The Tale of Terror written by Edith Birkhead

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"The tale here presented to the public is one I began
at Coligny, when _Frankenstein_ was planned, and when a
noble author, having determined to descend from his
lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror,
and wrote the fragment published at the end of
Mazeppa."

As no skull-headed lady appears in _Ernestus Berchtold_, it is
probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the
party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took
shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and
possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually
adopted in _Ernestus Berchtold_, a rambling, leisurely account of
the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves
to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant
spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is
bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not
divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have
waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. _Ernestus
Berchtold_ is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all.
The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with
the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in
because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as
indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:

"Many readers will think that the same moral and the
same colouring might have been given to characters
acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe
it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that
does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."

The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely
enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency"
into the background, because "a tale that rests upon
improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so
decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is
remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend
successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story
was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely
accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based
his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have
been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two
friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who,
like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a
prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his
death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw
a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "dead,
grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to
penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward
workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
the thirst of a vampyre."

Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
verge of the unspeakable.

Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
whom centres a story of absorbing interest.

De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the
Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty
Years' War. In _The Household Wreck_, published in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying
a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often
more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, _The
Avenger_, published in the same year, describes a series of
bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but
which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge
dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of _Popular
Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, published in 1823,
De Quincey translated _Der Freischuetz_ from the German of J.A.
Apel, under the title of _The Fatal Marksman_. By means of
ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one
of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge,
she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed
straight, but goes askew. In _The Dice_, another short story from
the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a
bargain with the devil.

De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into
unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in
themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the
widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is
noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere,
have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the
supernatural.

So late as 1834--more than a decade after the appearance of
_Melmoth_--Harrison Ainsworth, whose imagination was steeped in
terror, sought once more to revive the "feeble and fluttering
pulses of old Romance." Among his earliest experiments were tales
obviously fashioned in the Gothic manner. His Imperishable One,
the hero of a tale first published in the _European Magazine_ for
1822, bemoans the burden of immortality in the listless tones of
Godwin's St. Leon, and is tempted by the fallen angel in the
self-same guise in which he appeared to Lewis's notorious monk.
In _The Test of Affection_ (_European Magazine_, 1822) a wealthy
man avails himself of Mrs. Radcliffe's supernatural trickery to
test the loyalty of his friends, whom he succeeds in alarming by
noises and a skeleton apparition. In _Arliss's Pocket Magazine_
(1822) there appeared _The Spectre Bride_; and in the _European
Magazine_ (1823) Ainsworth attempted a theme that would have
attracted Poe in _The Half Hangit_. _The Boeotian_ for 1824
contained _A Tale of Mystery_, and the _Literary Souvenir_ for
1825 _The Fortress of Saguntum_, a story in the style of Lewis.
Ainsworth's first novel, _Rookwood_ (1834), was inspired by a
visit to Cuckfield Place, an old manor house which had reminded
Shelley of "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe":

"Wishing to describe somewhat minutely the trim
gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted
groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of
an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved
to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs.
Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old
manorial residence and an old English highwayman for
the Italian marchise, the castle and the brigand of
that great mistress of romance... The attempt has
succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectation. Romance,
if I am not mistaken, is destined shortly to undergo an
important change. Modified by the German and French
writers--Hoffmann, Tieck, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas,
Balzac and Paul Lacroix--the structure commenced in our
land by Horace Walpole, 'Monk' Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe
and Maturin, but, left imperfect and inharmonious,
requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its
approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful
architect to its entire renovation and perfection."

In _Rookwood_, Ainsworth disdains Mrs. Radcliffe's reasonable
elucidations of the supernatural, and introduces spectres whose
existence it would be impossible to deny. Once, however, a
supposed ghost becomes substantial, and proves to be none other
than a human being called Jack Palmer. The sexton, Luke Bradley,
_alias_ Alan Rookwood, has inherited two of the Wanderer's
traits--the fear-impelling eyes of intolerable lustre, and the
habit of indulging in wild, screaming laughter on the most
inauspicious occasions.

Gothic properties are scattered with indiscriminate
extravagance--skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles,
sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of _Rookwood_ is too
complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our
attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to
strike home. The only part of the book which holds us enthralled
is the famous description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Here we
forget Ainsworth's slip-shod style in the excitement of the
chase. In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs.
Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror
and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in
words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of
Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in _Crichton_, the historical
scenes of horror in _The Tower of London_, the masque of the
Dance of Death in _Old St. Paul's_, the appearance of Herne the
Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in _Windsor Castle_, the
terrible orgies of _The Lancashire Witches_, are described with
more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the
school of terror. In _Auriol_, which was first published in
_Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1844-5) under the title _Revelations of
London_, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the
_New Monthly_, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled
once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599)
describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his
great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, who
involves Auriol in wildly fantastic and frightful adventures. The
book closes in Dr. Lamb's laboratory; the intervening scenes are
but dream imagery. Phiz's sketch of the Ruined House is the most
lasting memory left by the book.

Captain Marryat, whose mind was well stored with sailors' yarns,
retells in _The Phantom Ship_ (1839) the old legend of the Flying
Dutchman. At one time the doomed vessel is an unsubstantial
vision, which can pass clean through the Utrecht; at another she
is a real craft, whose deck can be boarded by mortal men. The
one-eyed pilot, Schriften, with his malignant hatred of the hero,
Philip, is a terrifying figure. The story is embroidered by the
invention of a wife of Arab extraction, who is constantly
attempting to recall the half-forgotten magical arts which her
mother had practised. Marryat makes an opportunity in the history
of Krantz, the second mate of the _Vrou Katerina_, to introduce
the Scandinavian legend of the werewolf, which is related with
grisly detail.

The novel of terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty
of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with
erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to
rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man
of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has
tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer
was an imposing figure in the history of nineteenth century
fiction. Throughout his life, in spite of political and social
distractions and of matrimonial disaster, he continued to engage
with unwearying industry in literary work. He was not a man of
genius in whom the creative impulse found its own expression, but
a versatile and accomplished gentleman who could direct his
talents into any channel he pleased. Essays, translations,
verses, plays, novels flowed from his pen in rapid succession,
and he won his meed of applause and fame, as well as his share of
execration and derision, in his own lifetime. Quick to discern
the popular taste of the hour, and eager to gratify it, Lytton,
with the resourceful agility of a lightning impersonator, turns
in his novels from Wertherism to dandyism, from criminal
psychology to fairy folk-lore, from historical romance to
domestic romance, from pseudo-philosophic occultism to
pseudo-scientific fantasy. He ranges at will in the past, the
present or the future, consorting indifferently with impalpable
wraiths, Vrilya or mysterious Sages. It is to his credit that
this unusual gift of adaptability does not result in
incompetency. Though he attempts a variety of manners, it must in
justice be acknowledged that he does most of them well. He
constructs his plots with laborious art, and pays a deliberate,
if sometimes misguided, attention to style. When he fails, it is
less from lack of effort than from over-elaboration and excess of
zeal.

Bulwer Lytton's predilection for the supernatural was neither a
theatrical pose nor a passing folly excited by the fashionable
craze for psychical research, but a genuine and enduring
interest, inherited, it may be, from his ancestor, the learned,
eccentric savant, Dr. Bulwer, who studied the Black Art and
dabbled in astrology and palmistry. He was a member of the
society of Rosicrucians, and, to quote the words of his grandson,
"he certainly did not study magic for the sake of writing about
it, still less did he write about it, without having studied it,
merely for the sake of making his readers' flesh creep." From his
early years Lytton seems to have been keenly interested in
supernatural manifestations. He was inspired by the deserted
rooms at the end of a long gallery in Knebworth House to set down
the story of the ghost, Jenny Spinner, who was said to haunt
them; and the concealed chamber in _The Haunted and the Haunters_
may have been a revived memory of the trap-door down which Lytton
as a boy had "peeped with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses
of hellhole." In _Glenallan_,[126] an early fragment, we find
promising material for a tale of mystery--a villain with a
"strange and sinister expression," a boy who, like the youthful
Shelley, steals forth by night to graveyards, hoping to attain to
fearful secrets, and an aged servant, a living chronicle of
horrors, who relates the doings of an Irish wizard, Morshed
Tyrone, of such awful power that the spirits of the earth, air
and ocean ministered to him. In _Godolphin_ (1833) there is an
astrologer with the furrowed brow and awful eye, so common among
the people of terror, and a strangely gifted girl, Lucilla, who
turns soothsayer. But when Bulwer Lytton attempts a supernatural
romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and
soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than
horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
the crater of Vesuvius.

The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
Dweller of the Threshold:

"Whose form of giant mould
No mortal eye can fixed behold,"

Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
feels sympathy with human beings.

Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.

The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Zanoni_, may have
gleaned stray hints from the novel of terror; but the spirit and
intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton
expressly declares that his _Zanoni_ is not an allegory, he
confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to
assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse
subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice
that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that
Lytton first conceived his theories and then created personages
to illustrate them. His characters have no power to act of their
own volition or to do unexpected things, but must move along the
lines laid down for them.

In _The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain_,
which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1859, Bulwer Lytton
lays aside the sin of over-elaboration and ornamentation that so
easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable
horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the
accurate description of the position of the house in a street off
the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the
matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage
of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony,
all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie
child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands,
the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly
outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with
ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned
man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth
the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer.
Haunted by loathly presences, the watcher experiences a sensation
of almost intolerable horror, but saves himself at the worst by
opposing his will to that of the haunters. He rightly surmises
that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from
a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His
interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from
the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile
essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found
in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the
horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the
miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power to
prolong his life for two centuries, and to preserve a curse in a
magical vessel. He is actually interviewed by the watcher, to
whom he unfolds his remarkable history, and whom he mesmerises
into silence on the subject of his experiences in the haunted
house for a space of three months.

Lytton realises that it is not only what is told but what is left
unsaid that requires consideration in a ghost story. His
reticence and the entire absence of any note of mockery or doubt
secure the "willing suspension of disbelief" necessary to the
appreciation of the apparently supernatural.

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