Fiction
Old and New Horrors
The Necromancer : or the Tale of the Black Forest. Translated from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg. By Peter Tenthold. (Robert Holden. is. 6d.) More Ghosts and Marvels. From Sir Walter Scott to Michael Arlen. (Oxford University Press. 2s.) The Necromancer is another of the " horrid " stories enumer- ated by the sophisticated Isabella to the ingenuous Catherine Morland, when the latter young lady is working herself up into the exalted mood in which she will breathlessly draw from the ancient coffer in Northanger Abbey that discon- certing laundry-bill. The delicate satirist who created Catherine did not, as we all know by this time, invent the
promising titles of the breathless list. An enterprising pub- lisher is now offering the marvellous tales that stirred the breasts of the fin-dc-siècle young of the eighteenth century to our disillusioned but deeply interested eyes. What made the flesh creep in the days of elegance ? Here is another example, with a preface by Mr. Montague Summers, Grand
Inquisitor of the " horrid " in every time and place. They are worth considering, these stories, for they have an historic importance. In the noontide of the Romantic Movement, Byron, Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Clairmont sat down to a competition in " horrid " histories, of which the only completed result was Frankenstein, that odd and gruesome narrative, so useful to many journalists who have never read it.
The word "horrid" had, by Catherine's time, lost some- thing of its high Miltonic connotation ; but it still retained enough of its original sense to signify bristling nerves and bristling turrets. Bristling turrets—for the later eighteenth century had wearied of its balanced sentences, its finished Couplets, and all its polite conventions of style. It had found an amusing diversion in the " Gothick " ; and Horace Walpole, that malicious and mondain letter-writer, had ravished his acquaintances with Strawberry Hill and The Castle of Otranto.
Of all the extravagances which the Age of Reason had cor- rected away from its unmitigated inheritance from the reckless Elizabethans and the fantastic Cavaliers, the horror-motive was last to be relinquished and first to be resumed. The period of Addison and Pope ruled out the lyrical emotion with the lyrical metres. It became an interesting study in repressed literary complexes ; and from biography one might prove, as easily as one proves anything, that the Age of Reason was the Age of Madness. The true lyric reaction might begin faintly with Gray and Collins and Chatterton. The bright fountain of Blake's protestation might play all alone in an arid world. Before the time was ripe for the great Romantics, the century needed something crude and tatv to wake its flagging pulses, so it trifled, like Stevenson's
Mr. Maltby, with the joys of fear. Why is the primaevid mystery of horror so fascinating to the spirit of man that, not content with actually experiencing its icy throe at the heart, he must repeat and exalt its intensity in words ? Evidently the principle of catharsis holds here, at least.
Not much catharsis was there for Isabella and Catherine, one thinks, for the " horrid " stories of Mrs. Radcliffe and her kind gratified a taste for the alarming without any suggestion of danger. Remote from the sedate parlours, the pleasant tea-tables, the charming furniture, were the ruined Castles, haunted Priories, and Black Forests of their tales. This night- mare landscape was a wild fantasy that heightened the security of their existence. All the dreadful devices, carefully ex- plained in the conclusion by the authors who modelled them- selves on Mrs. Radcliffe, communicated no uneasiness to the soul. (Had they souls, Jane Austen's girls ? Sweet mate- rialists! It seems very ill-bred to inquire.) The Necromancer is translated from the German by a German, for, as Mr. Montague Summers points out, the Teutonic influence entered strongly into the " horrid " story. The plot is really interesting, though it loses itself considerably in multiplicity of episodes and narrators ; the moral tone is of the loftiest, though the theme is that of the outlaw who is not without his condoning plea, a theme that rose to world- wide fame in Schiller's Robbers. Passages have a melancholy dignity ; yet real horror never knocks at the heart.
But if you take up the little book of ghosts issued by the Oxford University Press your imagination will recoil shud-
dering many times. Every story in this collection is well written ; only great cunning of style can achieve the cold consummation of dread. Scott, Poe, Le Fanu, Mrs. Gaskell- all do very well in their diverse ways ; but it takes our con- temporaries to make the soul as well as the flesh creep. They cannot perhaps outdo Stevenson in this vein ; but they can suggest supernatural evil and the destruction of the spirit with terrifying force. There is a grim dense macabre by Miss May Sinclair which makes one physically ill—the proper reaction, I suppose, to a " horrid " story. After that, it is a relief to find that Henry James is represented only by "The
Great Good Place," though he can do worse things in super- natural fear; and Mr. Wells by "The Open Door," which is one of his rare pieces of sheer beauty.
Our sceptical writers of to-day arc mastering. the whole
gamut of horror. Not from the nalf Castle of Otranto do they descend ; yet they have something in common, perhaps; with its author's Mysterious Mother. But ours alone is the glory of the Grand Guignol ; and the Hangman we bring on the stage is more realistic than that of the puppet-show. We could surprise the blood-shedding Elizabethans.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
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