will is found and the family once more the heirs of Guzman. In a short time they are restored to health—even the grandfather recovers his reason before he dies—and the tale ends happily:
The family then set out for Germany, where they reside in prosperous felicity;—but to this hour Walberg shudders with horror when he recalls the fearful temptations of the stranger, whom he met in the nightly wanderings in the hour of his adversity, and the horror of this visitation appears to oppress his recollection more than even the images of his family perishing with want.—
That Godwin’s St. Leon makes itself remembered also in connection with the Tale of Guzman’s Family, is chiefly due to its being, upon the whole, the book which Melmoth probably is most indebted to. St. Leon is, no doubt, several times plunged into great poverty which he tries to bear as best he can, with the assistance of a brave and faithful wife and good and amiable children; but a detailed comparison would show little else than that these scenes, in Godwin, are dull and powerless, whereas Maturin’s story is just the reverse. So far from considering the Tale of Guzman’s Family an imitation, one would rather be inclined to imagine that it has sprung from personal recollections. Both in his father’s home and his own, Maturin had seen ease and affluence replaced by penury and want. The situation into which the family of Walberg is reduced—which leads to death and insanity—was, of course, extreme beyond anything in Maturin’s experience, and a product of furious and unrestrained imagination; but the first intimations of disappearing wealth are brought forth with a force and accuracy quite convincing, and among the best pages in the tale are those treating of the horrible suspense in which the family lives from the moment of Guzman’s death till the publication of his will. Yet another circumstance would go to show that the Tale of Guzman’s Family had no need of literary models. In the preface to Melmoth the Wanderer Maturin states that ‘the original from which the wife of Walberg is imperfectly sketched is a living woman, and long may she live;’ whence it is not unnatural to infer that it is his own wife he is describing. So the phrase seems to have been understood by the critic in the London Magazine 1821, who adds that he would be inclined to drop his pen and ‘weep over the misfortunes of a man of genius, instead of scrutinizing his errors.’ The picture which Maturin draws of the wife of Walberg is beautiful indeed. She is the good genius of her family, as prudent as she is gentle. She is secretly saving when her husband only thinks of spending; when he is seized with despair, she heroically tries to encourage him. She starves gladly herself, as long as there is a morsel left for her children and for the aged parents of her husband; and when he is beset by the tempter, she exerts her last energy to support him. The wife of Walberg is one of the incarnations of the idea of the superior moral strength of woman, so often recurring in Maturin’s works, and there is no reason to doubt that this idea originated in the partner of his life.—Another figure worthy of particular notice is the priest, with whom Maturin makes full amends for the attacks he delivers, in Melmoth, upon the dignitaries of the Catholic church. The confessor in the Tale of the Indians is too much of a buffoon to be taken seriously, but here, at last, is a Catholic prelate to whom the interests of humanity are more than those of the church, and who is ready to expose the crimes of his own colleagues in order to save the life of a heretical family.
The style of writing, in this tale, is hardly so fine as in the next one, although there are passages extremely characteristic of Maturin. He was the only one of the ‘terrific’ writers of the time capable of purely aesthetical enjoyment, almost perverse, from scenes of bodily suffering. The description of the boy who has been selling his blood to a surgeon could have been made by no one else:
The moonlight fell strongly through the unshuttered windows on the wretched closet that just contained the bed. Its furniture was sufficiently scanty, and in his spasms Everhard had thrown off the sheet. So he lay, as Ines approached his bed, in a kind of corse-like beauty, to which the light of the moon gave an effect that would have rendered the figure worthy of the pencil of a Murillo, a Rosa, or any of those painters, who, inspired by the genius of suffering, delight in representing the most exquisite of human forms in the extremity of human agony. A St. Bartholomew flayed, with his skin hanging about him in graceful drapery—a St. Laurence, broiled on a gridiron, and exhibiting his finely-formed anatomy on its bars, while naked slaves are blowing the coals beneath it,—even this were inferior to the form half-veiled, half-disclosed by the moonlight as it lay. The snow-white limbs of Everhard were extended as if for the inspection of a sculptor, and moveless, as if they were indeed what they resembled, in hue and symmetry, those of a marble statue. His arms were tossed above his head and the blood was trickling fast from the opened veins of both,—his bright and curled hair was clotted with the red stream that flowed from his arms,—his lips were blue, and a faint and fainter moan issued from them as his mother hung over him.
All the personages actually appearing in the Tale of Guzman’s Family are good and noble; there is no display of revolting crimes or depraved characters, and horrible and even disgusting as are the sufferings of the family, the tale has little to do with the school of terror. The fact, moreover, of its being the only one that is brought to a happy ending, probably made it a favourite with readers. An admiring critic in Blackwood’s Magazine[142] says that this tale, before all others, shows ‘what Mr. Maturin is capable of doing in his best moments of inspiration.’
Shortly after the stranger has read to Aliaga the tale related above, Melmoth himself appears at the inn. He causes—in a way unexplained—the death of the stranger who has dared to investigate into his achievements, and the next day associates himself with Aliaga. The merchant is not at all charmed with his obtrusive companion, but cannot well get rid of him; and as they slowly ride onward, Melmoth narrates what is called The Lovers’ Tale.[143]
This time Spain is left behind, and the reader is conducted to the England of the Restoration. The tale opens with a short chronicle of the fortunes of the Mortimer family, one of the oldest and noblest in the kingdom. At the time of Charles the First the then head of the house, Sir Roger Mortimer, ‘a man lofty alike in pride and in principle,’ distinguishes himself as one of the most fervent supporters of the royal cause. After the defeat of the monarch he is subjected to the reprisals, in form of fines and sequestrations, of the victorious rebels, in addition to which his domestic felicity is completely destroyed. His eldest son has fallen for his king at the battle of Newbury, while his second son has embraced the Puritan cause, married accordingly, and finally died, having ‘fought all day at the head of his regiment, and preached and prayed to them all night.’ The only daughter of the old loyalist also goes the wrong way and marries an Independent preacher of the name of Sandal, whom she survives. The daughter of the eldest son, Margaret, is made the heiress of the castle, where she resides with her grandfather and his old sister, Mrs. Ann Mortimer, who leads the household after the death of his brother’s wife. The daughter of the apostate son, Elinor, is, after the death of her mother, also received at the castle and educated there, though without expectations. Young John Sandal, the son of the rejected daughter, is recognized by his grandfather on the express condition of henceforth fighting for the royal family; he has, at his own request, been sent to sea at a very early age. At the return of Charles the Second old Sir Roger dies of joy, but the sacrifices of the family in the royal cause are amply compensated, and they are once again raised among the foremost in the country. At that period the widow Sandal takes up her residence in the neighbourhood of the castle and sometimes visits it, although the relations between her and her aunt Mrs. Ann never become very cordial. From her intrigues subsequently follows the fall of the house of Mortimer.
Through the re-acquired importance of the family a distinguished position in the navy is procured for John Sandal, and during the Dutch war he has the opportunity of showing that the spirit of his ancestors is not dead within him. News of valorous deeds achieved by John reaches even the remote castle, where the gentle Elinor, who remembers him with feelings of love in early childhood, is, more than others, occupied in thoughts of him. When the widow Sandal makes her appearance in the vicinity, she calls on her every day to talk about her son, and when John arrives to pay a visit to his mother, she is the first to meet him. John Sandal turns out to be as good as he is brave, and his friendship to his cousin Elinor swiftly ripens to love. Their betrothal is greeted with joy by all except the widow, who determines to prevent the union by any means. She has obtained a knowledge of Sir Roger’s will, which is to the effect that if his granddaughter Margaret marries John Sandal, all the immense estates are to fall to her, whereas John, in case of his marrying Elinor, is entitled only to a small fortune.—The wedding-day, however, is fixed; the church is filled with guests from far and near and everything is ready, yet the bridegroom, for some inexplicable reason, fails to appear. Tired and anxious at the delay Elinor retires to the vestry, from the casement window of which she sees a rider approaching at full speed. The rider, John Sandal, gallops past the church, casts a look of horror upon Elinor, and disappears.
After the frustration of her hopes Elinor quits the castle and takes up her abode in Yorkshire, at the house of a strictly Puritan sister of her late mother. Peace of mind, however, is denied her, and she lingers on in a pitiable state, when, one day, she receives a letter from Margaret, of surprising contents. Both old Mrs. Ann and Margaret have assured that the faithless bridegroom shall never darken their doors again; now Margaret announces to Elinor that John Sandal has returned to the castle and invites her to join them, dropping some ‘mysterious hints relative to the interruption of the marriage.’ With a vague hope Elinor sets out to the castle and is tenderly received by both her cousins; the manner of John, however, clearly evinces that there can be no question of other sentiments than a calm friendship between them. As the betrothal of Margaret and John is made public, her stay at the castle becomes too painful to Elinor; she returns to Yorkshire where she leads a life in utter seclusion, her Puritan aunt having died in the meantime. Yet she is once more summoned to the castle by a message from Margaret, who, now in confinement, implores Elinor’s presence at her hour of danger. Elinor obeys, but the gloomy forebodings of Margaret are fulfilled: twins are born dead, and a moment afterwards the mother also expires. Amid general despair the widow Sandal now makes a confession to her son, with the result that his reason is extinguished for ever. Solicitous to secure for her son the family estates, she had invented a story which she had imparted to him the night before his intended nuptials with Elinor, according to which he was not her son, but the offspring of an ‘illicit commerce of her husband the preacher with the Puritan mother of Elinor’—and this story she had bound her son by oath never to disclose to Elinor.
After this catastrophe the life of Elinor is devoted to the tending of the patient, whom she never leaves. It then befalls that they are, on one of their evening walks, approached by a stranger, who introduces himself by showing them some slight attentions and speaking on indifferent subjects. Their acquaintance continues some time, till it suddenly ends by the stranger saying something that causes Elinor wildly to rush to a neighbouring clergyman for assistance. The clergyman happens to be the identical friend of Melmoth the Wanderer who witnessed his apparent death in Germany, which strange event he now discloses to Elinor; as for Melmoth, he departs on recognizing the clergyman, and troubles Elinor no longer. Her time passes on in the same occupation, until her ward dies, and, in his last moments knows her, nor does she survive him long.
This beautiful story, though little noted by commentators, is inferior to none in the book, except the opening chapters describing the death of the old Irish miser; on the contrary, it seems rather the best of all the longer tales. Maturing favourite period in English history was sure to become to him a source of highest inspiration, whenever he turned to it, and to his other good qualities is here added that of an impartial historian. When Elinor, as a child, is taken up at the castle, she is said to come to the conclusion ‘that there must be good on both sides, however obscured or defaced by passion, where so much intellectual power, and so much physical energy, had been displayed by both;’ and in this spirit the controversies are treated throughout the story. That the author’s sympathies rest with the cavaliers is evident enough, but the errors of Puritanism—fortunately—do not irritate him so much as to prevent him from speaking of them with calmness, mingled with an almost imperceptible tinge of humour. And the peculiar spirit of the period he catches by the forelock and never leaves hold of it; Maturin had penetrated to the very soul of that wonderful time, when furious contests, religious and political, splintered family ties and shook the foundations of the empire, and when the last remnants of ancient chivalry clashed against growing democracy and sturdy Puritanism. Yet as the principal part of the tale takes place after the Restoration, when the wounds of the civil war are already beginning slowly to heal, he contrives to make those turbulent events felt through the pages as the after-rolls of a mighty storm. And as the plot consists of the tragical downfall of a great and illustrious house, there is, in the style, something like the glow of an autumnal sun setting over a rich and glorious landscape. It is, in fact, in autumn—the season Maturin loved best—that most of the incidents occur, and the pages abound in magnificent descriptions of nature, like the following:
Elinor took the path through the park, and, absorbed in new feelings, was for the first time insensible of its woodland beauty, at once gloomy and resplendent, mellowed by the tints of autumnal colouring, and glorious with the light of an autumnal evening,—till she was roused to attention by the exclamations of her companion, who appeared rapt into delight at what he beheld. — — — — As they approached the Castle, the scene became glorious beyond the imagination of a painter, whose eye has dreamed of sunset in foreign climes. The vast edifice lay buried in shade,—all its varied and strongly charactered features of tower and pinnacle, bartizan and battlement, were melted into one dense and sombrous mass. The distant hills with their conical summits, were still clearly defined in the dark-blue heaven, and their peaks still retained a hue of purple so brilliant and lovely, that it seemed as if the light had loved to linger there, and, parting, had left that tint as the promise of a glorious morning. The woods that surrounded the Castle stood as dark, and apparently as solid as itself. Sometimes a gleam like gold trembled over the tufted foliage of their summits, and at length, through a glade which opened among the dark and massive boles of the ancient trees, one last rich and gorgeous flood of light burst in, turned every blade of grass it touched into emerald for a moment,—passed on its lovely work—and parted. The effect was so instantaneous, brilliant, and evanishing, that Elinor had scarce time for a half uttered exclamation, as she extended her arm in the direction where the light had fallen so brightly and so briefly.
This style is sustained throughout the narrative, but instead of rendering it monotonous, it only makes the ‘atmosphere’ intense and harmonious in the extreme, which is the chief merit of The Lovers’ Tale. The characters, if not exactly conventional, are less originally conceived. Margaret and Elinor are a pair of heroines known from countless romances of all ages: the former high-spirited and vivacious, demanding homage and obtaining it at the same moment; the latter tender, pale, soft and contemplative, yet not without traits of distinct individuality. The characterization of John Sandal is not successful—it is the only thing in the tale which is not—he is too gentle, too ‘milky’ to be a young sailor and warrior, and is depicted with a considerable amount of sentimentality. He appears, however, but little; the principal personage is Elinor, whose hopes and sufferings are delineated with a psychological insight recalling corresponding passages in Women. Like Zaira, in the last-named romance, Elinor in vain seeks forgetfulness in philanthrophy and religion. In her aunt’s house nothing is changed since her earliest childhood. The Puritanic ideals and the memories of celebrated preachers are still cherished by the old maid with undiminished force; but Elinor cannot, in spite of desperate endeavours, find consolation in what once was all in all to her, too. It is not only that her heart is broken; she belongs to a new time, and her views have been enlarged during her life in the castle. The difference between two generations, in the persons of these two women, is brought forth with exquisite fineness, and the great and heroic qualities in Puritanism are freely admitted:
An old non-conformist minister, a very Saint John for sanctity of life, and simplicity of manners, had been seized by a magistrate while giving the word of consolation to a few of his flock who had met at the cottage of her aunt.
The old man had supplicated for a moment’s delay on the part of the civil power, and its officers, by an unusual effort of toleration or of humanity, complied. Turning to his congregation, who, amid the tumult of the arrest, had never risen from their knees, and only changed the voice of supplication from praying with their pastor to praying for him,—he quoted to them that beautiful passage from the prophet Malachi, which appears to give such delightful encouragement to the spiritual intercourse of Christians,—“Then they that feared the Lord, spoke often to one another, and the Lord heard it,” etc. As he spoke, the old man was dragged away by some rougher hands, and died soon after in confinement.
On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written. Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds and the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.
Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this reminiscence of religion—it was her last resource. Like the wife of Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she named him Ichabod,—and felt the glory was departed. She went to the narrow apartment,—she seated herself in the very chair that venerable man occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to her like that of an ascending prophet. She would then have caught the folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight had led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last words, to produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and wept in indescribable agony at feeling those words had no feeling now for her.
The faint hope wakened in her half-benumbed heart by Margaret’s first letter is soon extinguished. Gradually she loses her beauty and her strength, and when addressed by Melmoth she is, bodily, almost as weak as her ward. It has been said[144] that it is not clear why he tempts Elinor; it must be presumed that he would have the power to restore the mind of John, though his chance of succeeding with Elinor is certainly slight, she being altogether resigned to her fate.—
That The Lovers’ Tale is told by Melmoth himself, and told in such a way as it is, belongs to those curiosities in the composition of the book, which simply must be accepted as freaks of a careless yet self-conscious imagination that follows laws of its own. Aliaga, naturally enough, is at a loss to comprehend how this tale could be applied to him; but the next day, as they continue their journey together, Melmoth briefly recapitulates the early history of Isidora—the details of the shipwreck and her discovery later are now first revealed to the reader—adding that Aliaga should not lose a moment to save his daughter. Notwithstanding this warning, Aliaga allows concerns of business to detain him, and in the meantime the fatal nuptials of Melmoth and Isidora take place. After the Indians’ tale then has been brought to an end, the thread of the original narrative is at last resumed and the reader once more conducted to where young John Melmoth and the Spaniard Monçada are sitting in the desolate Irish country-house. Their conversation is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the subject of all these adventures. The term of his supernaturally prolonged existence is drawing to a close, and the terrible lustre of his eyes is already extinguished. He assures the horrified youths that there is nothing to fear; his wanderings are finished, and the reason for these wanderings need no longer be kept secret, any more than the failure of all his pursuits:
No one has ever exchanged destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. I have traversed the world in the search, and no one, to gain that world, would lose his own soul! Not Stanton in his cell—nor you, Monçada, in the prison of the Inquisition—nor Walberg, who saw his children perishing with want—nor—another—
After this confession the Wanderer asks for a moment’s repose, to sleep for the last time in his human existence. His dreams, however, are filled with a grand and awful vision of the realm of death which is awaiting him and which he has no hope of escaping. During the night mysterious voices issue from the room in which he has shut himself. In the morning the room is empty, but footsteps can be traced up to a rock overlooking the sea. John and Monçada follow the steps until they gain the last summit of the rock:
The ocean was beneath—the wide, waste, engulphing ocean! On a crag beneath them, something hung as floating to the blast. Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night—that was the last trace of the Wanderer!
Melmoth and Monçada exchanged looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly home.—
The conclusion of Melmoth the Wanderer is very impressive; the descriptions are well-balanced, suggestive, and not too furious, although, in certain details, not decidedly original in invention. As in the transformation of Melmoth by an apparent death an influence from a contemporary work of the school of terror can be discerned, his real death can be traced back to the Faustus of Marlowe.[145] The preparations of Faustus and Melmoth for the dreadful last night are carried on in the same way:
Faustus. Aye, pray for me—pray for me—and whatever noise soever you hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.
Melmoth says:
Leave me—I must be alone for the few last hours of my mortal existence—men retire—leave me alone—whatever noises you hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near this apartment, at the peril of your lives.
The final fulfilment of the bond, however, is only suggested by Maturin, while in Marlowe the devils who come to fetch Faustus are actually brought to the stage. In this respect the end of Melmoth the Wanderer differs, much to its advantage, from the end also of The Monk,[146] where the enemy in person takes hold of Ambrosio, soars with him in the air and dashes him to pieces against a sharp point of rock.
When the story of Melmoth, on one of the last pages of the book, turns back to the Irish country-house, the author expresses a fear that the reader has, perhaps, forgotten the existence of young John Melmoth. If he has not, he would at least have had plenty of time to do so; for the whole fabric of the work is nothing but a gigantic digression from the first action, in the form of tales within tales, told and read and read and told by somebody to somebody else, in an exceedingly intricate way rendering a general view of them a matter of considerable difficulty. The construction of Melmoth the Wanderer is extravagant beyond any degree reached by Montorio or The Wild Irish Boy, and has been subjected to severe criticism. Saintsbury[147] calls the arrangement ‘execrably bad,’ wondering ‘how anything quite so bad in form can have been put forth by anybody so clever.’ One explanation would be that this form implies an intentional disregard of the rules of composition, rather than a failure of ability to adhere to them, in other words, that the general effect is not calculated to rest upon regularity of construction, any more than in, for instance, the second part of Faust. But even if—which is more probable—Maturin really sat down to compose a story of ‘ordinary’ proportions and was unconsciously carried away on the wings of his ungovernable imagination, the general impression left by the book is such as to make the defects in its arrangement decidedly appear a question of secondary importance, just as the many literary reminiscences which present themselves during the perusal, cannot detract anything from the originality of the hero. Little as he actually appears, he is the locomotive power without which the whole would collapse, and he is remembered still when everything else is forgotten. From behind the various and manifold scenes of this amazing labyrinth, there arises the pale figure of the Wanderer, terrible and diabolical, yet suffering and despairing, to bear witness to his own defeat and the victory of human nature, so weak and yet so invincible, the object of at once his hatred and his adoration; and is it not, when we stand face to face with this wonderful creation of a great genius, indifferent where and when and by whom the separate tales are related? That the Wanderer, however, is capable of making so powerful an impression, is due to this curious fact, that the book, in its most essential feature, does not at all correspond to the passage in Maturin’s sermon which he maintains to have inspired it.
Several writers, from the most worthless to the most competent, have expressed their wonder at the very poor success Melmoth, with all his supernatural endowments, can boast of. The savage critic in the Quarterly Review[148] sneers that Melmoth ‘during his peregrination of two centuries, does less mischief than a clever mortal would have done;’ and Edgar Allan Poe[149] observes that Melmoth ‘labours indefatigably, through three octavo volumes, to accomplish the destruction of one or two souls, while any common devil would have demolished one or two thousand.’ The common devils certainly are more fortunate, and their difference from Maturin’s hero is conspicuous enough. In Balzac’s half-parody, Melmoth Reconcilié (1835), the Wanderer is delivered of his curse by a criminal, a cashier who has committed a fraud and is desirous to escape his sentence, and afterwards it passes from hand to hand among similar individuals. In Stevenson’s story of The Bottle Imp (1893); which has the same motive, the miracle-working and soul-destroying imp is at last, without subsequent repentance, purchased by a drunken boatswain who reckons he is going to hell anyway. The cause of Melmoth’s failure, and the precise character of his uncleverness, which consists in his strange ignorance whom to address, is in obvious contradiction to the sermon, where the final sin is declared to be too frightful even to those who have ever so much
departed from the Lord, disobeyed His will, and disregarded His word.
Now the persons who are subjected to the temptations of Melmoth the Wanderer have done nothing of the kind: on the contrary, most of them come as near perfection as poor human nature can possibly do. The tempter invariably takes care to accost those with whom he is least likely to succeed. He leaves unnoticed a character like the parricide, who is said to be beyond the redemption of a Saviour, and who, it must be assumed, would most joyfully accept the bond—to waste his time and energy on Alonzo di Monçada, whom he perceives to be as firm as any rock. Of Stanton, of Walberg, of Isidora, of Elinor, not one single wrong deed is recorded which would speak for the probability of their succumbing to his seductions. To all the tales, it has finely been observed,[150] can be applied a motto from Faust: ‘ein guter Mensch in seinem dunkeln Drange ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst;’ but it is not the good instinct in the good, but the good instinct in the bad, which Maturin, in the preface, promises to demonstrate. In consequence, however, of this ‘blunder,’ the character of Melmoth the Wanderer becomes so impressive, so impassioned, so distinct from all common men and common devils. The attraction exercised upon him by the good has its root in what there is human in him; what causes him his keenest sufferings is not that he is shut out of paradise but that he is shut out of the community of the good among human beings; and what he insists on trying, amid rage and despair, is that some one of those good would voluntarily share his fate and relieve his bitter loneliness. The relation of Melmoth to mankind is marked by that intense sense of loneliness, that sense of being ‘among them, but not of them,’ or, as Maturin says, ‘mingling with, yet distinct from all his species’—which goes through the romantic literature of the period and which indeed is genuinely romantic in its implication of something exceptional, something outside the common rules of life. The anguish of loneliness is shared alike by good and bad, by all whom adverse circumstances or else their own bodily or mental deformities have placed in a solitary position in the world. In Montorio, Ippolito is undeservedly overtaken by the fate which Melmoth deliberately invokes upon himself; but their anguish is the same. It is felt by St. Leon, the moment he attains earthly immortality and understands that those whom he has loved can mean nothing to him any longer; it is felt by the Black Dwarf when he contemplates the happiness of the strong and the beautiful, which he is never to share; and even the miserable monster created by Frankenstein prays for one being of the same species as himself, who might smile upon him and not answer his approaches with curses and maledictions. It was Maturin’s desire to dwell upon this emotion that in the long run decided the mould of the characters in Melmoth the Wanderer in a way, perhaps, not intended by him from the first. Viewed in the light of this same emotion, the contempt of Melmoth for his victims is only half-real, nor is it probable that Maturin meant him to appear so superior to humanity as he is shown by Baudelaire[151] in his well-known Essay de l’essence du rire:
Quoi de plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement à la pauvre humanité que ce pale et ennuyé Melmoth? Et pourtant, il y a en lui un côté faible, abject, antidivin et antilumineux. Aussi comme il rit, comme il rit, se comparant sans cesse aux chenilles humaines, lui si fort, si intelligent, lui pour qui une partie des lois conditionelles de l’humanité, physiques et intellectuelles, n’existent plus! Et ce rire est l’explosion perpétuelle de sa colère et de sa souffrance. Il est, qu’on me comprenne bien, la résultante nécessaire de sa double nature contradictoire, qui est infiniment grande relativement à l’homme, infiniment vile et basse relativement au Vrai et au Juste absolus.
The members of this pauvre humanité still represent the power of absolute Justice and Truth, the power so infinitely stronger than Melmoth. Theirs is the ultimate triumph.
Melmoth the Wanderer created, at its first appearance, a greater sensation than any of Maturin’s previous novels. Economically it also was something of a success: the profits it brought to the author are said[152] to have amounted to 500 pounds. A second edition appeared the following year as well as a French translation, Melmoth, ou l’Homme errant, by J. Cohen, and a ‘free’ German translation called Melmoth der Wanderer.—All the works of Maturin, except Manuel and Fredolfo, were translated into French soon after their appearance in English, and with the rendering of Melmoth his fame became definitely established in that country, where, in fact, it has always been greater than in England. A. A. Watts says[153] that his father, while travelling in France, possessed a passport to the romantic circles as the friend of that ‘triste et terrible Maturin.’—In 1823 the romance was published in the form of a melodrama in three acts, by B. West. This production is a combination of the Tale of Guzman’s Family and the Tale of the Indians; Isidora is represented as the daughter of Walberg, and has loved Melmoth in her youth. Walberg and Isidora are both, through the machinations of Melmoth, thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, whence they are rescued by another lover of hers, while Melmoth is killed by thunder. The play is without any literary value whatever, but shows clearly which two tales were most appreciated by the public.—The principal periodicals of the time also reviewed Melmoth at a considerable length, although, for the most part, with a negative result. In the Quarterly Review Croker raged against the book even more furiously than he had done against Women, pronouncing it to be the very acme of all that is execrable:
Indeed, Mr. Maturin has contrived, by a ‘curiosa infelicitas,’ to unite in this work all the worst particularities of the worst modern novels. Compared with it, Lady Morgan is almost intelligible—The Monk, decent—The Vampire, amiable—and Frankenstein, natural. We do not pronounce this judgment hastily, and we pronounce it with regret—we honour Mr. Maturin’s profession even when he debases it, and if ‘Melmoth’ had been only silly and tiresome, we should gladly have treated it with silent contempt; but it unfortunately variegates its stupidity with some characteristics of a more disgusting kind, which our respect for good manners and decency obliges us to denounce.
After declaring, in italics, that the hero of the book is the Devil himself, the reviewer solemnly accuses the author of nonsense, want of veracity, ignorance, blasphemy and brutality, and a dark, cold-blooded, pedantic obscenity; and finishes his article with a hint that it certainly is quite right that the Church does not provide subsistence for him.—That critics, upon the whole, spoke unfavourably of Melmoth is not to be wondered at. The school of terror had irrevocably had its day, and very different literary ideals were being established. The magic art of Scott held a strong sway over all minds, while the well-bred drawing-room adventures of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen were now, in their turn, felt as a relief and a liberation from the wilder forms of romanticism. The extravagances and horribly startling incidents in Maturin’s romance were enough to cover its powerful originality and lasting merits—which probably would be the case did the book appear to-day. Yet the author’s genius was unreservedly admitted even by most of those who disapproved of the style and contents of Melmoth; the end of the article in the Edinburgh Review is characteristic, its tone being as dignified as that of the Quarterly Review is base:
Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now said, that we think meanly of Mr. Maturin’s genius and abilities. It is precisely because we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to point out their misapplication; and we have extended our observations to a greater length than we contemplated, partly because we fear his strong though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command of glowing language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who ‘possessing the contortions of the sybil without her inspiration’ will deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;—and partly because we are not without hopes that our animadversions, offered in a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in literature more consonant to his high endowments, and to that sacred profession to which, we understand, he does honour by the virtues of his private life.
The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany writes essentially to the same purport:
There is one point of resemblance between this author and his hero. They both, in a different way, possess very considerable powers, which seem to have some invisible and mysterious limit, beyond which they cannot pass. The wild and wonderful, the odd and eccentric, seems to be Mr. Maturin’s chosen province;—into the regions of nature and probability he is either unable or unwilling to penetrate. Perhaps this is saying too much, but, if he does make an advance into these quiet precincts, his love of extravagance and exaggeration immediately leads him back into his wonted path. — — It is difficult to understand the construction of a mind so pregnant with every aggravation of mental and bodily suffering, that it seems absolutely to luxuriate, not only in the pain it describes, but in that which he produces in his readers. Surrounded as he is with terrible objects, and gleams of sulphureous flame, which his hero is ever and anon presenting to our view, the reverend author appears to our imagination like some Vulcan of the anvil, assiduously labouring and forging shackles, bolts, and instruments of torture, with this difference, that with the poor mechanic it was not matter of choice, whereas Mr. Maturin, with all the flowery paths of fiction open to him, has preferred this tortuous and gloomy one.
The only one who expresses himself with unrestrained admiration is the critic in the Blackwood’s Magazine—also referred to once above. Even he, it is true, points out that there are faults and errors in Maturin’s writings; but he admits that they are more than atoned for by the merits:
And yet, where is the lover of imaginative excitement, that ever laid down one of his books unfinished—or the man of candour and discrimination, who ever denied, after reading through any of them, that Maturin is gifted with a genius as fervently powerful as it is distinctly original—that there is ever and anon a truth of true poetry diffused over the thickest chaos of his absurdities—and that he walks almost without a rival, dead or living, in many of the darkest, but, at the same time, the most majestic circles of romance?
This critic, however, could hardly be taken seriously by the author, inasmuch as he places Montorio before the present work:
We are far from saying that Mr. Maturin should write less—but we do say, that he should write a great deal more—observe a great deal more—and correct a great deal more. If he does not, he may depend upon it he will never fulfil the rich promise of his Montorio; for that, we rather think, was his first—and, we are quite sure, is the best of all his performances.
It is of interest to notice these opinions; for, however slight their authority, they seem to have had the desired effect of checking the ‘extravagances’ of Maturin’s genius—so much the worse for literature. His desire to please—for such desire there was in his temperament, quite apart from all pecuniary considerations—was once more discouraged, and he began to grow weary of being told the same things over and again. It was several years before he again produced a novel, and when he did, he painfully strove to adhere to patterns universally accepted, and avoid displaying those peculiarities which were distinctly his own, but the absence of which to a production of his irreparably meant the loss of vital power, notwithstanding a small temporary success. A sense of ultimate failure and disappointment has, among other things, its share in the unmistakable gloom cast over Maturin’s last years.