Longsword: Contender for First Historical and Gothic Novel

Thomas Leland’s Longsword, Earl of Salisbury (1762) is largely forgotten today, but every once in a while, some scholar mentions it as the first historical and/or first Gothic novel. Usually, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) is considered the first Gothic novel, but I feel the accolades really do belong to Leland and it is plausible Longsword even influenced Walpole’s work. In this essay, I will discuss its role both as historical and Gothic novel.

Thomas Leland (1722-1785) was an Irish Anglican priest who wrote several books of history, but Longsword is his only novel. It appears to have been popular in its own day, which is why it is possible it influenced Walpole and perhaps other writers of Gothic and historical fiction, although little direct evidence exists of its influence. In 1767, it was turned into a tragic play, The Countess of Salisbury, and performed in London. The novel was republished in England in 1775 and in Ireland in 1790 (Power, “Thomas Leland,” 17-18). The only literary reference to the novel, however, appears to be in Clara Reeve’s Progress of Romance in 1785. She refers to it as “a hodgepodge of gloom and tinsel” (Phelps 83-4). It is notable that Reeve read Longsword since she is the author of another early Gothic novel, The Old English Baron (1777). Although the novel fell into obscurity after that, literary critics never quite forgot it. William Phelps calls it the first historical novel in The Advance of the English Novel in 1922 (82-3). Montague Summers referenced it in The Gothic Quest in 1938 as an important example of historical gothic. It was republished in the twentieth century with editions in 1957 and 1974 before the current 2012 edition by Swan Press to celebrate its 250^th anniversary (Power, “Thomas Leland,” 17-18).

Upon reading the novel, I was surprised by just how historical and Gothic Longsword is. Even the title character is a historical person. William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury (circa 1167–1226), was not only a real person, but one of my ancestors. Leland states that Longsword, predominantly called Salisbury in the novel, is an illegitimate son of King Henry II and his mistress, Rosamund. In truth, Rosamund and Henry II had no children, and only in the twentieth century was it made known that Longsword’s mother was Henry II’s mistress Ida de Tosney (Wikipedia). Regardless, Salisbury was the half-brother of King Richard I and King John. The novel takes place during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216-1272), Salisbury’s nephew. The plot refers to several other historical people, including the king and the villain Hubert, who was the king’s advisor.

Rarely do early historical novels have a historical person for their main character, which helps make Longsword all the more remarkable. Usually, the main character is fictional while historical people make cameo appearances. This is true in novels like Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783), which creates two fictional daughters for Mary, Queen of Scots, as main characters, and also true in all of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. Only a handful of historical novels through the early Victorian period have a historical personage as the main character, such as Mary Shelley’s Perkin Warbeck (1830), Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Harold, Last of the Saxons (1848), or Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia (1853), so Leland was clearly decades before his time.

The story begins when Salisbury, disguised as a palmer, arrives on the coast of Cornwall. He is greeted by his friend and former soldier, Randolph. Salisbury tells Randolph how he and his English comrades were shipwrecked on the Isle of Rhè, owned by the French lord Count Savourè de Mal-leon. Salisbury meets another Frenchman, Les Roches, who should be his enemy, but he spared his life once in the past so Les Roches helps to hide Salisbury. Through a series of events, Les Roches becomes captured by Mal-leon. Salisbury also becomes a captive but escapes and then helps Les Roches’ daughter, Jacqueline, to escape. They head for England with the intent to return to save Les Roches. Once Salisbury concludes his story, Randolph shares with him recent developments.

Salisbury has been believed dead. Consequently, Hubert, the king’s counselor, has sent his nephew Raymond to possess Salisbury’s castle and marry his wife, Ela, the countess. Salisbury is now determined to head home and set matters to right, unaware of all the developments in his absence.

Meanwhile, Raymond tries to force Ela into marriage. He even threatens to take her son, young William, from her. He has an evil counselor, Grey, who has an even more evil brother, a monk named Reginhald. These evil brothers do most of the plotting, including kidnapping young William and planning to murder him. When Salisbury finally shows up at his home and it’s learned he’s not dead, Reginhald tries to poison him but fails.

In the end, all is mostly righted. Reginhald and Grey are both hung for their crimes. Raymond, in guilt, falls on his sword. Salisbury is restored to his family and his rights. Les Roches escapes France and is reunited with his daughter Jacqueline. She also ends up marrying the son of another French lord who had persecuted them but whom she loves. The only unhappy aspect of the conclusion is that Ela has been nearly driven mad by Raymond’s persecution and her fears that her husband is dead and her son murdered. We are told she recovers, but one wonders if she can ever fully recover from the trauma.

According to Albert Power, who wrote the introduction to the 250^th anniversary edition, the novel is very historical. Salisbury really was shipwrecked on Rhè and did have to fight to regain his rights. Salisbury died not long after his escape from Rhè, and a rumor existed that Hubert poisoned him. The novel is very close to the historical facts, although the most interesting characters, Grey and Reginhald, appear to be fictional.

But is Longsword a Gothic novel? I would have to say the evidence is in its favor. So many Gothic elements appear in Longsword. First we have male imprisonment, which happens in many later novels like Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797) and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Next, we have crossdressing (Jacqueline cross-dresses to escape), which happens in many later novels like Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs (1809) and George W. M. Reynolds’ The Mysteries of London (1844). Female imprisonment and abduction are also present in the mistreatment of Ela, Countess of Salisbury, elements common in countless Gothic novels including Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).

Most notable and surprising, however, is the presence of the evil monk Reginhald. He is a forerunner to Matthew Lewis’ Ambrose in The Monk (1796) and the evil monk Schedoni in The Italian (1797). Ambrose is full of sexual lust. Schedoni nearly murders his illegitimate daughter. Reginhald, however, surpasses both, being full of both lust and murder. Because of his social connections, the other monks at his monastery overlook some of his wild behavior, which includes sexual licentiousness. He also tries to poison Salisbury, and to murder Salisbury’s son. Reginhald is definitely the most interesting and Gothic character in the novel.

Another Gothic element is the use of the story-within-a-story device that the Gothic adopted from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, which had first been translated into English in 1706-21. Gothic novels typically have the found manuscript device in which the characters find a manuscript that tells a character’s story in first person. This device allows for multiple narrators and points of view. Leland’s novel is similar yet differs in this respect since there are four stories within the main story, but they are all stories told by other characters about their lives or events that happened to them to fill in the backstory or catch characters up on what has been happening while they have been separated. There is no found manuscript, nor any pretense that the novel itself is a found manuscript like Walpole initially claimed of The Castle of Otranto.

The least relevant of the stories within the main story to the plot is that of Elinor, a servant to Countess Ela. However, Elinor’s story is notable as a Gothic tale since it includes a story of rape—more violence against women—and also a tale of a son who unknowingly kills his father because both are wearing armor and can’t recognize each other. Parricide is a theme in several Gothic novels, including The Parricide (1846) by George W. M. Reynolds. In that novel, the killing of the father is also done unknowingly.

Murder plots, duels (sword play), a medieval setting, pirates, and gloomy castles all finish the list of Gothic elements. The only thing missing is a ghost, whether real or imagined. Indeed, there is not a single supernatural element in the novel, which is the only reason some may hesitate to define it as a Gothic novel. However, I would argue that the supernatural, for all its predominance in Gothic fiction, is not what makes a Gothic novel. I think the primary element is that of fear, whether it may appear as terror or horror. The characters have plenty to fear in Longsword, whether it be Salisbury overhearing people plotting to murder him while he’s in hiding or the Countess fearing for her husband and son’s lives.

Thomas Leland, an Irish Anglican Clergyman, may have written the first Gothic novel

Also noteworthy is that Longsword is also sincere in its tone, unlike Walpole’s novel, which comes off as almost comical, satirical, and bordering on ridiculous—giant helmets do not fall from the sky. While no one can deny Walpole was highly influential in the development of the Gothic novel, I will contest that he did not begin it. I feel it is time Leland take his rightful place as the father of the Gothic and historical novel, even if he did not set out to create the former. I hope further research into Longsword will better reveal its influence upon later Gothic works. Anyone interested in the development of the novel will find Longsword a seminal text.

Sources

Leland, Thomas. Longsword. 1762. Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press, 2012.

Phelps, William Lyon. The Advance of the English Novel. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922.

Power, Albert. “Introduction.” Longsword. 1762. Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press, 2022. vii.-xv.

Power, Albert. “Thomas Leland.” The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. 13 (2019): 14-20.

Wikipedia. “William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Longesp%C3%A9e,_3rd_Earl_of_Salisbury. Accessed March 16, 2024.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

Werewolf Meets Frankenstein Monster in New Spy Thriller

Secret agent and bionic werewolf Val West is back in Wade Walker’s latest novel Operation Frankenstein. This novel is the second installment in the Code Name: LoneWolf series and the sequel to Bite of the Wolf, which I previously reviewed here. In the last novel, West was bitten by a werewolf and became one himself. He then learned through bionic means how to control his instincts and transformation, getting a special wolf belt to wear from the secret US government organization for which he works.

This new story begins when secret agent West is spying on a suspect, Ossie Weiner, who is sixty-two but has picked up a twenty-two-year-old woman and taken her back to his penthouse near Piccadilly Circus. West is no peeping Tom, but he has a job to do, so he sees a bit of their activity, though he never expects to see the young woman cause Ossie’s eyes to pop out. When she then tries to flee the scene of the crime, West is after her, using his Wolfapult Boots to spring after her like the legendary Spring-Heeled Jack. West also doesn’t expect her to grab an antenna to fight him, only to electrocute herself and have her head pop off in his hands before she dissolves into a pile of green slime. Obviously, she wasn’t human, but what exactly was she?

West will spend the rest of the novel unraveling that mystery. In the process, he attends the Frankenball in Switzerland, hosted every year by Victor Frankenstein III, who owns Frankentech. Victor III is the descendant of the Victor Frankenstein who created the monster now known as Prototype A. Victor III, however, appears to be working for the good of humanity. But is he? It doesn’t take West long to realize the woman whose head popped off was some sort of creation similar to Prototype A, if more advanced. But Victor III appears innocent. Is he being controlled by others working with him, including HIVE, a secret organization which—you guessed it—is interested in world domination?

West’s adventure continues in a manner that is part James Bond-style spy novel and part Gothic novel. A visit to a girls’ finishing school nearly gets him killed because the girls are being trained to “finish off” people. These women turn out to be as bionic as West, right down to their dart-shooting breasts. And then there’s a disembodied head involved in the world domination plot. And there are plenty of seductive women. West certainly enjoys his amorous adventures, but unfortunately, they tend to get him in trouble.

Wade Walker is a master at keeping the reader turning the page. When he’s not giving us thrills as West skis away from the enemy attacking him or fights a giant sea monster, he’s drawing upon classic horror stories in an original way, often making us laugh as he gently parodies the books and films he clearly loves—not just Frankenstein, but also James Bond novels and The Island of Dr. Moreau—while never falling into cheesiness. He constantly resurrects old characters and themes, giving them fresh twists that delight the reader for their cleverness.

Speaking of resurrection, more than one character comes back to life, and West himself gets crucified. He even loses his wolf belt that helps him control his werewolf urges, and as the full moon approaches, you can imagine what that means.

If you love a fun, action-packed, original take on timeless stories, then Operation Frankenstein is the book for you. And poor West just can’t get a break from the adventures. At the end of the novel, he finds out his next mission is to return to Transylvania, where he was first bitten by the werewolf. That means a third book—From Transylvania With Love—is coming soon. I can’t wait.

For more information about Operation Frankenstein, visit https://www.codenamelonewolf.com/

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

Dracula and The Vengeful Female Vampire of French Literature

Nineteenth-century French vampire fiction is usually marginalized in vampire studies compared to the better-known British vampire works by John William Polidori, James Malcolm Rymer, J. S. Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker. However, French Gothic literature of the time had a stronger vampire tradition than Great Britain, the United States, or other nations’ literatures. What makes French vampire literature particularly unique is its depiction of female vampires.

Female vampires are nonexistent in British literature until J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871) unless one counts the enigmatic Geraldine of Coleridge’s unfinished poem “Christabel” (1816); critics still debate whether Coleridge intended Geraldine to be a vampire. French authors, by contrast, embraced the female vampire in their earliest works. The nineteenth-century fascination with vampire fiction began with the publication of Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) in England. After the novella was quickly translated into French, it became more popular in France than in England, inspiring several plays. Cyprien Bérard also wrote a sequel, Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires (1820), which contains the first female vampire in fiction.

In this article, I will review depictions of female vampires in three French novels by Cyprien Bérard, Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, and Paul Féval. The female vampires in these works are depicted less as bloodsuckers than as the enemies of the vampires who created them. I will also compare these female vampires to their less extreme counterparts in the works of J. S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker and argue that enough textual similarity exists to suggest those British authors knew the earlier French works.

Cyprien Bérard’s Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires

Because The Vampyre was misattributed as a work by Lord Byron, Pierre-Franҫois Ladvocat would publish Polidori’s story under Byron’s name in France. This attribution to Byron would increase the novel’s popularity. Ladvocat would also publish Cyprien Bérard’s sequel, Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires (1820). Charles Nodier, who worked for Ladvocat and later wrote the play version of Polidori’s story, would provide the introduction to Bérard’s book, causing some misattribution of the story to him.^[1]

Bérard and Nodier’s works would cement the popularity of vampire literature in France, where it surpassed vampire literature’s popularity in Great Britain. This popularity may be due to the French equating the vampire figure with an aristocrat who preys on others—a metaphor for how the upper classes had preyed upon the French people prior to the French Revolution. That the vampire was equated with Lord Byron, and thus, with nobility, only strengthened this connection. Furthermore, Lady Caroline Lamb had published in 1816 her novel Glenarvon, which had depicted a fictional version of Lord Byron giving him vampiric characteristics. Lamb wrote her novel as a form of revenge against Lord Byron after he had ended their romantic liaison. Therefore, it is ironic and fitting that the French also used revenge as a major theme in their vampire fiction. Only, this time, the vampires were not humans with vampiric characteristics but true vampires, and their female victims did not write novels as revenge but rather sought to help annihilate the male vampires who had wronged them.

Bérard’s story begins where Polidori’s left off. Lord Ruthven has successfully destroyed his former friend Aubrey’s sister, and now Aubrey seeks revenge upon Ruthven. The novel opens in Venice with the love story of Bettina and Léonti. Lord Ruthwen (Bérard’s spelling for Polidori’s Lord Ruthven) is also in Venice, and there he preys upon Bettina, causing her death. Her lover Léonti then searches for the stranger who destroyed the woman he loves. He meets Aubrey and they share notes until Aubrey is convinced the stranger is the Lord Ruthwen who killed his sister.

Aubrey and Léonti follow a trail of clues to locate Ruthwen. In the process, they hear the story of a Moravian woman who was betrayed by her lover and died. She then returned from the grave and pursued him. This story is believed to contain the first female vampire in French literature, and notably, she became a vampire through her lover’s betrayal, not by being bitten by another vampire.

Aubrey and Léonti then receive confirmation that Bettina has become a vampire (apparently also because of her lover’s betrayal; neither Polidori nor Bérard make Lord Ruthven a blood drinker). Léonti insists that if Bettina is a vampire, she will only use her powers to protect and help him in his quest to destroy Ruthwen. Soon after, Bettina appears and tells the men she rose from the grave as a vampire, but an angel came to protect her in a dream and told her she cannot be reunited with Léonti until Ruthwen is returned to the tomb.

The men now travel to the Duke of Modena’s court where a Lord Seymour (Ruthwen in disguise) has insinuated himself into the duke’s court and become prime minister. When the duke’s palace catches on fire, Seymour saves the duke. For his reward, he asks for the hand of the duke’s daughter, Eleanora. At the wedding, Aubrey and Léonti recognize Seymour as Ruthwen. Bettina also appears and confirms that Seymour is a vampire. She then falls and dies. Léonti plunges a blade into Ruthwen’s breast. Ruthwen dies and is buried, but in the days that follow, many women begin dying, so he is dug up. When life is seen to be still on his lips, he is destroyed by having red-hot irons applied to his heart and eyes.

While Bettina does not destroy Ruthwen, she clearly assists Léonti in destroying Ruthwen. Rather than becoming a vampire like him, Bettina is an innocent victim of the vampire. Consequently, God assists her through the angel he sends to inform her how she can be reunited with Léonti, though only in the afterlife. Consequently, Bettina is the first female vampire who seeks revenge upon her creator.

Literary critic Kevin Dodd states that Bettina is a kind of Virgin Mary to Ruthwen’s Satan and the story is the only Ruthwen narrative in which an “unquestionably good vampire” opposes Ruthwen. “She feeds on no one and is genuinely altruistic.”^[2] Stableford, in a similar vein, refers to Bettina as an “anti-vampire,” also stating she is the first of the “seductive female revenants,” who are numerous in French literature.[3]

Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon’s The Virgin Vampire

Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon’s La Vampire, ou la Vierge de Hongrie (1825), translated into English by Brian Stableford as The Virgin Vampire, is the first work to have a female vampire as its main character. Like Bettina, Alinska in The Virgin Vampire is subjected to a fate she did not choose. But Alinska is also more complicated than Bettina. While she becomes an object of terror to the novel’s other characters, once her backstory is revealed, the reader sympathizes with her.

The Virgin Vampire is set in France in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. Edouard Delmont, a colonel in Napoleon’s army, has decided to leave Paris and relocate his family—his wife Hélène, son Eugène, and daughter Juliette—to a chateau near Toulouse. He tells his wife a change in their finances requires them to move, but the truth is he has received a demanding letter from Alinska, whom he formerly promised to marry when he was stationed in Hungary with Napoleon’s army. There they engaged in a blood pact promise, but when the army departed, Edouard decided to forget about Alinska and later married Hélène.

Not long after the Delmonts arrive in Toulouse, Edouard is called away to visit his sister. While Edouard is away, Alinska moves into the neighborhood. Raoul, a former soldier who served under Edouard and is now a servant to the Delmonts, knows of Alinska’s past relationship with Edouard, but no one in the family does. When Raoul tries to confront Alinska about why she is pursuing Edouard, he is manhandled by her powerful servant. Raoul then tries to write to Edouard to warn him of the danger, but his letters are inexplicably torn to pieces or become covered in blood. Eventually, Edouard’s children and then Hélène befriend Alinska. When Alinska’s house burns down and her servant dies in the fire, Hélène invites Alinska to seek shelter under the Delmonts’ roof.

Edouard returns home to find himself in an uncomfortable situation. Alinska confronts him about how he broke his vow to her, but he can do nothing to resolve the situation since he is married to Hélène. Then Edouard and Hélène’s son Eugène becomes ill. Raoul, realizing Alinska is not quite human, looks through a keyhole one night when she is watching over the child and sees her sucking out Eugène’s blood through his mouth. Raoul enters the room and shoots Alinska, but she manages to stab and kill him. When she later claims the house was attacked by thieves, who killed Raoul, the Delmonts believe her. Alinska recovers from her gunshot wound, but Eugène dies.

Soon after, Hélène also begins to weaken. Edouard takes her away from Toulouse, but she feels the need to see Alinska again and calls her to her deathbed. Hélène asks Alinska to take care of her daughter Juliette after her death, which Alinska agrees to. Once Hélène dies, Alinska refuses to attend the funeral. She tells Edouard she cannot. Alinska tries to care for Juliette but finds herself repulsed by the girl, so Edouard sends Juliette off to boarding school.

By this point, neighbors report seeing Hélène and Eugène’s ghosts entering the house. Edouard tries to recompense Alinska for his past wrongs by offering to marry her, but she says she cannot be married by a priest. She finally agrees to a civil ceremony, but following that, Edouard brings her to a chapel where a priest awaits. Alinska now feels she must give in to her destiny. When Edouard removes her glove to put a ring on her finger, her hand is revealed to be that of a skeleton and her corrupted blood pours out of open wounds. The priest orders the demon to make itself known, but it is too late; Alinska has fallen to the floor as a corpse.

The novel’s power does not come through in such a simple summary. We are repeatedly shown Alinska being antisocial, rejecting visitors, fleeing from priests, refusing to go to church, and lamenting her fate or making cryptic statements to the Delmont family about her past and how she cannot partake of happiness. The most dramatic of these statements comes when Alinska tells Edouard she cannot marry him in a church:

Thus, making an effort, she cried: “No, Edouard, no, don’t talk to me about a ceremony to which I once attached all the felicity of my existence. Can I be yours now, when I do not belong to myself? Besides, where are your pretentions taking you? Feeble child of humankind, what union are you proposing? Shall I prostrate myself at the foot of the altar that has rejected me? I’ve already told you—banished from the Lord’s temples by a terrible malediction, I would not dare to cross the redoubtable threshold. You would believe it to be open to us, but I would see an exterminating angel there, which would escape your mortal sight. You love me, you say? Well, give me proof of it, by not importuning me again. I believe in your affection; that must suffice—it is not permissible for you to doubt mine.

Alinska then compares herself to the biblical Cain whose sin of murdering his brother resulted in the mark of Cain upon his forehead:

“Edouard, God marked the forehead of the fratricide Cain with a terrible mark; I bear an equally formidable sign on mine; you cannot see it, but he would perceive it, and then it would be necessary to say adieu to you forever, for there is here, as in Hungary, consecrated ground ever-ready to receive bodies that must dissolve.”

“Poor girl! How I pity you! You’re misled by the prejudices of your education; thus, by virtue of a chimerical dread, you oppose our common happiness. If you fear the rigors of the church, though, would you be equally afraid of a union consecrated by the civil authorities?”

“Oh, that wouldn’t matter—no sacred hand would touch my own.”[4]

Unlike Cain, however, Alinska has not committed a true transgression; rather, she has been transgressed against by her lover, though one might argue the pact she and Edouard made was based in pagan superstition and, therefore, a transgression against God. Edouard had agreed to the pact in Hungary, but the text never reveals what happened to Alinska after Edouard abandoned her. She apparently died and then rose from the grave as a vampire, though how she died is unclear. We may assume it was from a broken heart. Her punishment of becoming a vampire is unfair since she was abandoned by her lover, and she continually fights her vampiric urges while knowing she is cursed by God and will eventually suffer hellfire. As Brian Stableford points out, we cannot feel sympathy for Edouard since he abandoned her, but the novel’s real villain may be God, who creates such unjust punishment. Stableford remarks that Alinska herself is the instrument of God’s Divine Wrath, and:

Within the metaphysical schema of La Vampire, the question tentatively asked and left unanswered by Bérard, as to why God allows evildoing vampires to persecute the innocent, simply does not arise. Here, vampires are not evil, and any persecution that is going on is the work of God….

[Alinska’s] eternal and irrevocable damnation is way over the top by reference to any conceivable scale of justice. If she is a monster, she is not a self-made monster; her monstrousness has been inflicted upon her.[5]

One might also argue, given that the novel was written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, that the novel represents a discomfort with the conquest of much of Europe by Napoleon. The vampire comes from one of the countries Napoleon subjected, and it seeks revenge upon one of Napoleon’s soldiers by following him home to destroy his family.

If Polidori’s The Vampyre is the father of vampire literature, then we might call The Virgin Vampire the mother of it, for it presents the first fully developed female vampire and is the first to grapple with the question of whether vampires can be redeemed.

Paul Féval’s Vampire City

Paul Féval wrote three vampire works, the best in my opinion being Vampire City (La Ville-Vampire, 1875). While it parodies Gothic literature, it also presents a female vampire who actively exacts revenge upon her creator.

The novel’s main character is none other than Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, whom Féval refers to as Anna. Anna is, as Brian Stableford has noted, an early version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[6] Anna leaves England the morning of her wedding after learning from Ned, fiancé to her cousin Cornelia, that Cornelia has been abducted on the continent by a vampire named Monsieur Goetzi.

Anna heads to the continent where she meets Ned at an inn. Ned was attacked by Goetzi and is now lingering near death. Anna also meets Polly, who has partially become a vampire because Goetzi attacked her. Because Polly was Goetzi’s first victim, she has a special connection to him. She says that only she can help kill him, which must be done by inserting a key in his breast at a specific hour when he is weak. (Féval makes up such rules about vampires throughout the novel, obviously going for exaggerated humor.) Anna and her companions begin to pursue Goetzi.

Goetzi eludes the vampire hunters again and again—partly because all of his victims become in a sense part of him. They can even seem to double for him or at least serve his purposes. At one point, Goetzi escapes by crossing water, and he brings all his doubles or companions with him. They all enter inside of him, and then he lays flat on the water and floats on his back, feet forward, to his destination.

This sight results in Polly’s dramatic speech:

While each of them silently considered this strange spectacle, the former Polly broke down in tears. When she was asked why she was so sad, she replied: “Do you think that I can look upon the monster who stole my honor and my happiness without being overcome by rage? Mark this: he will not give you an inch of leeway while you lack the means of destroying him utterly. I tell you this partly for the sake of my vengeance, but above all else for your safety. Every hour of the day and night, whether he be apparent or hidden, you may be certain that Monsieur Goetzi is always prowling around you. Consequently, I now intend to explain in every detail the plan which I have already suggested briefly to Merry Bones—which, if it is executed courageously, will permanently annihilate our common enemy. The moment is favorable, for while we can see him down there, we can be certain that he is not here, listening. While he does not have me, he is obliged to keep all his other parts within him, and you will understand how angry that makes him.”[7]

Polly then tells them they must go to Vampire City where all the vampires reside. She gives them details on how to get into the city and what to expect there. They are successful in their journey, stealthily make it into the city, and they succeed in cutting out Goetzi’s heart.

Polly is remarkable for not only does she want revenge, but she has a psychic or telepathic connection to Goetzi that previous female vampires did not have. This connection allows her to assist in Goetzi’s destruction, thus fulfilling her desire for vengeance.

French Female Vampires’ Influence on Carmilla and Dracula

Of course, the question arises of whether Le Fanu or Stoker read these French novels and were inspired by them when creating their own female vampires. Unfortunately, Le Fanu and Stoker left us no references to these French novels so most critics have shied away from declaring there is an influence. I agree no hard evidence exists, but the textual similarities between the novels in their themes and characterizations, especially when considering the role of female vampires in the novels, makes me think it very likely Le Fanu and especially Stoker had knowledge of the French female vampire tradition.

Le Fanu’s Carmilla is a bloodsucker unlike the French female vampires, but she also seems both to act intentionally and feel remorse for what she plans to do. Consequently, she is most akin to Alinska.

Carmilla’s intentions are clear when she tells her friend and future victim Laura, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.”[8] When Laura questions her about things she keeps secret, Carmilla states:

The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me,—to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and hating me through death and after.[9]

These statements suggest Carmilla is fully aware that she plans to kill Laura, to drain her of her blood.

In other instances, however, Carmilla seems unaware of her actions or at least unable to explain them. Early in the novella, we are told Laura experienced a strange dream as a child in which she saw a female crawl out from her bed and bite her. The reader is obviously intended to see this as a foreshadowing of Carmilla later being in Laura’s life. When Laura then meets Carmilla, Carmilla remarks that she recognizes Laura from a dream of her own, stating:

I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick, with two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from under the bed, I heard some one crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw you—most assuredly you—as I see you now; a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and lips—your lips—you, as you are here. Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I then saw.[10]

Carmilla turns out, then, to be an odd vampire, for unless she has completely made up the story above, she does not seem to understand fully the vampirism that motivates her actions, and thus, she is reluctant as a vampire, far from the male Dracula who appears to delight in his bloodthirst.

The similarities between French female vampires and the female vampires in Dracula are even stronger. Stoker’s novel has five female vampires in total—the three in Dracula’s castle, Lucy Westenra, and Mina Harker. Mina never fully becomes a vampire, but while the other female vampires are all bloodsuckers, Mina is most akin to French female vampires.

I have argued in my book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897 that Stoker could read and probably speak French well enough to read French vampire fiction in French.[11] In addition to my arguments there, it is notable that in his Dublin journal, he copied out an inscription in French he saw at a Trappist Monastery in France.[12] If he couldn’t read French, it is doubtful he could have understood the inscription, much less would have copied it. Furthermore, he made several trips to the Continent, at least four in the 1870s.[13]

While Stoker makes no mention of the French vampire novels discussed above in any of his notes for Dracula or other writings, he certainly was familiar with many works of French literature, including the works of Alexandre Dumas. Dumas would write his own vampire play, The Vampire, in 1851. This play has no female vampires, and we do not know if Stoker knew it, but it is very likely he did since he was the manager of the Lyceum Theatre and very familiar with most popular plays of the era. He certainly knew Dion Boucicault, who created his own version of Dumas’ vampire play in 1852. Boucicault wrote several works for Sir Henry Irving, Stoker’s employer, to perform at the Lyceum, as Stoker states in his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. Boucicault’s vampire play does not contain female vampires, but his play version of Dumas’ The Corsican Brothers (1852) may have influenced Dracula.[14] Irving’s production of The Corsican Brothers at the Lyceum in 1880 included Stoker in the cast as an extra, the only time Stoker is ever known to have performed.[15] The Corsican Brothers shares a similarity with Dracula because it depicts two brothers who are able to feel each other’s pain and sense when something is wrong with the other. Stoker may have been influenced by this connection between the brothers to depict Mina’s telepathic connection to Dracula after he forces her to suck his blood. It is also similar to the telepathic connection between Polly and Goetzi in Féval’s Vampire City.

Perhaps an even more significant work by Dumas that may have a connection to Dracula is The Hero of the People (1853), part of Dumas’ Marie Antoinette series. In that novel, Gilbert hypnotizes Andrée so he can learn the whereabouts of their son Sebastian. While Andrée does not know where Sebastian is, in the trance, she is able to see things usually beyond human ability, referred to as a “second-sight vision.” While in the trance, Andrée realizes Sebastian has had an accident and been rescued by a “vampire” doctor.[16] Dumas also uses a form of the second sight in The Man in the Iron Mask, in which the musketeer Athos feels so connected to his son Raoul that he senses his death before news arrives to confirm it. Dumas’ use of the second sight might have inspired Féval in creating the connection between Polly and Goetzi, which in turn may have inspired Stoker.

We know Stoker was interested in the second sight and he definitely used it in Dracula. Once Mina has become Dracula’s victim, she becomes the means for defeating him because through a form of the second sight, Mina is able to sense Dracula’s movements and read his thoughts, which she then communicates to the novel’s male vampire hunters so they can pursue and kill him. I feel this use of the second sight can be no coincidence on Stoker’s part. Based on previous British vampire literature, the vampire is destroyed by the use of stakes or other weapons but not with the help of a victim who has gained psychic powers. That means of defeat only exists in French vampire fiction prior to Dracula. Perhaps Stoker developed the idea on his own, but Dumas and Féval could be sources for his idea to use it in Dracula. That said, uses of the second sight are also abundant in British literature and include Edward Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), H. Rider Haggard’s Allan’s Wife (1889), and Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep (1856), but we have no record that Stoker knew these works any more than we have record he read Féval, while we do know he was familiar with Dumas’ works, even if only in translation or in plays adapted from them. He might also have been influenced by nonfiction works, of course. He definitely was fascinated with the second sight, again using it in his novel The Mystery of the Sea (1902), even using the actual term, which he does not in Dracula. Later in 1909, he wrote a book review of Norman Macrae’s book Highland Second Sight. Paul S. McAlduff and John Edgar Browning discuss Stoker’s interest in the second sight and list several nonfiction books in Stoker’s library that mentioned the topic, several of which predate the publication of Dracula.[17]

In Stoker’s novel, Mina understands that Dracula’s power over her is so great that while she can read his thoughts, he can also read hers. Therefore, she avoids learning everything the men know from fear she will betray them by unwittingly helping Dracula. Mina and Van Helsing discuss this situation in detail in Chapters 25 and 26 of the novel. This connection and the resulting sympathy Mina feels for Dracula results from the vampire’s hold upon his female victim. Féval is the first author to employ sympathy as a plot device in this manner. Polly even goes so far as to become Goetzi once his actual body is destroyed. Nowhere does a vampire have another character serve as almost a double for him before Vampire City, and nowhere again does it occur until Dracula.

Conclusion

Several other similarities exist between Vampire City and Dracula that I have discussed in Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides, plus other possible French influences upon Dracula, but the strongest argument for a possible influence is the use of female vampires who seek revenge upon their creators and assist in bringing down his downfall, even when, like Mina, they feel conflicted over the matter.

We may never know whether Stoker read Féval or other French authors, and to some extent it does not matter. To say Stoker drew from these works may in some ways limit Stoker’s genius. To say these authors influenced Stoker may also deny their works their own marks of genius if they are read only as sources for Dracula. Tracing such lines of influence may be detrimental to full appreciation of both works. However, authors have always influenced other authors throughout history, so why should we think the case was any different with vampire literature? I believe Stoker was influenced by the French vampire tradition given the similarities presented in this discussion between his and French vampire novels. Furthermore, all of the authors discussed here made significant contributions to vampire literature, especially in their depiction of female vampires, and they deserve to be acknowledged and appreciated for those remarkable contributions.

Bibliography

Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2002.

Bérard, Cyprien. The Vampire Lord Ruthwen. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011. Kindle edition.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Christabel.” 1816. The Portable Coleridge. Ed. I. A. Richards. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1970. 105-27.

D’Arcy, Uriah Derick. “The Black Vampyre, a Legend of St. Domingo.” 1819. Edinburgh, Gr. Brit.: Gothic World Literature Editions, 2020. Kindle edition.

Dodd, Kevin. “Plot Variations in the Nineteenth-Century Story of Lord Ruthven, Pt. 1.” Journal of Vampire Studies. 1.2 (2020): 19-43.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Corsican Brothers. 1844. In Alexandre Dumas: Collection of 34 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated). n.p.: Annotated Classics, n.d. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Hero of the People. 1853. Trans. Henry Llewellyn Williams. New York, NY: J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company, 1892. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Man in the Iron Mask. 1847. In Alexandre Dumas: Collection of 34 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated). n.p.: Annotated Classics, n.d. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Vampire. 1851. Trans. Frank J. Morlock. In The Return of Lord Ruthven. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2004. Kindle edition.

Féval, Paul. Vampire City. 1875. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Féval, Paul. The Vampire Countess. 1865. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Gautier, Théophile. “Clarimonde.” 1836. Trans. Lafcadio Hearn. 1909. n.p.: Public Domain Book, n.d. Kindle edition.

Lamb, Lady Caroline. Glenarvon. 1816. London, Gr. Brit.: J. M. Dent, 1995.

Lamothe-Langon, Étienne-Léon de. The Virgin Vampire. 1825. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011.

Le Fanu, J. S. Carmilla. In In a Glass Darkly. Vol. 3. 1872. Kindle edition.

McAlduff, Paul S. and John Edgar Browning. “Bram Stoker’s Oeuvre and ‘Other Knowledges’: The ‘Lost’ Book Review of Norman Macrae’s Highland Second-Sight (1909).” Gothic Studies. 18(2):86-95.

Polidori, John. The Vampyre. 1819. In The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold: or, The Modern Oedipus. 1819. Collected Fiction of John William Polidori. Toronto, Canada: U of Toronto P, 1994. p. 33-49.

Richardson, Elsa. Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century: Prophecy, Imagination and Nationhood. London, Gr. Brit.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Skal, David J. Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker the Man Who Wrote Dracula. New York, NY: Liveright, 2016.

Stableford, Brian. “Afterword: A Brief Note on the Theodicy of La Vampire.” In The Virgin Vampire by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011.

Stableford, Brian. “Introduction.” In The Vampire Lord Ruthwen by Cyprien Bérard. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011. Kindle edition.

Stableford, Brian. “Introduction.” In Vampire City by Paul Féval. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula: The Postcolonial Edition. 1897. Ed. Cristina Artenie. Montreal, Canada: Universitas Press, 2016.

Stoker, Bram. The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years. Ed. Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker. Austin, TX: HellBound Books, 2012.

Stoker, Bram. Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. 1906. In The Collected Works of Bram Stoker. n.p.: Delphi Classics, 2014. Kindle edition.

Stoker, Bram. The Mystery of the Sea. In The Collected Works of Bram Stoker. n.p.: Delphi Classics, 2014. Kindle edition.

Tichelaar, Tyler R. Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897. Marquette, MI: Marquette Fiction, 2023.

TYLER R. TICHELAAR is an author and independent scholar. He has a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature from Western Michigan University. His publications include two books on Gothic fiction, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption and Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Literature. He blogs at http://www.GothicWanderer.com.

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^[1] Stableford, “Introduction,” The Vampire Lord Ruthwen.

^[2] Dodd, “Plot Variations, Part I,” p. 28.

[3] Stableford, “Introduction,” The Vampire Lord Ruthwen.

[4] Lamothe-Langon, The Virgin Vampire, Chapter 23.

[5] Stableford, “Afterword: A Brief Note on the Theodicy of La Vampire.”

[6] Stableford, “Introduction,” Vampire City.

[7] Féval, Vampire City, Chapter 10.

[8] Le Fanu, Chapter 4.

[9] Le Fanu, Chapter 6.

[10] Le Fanu, Chapter 3.

[11] Tichelaar p. 422-3.

[12] Stoker, The Lost Journal, p. 241.

[13] Stoker, The Lost Journal, p. 238.

[14] Belford p. 130.

[15] Skal p. 219; Stoker, Personal Reminiscences, Chapter 15.

[16] Dumas, The Hero of the People, Chapter 15.

[17] McAlduff and Browning, p. 88. For more on the nineteenth-century fascination with the second sight, see Elsa Richardson’s Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century. Richardson discusses expeditions into Scotland to find people who had the gift, as well as how it was used in literature by authors like Andrew Lang and Dickens and Collins in their play The Frozen Deep (1856). However, Richardson makes no mention of Stoker.

New Novel Features Bionic Wolfman as Secret Agent in Transylvania

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting author Wade Walker at a publishing conference. After we discussed our mutual admiration for Dark Shadows, Hammer Horror films, and werewolf fiction, I was intrigued to read his debut novel, Bite of the Wolf. Although not a nineteenth-century Gothic work like I usually blog about, Bite of the Wolf plays in interesting ways with many classic Gothic elements, updating them for the twenty-first century.

The novel begins when Val West, who works for a secret American government organization, is on assignment in Transylvania where he is attacked and bitten by a werewolf. Of course, this means he will soon transform into one himself. The twist comes when the secret organization he works for decides they can use that in their favor by turning him into secret agent LoneWolf; this requires providing West with a suit he can wear under his clothes. His coworker Borge will be able to control the suit, thus preventing West from becoming a werewolf except when it is deemed favorable. West has then become a sort of bionic werewolf working for the government on secret missions. Regardless, he hopes to be cured of his werewolfism by capturing the werewolf that bit him so experiments can be done on it to come up with a cure.

I won’t give away the novel’s entire plot, but I will assure the reader it is full of twists. I especially appreciated how West was sent to exotic locations. With a bit of a nod to James Bond, West is rather a ladies’ man, and he continually gets himself into dangerous situations. From Tangiers to the casino in Monte Carlo and back to Transylvania, West tracks down smugglers and, ultimately, some criminals with Nazi connections, which leads to the final dramatic showdown. Yes, the novel is set in the present-day, but West connects with some treasure hunters looking for Nazi gold, which results in surprising revelations.

The only negative criticism the book has received to date is that Walker treats Transylvania like it is its own country and not part of Romania. This is a fair criticism from a political and geographical perspective, although Walker is clearly relying on a fictional tradition about Transylvania that goes back to the nineteenth century. Furthermore, Walker clearly did extensive research into Transylvania’s geography as evidenced by the many references to different locations. I was also surprised by all the research he must have done in regards to weapons, Nazi history, and, of course, Gothic and, in particular, werewolf literature. In fact, I was surprised that the villain turned out to be a historical person since I had never heard of him.

Walker fills Bite of the Wolf with interesting new twists on traditional Gothic motifs. For example, at one point, a bat is seen flying through the Transylvanian night sky. As it approaches, it looks like quite a large bat, but then turns out to be a drone. The organization West works for has secret bases spread around the globe and located under such Gothic landmarks as Highgate Cemetery in London and cemeteries in France. Of course, West will have a final battle in which he turns into a werewolf. What is interesting about this final scene is that while throughout the novel we are aware that the full moon’s effect on West is to transform him into a werewolf, when he is severely beaten and it appears he is likely to die, the rays of the full moon not only transform him but restore him to his previous vigor. I especially found this detail interesting since in early vampire fiction, if the vampire was placed in the light of the full moon, he could be brought back to life, as happens in Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and several of the other Lord Ruthven vampire stories, as I’ve explored in my book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides.

Of course, every good hero has a female love interest, and Val West is no different. He befriends Tanya, a young woman who finds she’s on the wrong side. He tries to help her while going after the man she works for, who is involved in treasure hunting. Throughout their time together, West keeps from Tanya his secret that he is a werewolf. When she finally learns the truth, some astonishing things happen that I won’t give away. But one of my favorite parts of the book came after the climax when Tanya and West are alone together in the Transylvanian forest. Trust me; it is more than you would expect, and I’m not talking just about sex.

Bite of the Wolf is filled with plot twists, heroism, and suspenseful moments that make you think the villain just might win—and what a wonderfully evil villain he is! Even though he’s out for world domination like many another evil character, his plan to achieve it is original and masterfully depicted. Finally, plenty of humor makes all the good guys likeable.

The novel ends with West being told about other possible missions he might be sent on. I hope that means one or several sequels. Walker did tell me he was working on another book. I’ll be looking forward to it.

For more information about Bite of the Wolf, visit https://www.codenamelonewolf.com/

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

George Lippard’s The Mysteries of Florence: A Hot Mess of Medieval Murder and Mayhem

After reading The Quaker City (1845) by George Lippard (1822-1854), which I blogged about earlier this year, I was intrigued to find at Amazon a novel titled The Mysteries of Florence by Lippard. I was surprised an American author would choose a foreign city as the subject for a city mysteries novel. However, it turns out The Mysteries of Florence is not a city mysteries novel at all. The first city mysteries novel was Eugene Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris (1842-3), and that was the work Lippard was imitating in writing The Quaker City. However, The Mysteries of Florence was probably written or at least begun before Sue began or finished The Mysteries of Paris, so the novel could not be influenced by the city mysteries genre. Further investigation revealed the novel was retitled from its original title The Ladye Annabel, or The Doom of the Poisoner: A Romance by an Unknown Author.

The Mysteries of Florence, published by Good Press, 2022, is a retitled copy of George Lippard’s The Ladye Annabel (1844)

Who changed the title, whether for the ebook version I read published by Good Press in 2022 or an earlier edition, I do not know. But the novel is not at all aligned with the city mysteries genre, which is always set in a contemporary urban setting. Instead, The Ladye Annabel, as I’ll refer to it going forward, is set in medieval Florence circa 1200. The date is not given, but we can estimate the time period because the Count of Albarone in the novel has been on crusade with Richard the Lionheart, who died in 1199. The novel’s style is more akin to that of Mrs. Radcliffe, especially her earlier works like The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) or even Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), given its medieval setting. It is also mostly devoid of anything supernatural, with believed supernatural events later explained rationally, as was Mrs. Radcliffe’s method. That said, the novel contains plenty of seeds that would point toward Lippard learning his craft and later developing his masterpiece, The Quaker City.

According to Emilia de Grazia’s 1969 dissertation The Life and Works of George Lippard, The Ladye Annabel was Lippard’s first full-length novel. He published it anonymously, and to divert criticism, he claimed it was based on an ancient chronicle. The novel was serialized beginning November 29, 1843 in the journal Citizen Soldier; Lippard was its editor (p. 112). This conflict of interest explains his decision to publish the work anonymously, since he was then free to praise it and claim a large sum of money—$350—was paid for the rights to print it. It was later published in book form in early 1844 (p. 125).

Lippard actually wrote four works (per Wikipedia) before The Quaker City. I have not read them, but I would consider The Ladye Annabel, because of its flaws compared to the mature The Quaker City, a work all the more remarkable because Lippard was only twenty-three when it was published. He was only twenty-one when he began publishing The Ladye Annabel.

I consider The Ladye Annabel as juvenilia because the plot is weak and largely predictable, but mainly because some of it is not well developed. The book goes in directions we don’t expect at times and then gives us information we should have known much earlier. Sometimes the book suffers from wordiness and lack of clarity, yet there are some stunning moments.

The plot is rather complicated because of the large cast of characters. It begins when we are introduced to the Castle of Albarone near Florence. The castle has been owned for centuries by the Counts of Albarone. The current count, Julian, has just returned from Crusade where he served with Richard the Lionheart. He has a wife and a son, Adrian. He also has a brother, Aldarin, who is a scholar of the occult mysteries and the villain. Aldarin has a daughter, Annabel.

Early in the novel, Aldarin poisons his brother and frames Adrian for the murder. He does this so he can become count and marry his daughter, Annabel, to the Duke of Florence rather than have her marry Adrian, whom she loves. Aldarin also seeks to become immortal. He has been working on a formula for twenty-one years that will make him immortal, and he is just days away from completing his experiment when he murders his brother. Not long after, the eastern sage Ibrahim arrives to tell him the final secrets he must know to become immortal. But Ibrahim is really a monk in disguise, Albertine, who is part of the secret order of the Monks of the Holy Steel. He has befriended Adrian, but in disguise, he tricks Aldarin into believing he is helping him. In the end, Aldarin’s efforts fail, though for a short time he believes he is immortal. Eventually, he dies but proclaims he will still be part of the “Awful Soul” and live forever in spirit form. His ashes are spread throughout the earth by the wind so that he is unable to regain physical form.

Aldarin is definitely the most interesting figure in a novel filled with undeveloped characters. He is very much a typical Gothic wanderer, one seeking immortality and wealth, a Rosicrucian transgressor centuries before Rosicrucianism was founded, and while he does not specifically discuss the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone, those are what he seems intent on. He is interested in esoteric knowledge, having traveled to Palestine with his brother on crusade and there acquired occult knowledge. Of course, in the end, his quest is his downfall; his eagerness for knowledge to become immortal is what allows the protagonists to trick him.

The only other character of any real interest is the monk Albertine who leads the Order of the Holy Steel (or Monks of the Holy Steel), and we get the sense he is manipulating events behind the scenes, though it is not always clear what his motives or processes are.

Oddly, Aldarin dies at the end of Book 3 but the novel goes on with Book 4, in which we catch up mainly with what happened to Adrian after being arrested by the Duke of Florence for parricide. The Duke, who is Aldarin’s conspirator, plans to have Adrian murdered so he can wed Annabel. However, the Duke ends up tricked by Albertine and meets his own death. Adrian is supposedly murdered but is actually only drugged and buried alive in a coffin. The most powerful scene in the novel occurs when Adrian dreams while drugged that he awakes a century later to join a dance of the dead. He sees skeletons dancing in the tomb, including that of Annabel, whom he dances with.

Following his dream, Adrian tries to escape from the tomb. He has been locked up for days and is ravenous, and he is also surprised to find his arm wounded and bleeding. To nourish himself, he resorts to sucking his own blood. He also hears the groans of another, the man sent to kill him and who had wounded him but found himself also locked in the vault. Adrian does not save this man, but refreshed by his own blood, he gains the strength to figure out how to escape from the vault.

Adrian is soon reunited with Annabel. They are wed and crowned Duke and Duchess of Florence, but as the novel closes, the sky grows dark and Annabel hears a mysterious voice she recognizes as her father’s. He says all is now fulfilled since his daughter is Duchess of Florence. Annabel then says to Adrian:

“The corse, Adrian, the corse of my father—where doth it rest?”

“It hath no place of repose on earth,” was the solemn answer. “Given to the invisible air, the mortal frame finds nor home, nor resting place in sacred chapel, or in wild wood glade; but mingled with the unseen winds, floating in the atmosphere of heaven; on, and on forever wanders the earthly dust of the Scholar, denied repose on earth, refused judgment by heaven, condemned to the eternal solitudes of the disembodied spirit; on, and on it wanders seeking companionship with the mighty soul of Aldarin!”

The novel ends with an invisible voice saying, “It is finished.”

This odd ending plays off Christ’s last words after he is crucified. However, Aldarin is a reverse Christ figure. He has also become spirit like Christ, but he remains a Gothic Wanderer figure akin to the Wandering Jew since his earthly dust continues to wander.

The Ladye Annabel has many faults, its greatest being its clumsy structure and dragging on too long. Once Aldarin dies, the reader expects a quick resolution that is not provided, and yet the most powerful moments occur in Book 4.

Another fault is Lippard’s failure to foreshadow properly or give us reason for events in the proper place. For example, not until Chapter 10 of Book 4 are we informed that Florence has experienced bloodshed for three years, which is why the Monks of the Holy Steel formed—so they can overthrow the Duke. It is rather late then to tell us the Duke has been a bad person for years since we only see him acting in an evil manner because he wants to wed Annabel.

Given that the novel was renamed The Mysteries of Florence, it does not live up to the level of mystery one might expect. We almost always know the characters’ motives and actions with few surprises along the way. There were a few, such as when Aldarin reveals to the page Guiseppo that he is his illegitimate son only to get him to stab the returned crusader Geoffrey the Longsword, and then have Guiseppo learn that Geoffrey is his real father. Fortunately, Geoffrey is saved from Guiseppo’s dagger by a piece of the True Cross he keeps on his person.

Another fault of the novel is that it is only in the footnotes that Lippard starts to suggest, and then well into the novel, that he is working from an ancient manuscript and retelling the story. He references a “Romancer” in the beginning of the book, but it is not clear there that the Romancer is his source for the story.

George Lippard, a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, died at thirty-one after writing more than two dozen books.

Such flaws are why I consider the novel Lippard’s juvenilia. A more accomplished author would have gone back and revised as they developed the story or would have planned it out better to begin with. Of course, part of the problem is the novel’s serialization, which prevented Lippard from rewriting earlier scenes, but that is all the more reason to have a strong outline worked out to write from, though in all fairness, even more accomplished serial writers like Sue, Dumas, and Dickens made things up as they went along.

Regardless of its faults, The Ladye Annabel is a very readable book, and while its plot is fairly complicated, it is not overly long, taking only about ten hours to read, compared to the typically one-thousand-page-plus city mystery novels. Fans of Lippard will want to read it to see the author of The Quaker City learning his craft. Truly, given the novel’s flaws, the far more polished The Quaker City is all the remarkable for being written immediately after The Ladye Annabel.

I remain astonished that I only recently learned of George Lippard, given his popularity in American literature at the time. Partly, his obscurity may be due to his untimely death at thirty-one, partly because his extremely popular sensational works were considered not really literature by later literary critics, but he was the friend of Edgar Allan Poe, who praised his work. I can understand that Poe’s works are shorter and, therefore, more accessible to students in American literature survey classes, but frankly, with a few exceptions, I’ve always found Poe’s works somewhat boring and lacking in purpose. Furthermore, Poe usually had European settings for his tales while Lippard was more revolutionary by using American settings—The Ladye Annabel being the one exception. I look forward to reading more by the author of The Quaker City, perhaps the greatest novel written between Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

I also hope to learn more about Lippard. Unfortunately, no full-length biographies or published studies of Lippard exist. Emilia de Grazia’s 1969 dissertation The Life and Works of George Lippard appears to be the most complete critical work on Lippard. It can be downloaded online. Like George W. M. Reynolds and many other nineteenth-century authors of Gothic and city mysteries novels, Lippard deserves far more attention than he has received. According to Wikipedia, he wrote more than two dozens books, an enormous achievement for someone who died of tuberculosis two months before his thirty-second birthday.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

A Love Quadrangle, Platonic Love, and History in Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs

This blog post is a follow-up to one I posted on September 18, 2017 on Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs. In that post, I lamented that no complete biography has been published of Jane Porter and that there has been no critical edition of the novel. Since then, Devoney Looser published her wonderful biography of Jane Porter and her sister Anna Maria Porter, titled Sister Novelists. I posted about Looser’s biography on January 10, 2023. Besides being a well-researched and thoroughly interesting biography, it revealed to me that the edition of The Scottish Chiefs I own and have read twice, the Scribner 1921 edition with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, is a heavily abridged edition. Yes, I had read the introduction in that edition by Kate Douglass Wiggin where she describes how she and Nora Smith, the book’s editors, hardly changed anything in the book. Wiggin states:

Neither of the editors believes in abridging the classics; still less in altering, interrupting, or adding to a text that should be sacred; but we hope that we have taken away from the present edition nothing but negligible phrases, paragraphs that are not a part of the main flow of the story; a little of the descriptive matter, retaining the most beautiful where there is little else than sheer beauty; preserving the historic content, and not allowing a single romantic incident to escape us in a world that sometimes threatens to be dull, dreary and lacking in idealism. (p. ix)

Reprint of the 1921 Scribner’s Edition with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth

Could anything be more untrue? Wiggin tells at least a half-lie here since she and Smith did everything she says, but her tone makes us believe just a word or at most a paragraph here or there was cut or changed. In truth, about one-third of the book was cut for the Scribner edition. Worse, they constantly rewrote sentences, often to make them shorter, but rarely improving them. The novel’s very first sentence was altered. In the Scribner edition, the first sentence is “Bright was the summer of 1296.” In Porter’s original, it begins, “That war which had desolated Scotland was now at an end.” Only later in the paragraph does Porter insert the year 1296, but Wiggin and Smith felt the need to insert the date earlier. The number of such changes is far too numerous to discuss in detail. But worse, whole paragraphs and even pages of text are cut. In one place, a very Radcliffean exclamation about nature is chopped out, which detracts from the work’s place in the Romantic tradition. In another, Wallace meets a poor family and hears them praise him before his identity is known to them—it is all cut from the novel. In other cases, chapters of Porter’s novel were trimmed down and combined into new chapters. In short, a travesty was committed.

The Broadview Press edition of 2007, containing the complete text of Porter’s novel

Fortunately, I have since learned that Broadview Press published an edition of The Scottish Chiefs in 2007, edited by Fiona Price, which includes the complete five-volume original text. While not a critical edition, it has a wonderful introduction by Price, retains Porter’s own notes about her sources in writing the novel, and includes appendices of Porter’s prefaces to later editions, contemporary reviews of the novel’s editions, and poems about Wallace by other authors. I would like more notes and clear statements on the historical people in the novel to separate them from the fictional characters so I don’t have to keep looking them up at Wikipedia, but the Broadview Press edition is the one to read. That said, I found it fascinating to carefully compare it to the Scribner edition as I read to discover what changes were made.

I always wanted to like The Scottish Chiefs, but when I first read it in 1992, I found it dull. That was three years before Braveheart (1995) was released. After rewatching Braveheart in 2017, I wanted to revisit Porter’s novel. I found it more interesting on a reread, but somewhat dull in places, still not knowing I was reading a heavily abridged volume. Now, on reading the Broadview Press edition, I was blown away by Porter’s writing and the strong Romanticism evident throughout the novel. Now I think the novel a true marvel and one of the gems of the Romantic period.

Wallace and Bruce meeting on the beach by N. C. Wyeth

For the remainder of this essay, I will discuss the role of love in The Scottish Chiefs and how it affects the love quadrangle of characters. While some readers might only think a love triangle exists in the novel, in many ways, it is a very subversive text, and a close reading reveals that gender fluidity marks the text. The members of this love quadrangle are Sir William Wallace, who is widowed early in the novel; Helen of Mar, a young virgin and daughter of the Earl of Mar; her stepmother Joanna, Countess of Mar, who though married falls in love with Wallace and throws herself at him; and Edwin Ruthven, Helen’s cousin who—believe it or not—is clearly in love with Sir William Wallace despite all the descriptions of it being brotherly love in the novel. Some might argue Edwin simply hero-worships Wallace, but I will argue and cite passages that demonstrate the text clearly implies Edwin has homosexual tendencies toward Wallace and that Wallace may even share those tendencies. In her introduction to the Broadview Press edition, Fiona Price notes the novel contains “latent homosexuality” (p. 21), but I’m not sure it’s solely latent). Because homosexuality would be a taboo subject, while Porter repeatedly hints at it, she also pulls back into claims of platonic love. (Porter never uses the word platonic but describes it as “brotherly” or “spiritual.”) The only member of the quadrangle whose love is not purified by being described as being spiritual is Joanna, whose love is “passionate.”

I will now highlight the significant moments in the relationships between the characters in the love quadrangle. The novel opens when Wallace is pulled into the events of the Scottish War against the tyrant King Edward I of England. A Scottish noble, Donald, Earl of Mar, seeks Wallace’s aid to hide him and a mysterious casket. By the end of the novel, we will learn the casket contains the regalia of Scotland. Wallace and his wife Marion hide Mar, but when the English soldiers come, Marion is slain. This crime causes Wallace to take up arms for his country to free it. He repeatedly from this point on feels like God has chosen him to save Scotland and that Marion’s death, as much as it hurts him, is part of Scotland’s plan.

Once Wallace takes up arms to free Scotland, he also feels he is no longer capable of loving another woman. While in time he grows to love both Helen and Edwin, he refers to this love as that of a brother and sister.

Helen and Edwin also develop love in their hearts for Wallace. Helen realizes she loves Wallace, but she also understands his statements that he cannot love again, and she does not believe he can love her in that way. Wallace is repeatedly described as being like a god and someone to be worshiped, so not surprisingly, Helen may feel she is not worthy of the love of a being so superior to her.

Edwin is a different story. Edwin is a boy of fifteen who has been weak and sickly, so he has been sent to a monastery to live. The monastery is attacked by the English, causing Edwin to be rescued by Wallace. From that point, Edwin is dedicated to Wallace, indeed worships him, and likely has homosexual feelings for him. At the same time, through Wallace’s fatherly or brotherly love, Edwin gains confidence to become more manly and do manly warlike deeds. We might just call this male bonding or a father’s influence, but an extreme number of scenes about Wallace and Edwin’s love suggests something more is going on.

It is hard to tell if Wallace has any feelings for Edwin that might be of a sexual nature, but I suspect his relationship with Edwin is a type of surrogate relationship for his inability to love a woman—both because he mourns Marion and because a woman’s love would interfere with his ability to focus on the fight for Scotland’s independence from English tyranny. Consequently, the love Wallace feels for Edwin seems to be a vicarious replacement for his love of a woman.

Edwin, however, clearly has stronger feelings for Wallace that go beyond hero-worship or brotherly love. Wallace, in turn, transforms Edwin into a pseudo-female in his thoughts. For example, at one point Wallace has a nightmare that Edwin has drowned. He awakes and declares:

“Oh! I love thee, Edwin,” he exclaimed to himself, “and I fear my hermit-heart was to be separated from all but a patriot’s love! So is Heaven’s will; and why then did I think of loving thee?—must thou too die, that Scotland may have no rival, that Wallace may feel himself quite alone?” (p. 252-3; all subsequent page numbers from the Broadview edition)

Here, Wallace is equating Edwin with the dead Marion. She had to die so Wallace would be free to fight for Scotland. Now that he realizes he loves Edwin, he fears Edwin will have to die also.

Later, Edwin tells Wallace, “Ah, my beloved general, what Jonathan was to David I would be to thee!” Wallace replies, “But thy love, passes not the love of woman, Edwin!” In response, Edwin replies, “No, but it equals it…what has been done for thee, I would do; only love me as David did Jonathan, and I shall be the happiest of the happy.” Wallace replies, “Be happy then; sweet boy!…For all that ever beat in heathen or in Christian breast for friend or brother, lives in my heart for thee” (p. 295).

Porter continually does this, hinting at something more than brotherly love, then pulling back to call it something more innocent. The David and Jonathan reference recalls 2 Samuel 1:26, where after Jonathan dies, David says of him, “thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Notably, though, both Wallace and Edwin agree Edwin does not offer love that passes that of a woman. Rather because Edwin’s love equals a woman’s love, it equates him with a woman, making him the subordinate in his relationship with Wallace, the dominant male.

If I seem to be reading between the lines too much, consider the following passage. Here, Wallace and Edwin have been parted and they express their joy at being reunited.

“[Edwin was] clasped in the arms of Wallace. Real transport, true happiness, now dilated the heart of the before desponding chief. He pressed the dear boy again and again to his bosom, and kissed his white forehead with all the rapture of the fondest brother. “Thank God! thank God!” was all that Edwin could say; while, at every effort he made to tear himself away from Wallace to congratulate his uncle on his safety, his heart overflowing towards his friend, opened afresh, and he clung the closer to his breast; till at last exhausted with happiness, the little hero of Dumbarton gave way to the sensibility of his tender age, and the chief felt his bosom wet with the joy-drawn tears of his youthful knight.” (p. 255)

To me, this is hardly less than a veiled orgasm on Edwin’s part. Edwin is pulled repeatedly to Wallace until he is exhausted and ejaculates tears. Call it brotherly love if you want, but having had a brother, I’ve never seen two brothers express love in such a dramatic fashion. Notably, the Scribner edition completely cuts this scene, suggesting Wiggin and Smith could read between the lines also.

Other characters are also aware of the heightened affection between Wallace and Edwin. Witnessing the above scene, Edwin’s cousin Murray says to Wallace, “That urchin is such a monopoliser, that I see you have not a greeting for anyone else!” (p. 255). Murray is only joking, but several other characters find this homoerotic love less amusing and take it more seriously.

Helen feels she must repress her feelings for Wallace, though she thinks of him as “a God” and is aware that she could easily fall down and worship him (p. 346). She thinks, “I may steal some portion of the rare lot that was Lady Marion’s—to die for such a man,” but then she adds, “Ah, that I could be in Edwin’s place, and wait upon his smiles, and with my bosom shield his breast! But that may not be: I am a woman, and formed to suffer in silence and seclusion. But even at a distance, brave Wallace, my spirit shall watch over you in the form of this Edwin; I will teach him a double care of the light of Scotland” (p. 347). In other words, Helen wishes she could be Edwin so she could always be with Wallace, and she imaginatively transforms herself into Edwin to protect Wallace.

Wallace repeatedly holds Helen at a distance, citing he must fight for Scotland and that he can love no woman, but he keeps having a spiritual relationship with her. At one point they are in “communion” and she is described as “the sublimest of beings.” He then gives her a chain to wear to “bear witness to a friendship…which will be cemented by eternal ties in heaven!” (p. 378).

Later, Helen feels resigned to live like a nun for Wallace, and she tells Edwin, “He has spoken to me the language of friendship: you know what it is to be his friend: And having tasted of heaven, I cannot stoop to earth” (p. 409).

In response, Edwin says, “Ah, Helen! Helen!…durst I speak the wishes of my heart! But you and Sir William Wallace would both frown on me, and I dare not!”

“Then never do!” exclaimed Helen, turning pale, and trembling from head to foot; too well guessing by the generous glow in his countenance, what would have been that wish” (p. 409).

But does Helen guess correctly? We are led to assume Edwin wishes Helen and Wallace could be together, but perhaps Edwin is only wishing to be with Wallace himself.

Joanna also suspects something unusual about the closeness between Edwin and Wallace, largely because of her jealousy toward anyone Wallace loves since she loves him herself. Joanna is the only one in the love quadrangle who is not chaste or pure in her feelings. To some degree, we might argue that Wallace, Helen, and Edwin are all repressing their sexuality while Joanna is the only one in touch with her sexual needs and passion. However, because she is married to Lord Mar, not to mention she is too forward and obnoxious for Wallace to love, Wallace repeatedly refuses her. Joanna is a sublime villain, even wishing her husband were dead so she can marry Wallace. But while she clearly admires Wallace—everyone in the novel does; even Queen Margaret of England falls for him later—Joanna’s love is love of self-interest. She is herself descended from one of the houses contending for the throne of Scotland, so she considers herself a princess. She envisions her royal blood can help Wallace take the throne for himself, and then he will want her to be his queen. It will be a marriage of convenience for them, but also one of love. Wallace wants nothing to do with such a relationship, however.

After her husband dies and Joanna reveals the full extent of her intentions toward Wallace, she comes to embody the statement that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In the end, she plots against Wallace, wishing him dead rather than seeing him marry Helen, whom he denies he can love because his heart belongs to Marion, but Joanna knows better. In the end, as Joanna feared, Wallace and Helen do marry when he is in prison and about to be killed by King Edward. Again, Joanna seems the only character in touch with her and even others’ sexuality, and while she is the greatest villain in the novel, save perhaps King Edward, she is perhaps the character who feels most real to us today.

Being in touch with her sexuality, Joanna not only realizes the love between Helen and Wallace, but she recognizes Edwin’s improper feelings for Wallace. This recognition first happens when Edwin teases her for not letting Wallace leave her presence by saying, “if you do not mean to play Circle to our Ulysses, give us leave to go!” She whispers, “Are you indeed my nephew?” At first, I thought she was offended by his remark, but Porter then tells us, “A strange jealousy glanced on her heart; she had never seen Edwin Ruthven; the blooming cheek of this youth, his smooth skin, his almost impassioned fondness for Wallace: all made a wild suspicion rush upon her mind” (p. 262). What can this mean other than that she realizes Edwin is in love with Wallace? Fiona Price interprets this as saying Joanna suspects Edwin is really a woman (p. 21), which is possible since she has never seen him before and cross-dressing is not uncommon in the novel, but whether she really thinks Edwin a woman or suspects he is queer, it is a shocking moment in the novel and I suspect she feels Edwin is trying to steal Wallace from her.

Later, Joanna is stupid enough to reveal to Edwin her plans to marry Wallace and have him make her his queen. When Edwin upbraids her, she replies, “when you love yourself, and struggle with a passion that drinks your very life, you will pity Joanna of Mar, and forgive her!” By this point her husband is recently dead, so she tries to claim she has only just begun to love Wallace, but Edwin responds that love grows by degrees, and there has not been time for such love to grow. Joanna then realizes “by the remarks of Edwin that he was deeper read in the human heart than she had suspected; that he was neither ignorant of the feelings of the passion, nor of what ought to be its source” (p. 491). Edwin has had no passion for a woman at this point; he is a fifteen-year-old boy who has been locked up in a monastery—what passion can he know except for the passion he feels for Wallace?

Joanna is so consumed by passion that at one point she dresses herself as the Green Knight of the Plume to join Wallace. After a battle, she reveals her true identity to him and claims she has proven her love for him by putting herself in danger. Wallace once again rejects her. She then works to destroy Wallace. When the Scottish chiefs hold a trial and Joanna accuses Wallace of treason, others speculate that the Green Knight might have been the treasonous one or working with Wallace. Joanna is now afraid that Wallace may have told Edwin that she was the Green Knight and he will reveal it. Wallace has not told Edwin since he is too honorable to cast shame on her by revealing her ill behavior. However, to protect herself, Joanna “informs the council of the infatuated attachment of Edwin Ruthven to the accused, and she concluded by asserting that she had ample cause for knowing that the boy was so bewitched by the commander who had flattered his youthful vanity by loading him with the distinctions due to approved valour in manhood, that he was ready at any time to sacrifice every consideration of truth, reason, and duty, to please Sir William Wallace” (p. 623). In other words, “That gay boy is so infatuated with lust for Wallace he’ll lie for him.”

In Edwin’s final scene, he tries to protect Wallace, resulting in being shot with an arrow to his heart. He embodies that there is no greater love than to die for one’s friend. Wallace, in mourning, says of Edwin, “In thee was truth, manhood, and nobleness; in thee was all man’s fidelity, with woman’s tenderness” (p. 67). With Edwin’s death, I rest my case on whether he was gay or not.

If Edwin and Wallace do have homosexual feelings for each other, Porter tries to cover this up with depictions of Wallace’s heroism and the argument that after Marion’s death, he can only love on a spiritual level. Consequently, she repeatedly depicts Wallace in Christ-like terms. Such references are numerous, so I will only cite a few examples of how Wallace resembles Christ.

Wallace rallying the troops by N. C. Wyeth

At one point, Wallace is reunited with his old steward, Gregory, who declares, “O Power of Mercy, take me now to thyself, since my eyes have seen the deliverer of Scotland!” (p. 390). This recalls the priest Simeon when he sees Christ as a baby in the temple and proclaims, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2: 28-31).

In another scene, Wallace arranges to feed the poor, though obviously he can’t multiply fish and loaves (p. 392).

Also like Christ, the common people love Wallace so much that the other Scottish leaders begin to feel threatened by him (p. 444). At this point, Joanna begins plotting to get Wallace crowned king and the people are crying out “Long live our King!” (p. 444). They want to crown him just like the Jews wanted Christ to be King of the Jews, a title he refused just as Wallace refuses to take the throne. And yet, the Sanhedrin accused Christ of wanting to be king and the Scottish leaders accuse Wallace of the same.

Eventually, to remove contention, Wallace steps down from being regent, but he says if Scotland is in danger, “the spirit of Wallace will be with you still!” (p. 487) just like Christ tells the apostles after he leaves earth that he will always be with them (Matthew 28:20).

Edwin tells Joanna that Wallace will not accept a crown, saying “Earthly crowns are dross to him who looks for a heavenly one” (p. 490). Later, when Wallace is imprisoned, he is mocked like Christ by having laurels thrown at his head, which reflects how Christ was given a crown of thorns. In fact, Porter’s note says Wallace was given a wreath of laurel, but she says for obvious reasons she changed this (p. 676). The reasons are not that obvious; why would she shy away from comparing Wallace to Christ here when she does so frequently elsewhere? Later, Wallace, though referring to himself as a servant to his master, remarks that Christ laid down his life for a rebellious world, so he can do no less (p. 691).

Numerous other passages support my arguments that I will not quote, but anyone who reads the novel will not fail to realize the hero worship of Wallace that exists, the way all the characters (save his enemies) feel almost compelled to love him, and the parallels between Wallace and Christ.

The question remains as to how accurate the novel is. Most events are historical as Porter attests, but her treatment of Wallace himself may be more romanticized than realistic. While The Scottish Chiefs fits most strongly into the categories of Romanticism and historical fiction, it is also worth noting that Porter is carrying on the eighteenth-century novel of manners tradition and writing very much in the style of Fanny Burney and Samuel Richardson in how she handles gender themes. Porter’s Wallace is a study in hero-worship, continually referred to as godlike, perhaps even a more perfect Sir Charles Grandison. The female conduct books of the eighteenth century taught a young woman how to conduct herself (largely to win a man). Richardson and Burney both created novels to illustrate how to conduct oneself. In Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4), it is the demure Harriet Byron who wins the title character, not the forward Lady Olivia. In Burney’s The Wanderer (1814), Harleigh is loved by the forward Elinor, but it is the demure Juliet he marries. So here, Wallace rejects the forward Joanna in favor of the virginal Helen with whom he can experience spiritual love, and while he marries her in the end when he is in prison, notably, she is still a virgin when he dies.

Consequently, while Porter does provide historical research and develop her characters very well, the novel is still a product of her time. Her gentlemanly, noble, and almost saintly Wallace may not be the rough man he was in reality, as an 1810 review of the novel in The Scots Magazine argued, saying the “rough strength and austerity” of Wallace instead “is represented as finished fine gentleman, and the idol of every female heart” (p. 751). Sir Walter Scott also thought the portrait of Wallace was inaccurate, remarking in a letter to a friend about the novel, “Lord help her!…It is not safe meddling with the hero of a country and of all others I cannot endure to see the character of Wallace frittered away to that of a fine gentleman” (Looser p. 281). Perhaps Scott is right in this regard; perhaps he was so appalled by Porter’s depiction of Wallace that he could not give Porter credit for influencing him. However, the remark proves he read the novel. I won’t get into the controversy here of whether Scott or Porter deserve credit for being the first historical novelist, but I do believe Porter deserves far more credit than she has received to date. Not only is she the mother of historical fiction, but she was not afraid to explore gender roles and sexuality, while reining in her subversive themes under the cloak of platonic, spiritual, Christian love to make them palatable to the reading public. Thankfully new interest in her, new editions, and Looser’s biography are helping to place her back into the forefront of early historical fiction.

Curious to learn more about Wallace and determine just how historical Porter was, I read William Mackay’s 1995 biography William Wallace: Brave Heart, which notably came out the same year as the film Braveheart. Mackay appears to be completely clueless that The Scottish Chiefs ever existed since he never references it, yet he points out that Wallace’s capture of the Red Rover, a historical event, is referenced in Sir Walter Scott’s The Fair Maid of Perth (1828), one of Scott’s lesser-known books.

William Mackay’s 1995 biography of William Wallace, released the same year as the film Braveheart

Porter’s primary source was the poem about Wallace by Blind Harry, and this is also a primary source for Mackay’s biography. Much of what Porter includes has historical evidence or historical tradition, but she deviates from history in many substantial ways. In reality, Wallace began his campaign against the English as the result of his father being murdered (p. 60), not because his wife Marion was murdered. In fact, Wallace was well into his campaign against the English before he ever married. Like Porter’s hero, he felt he had no time for marriage when he had to free Scotland, although in time he did marry Marion and she was murdered after helping her husband to escape (p. 105-13). Mackay notes that many later historians thought depictions of Wallace’s great size and strength were exaggerated, but Mackay states he was likely six-foot-seven and in a warrior culture a man of great strength would have been admired and a leader.

However, Wallace was a gentleman in many ways, if not to the extreme Porter depicts. As a second son, he was actually intended for the church, which may have helped to soften his character. He probably felt the only good Englishman was a dead Englishman, so he was not gentle with his English soldier captives, but he never killed women, children, or the clergy. Mackay also points out that Wallace was innately modest, selfless, worked for the good of his people, and was the only Scottish leader who never took an oath of fealty to Edward I (p. 173).

One fascinating aspect of Wallace’s history is that twice he put on women’s clothes to escape the English and got away. This is quite shocking given his huge size. Porter has plenty of crossdressing in her novel, but it is the women, Helen and Joanna, who cross-dress, never the men. Wallace also nearly died after being captured and assaulted by the English at one point. He was believed dead and even was being prepared for burial when a woman noticed he was still alive and nursed him back to health. Mackay says this symbolic resurrection wouldn’t have been lost on his followers who would have gotten the Christ-like comparison (p. 89). Later, like Christ, Wallace does have a crown of laurels placed on his head in mockery by the English before his death, and Mackay notes such mockery was quite common in medieval times (p. 257).

Porter’s cast of characters is largely fictional, but Mackay notes that an English soldier named Grimmsesby (Grimsby in Porter) did change sides to fight with Wallace (p. 115). Andrew Moray (Murray in Porter) was a major Scottish leader in the North (p. 121), Wallace’s grandfather was murdered by the English (p. 124), and a young night named Ruthven brought thirty men to serve with Wallace; later this Ruthven would be the Sheriff of Perth (p. 136). This Ruthven may be the character Edwin is based on.

Wallace’s visits to the court of Philip IV and his encounters at sea with pirates are also historical and similar to Porter’s depictions. In addition, he visited Rome and likely met with the Pope and may have also visited Norway, but Porter ignores these visits. However, Porter also depicts Wallace going disguised as a minstrel to Edward I’s court and even winning the heart of Queen Marguerite; this incident appears to be Porter’s invention.

The most noticeable difference in the historical record from Porter’s novel is Wallace’s death. Porter allows Wallace to die a natural death in the Tower of London. In truth, Wallace never was kept in the tower but in a private house under house arrest (p. 258). He then received the standard punishment for treason (although since he never swore an oath of loyalty to Edward I, he never technically committed treason). That punishment was hanging, drawing, and quartering—a ghastly form of death that Porter may have felt too ignoble an end for her hero or perhaps too violent for her readers. Wallace’s body parts were then sent to various parts of Scotland for display while his head was put on a pike on London Bridge (p. 263-6).

It is a shame Mackay did not read The Scottish Chiefs and note some of the historical differences. At least two more biographies of William Wallace that I have not read have appeared since Mackay’s biography, so I do not know if other biographers have acknowledged Porter’s novel. An annotated version of the novel is still needed to detail further where Porter was historically accurate and where she differed from the historical record. Regardless, The Scottish Chiefs is the most historically accurate novel about a historical person and period that had been written when it appeared in 1810. For all its elements of romance, it is clearly more historical fiction than romance. Porter’s novel remains a monumental achievement for which all lovers of historical fiction can be grateful.

Jane Porter, Mother of Historical Fiction

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

Meet the Gothic Cast – A Guest Post by Rayne Hall

In Gothic Fiction, certain types show up again and again: the loyal retainer, the obsessed scientist, the corrupt doctor, the greedy villain, the sickly invalid, the helpless child, the naive bride, the old eccentric, the mentally deranged person….

What’s interesting is that each character can assume several of these roles. For example, the mentally deranged person may also be the helpless child—or he may be the greedy villain, or the obsessed scientist, or the old eccentric at the end of his life. The newly arrived outsider could also be the naive bride or the sickly invalid or the obsessed scientist—or perhaps all of those. This “mix-and-match” ensures that the characters aren’t cardboard copies repeated in every story. Each of them can be male or female.

So now let’s look at these characters—or perhaps I should say, the roles characters in Gothic fiction assume.

THE NEWLY ARRIVED OUTSIDER

This is frequently the novel’s main character (MC). Sometimes, she’s the Naive Bride, or she may be revealed to be the True Heir.

Examples from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, the MC is a poor relation who needs a place to live. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart both feature governesses starting out in a new job. The MC in The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart visits the Gloomy House because she is curious to meet her eccentric relative. In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier she is the bride, taking up residence as her husband’s second wife. In Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu, orphaned heiress Maud Ruthyn goes to live with her guardian uncle.

THE GREEDY VILLAIN

Gothic villains are motivated by greed more than anything else. They may use cruelty and abuse their power to satisfy this greed. The Greedy Villain may be bitter because he himself has suffered great injustice, and perhaps he has devoted his life to revenge. If he’s the Obsessed Scientist, he’ll use his invention to get rich. If he’s the Evil Charmer, he’ll make his potential victim fall in love with him and convince everyone that he is innocent. Although evil, he may have a good and noble side to his character.

Greed is often the motivation of the Gothic villain – Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Examples from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, Lady Broome, who sacrificed a lot to care for her sick husband, feels entitled to own the Gloomy House and will go to any lengths to keep it for herself and her descendants. In The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart, the villains scheme to get Lady Harriet’s wealth. In Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu, the titular character—who is also the Abusive Guardian—schemes to get heiress Maud’s money.

THE BIGAMIST

He’s already married and wants to wed a new wife—either because he’s obsessively in love with the girl or because she’s an heiress and he wants her fortune. To achieve this, he denies his first wife’s existence, hides her away (in the underground chamber or the attic), fakes evidence that the marriage wasn’t valid (with the help of the Corrupt Priest) or poisons her (with the help of the Corrupt Doctor) so he’ll be a widower and free to take a new wife. Alternatively, the bigamist is truly widowed, but his deceased wife continues to rule the Gloomy House as a ghost, either terrorizing the new bride or warning her. Sometimes, the Bigamist and his wives are long dead, but their descendants survive, and when the bigamy comes to light, it changes the line of inheritance.

Examples from literature: In the earliest Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, Sir Manfred schemes to rid himself of his wife so he can marry a young princess. In Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester is the Bigamist. He loves the governess and wants to marry her, but already has a wife—a madwoman locked in the attic.

THE LOYAL RETAINER

This faithful servant may be the housekeeper, the butler, the secretary, or the lady’s maid. She has worked in this household for years or decades, perhaps since the days when the current master was a baby. Perhaps her parents and grandparents served the same family. The loyal retainer probably knows the Guilty Secret and may even be part of it. She’s very loyal to her master…. But there may be a twist: to which master? For example, her true master may be the immortal vampire living in the crypt below the Gloomy House. The Loyal Retainer may at the same time be the Corrupt Doctor, or the Ghost, or the Dog.

Examples from literature: In Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, the Loyal Retainer is the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, and she is loyal to the master’s deceased first wife. In The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, the nurse narrator is loyal first to the young couple who employ her, and then to their orphaned child.

THE OBSESSED SCIENTIST

A scientist, alchemist, or inventor, either an amateur or a professional, experiments with the latest technology or scientific formulas. His inventions may be benign (seeking a cure for cancer) or evil (developing a weapon of mass destruction). He is so obsessed with his experiments that he ruins his physical or mental health (making him the Sickly Invalid or the Mentally Deranged Person). He could be devoted to curing the sickly invalid, or he could carry out human experiments on the Captive, the Helpless Child, or the Mentally Deranged Person. Sometimes he’s the Loyal Retainer or the Corrupt Doctor. If you layer Science Fiction or Steampunk with Gothic, the Obsessed Scientist and his work may be at the centre of the plot.

Examples from literature: In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the MC Victor Frankenstein is obsessed with creating a new person from the body parts of dead people. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll is a respected scientist who meddles with the dark side of science to create his alter ego, and can’t stop, even when he realizes the evil nature of Mr Hyde.

THE CORRUPT DOCTOR

This can be a medical doctor, a nurse, a physiotherapist, a naturopath, a masseur, or someone else with a healing role. Charged with caring for a patient who lives in the Gloomy House (the Sickly Invalid, the Mentally Deranged Person, the Helpless Child, or the Old Eccentric), the Corrupt Doctor deliberately makes the illness worse instead of better. He may be in the pay of the Greedy Villain, or he may pursue his own interests. He may drive his victim to insanity (so nobody will believe her when she reveals the sinister goings on), poison her slowly, keep her bedridden (so she can’t reveal the secret), or murder her (so someone else will inherit her wealth).

Examples from literature: In Georgette Heyer’s Cousin Kate, Dr. Delabole helps to hide the criminal insanity of the young heir. In The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart, Dr. Henry Grafton schemes to get his share of Lady Harriet’s wealth.

THE SICKLY INVALID

This person needs constant care, and never leaves the Gloomy House. She may be suffering with the patience of an angel, or she may be a cranky demanding patient. Often, the Corrupt Doctor is in charge of caring for her. Sometimes, the Sickly Invalid is also the Helpless Child, but she could also be the Old Eccentric, the Naive Bride, the True Heir, the Captive, or the Mentally Deranged Person.

Examples from literature: In The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer, bedridden Sir Peter knows he’s about to die and has many regrets—but on his deathbed, he manages to pull off a scheme that will protect his granddaughter from the villains’ machinations. In The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, Miss Furnivall is a wrinkled, nearly deaf octogenarian with a guilty secret from the days of her youth.

THE CORRUPT PRIEST

A religious professional (priest, monk, nun, shaman, rabbi, swami, meditation retreat leader…) inspires trust because of his role, and he abuses this position. As a Catholic priest, he betrays a secret he’s heard in confession. As a cult leader, he stirs up religious fervour to drive people to commit crimes in the name of faith. As a monk, he solicits donations for a charitable cause and keeps the funds for himself.

Examples from literature: In The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, the viciously cruel Prioress Mother St. Agatha keeps a girl prisoner in the dungeons beneath the convent and spreads the word about her death. In Thomas M. Disch’s novel The Priest, Father Patrick Bryce is a Catholic priest with a paedophile past.

THE HELPLESS CHILD

The Helpless Child may be a baby, a toddler, or a teenager, but is definitely a minor in the eyes of the law. Who cares for her? Who is her legal representative? She may be in the power of the Abusive Guardian. The child is often the Sickly Invalid and/or the True Heir. If she’s the heir, then her fortune maybe administered by the Abusive Guardian, too. The Helpless Child is often a personification of angelic innocence; however, in some stories, she’s evil. She may also be innocent, but becomes possessed by an evil spirit that drives her to commit cruelties.

Examples from literature: In The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, young Rosamond follows the ghost of a pretty little girl out into the cold and is found nearly frozen to death. In Nine Coaches Waiting, Philippe de Valmy is a lonely nine-year-old boy, owner of the opulent Château de Valmy and the title Comte de Valmy, but powerless in the hands of his guardians.

THE ABUSIVE GUARDIAN

The Abusive Guardian has charge of the Helpless Child—perhaps he’s simply an employed tutor paid to teach the child for a few hours every day, or perhaps he is her guardian in the legal sense, a quasi-parent who administers her fortune and makes decisions. He may scheme that she will not survive to reach adulthood (so he himself will inherit her wealth), or plan to marry her to his son, or to marry her himself to get his hands on her fortune. He will keep her isolated, perhaps on the grounds of her alleged ill health (in which case she’s also the Sickly Invalid or the Mentally Deranged Person), and instead of allowing her to go to school, he has her home-schooled.

Examples from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, Lady Broome keeps her mentally ill son isolated, scheming to get him married at a young age so he will father a legal heir. In Nine Coaches Waiting, cynical disabled Léon de Valmy is not only the guardian of his nine-year-old nephew, but also the trustee of the boy’s property. In Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu, Silas is the guardian of his late brother’s daughter, and he abuses his power, first by trying to force her to wed his son, and then to plot her death.

THE NAIVE BRIDE

Shy, inexperienced in the ways of the world, poor, socially inept, without family or friends, the Naive Bride has fallen in love with the man who owns the Gloomy Place and moves in. He may turn out to be the Greedy Villain, the Obsessed Scientist, the Evil Charmer, or the Mentally Deranged Person, and she may find herself the Captive and perhaps destined to become the Mentally Deranged Person. She may also discover that she has married the Bigamist.

The innocent bride – Image by sfetfedyhghj from Pixabay

Examples from literature: In Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, the unnamed narrator marries a widower and naively assumes they’ll live happily ever after—but then discovers that his late wife Rebecca rules over their lives. In The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, the orphaned heiress Laura Fairlie, guileless and gentle, finds that the man she’s fallen in love with and married wants her fortune and plots her death.

THE CAPTIVE

This person is in the power of the Evil Villain or the Obsessed Scientist. Maybe she’s recently arrived, stumbled upon the Guilty Secret, and therefore is not allowed to leave again. Or maybe she’s been imprisoned all her life, or her existence is inconvenient to someone. She’s probably locked into the underground chamber or the attic.

A child being held captive by a Gothic villain – Image by ibrahim abed from Pixabay

Examples from literature: In The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, MC Laura is kept captive by her husband—at first at home, and then under a false identity in a lunatic asylum. In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, the mentally ill Bertha Mason is kept locked up in the attic.

THE OLD ECCENTRIC

Nearing the end of his life, the Old Eccentric is probably rich—but he might also have lost his fortune long ago, or maybe people merely suspect that he has riches hidden away. Sometimes the Old Eccentric has already died, and people search for his last will and testament, or they argue over whether the will is valid since the Old Eccentric was obviously a Mentally Deranged Person. Maybe the Old Eccentric died generations ago, and now he haunts the Gloomy House. Either way, the Old Eccentric’s last will and testament probably plays a role in the plot.

Example from literature: In The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart, old Aunt Harriet chooses to live in the decaying splendour of an old palace near Beirut, dressed in male Arab garb, and changes her will every six months.

THE INSIDE CONFIDANT

This is a servant/fellow employee living in the Gloomy House whom the MC trusts. However, the Inside Confidant is powerless, and can’t do much more than warn the MC of specific dangers. The Inside Confidant can be a servant who depends on her job and can’t take risks, or she may be a fellow victim and is often brainwashed. It’s not entirely sure how trustworthy she really is. She may truly want to help the MC, but the master of the house has such power over her that she may cave in and betray the MC out of fear.

Example from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, the MC’s maid is friendly and supportive, but is herself powerless.

THE MENTALLY DERANGED PERSON

Any kind of madness or mental instability works here. The character may simply get occasional bouts of paranoia, or she may have lingering PTSD and be otherwise sane. Perhaps she never got over the grief at the death of her child. Maybe she suffers from schizophrenia. She could be a raving lunatic or a criminally insane serial killer. Perhaps incest practised over generations has led to inbreeding and mental weakness. Perhaps she lives voluntarily in the Gloomy House, hoping that the quiet location will aid her recovery. Or perhaps her relatives keep her hidden here (probably in the underground chamber or the attic) because she would be an embarrassment in society. Maybe the Obsessed Scientist uses her as a human guinea pig. Or maybe she’s perfectly sane, but the Greedy Villain and the Corrupt Doctor conspire to drive her insane. Maybe she’s perfectly sane when she arrives, but thinks she’s going nuts because of the ghost’s activities.

Examples from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, young Torquil is mentally unstable and commits cruel atrocities during periods of insanity. In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, violently insane Bertha Mason is kept locked up in the attic by her husband, who hides her existence.

THE SEMI-OUTSIDER

This character is closely connected to the family but isn’t part of it, and he knows the Gloomy House well but doesn’t live there. He could be a distant cousin who grew up in the Gloomy House and still visits often. The MC doesn’t know where the Semi-Outsider’s loyalties lie. In Gothic Romance, he often turns out to be the Love Interest, and sometimes also the True Heir.

Example from Literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, Phillip Broome is a relative who knows the Gloomy House and everyone in it well, but he’s doesn’t live there and isn’t part of the family.

THE ALLY OUTSIDE

The MC has a colleague, sister, friend, godmother, or other friendly person who cares about her well-being but is not able to be with her in the Gloomy House. The Ally Outside may have initially encouraged the MC to take this job, or she may have warned her against it. Distance prevents the Ally Outside from providing real help, although she contrives at least one visit. The villain perceives this visit as a danger, so he makes sure the visit is a short one and the MC gets no chance to talk alone with the Ally Outside. In Romance novels, the Ally Outside can be the Love Interest. In this case, the Ally Outside contrives to visit in secret several times.

Examples from literature: In Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer, Mrs. Nidd used to be the MC’s childhood nurse. She’s the only one whom the MC can truly trust, but the villain intercepts their correspondence. In The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart, the MC’s cousin Charles knows that she has gone to the Gloomy House, but will he realize she is in danger, and will he gain access?

THE LOVE INTEREST

Many Gothic short stories (and almost all Gothic novels) contain a Romance element. The MC falls in love (possibly at first with the wrong person, then with the Love Interest who turns out to be her true love). Often, the Love Interest is the master of the Gloomy House, the Semi-Outsider, or the Ally Outside. The Love Interest could also be another newly-arrived outsider. They may arrive separately (she’s a governess to the girls, he’s the tutor to the boys) or together (they’re newlyweds honeymooning in a remote castle).

Example from literature: Raoul de Valmy in Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart is a great example of a Love Interest character whose true nature is not revealed until the end. In many plot twists, the reader is led to believe him a noble hero and a ruthless villain in turns.

THE EVIL CHARMER

This character may make everyone—including the MC—like him and even fall in love with him. He then abuses their trust to his own ends. In some stories, he’s not universally liked, but a ruthless seducer of members of the opposite sex, who—especially in Historical fiction—ruins women. Often, he’s the master of the Gloomy House, but he could also be the visiting doctor or lawyer who seems on the MC’s side. Maybe he appears likeable and charming in the first chapters before he shows his true colours, or perhaps people know that he’s evil but still succumb to his demonic charm. The Evil Charmer could also be the Loyal Retainer, the Bigamist, or the Semi-Outsider.

Example from literature: In Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, dashing heir Captain Frederick Tilney seduces an ambitious young woman by leading her to expect marriage.

THE GHOST

A ghost haunts the Gloomy House—probably the underground chamber, the attic, the staircase, a corridor, or the picture gallery. She was either the victim or the perpetrator of a crime (most likely, murder, bigamy, or deceit over the inheritance) and wants to get the old wrong righted. She may seek to redeem herself for her own misdeed, or she may seek vengeance on the descendants of the person who did her wrong. Sometimes, the evil deed committed by or against her is mirrored by the modern-day Guilty Secret.

Examples from literature: In The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, the ghost of a pretty little girl lures the child Rosamond out into the freezing cold. In Nocturne for a Widow by Amanda DeWees, the ghost of the late first wife slashes the dress the MC was going to wear to a special event—but does she mean to harm or to protect?

THE DOG

Surprisingly, many works of Gothic Fiction feature a canine character. It can be a fierce guard dog or the master’s faithful companion (in which case it takes on the role of Loyal Retainer). It might also be the Newly Arrived Outsider’s beloved pet, or one of the Obsessed Scientist’s laboratory animals. It might be a monster or the Ghost. The Dog likely has strong likes and dislikes, and it may notice suspicious smells or dig up a clue to the guilty secret.

A Gothic Dog – Image by Angel from Pixabay

Example from literature: The Dog in the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle is both a mythological beast and a real-life savage canine.

THE BLINKERED PROFESSIONAL

Thoroughly competent in his role, the blinkered professional unfortunately doesn’t see the big picture. He carries out the task he’s been hired for, and nothing else.

As a doctor, he refuses to prescribe the harmful medication to the Sickly Invalid or to sign the death certificate without an autopsy. As a lawyer, he refuses to issue illegal documents, and he even warns the bride that it’s not in her interest to sign the prenuptial agreement. He remains firm, even under pressure from the villain—but with his duties concluded, he won’t involve himself further.

When this person arrives on the scene, the MC is hopeful, believing that this unbiased expert will see the truth—but the Blinkered Professional isn’t interested.

Example from literature: In The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, lawyer Vincent Gilmore points out that the terms of the marriage contract are not in the bride’s interest, and warns her guardian not to sign the agreement.

THE TRUE HEIR

He’s the one who has inherited the Gloomy House, probably because of the Old Eccentric’s bizarre will. He might also be the one who was defrauded of his inheritance (due to bigamy or some other crime). He may be the Helpless Child whose fate and fortune are in the hands of the Abusive Guardian. Or maybe he hasn’t inherited yet, but stands to inherit, and his evil relatives want him out of the way before the wealthy Old Eccentric dies. In some novels, the Semi-Outsider, the Loyal Retainer, the Love Interest, the Newly Arrived Outsider and/or the MC herself turn out to be the True Heir.

Since the True Heir’s identity is often revealed as a twist at the end of the book, I won’t give examples from literature and spoil your reading surprise.

YOUR TURN

Think of Gothic novels you’ve read. Identify the “roles” you recognize from my descriptions. (You may be surprised how many you find.) Do any of the characters combine dual or even multiple roles?

Besides the character roles I’ve outlined above, can you think of others which are common in Gothic fiction?

Tell us about this in the Comments section.

_________________________________________

Author Rayne Hall and her cat Sulu

Rayne Hall MA is the author of over 100 books, mostly Dark Fantasy and Gothic Horror, e.g. The Bride’s Curse: Bulgarian Gothic Ghost and Horror Stories. She is also the acclaimed editor of Gothic, Fantasy, and Horror anthologies (e.g. Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard, and author of the bestselling Writer’s Craft series for advanced-level writers, including the bestselling Writer’s Craft series e.g. Writing Gothic Fiction.

Born and raised in Germany, Rayne Hall has lived in China, Mongolia, Nepal, and Britain. Now she resides in a village in Bulgaria, where men perform the annual demon dance, ghosts and sirens beckon, and abandoned decaying houses hold memories of a glorious past.

Her lucky black rescue cat Sulu often accompanies her when she explores spooky derelict buildings. He delights in walking across shattered roof tiles, scratching charred timbers, and sniffing at long-abandoned hearths. He even senses the presence of ghosts…but that’s another story.

Rayne has worked as an investigative journalist, development aid worker, museum guide, apple picker, tarot reader, adult education teacher, belly dancer, magazine editor, publishing manager, and more, and now writes full time.

For more about Rayne and her books, visit www.RayneHall.com.

Sulu reading Rayne’s book Writing Gothic Fiction

The Mysteries of Lisbon: A Film of Portuguese Author Camilo Castelo Branco’s City Mysteries Novel

I have written extensively at this blog about the city mysteries genre, which began with Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris. Sue’s novel inspired a plethora of imitations, including Paul Féval’s The Mysteries of London (discussed in my book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature), George W. M. Reynolds’ The Mysteries of London, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and George Lippard’s The Quaker City. Authors around the world wrote novels in a similar vein and often with the same title pattern. However, until recently, Portugal’s contribution to the genre, The Mysteries of Lisbon, was almost unknown to the English-speaking world. That changed in 2010 when Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz filmed the Portuguese novel as Mistérios de Lisboa. The film is available with English subtitles at Amazon Prime.

A DVD cover of Mysteries of Lisbon

Mistérios de Lisboa is based on the 1854 novel Os Mistérios de Lisboa by Camilo Castelo Branco (1825-1890). Unfortunately, Branco’s novel has never been translated into English, although scholar Stephen Basdeo announced on his blog in 2022 that he is in the process of translating it. Since I have not read the novel, this blog post will only discuss the film.

Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon, like the city mysteries novels that came before it, is a convoluted tale filled with individual characters who tell their backstories, many of which are a bit on the sordid side. Unlike the novels of Sue, Reynolds, and Féval, however, the film, and probably the novel, do not provide a cross-section of characters from the upper and lower classes but focus solely on members of the Portuguese and French aristocracy and nobility. The plot is not difficult to follow, even with reliance on the subtitles, but it is complicated enough that I imagine the novel has more subplots than the film offers since the novel was published in three volumes and runs more than 600 pages, although the film itself runs approximately 270 minutes.

The plot centers around a young boy named João who attends a school operated by Father Dinis. Unlike the other boys at the school, João does not have a last name and knows nothing about his parentage. After another boy bullies and assaults him over his unknown parentage, João becomes ill and loses consciousness. He wakes in a sort of delirium to discover the mother he has never met has come to visit him. The visit is short, but it causes João to question Father Dinis about his mother. In time, he learns she is Ângela de Lima, the Countess Santa Bárbara. However, her husband, the Count, is not João’s father. João has grown up thinking Father Dinis may be his father, but the priest assures him otherwise and will only tell him his father was an honorable man and that he died two days after João’s birth. In time, we learn João’s father was Pedro da Silva. Father Dinis arranges secret visits between João and his mother, but these are threatened by Count Santa Bárbara’s displeasure over her having contact with the boy. She has been locked up and mistreated by her husband for years, plus he has been carrying on an affair with a woman named Eugénia. Eventually, she leaves him to be with her son.

The count now spreads rumors about Ângela, but when Father Dinis goes to confront him, he finds him dying. Father Dinis then arranges for Ângela to visit the count at the count’s request because he wishes for her forgiveness. He dies before she arrives, but he leaves her a letter and she forgives him. The count leaves Ângela his fortune, but she rejects it and enters a convent. For João, her decision to enter the convent is heartbreaking because he has only just begun to know his mother, and now he feels he is losing her.

In flashbacks, we then learn the backstory of João’s birth. Ângela’s father, the Marquis of Montezelos, had been against João’s parents’ proposed marriage. Instead, he arranged for her to marry the Count de Santa Bárbara. After Ângela gave birth to João, she was told the child died, but the count gave the child to a gypsy named Knife Eater with orders to have it killed. However, Father Dinis, who was not yet a priest, paid Knife Eater for the boy and then secretly raised him, even changing his identity to that of a priest. Meanwhile, Knife Eater used the money he received to become a rich man.

Returning to the story’s main timeline, Knife Eater has adopted the identity of a Brazilian named Alberto and entered Lisbon society. Rumors surround Alberto, from him being a rich slave trader or a pirate to being a spy for Dom Pedro (the first Emperor of Brazil who first fought for Brazil’s independence and then invaded Portugal and for a brief time was king). Women faint over Alberto, apparently because he is so masculine, powerful, and sexy. Men challenge him to duels and die by his hand.

Meanwhile, Father Dinis, who has been keeping João’s birth a secret, discovers the secret of his own birth. When the Count Santa Bárbara died, Friar Baltasar da Encarnação gave him last rites, at which time he and Father Dinis met for the first time. Instantly, the friar realizes Father Dinis is his son. The friar reveals to Father Dinis that he was once Álvaro de Albuquerque, who seduced and fell in love with the married Countess de Vizo. They ran away together to Italy where she died while giving birth to Father Dinis. Álvaro was grief-stricken over her death and his sin. Feeling unable to raise his child, he gave it to a friend to raise; when that friend died, the child was passed on to a French nobleman to raise. This nobleman in time would die at the guillotine during the French Revolution. The young Father Dinis grew up to fight in Napoleon’s army under the name Sebastião de Melo.

Back in the present, Alberto has married Eugénia, former mistress of Count Santa Bárbara. He finds himself being stalked by Elisa de Montfort, a widowed French duchess. She says she is bent upon revenge, and eventually tells Father Dinis her story. Alberto had negotiated with her to have sex with her and finally she had agreed. After their liaison, Elisa kept coming back each night for more sex, gradually falling in love with Alberto and wanting to return the money he paid her. For Alberto, it is all a game and about the chase, so when she begins stalking him, he wants nothing more to do with her. Now she has come to Lisbon to try again to return the money he paid her. Her efforts cause Eugénia discomfort, although she knows Alberto has a sordid past. Elisa, however, also wants revenge. She allowed her brother Artur to believe Alberto wronged her. Artur had attacked Alberto, who killed him in self-defense, but Elisa blames Alberto for her brother’s death.

Father Dinis now reveals to Elisa that he knew her mother. In the middle of Father Dinis’ story, Alberto bursts in. Elisa tries to shoot him, but earlier, Father Dinis had removed the bullet from her gun. Alberto then tries to strangle Elisa, but he stops when Father Dinis calls him Knife Eater and he apparently fears Father Dinis will reveal his origins if he commits the murder.

After Alberto leaves, Father Dinis finishes his story, telling Elisa of how he had once been in love with her mother, Blanche, but that Blanche had loved his best friend, Benoit. Benoit was an aristocrat while Father Dinis was a bastard child, so he knew he could not compete with Benoit for Blanche’s love. Then Father Dinis and Benoit save Colonel Lacroze from a firing squad during the Napoleonic Wars and befriend him, only to have him begin an affair with Blanche. Dinis is very jealous, but Benoit is more jealous. When Lacroze is called back to service, Benoit does not tell Blanche, so she does not come to say goodbye to him and then he intercepts Lacroze’s letters so that she thinks he has forgotten her. In the end, Benoit convinces her to marry him. Meanwhile, Dinis leaves, unable to endure Blanche and Benoit’s happiness. Later, Lacroze commits suicide from heartbreak that Blanche has abandoned him. When Blanche learns Benoit lied to her about Lacroze abandoning her, she is deeply hurt, and soon she claims she is speaking to Lacroze’s ghost. Blanche then dies in a fire, which Benoit may have set.

We now return to João, who has grown up, adopted his father’s name of Pedro da Silva, and become a poet. When he sees Elisa, he falls in love with her. Elisa tells him how she was wronged by Alberto and that her brother was murdered by him, so João goes to Alberto to challenge him to a duel. They fight with swords, but when neither is wounded, they plan to switch to pistols. First, however, Alberto reveals he has known João since he was a baby and tells him of how he nearly killed him but sold him to Father Dinis. Alberto also explains that Elisa’s brother’s death was an accident and the result of self-defense.

The film becomes confusing here. After Alberto leaves the site of the duel, João takes over as narrator, stating how he feels lost and talked down to, as if he is just João again rather than Dom Pedro da Silva as he now styles himself after his father. The film actually shows him shooting himself after Alberto leaves, but he is apparently only wounded and does not die. João now feeling his life makes no sense, runs away from his past, but he knows that is impossible. He travels randomly (like a true Gothic wanderer) and ultimately goes to Tangiers. He seems to be pursued by the representatives of Alberto, who wishes to return to him the sum of money Father Dinis had given him for his life, but João does not want the money.

João finds an inn in Tangiers and there becomes ill. As the film ends, we see him dictating his memoirs to an African servant, discussing how he has never really known who he is and he sometimes wonders if his whole life has been a dream since the moment he lost unconsciousness and first saw his mother in his delirium. The ending is very existential and also the kind of melancholic ending typical of Romanticism. It would not be going to far to liken João’s existential angst to that of Frankenstein’s Monster.

While the film seems focused on realism most of the time, it also tends to deconstruct the illusion of reality in subtle ways. Supernaturalism is suggested when Blanche claims to be speaking to Colonel Lacroze’s ghost. In other scenes, the camera shows characters not walking but appearing to glide through a room like one might expect in a modern-day vampire film. Numerous interesting camera angles and camera tricks are used. At one point we see a filled teacup upside down. The suggestion of illusion is emphasized by the miniature play theatre that João’s mother gives to him soon after they are reunited. Several of the various storylines have moments where the characters are depicted as paper figures in the play theatre, suggesting that someone is manipulating the story and characters, or perhaps they are all part of João’s imagination. Less understandable oddities include Eugénia hiding under the furniture for no perceivable reason unless she fears Elisa. Alberto and Eugénia also have a servant with some sort of mental disability that causes him to be in perpetual motion as if running in place. The viewer notes all these oddities, but they do not fully register or make sense until the end when João suggests everything in the film may just have been a dream. They then suggest they are the oddities one encounters in dreams that do not make sense in the real world.

The film makes no references to Eugène Sue or any other author of the city mysteries genre, but at one point, when Pedro (formerly João) is told by a friend how Elisa’s brother died in a duel for her, he can’t help remarking that it is like a plot out of a novel by Mrs. Radcliffe, which shows the filmmaker and probably Branco was aware of the Gothic tradition and Mrs. Radcliffe’s works.

Truly, there is little about the film that is similar to The Mysteries of Paris. Yes, some of the characters have multiple identities and there are numerous interconnected plots, but we also have a string of counts and marquises without any of the social justice themes of Sue and Reynolds’ novels with their depictions of the lower classes. All the characters in Mysteries of Lisbon are upper class or connected to them. If the novel was influenced by earlier city mysteries novels, I suspect the influence came from Féval’s The Mysteries of London, since in that novel the protagonist, the Marquis de Rio Santo, is an Irishman who earns a Portuguese title of nobility and seeks revenge against his English enemies. Another influence may be Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, in which Edmond Dantès becomes the fabulously wealthy count who seeks revenge on his enemies. Alberto’s story is similar to both characters in that he gains great wealth and has an air of mystery about him, including rumors about his past and being a seducer of women like Rio Santo. However, Alberto is not set on revenge toward anyone but rather has Elisa set on revenge against him.

If there is a link to Sue’s novel, Stephen Basdeo suggests it lies in Father Dinis, who like Sue’s Prince Rodolphe, is a dispenser of justice, or at least one who tries to save others. He stops Alberto and Elisa from murdering each other, saves João from being killed as a child, saves the life of Colonel Lacroze, though it backfires on him, and brings forgiveness between the Count and Countess Santa Bárbara. His multiple identities are like those of Rodolphe, Edmond Dantès, Rio Santo, and many other characters in city mysteries novels, and he can be equated to Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, itself influenced by the city mysteries genre, in the way he tries to right wrongs.

Camilo Castelo Branco

That said, much of the novel may be autobiographical. Branco, like João, was an illegitimate son. His father was a younger son of a provincial aristocrat family. His father was impoverished because of the strict laws of primogeniture in Portugal at the time that meant the family property and fortune would have gone to the eldest son. Branco ended up orphaned at a young age, and after being raised by three aunts, like João, at age thirteen, he was sent to a seminary where he was educated by priests. He studied theology and considered becoming a priest, even taking minor holy orders, but later decided to devote himself to literature. Therefore, he must have had insight into Father Dinis’ soul. He was also well-equated with the upper class’ licentiousness and crimes. He was arrested twice, the first time for digging up his first wife’s body, and the second time for committing adultery with Ana Placido, a Portuguese novelist, who later became his second wife. In 1885, he became a member of the aristocracy when he was made a viscount for his contributions to literature. This honor is not surprising since he was probably the most prolific Portuguese author of all time.

The Mysteries of Lisbon is the only novel in the city mysteries genre to have been filmed, unless one counts the various film versions of The Count of Monte Cristo. The film won many awards, and despite the subtitles and its extreme length, it is a worthy depiction of a city mysteries novel. I hope more films of the city mysteries genre will be made, and in English. Meanwhile, I look forward to reading the novel when it is translated into English.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

The Quaker City: America’s First City Mysteries Novel

On this blog and in my new book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897, I have written extensively about the City Mysteries novel genre, which began with French author Eugène Sue’s blockbuster The Mysteries of Paris (1842-1843). Sue’s novel inspired a chain of novels ranging from two novels of the same title, The Mysteries of London, one by French author Paul Féval, one by George W. M. Reynolds, and then numerous more imitations from authors around the world.

An illustration of George Lippard as a young man

In the United States, the city mysteries genre was first taken up by George Lippard (1822-1854), although he shied away from copying Sue’s title, naming his novel The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monks Hall. It was issued in monthly parts from August 1844 to May 1845. Its circulation began after Féval began serializing his novel, and so it is possible it was somewhat inspired by it, but it was completed before Reynolds began his novel. The Quaker City would be extremely popular and lead to many more city mystery novels in the United States, including Ned Buntline’s The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1848), written under the pseudonym Edward Zane Carroll Judson.

While similarities exist between Lippard’s novel and those of Sue and Féval, the reader, especially an American reader knowledgeable of American literature and particularly antebellum literature, is bound to be struck by what a very American novel it is in its themes. All the Gothic trappings of Sue, Féval, and Reynolds are here, but the novel’s setting in the United States makes the concerns over the criminal world and immorality all the more relevant because they threaten not only society and domestic happiness but the very ideals upon which the American Republic was based. Throughout the book, Lippard decries how Philadelphia, the Quaker City (Lippard appears to have coined the name), and setting of the novel, no longer reflects the ideals of the American Revolution. Lippard plays on scenes like Washington crossing the Delaware to have a criminal pursued on the river to have revenge taken upon him. In a terrible vision, another character foresees the destruction of Philadelphia, with Independence Hall standing in ruins and in the sky written in flaming letters the words: “WO UNTO SODOM.” The novel then serves as a warning to the American people of where the Republic is headed, mourning the lost ideals of the Founding Fathers and even having the President replaced with a king in the vision of the future. As a result, its exposure of crime and vice and its calls for reform make it the first muckraking novel in the United States.

A summary of The Quaker City’s plot would be difficult to follow, but like his city mystery predecessors, Lippard provides multiple storylines, each of which surrounds some crime or attempted crime ranging from abducting innocent women or bamboozling them into fake marriages to adultery to characters disguising themselves to con others and religious deceivers.

Throughout, Lippard pays homage to other great Gothic authors. He makes reference to Ainsworth as a master of plot and references both Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton. That much of the novel’s action takes place in the fictional Monk Hall may be a nod to Matthew “Monk” Lewis. It is surprising Lippard makes no references to Sue or Féval since at least the former, and probably both, inspired his work. He dedicates the book to Charles Brockden Brown, America’s first Gothic novelist who was from Philadelphia and set his novel Arthur Mervyn there. He also references James Fenimore Cooper, but notes that critics complain that more people in the United States read Ainsworth than Cooper, and he defends Ainsworth in the process. Surprisingly, he avoids mentioning his own American Gothic contemporaries, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Lippard was himself a good friend of Poe’s, and while the novel was published before Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and his other novels, Lippard must have known Hawthorne’s short stories since Poe reviewed them. Based on The Quaker City, it surprises me that Lippard is not a household name along with Poe and Hawthorne, for his novel is more thoroughly plotted and complicated than anything either of them wrote, and if he is not the equal in style and depth to Hawthorne, I feel he exceeds Poe in his greater vision of society and he keeps the reader in suspense without the boredom Poe too often creates.

Literary critic and historian Stephen Knight, in his chapter on the novel in The Mysteries of the Cities, notes that many critics have dismissed Lippard, but such critics have not really read him. The novel is actually wonderfully plotted and Lippard is a master of pacing, something in keeping with the writing of Ainsworth, as well as Sue, Féval, and Reynolds, and far exceeding the plotting and pacing of anything Dickens had achieved at this point in his career. That the novel was written by Lippard when he was only twenty-two to twenty-three years of age is remarkable, and really gives him genius designation with other brilliant young authors like Mary Shelley. By comparison, Dickens did not write The Pickwick Papers until he was twenty-five and it is a nearly plotless book. Furthermore, because Lippard wrote quickly, his work has been seen as inferior, but in my opinion, it just adds to his genius that he was able to keep so many plot strands straight and weave them together so effortlessly. Anthony Trollope also wrote quickly but only because he dedicated himself to daily writing. Nor should a novelist be decried for writing a novel in a year when it takes another author three years to do so since we cannot know how many hours of writing and contemplative thinking about the novel took place within either time frame.

A few plot points and characters from The Quaker City deserve mention. The novel begins a few days before Christmas when two men go to see a fortune-teller and are told that one of them will die by the other’s hand at the hour of sunset on Christmas Eve. The novel unfolds from there as these two seeming friends discover that neither is who the other thought and one greatly wrongs the other, leading to the dramatic murder scene on the Delaware River, said to be based on a true murder case in Philadelphia.

Another notable character is Devil-Bug. This depraved criminal is illiterate, unintelligent, and mostly the slave to superior criminals, yet he is perhaps the closest thing the novel has to a main character. As Stephen Knight notes, he is almost the reverse of Eugene Sue’s hero Rodolphe, who is a prince in disguise. Devil-Bug is not moral, but he is haunted by his past, continually seeing the ghosts of those he has killed. He also once was in love and had a daughter who was lost to him. By the end of the novel, we will learn not only what became of his daughter, but he will manage to save her and see her happy and prosperous, a marked contrast to how Rodolphe is unable to save his daughter, who ultimately dies of shame because of her past. Devil-Bug is also the character granted the vision of the future in the novel.

Original cover for The Quaker City

Perhaps the most interesting character for me, however, is Signor Ravoni. Did I not know that this novel was published before Alexandre Dumas’ Joseph Balsamo (1846-1848), I might have thought Ravoni was inspired by Dumas’ sorcerer character because Ravoni is also a sorcerer and has the same mesmeric abilities as Balsamo. However, as Stephen Knight notes, more likely Ravoni’s name is a play on Zanoni, the Rosicrucian hero of Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (1842). Like Zanoni, Ravoni claims to have lived a long life—two centuries. He is a voice of atheism in the novel, wishing to rid the world of the old religions and replace it with a religion of man for man, which may sound like a sort of religion of reason akin to the Goddess of Reason during the French Revolution. However, he intends to use his new religion to gain power over other men, and to do so, he uses supernatural powers, attempting to resurrect the dead to win over followers who claim they will worship him if he can do so. He manages to bring about a faked resurrection, and he also mesmerizes a young woman, holding her in thrall similarly to how Svengali will hold power over Trilby half a century later in George du Maurier’s novel Trilby. The scenes where Ravoni is worshiped by his followers in a mass meeting also eerily reminds me of scenes in the Swedish version of Dracula, Powers of Darkness, where Draculitz tries to create a new world order. In the end, Ravoni is stabbed and dies, but not before he gets his followers to promise to carry on his new religion and he appoints a successor. (I discuss these novels by Dumas and Bulwer-Lytton and Powers of Darkness in Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides.)

The Ravoni plot does not get introduced into the novel until the fifth of the six books, and it is not as closely tied to the main plots as it might be, but it is interesting for its religious message that seems anti-Christian, anti-religion, and pro-man if not pro-reason, wishing to raise man from the groveling servitude that religion often places him in, and yet Ravoni is a type of hypocrite in wishing to be worshiped like a god. It is also telling that American culture has always been highly religious due to its Puritan roots, ironic given the novel is set in a city founded by Quakers. The role of religion in the novel needs far more attention by future critics.

While my interest in The Quaker City is primarily in its Gothic elements, it is worth noting that like Sue, Lippard was a voice of reform and one who spoke out for the poor and downtrodden. He mocks those ready to send off missionaries to Hindoostan when there are outcasts at home who know nothing of the Bible. He also shows the sad state of racism in the country, some of the characters finding it a lark to burn down negro churches or abolitionist headquarters and create race riots. He is not afraid to speak out against the many wrongs that afflicted American society in the 1840s, even if those wrongs also gave him fodder for creating his novels.

The Quaker City was a phenomenal success in its day. It was the best-selling novel in America until the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. It sold 60,000 copies in the first year and at least another 10,000 in the following decade per Wikipedia. According to Stephen Knight, in London, Lloyd, the leading low-level publisher, republished it, much reduced and sensationalized, as Dora Livingstone (1845) (Dora is the adulteress character in the novel), and the German popular writer Franz Gerstacker translated it as Die Geheimnisse [“The Mysteries”] von Philadelphia (1845), taking credit as the author. In America, it spawned numerous more city mysteries novels.

As for George Lippard, he had published five previous books and would go on to publish at least twenty more before his untimely death in 1854 of tuberculosis. A list of his works is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lippard. Not listed, however, is The Mysteries of Florence, which is available at Amazon and was published under his name. I intend to explore that novel and other works by Lippard in the future, along with several other city mysteries novels.

Lippard, in my opinion, deserves a prominent place in early American literature alongside fellow novelists Charles Brockden Brown, Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne. Few scholars pay much attention to him today, but for more information on The Quaker City, I recommend Stephen Knight’s The Mysteries of the Cities which discusses not only Lippard’s novel but several other city mystery novels. Two books about Lippard’s life and writings I have not read but hope to explore are Roger Davidson’s George Lippard and R. Swinburne Clymer’s George Lippard: His Life and Works. References to Lippard can also be found in biographies of his friend Edgar Allan Poe.

While I have mostly focused on British and French Gothic works at this blog, American Gothic literature was alive and well in the nineteenth-century, though mostly overlooked today. Certainly, it deserves far more attention beyond the works of Poe and Hawthorne. I will try to remedy that in some of my future posts.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

The Introduction to Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897

“his trousers here, his towels there, and his French novels everywhere.”

— Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

The above quote from Wilkie Collins’ 1868 masterpiece[i] testifies that young gentlemen in England at the time were reading French novels, and yet the influence of French literature has been all but ignored by most scholars of British Gothic literature. This omission is surprising given that French novels were read in England by a wide audience in the nineteenth century as British literature of the period itself testifies. Besides the reference in Collins’ The Moonstone, in Anthony Trollope’s The Small House at Allington (1864), we are told of the Earl de Courcy that “He always breakfasted alone, and after breakfast found in a French novel and a cigar what solace those innocent recreations were still able to afford him.”[ii] In the last chapter of Barchester Towers (1857), Trollope references three contemporary French authors as he attempts to complete his story, “What novelist, what Fielding, what Scott, what George Sand, or Sue, or Dumas can impart an interest to the last chapter of his fictitious history?”[iii] Mary E. Braddon, best remembered for Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), writes in her short story “Good Lady Ducayne” (1896) of a young companion paid to read to the title character, but because the companion’s French is not good, the French maid instead reads French works to Lady Ducayne: “When she is tired of my reading she orders Francine, her maid, to read a French novel to her, and I hear her chuckle and groan now and then, as if she were more interested in those books than in Dickens or Scott.”[iv] Furthermore, in Lady Audley’s Secret, the lawyer Robert Audley is emphatically associated with reading French novels to the point of neglecting his work, and in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Pendennis (1848-50), a student’s quarters are described as, “While there was quite an infantine law library clad in skins of fresh new born calf, there was a tolerably large collection of classical books which he could not read, and of English and French works of poetry and fiction which he read a great deal too much.”[v]

Countless books have been written on nineteenth-century British Gothic literature, including my previous book The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption. Possibly, books have also been written on nineteenth-century French Gothic literature that are not accessible to an English-speaking audience since they were written in French, although the study of the Gothic does not yet seem to have become popular among academics in France.[vi] Even some significant nineteenth-century French Gothic novels have not been translated into English, and some of those that have been translated have suffered from being abridged. As a result, many students of the Gothic, myself included until recently, have been unfamiliar with the incredible influence that French and British Gothic novelists of this period had upon one another.

In scholarly works, if influence between French and British literature is mentioned, it is usually done so in passing and rarely detailed. To the best of my knowledge, no one to date has written a full study of how British and French Gothic texts influenced each other. The most thorough study I have found of English literature’s influence on French novels has been Eric Partridge’s The French Romantics’ Knowledge of English Literature, which was published in 1924, and as thorough as it is, it only briefly mentions a few Gothic novels and quotes extensively in French, which makes it inaccessible to many readers. M. G. Devonshire’s The English Novel in France (1929) similarly extensively discusses how English literature influenced French literature from 1830-70, but also makes little mention of Gothic fiction beyond Radcliffe and Lewis. Neither Partridge nor Devonshire mention Polidori or vampire fiction at all. Many other critics have discussed the specific influence of an individual work upon an author or work, but none have broadly discussed such influences upon the Gothic novel throughout the nineteenth century.

A misconception also appears to exist that British Victorians did not read French literature, thinking it too risqué. The above examples prove that is largely untrue. While some Victorians did hold that viewpoint, the extent of it has been heavily exaggerated. In his Preface to The Modern Literature of France (1839), George W. M. Reynolds, one of the most prolific British Victorian Gothic novelists, addressed this issue by stating that the journals of the day expressed as much dislike for anything French as they did during the Napoleonic Wars. He also disputed an article written three years earlier in the Quarterly Review that suggested the 1830 insurrection in France resulted from “the depraved taste of the nation with regard to literature, a proposition no less ridiculous than unfounded.”[vii] He goes on to argue that the divorce, licentiousness, and murders that take place in France cannot be attributed to its literature and that the British are just as guilty if not more so of such behaviors. Then he argues that the sense of freedom that resulted from the 1830 revolution is precisely what has led to an increase of high quality literature in France.[1] Consequently, his study reviews only French literature written after 1830. Most remarkably, with every author Reynolds discusses, he translates passages from works not yet known in England as examples of the French authors’ writing styles.

Despite Reynolds’ arguments and efforts, it is hard to know how many people listened to him. While some prejudice toward French literature doubtless remained, Juliette Atkinson has revealed in her 2013 article “The London Library and the Circulation of French Fiction in the 1840s” that circulation records from the London Library and other British libraries prove early British Victorians were reading French literature. Furthermore, Alexander Hugh Jordan, in an article discussing the influence of Carlyle upon Eugène Sue, remarks:

As Juliette Atkinson has recently noted, the assumption that the Victorians rejected contemporary French literature as “immoral” has proven stubbornly persistent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (391-93). In fact, the productions of leading French novelists met with a wide-ranging and enthusiastic response in Britain, not least through the medium of English translations. For instance, between 1842 and 1847, no less than seven of George Sand’s novels made their way to Britain (Bensimon 200-01). Moreover, thanks to the endeavours of Berry Palmer Chevasco [in Mysterymania], we now possess a near-exhaustive study of the British reception of Eugène Sue, and particularly of his Mystères de Paris. As Chevasco points out, in 1844 and 1845 alone, thirteen separate editions of Sue’s novels appeared in Britain (80).[viii]

Consequently, a convincing argument can be made not only that the British read French literature, but that British authors were influenced by their French contemporaries and vice versa. In fact, the influence of British authors on French authors is better documented, at least among studies written in English. Literary historian Maurice Lévy has documented more than one hundred English Gothic novels translated into French by the 1820s.[ix] Regardless, much work remains to be done to understand the influences that extended in both directions among British and French Gothic novelists from the time of the French Revolution through the nineteenth century.

Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature seeks to help fill the void of documenting the influence that both nations’ Gothic literature had upon one another. While no study can fully display the depth of influence individual works had upon each other, I hope this book will inspire a revision of Gothic studies with the understanding that there is no isolated British or French Gothic tradition, but rather a tradition that crosses national boundaries. I am also fully aware that the French and British novels I will discuss influenced other nations’ literatures and were influenced by them. For example, it is well known that German Gothic works had a significant influence upon British and French Gothic works, especially in the days of the Gothic’s infancy. However, to create a manageable survey, I will focus, with a few exceptions, on British and French texts.

The title of this book reflects the frequent attempts by male vampire characters, usually based upon John Polidori’s vampire Lord Ruthven, to force a woman to marry him so she can become his victim. William H. Ainsworth’s short story “The Spectre Bride” is also referenced in the title. It refers to a bride who, surprisingly, is not supernatural but forced to marry a supernatural being. The word “marriage” in this book’s subtitle is perfect to describe the relationship between French and British Gothic because it goes beyond the idea of simple influence to a partnership. I believe in many cases the French and British Gothic writers were conscious that they were writing within the same Gothic tradition and being influenced by one another’s work. Proof of that influence will be provided in every chapter of this book and, hopefully, readers will be convinced by the book’s conclusion of my argument for this incredible shared influence that crossed national and language barriers.

Before diving further into our subject, it is best to define a few terms. By French Gothic, I am referring specifically to novels, plays, and short stories written within the boundaries of France. Similarly, by British, I mean works produced within Great Britain. I have chosen not to use the term English because it is less encompassing and could refer solely to England, while British would include works produced in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. I have also opted to use British rather than English so it is not confused with works written in English by people outside of Great Britain, such as in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, or Australia. Only works produced within the national boundaries of Great Britain and France between 1789 and 1897 will be discussed in detail, with the exception of two American vampire works and the Swedish translation of Dracula.

Secondly, by using the term Gothic, I am referring to texts that include supernatural beings and occurrences, also known as the masculine Gothic, which includes works by Matthew Lewis, Alexandre Dumas, Bram Stoker, and others. I am also referring to texts where supernatural beings or events are believed to be occurring, even though they turn out to have rational explanations; this school is known as the feminine Gothic and is represented primarily by the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, although male authors like Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail and Jules Verne also fit into this category.[2] By Gothic, I am also referring to works that are devoid of anything supernatural but still have a Gothic atmosphere, specifically crime-related novels, which arose out of the “mystery” aspect of earlier Gothic literature. Such works include the city mysteries novels of Eugène Sue, Paul Féval, and George W. M. Reynolds.

The bulk of the works discussed in this book belong to what I consider the Second Golden Age of the Gothic. As is well known, the Gothic novel began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, but its Golden Age really began in the 1790s when the terrors of the French Revolution resulted in a flood of Gothic novels that reflected people’s fears played out in a fictional form and set in the past because the present horrors were too terrifying to contemplate. This period ranges roughly from 1789-1820 and includes the works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The Second Gothic Golden Age began about a dozen years later. The year 1818 is a key year for the Gothic because two Gothic parody novels, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey, were published that year, announcing if not causing the Gothic’s death knell for the next decade. Parodies are always a sign that genres are popular but have also begun to decline in quality or influence.

The Gothic craze fell off in the 1820s with few notable works. Not until Victor Hugo published Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831 (translated into English in 1833 by Frederic Shoberl as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and William Harrison Ainsworth published Rookwood in 1834 did the Gothic regain its popularity. This Second Gothic Golden Age would run through the 1850s, at which time crime fiction, the child of the Gothic, superseded it in popularity along with sensational Victorian novels. However, the Gothic would remain popular throughout the nineteenth century, and following the 1897 publication of Dracula, and the subsequent film versions of that novel that made horror a staple of modern cinema, the Gothic has become immortal in a way many of its characters who sought the elixir of life never could have foreseen.

This Second Gothic Golden Age is when the influences of French and British Gothic literature were strongest upon each other, and it is that mutual influence I wish to highlight in this book. The nineteenth century was a period when authors in France and Great Britain largely spoke each other’s language and read each other’s books, often in their original language, but also in translation. Today, I suspect people are less bilingual than they were then. As an American, I studied French in school, but I cannot speak it fluently or even read it without it being a somewhat painstaking task. I suspect many literary scholars (despite most PhD programs requiring one or two foreign languages) and most general readers would say the same. Consequently, we must rely upon translations and the decisions of publishers and translators about which works will be translated. I hope Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides will bring attention to the incredible influence that British and French authors of this period had upon each other. This literary marriage has long been overlooked largely because of translation barriers, so I wish my work to inspire further scholarship and interest.

I also hope this book will bring more attention to many significant writers of nineteenth-century Gothic literature who have largely been ignored until recent years. While Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas are, if not household names, known by most lovers of books, authors like George W. M. Reynolds, William Harrison Ainsworth, Eugène Sue, and Paul Féval are unknown to most readers. These authors were in many ways just as remarkable as their better-known contemporaries. In fact, Reynolds and Ainsworth’s novels are said to have outsold those of Dickens, and as much as I love Dickens, both Reynolds and Ainsworth, in my opinion, surpassed Dickens in their plotting and pacing skills, if not in their character development or overall philosophical outlook. Similarly, the imaginations of the French authors of this period knew no bounds and their fantastic works deserve to be read today. Reading Sue’s The Wandering Jew or Féval’s Vampire City are incredible treats more readers should experience.

Nineteenth-century French and British Gothic is as capable today of teaching and entertaining us as it was for its original readers, for the twenty-first century is for us just as traumatic and terrorizing, if in different ways, as the nineteenth century was for our ancestors. By exploring such fears and the works they inspired, not only do we better understand Gothic literature, but we better understand the tastes, concerns, hopes, and dreams of our nineteenth-century ancestors, and in understanding them, we can understand more about ourselves because we are living their legacy.

Tyler R. Tichelaar

Marquette, Michigan

Halloween 2022

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[1] One of the giants of French Romanticism, Charles Nodier, would agree with him on this point. In his essay “Du fantastique en littérature” in the Revue de Paris in 1830, Nodier argued that: “the fantastique requires a virginal imagination and beliefs that secondary literatures lack, and which are only reproduced therein following revolutions whose passage renews everything.” (Quoted in Stableford, “Introduction,” Weird Fiction in France, p. 6.)

[2] The terms masculine and feminine Gothic were first coined by Kate Ellis in The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology (1989).

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Introduction

[i] Collins, Wilkie p. 359.

[ii] Trollope, The Small House, p. 281.

[iii] Trollope, Barchester Towers, p. 424.

[iv] Braddon p. 324.

[v] Quoted in Atkinson p. 21-2.

[vi] Horner, “Introduction,” p. 1.

[vii] Reynolds, Modern Literature, Vol 1. p. iv.

[viii] Jordan.

[ix] Hale p. 31.