They all agreed to the proposal.— “And let the good people who have so heartily welcomed us home be called in too,” said La Luc: “they shall all partake our happiness. There is devotion in making others happy, and gratitude ought to make us devout. Peter, bring more wine, and set some tables under the trees.” Peter flew, and, while chairs and tables were placing, Clara ran for her favourite lute, the lute which had formerly afforded her such delight, and which Adeline had often touched with a melancholy expression. Clara’s light hand now ran over the chords, and drew forth tones of tender sweetness, her voice accompanying the following
AIR.
Now at Moonlight’s fairy hour,
When faintly gleams each dewy steep,
And vale and mountain, lake and bow’r,
In solitary grandeur sleep;
When slowly sinks the evening breeze,
That lulls the mind in pensive care,
And Fancy loftier visions sees,
Bid Music wake the silent air.
Bid the merry, merry tabor sound,
And with the Fays of lawn or glade,
In tripping circlet beat the ground
Under the high trees’ trembling shade.
“Now at Moonlight’s fairy hour”
Shall Music breathe her dulcet voice,
And o’er the waves, with magic pow’r,
Call on Echo to rejoice!
Peter, who could not move in a sober step, had already spread refreshments under the trees, and in a short time the lawn was encircled with peasantry. The rural pipe and tabor were placed, at Clara’s request, under the shade of her beloved acacias on the margin of the lake; the merry notes of music sounded, Adeline led off the dance, and the mountains answered only to the strains of mirth and melody.
The venerable La Luc, as he sat among the elder peasants, surveyed the scene — his children and people thus assembled round him in one grand compact of harmony and joy — the frequent tear bedewed his cheek, and he seemed to taste the fulness of an exalted delight.
So much was every heart roused to gladness, that the morning dawn began to peep upon the scene of their festivity, when every cottager returned to his home blessing the benevolence of La Luc.
After passing some weeks with La Luc, M. Verneuil bought a chateau in the village of Leloncourt, and as it was the only one not already occupied, Theodore looked out for a residence in the neighbourhood. At the distance of a few leagues, on the beautiful banks of the lake of Geneva, where the waters retire into a small bay, he purchased a villa. The chateau was characterized by an air of simplicity and taste, rather than of magnificence, which however was the chief trait in the surrounding scene. The chateau was almost encircled with woods, which forming a grand amphitheatre swept down to the water’s edge, and abounded with wild and romantic walks. Here nature was suffered to sport in all her beautiful luxuriance, except where here, and there, the hand of art formed the foliage to admit a view of the blue waters of the lake, with the white sail that glided by, or of the distant mountains. In front of the chateau the woods opened to a lawn, and the eye was suffered to wander over the lake, whose bosom presented an evermoving picture, while its varied margin sprinkled with villas, woods, and towns, and crowned beyond with the snowy and sublime alps, rising point behind point in aweful confusion, exhibited a scenery of almost unequalled magnificence.
Here, contemning the splendour of false happiness, and possessing the pure and rational delights of a love refined into the most tender friendship, surrounded by the friends so dear to them, and visited by a select and enlightened society — here, in the very bosom of felicity, lived Theodore and Adeline La Luc.
The passion of Louis De la Motte yielded at length to the powers of absence and necessity. He still loved Adeline, but it was with the placid tenderness of friendship, and when, at the earnest invitation of Theodore, he visited the villa, he beheld their happiness with a satisfaction unalloyed by any emotions of envy. He afterwards married a lady of some fortune at Geneva, and resigning his commission in the French service, settled on the borders of the lake, and increased the social delights of Theodore and Adeline.
Their former lives afforded an example of trials well endured — and their present, of virtues greatly rewarded; and this reward they continued to deserve — for not to themselves was their happiness contracted, but diffused to all who came within the sphere of their influence. The indigent and unhappy rejoiced in their benevolence, the virtuous and enlightened in their friendship, and their children in parents whose example impressed upon their hearts the precepts offered to their understandings.
THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO
The Mysteries of Udolpho was originally published in four volumes on May 8th 1794 by G. G and J. Robinson of London. It was Radcliffe’s fourth novel and remains her most popular today, gaining additional attention due to Jane Austen satirising the work in her successful novel Northanger Abbey. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe exploits the realm of terror while avoiding the horror genre and anything that would be deemed too explicit. The troubling episodes and incidents in the novel are created by the heroine’s inability to express what she is viewing and the physical reaction she has to situations. It is the unsaid, the unexplained, the half-seen, which works as psychological terror in large sections of the work. The novel is set in 16th century France and Italy and the narrative centres on a motherless and soon orphaned girl Emily, who is separated from her desired suitor and forced into the care of an unloving aunt and a villainous step uncle. There are attempts to force her into a marriage, to steal her rightful property and remove her from the supposed protection of society.
Emily St. Aubert is a quintessential Gothic heroine, endowed with great sensibility shown by her love of the arts, her fainting fits and penchant for crying. She, like most of Radcliffe’s heroines, feels too much and is forced to undergo a series of frightening and potentially fatal situations, which attempt to teach her a balance between sentiment and reason. The Mysteries of Udolpho does not allow the supernatural to remain so; it provides rational explanations for these events and therefore reason is asserted by the conclusion of the novel. Emily’s beloved is a highly sensitive and emotional young man that is greatly moved by the beauty of nature and Radcliffe portrays him so distraught at his separation from Emily that he becomes corrupted by city life; he too must learn to temper his sensibility with reason.
During the time of Radcliffe’s writing the cult of sensibility and the idea of emphasis on feeling over reason assumed an important political dimension. The French Revolution was unfolding and there was fright and panic amongst the upper-classes of revolutionary ideas spreading to England and resulting in a violent overthrow of the established order. The idea of excessive sensibility was linked to political notions associated with the French Revolution; the focus on individuality and emotional volatility was seen as anti-rationalist and subversive, which English conservatives feared would encourage a bloody upheaval on their shores. Emily is educated through the novel to tame her unrestrained sensibility and learn the importance of elevating reason over her passions, but never to detach her emotions from her life — a lesson in moderation.
Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey at the end of the eighteenth century, shortly after the success of The Mysteries of Udolpho, during a sustained period of success for Gothic romance novels. As a form of writing the novel was associated with a female readership and considered artistically and culturally inferior to poetry, philosophy and history which were all deemed to be masculine subjects. Austen sought to defend the value of the novel from critics, while also attacking aspects of the genre or writers she thought were intellectually feeble. The lack of reason often exhibited by the heroines of gothic fiction and their excessive sensibility is satirised by Austen in her main character, Catherine Moreland, who possesses none of the talents traditionally associated with the heroines of the genre. Catherine is reading The Mysteries of Udolpho and the fanciful nature of it causes her to imagine
that there are dreadful secrets hidden at Northanger Abbey where she is staying. Austen juxtaposes the flight of imagination typical in Radcliffe’s book with the uninteresting, mundane reality of everyday life when Catherine discovers what she believes to be a manuscript full of secrets, locked away in chest, only to read it and realise that it is a laundry list. The fact that Austen chose The Mysteries of Udolpho as the Gothic text to satirise identifies the novel’s popularity and influence during that period and it has remained a pillar of the genre since its first publication.
The first edition was published in four volumes.
The original title page
CONTENTS
VOLUME 1
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
VOLUME 2
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
VOLUME 3
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
VOLUME 4
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
Jane Austen, one of the many authors that have been inspired by Radcliffe’s famous novel
Gothic convention – sensitive heroine overcome by the fear of the supernatural
VOLUME 1
CHAPTER I
home is the resort
Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where,
Supporting and supported, polish’d friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.
Thomson
On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony, stood, in the year 1584, the chateau of Monsieur St. Aubert. From its windows were seen the pastoral landscapes of Guienne and Gascony stretching along the river, gay with luxuriant woods and vine, and plantations of olives. To the south, the view was bounded by the majestic Pyrenees, whose summits, veiled in clouds, or exhibiting awful forms, seen, and lost again, as the partial vapours rolled along, were sometimes barren, and gleamed through the blue tinge of air, and sometimes frowned with forests of gloomy pine, that swept downward to their base. These tremendous precipices were contrasted by the soft green of the pastures and woods that hung upon their skirts; among whose flocks, and herds, and simple cottages, the eye, after having scaled the cliffs above, delighted to repose. To the north, and to the east, the plains of Guienne and Languedoc were lost in the mist of distance; on the west, Gascony was bounded by the waters of Biscay.
M. St. Aubert loved to wander, with his wife and daughter, on the margin of the Garonne, and to listen to the music that floated on its waves. He had known life in other forms than those of pastoral simplicity, having mingled in the gay and in the busy scenes of the world; but the flattering portrait of mankind, which his heart had delineated in early youth, his experience had too sorrowfully corrected. Yet, amidst the changing visions of life, his principles remained unshaken, his benevolence unchilled; and he retired from the multitude ‘more in PITY than in anger,’ to scenes of simple nature, to the pure delights of literature, and to the exercise of domestic virtues.
He was a descendant from the younger branch of an illustrious family, and it was designed, that the deficiency of his patrimonial wealth should be supplied either by a splendid alliance in marriage, or by success in the intrigues of public affairs. But St. Aubert had too nice a sense of honour to fulfil the latter hope, and too small a portion of ambition to sacrifice what he called happiness, to the attainment of wealth. After the death of his father he married a very amiable woman, his equal in birth, and not his superior in fortune. The late Monsieur St. Aubert’s liberality, or extravagance, had so much involved his affairs, that his son found it necessary to dispose of a part of the family domain, and, some years after his marriage, he sold it to Monsieur Quesnel, the brother of his wife, and retired to a small estate in Gascony, where conjugal felicity, and parental duties, divided his attention with the treasures of knowledge and the illuminations of genius.
To this spot he had been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind by the homely kindness of the grey-headed peasant, to whom it was intrusted, and whose fruit and cream never failed, had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom — the woods, under whose refreshing shade he had first indulged that pensive melancholy, which afterwards made a strong feature of his character — the wild walks of the mountains, the river, on whose waves he had floated, and the distant plains, which seemed boundless as his early hopes — were never after remembered by St. Aubert but with enthusiasm and regret. At length he disengaged himself from the world, and retired hither, to realize the wishes of many years.
The building, as it then stood, was merely a summer cottage, rendered interesting to a stranger by its neat simplicity, or the beauty of the surrounding scene; and considerable additions were necessary to make it a comfortable family residence. St. Aubert felt a kind of affection for every part of the fabric, which he remembered in his youth, and would not suffer a stone of it to be removed, so that the new building, adapted to the style of the old one, formed with it only a simple and elegant residence. The taste of Madame St. Aubert was conspicuous in its internal finishing, where the same chaste simplicity was observable in the furniture, and in the few ornaments of the apartments, that characterized the manners of its inhabitants.
The library occupied the west side of the chateau, and was enriched by a collection of the best books in the ancient and modern languages. This room opened upon a grove, which stood on the brow of a gentle declivity, that fell towards the river, and the tall trees gave it a melancholy and pleasing shade; while from the windows the eye caught, beneath the spreading branches, the gay and luxuriant landscape stretching to the west, and overlooked on the left by the bold precipices of the Pyrenees. Adjoining the library was a green-house, stored with scarce and beautiful plants; for one of the amusements of St. Aubert was the study of botany, and among the neighbouring mountains, which afforded a luxurious feast to the mind of the naturalist, he often passed the day in the pursuit of his favourite science. He was sometimes accompanied in these little excursions by Madame St. Aubert, and frequently by his daughter; when, with a small osier basket to receive plants, and another filled with cold refreshments, such as the cabin of the shepherd did not afford, they wandered away among the most romantic and magnificent scenes, nor suffered the charms of Nature’s lowly children to abstract them from the observance of her stupendous works. When weary of sauntering among cliffs that seemed scarcely accessible but to the steps of the enthusiast, and where no track appeared on the vegetation, but what the foot of the izard had left; they would seek one of
those green recesses, which so beautifully adorn the bosom of these mountains, where, under the shade of the lofty larch, or cedar, they enjoyed their simple repast, made sweeter by the waters of the cool stream, that crept along the turf, and by the breath of wild flowers and aromatic plants, that fringed the rocks, and inlaid the grass.
Adjoining the eastern side of the green-house, looking towards the plains of Languedoc, was a room, which Emily called hers, and which contained her books, her drawings, her musical instruments, with some favourite birds and plants. Here she usually exercised herself in elegant arts, cultivated only because they were congenial to her taste, and in which native genius, assisted by the instructions of Monsieur and Madame St. Aubert, made her an early proficient. The windows of this room were particularly pleasant; they descended to the floor, and, opening upon the little lawn that surrounded the house, the eye was led between groves of almond, palm-trees, flowering-ash, and myrtle, to the distant landscape, where the Garonne wandered.
The peasants of this gay climate were often seen on an evening, when the day’s labour was done, dancing in groups on the margin of the river. Their sprightly melodies, debonnaire steps, the fanciful figure of their dances, with the tasteful and capricious manner in which the girls adjusted their simple dress, gave a character to the scene entirely French.
The front of the chateau, which, having a southern aspect, opened upon the grandeur of the mountains, was occupied on the ground floor by a rustic hall, and two excellent sitting rooms. The first floor, for the cottage had no second story, was laid out in bedchambers, except one apartment that opened to a balcony, and which was generally used for a breakfast-room.
Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Page 75