Melmoth the Wanderer

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by Charles Maturin


  L’Abbe le Blanc: Jean Bernard le Blanc (1707–81), Letters on the French and English Nations, trans. (1747). Le Blanc helped perpetrate the French view of English ‘tragedy’, which was that it was a blood-spattered form of popular melodrama.

  49. the burning of the Pope: Publicly burnt in effigy on Queen Elizabeth’s birthday in 1679–81, at the height of the anti-Popish agitation (Grant). By 1820, the matter is still much contested, especially in Ireland: Catholic emancipation is only nine years away, as Maturin writes.

  50. Sir Robert Howard: Dramatist (1626–98).

  Elkanah Settle: Dramatist (1648–1724). Maturin is using their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects as a subtext here, just as he uses Cervantes.

  51. Mobbed…demure: John Gay, The Tea-Table: A Town Eclogue (Grant). Mobbed: Wearing a mob-cap (i.e. incognito).

  52. Oroonoko: Thomas Southerne’s tragedy, produced in 1695. It was based upon Aphra Behn’s novel of the same name.

  53. charm…ghost: It is in fact in the epilogue, not the prologue, to Oedipus.

  54. Alexander: Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens, or, The Death of Alexander the Great, produced in 1677. The actor Charles Hart played Alexander.

  55. Ammon: Amon, Egyptian deity, equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon, revealed as king of the Gods, identified with the Sun-god, Re of Heliopolis.

  56. the veteran Betterton: Thomas Betterton (1635?–1710), actor and dramatist. A History of the English Stage was published from his notes in 1741. His story concerns a production of Lee’s The Rival Queens (Grant). The passage shows how deliberately Maturin uses historical details to extend his preoccupation with overlaps between art and life.

  57. many…them: This sentence forms a ‘seam’ between history and fiction: Stanton is a fictional character seated in a historical audience – all rise to their feet.

  58. airs…heaven: Hamlet, I, iv, 41. The parallel is with Hamlet, face to face with his father’s ghost.

  59. like Bruce…History: James Bruce (1730–94) published his account of the discovery of the Blue Nile in 1790. Edward Gibbon (1737–94) completed the publication of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1788.

  60. when…continuation: Note the fiction of ‘editing’ here. There is just interruption, no other writing: where the text begins, the narrative continues.

  61. the selfish Frenchman: La Rochefoucauld (1613–80), the favourite of Swift, whose ethical model is based on self-love. The joke is that he cannot escape his own model.

  62. Bobadil: The braggart in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, first performed in 1598. These pamphlets are an allusion to Swift’s madhouse in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), which is a parody of the Royal Academy; and of his famous satirical pamphlet, A Modest Proposal (1729). Note the anti-Imperial satire in the account of these ‘conversions’.

  63. in pontificalibus: In his robes of office.

  64. Ethelbert (552?–615), King of Kent, 560, baptized by St Augustine in 597.

  65. sybilline books: Prophetic books of the ancient Sybils – here the breaking off of the MS indicates a whole lot more spoof learned commentary to show that speeches in Latin are able to convert those who cannot understand a word of it.

  66. Cum multis aliis: Along with many others – i.e. other missing pages, or examples of this kind. It is difficult to decide whether this is primarily offered to the reader as part of what the manuscript says, or whether it is editorial comment of a dismissive kind.

  67. O…period: The first line of an anonymous poem entitled ‘Nonsense’, printed in Wit and Drollery, 1656. Nathaniel Lee, the dramatist (1653–92), who died in a madhouse in 1692, evidently could not have written it.

  68. wished for day: Acts xxvii, 29.

  69. darbies: Handcuffs. Maturin might have got this cant term from Scott’s Guy Mannering (1811).

  70. Hugh Peters (1598–1660), an Independent and a powerful preacher to the army, who was executed after the Restoration.

  71. five points: Of Calvinist doctrine, laid down, in reaction to the threat of Arminianism, by the Synod of Dort (1618–19) in Holland: (1) predestined election to Heaven or reprobation to Hell of every individual, not conditional on belief; (2) Christ did not die for all men; (3) the total depravity of natural man through original sin; (4) the irresistible grace of God; (5) the impossibility of falling from grace.

  72. Rebellion is breaking up house: The allusion is to the first line of the ballad ‘The State of Rebellious Household-Stuff,’ printed in Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765, ii, 336.

  73. How long, Lord, how long: Rev. vi, 10.

  74. earth gapes to swallow it: The allusion is to Faustus’s last speech in Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, V, ii, 151.

  75. Spare…mighty: Judges v, 23.

  76. Kedar: Ps. cxx, 5.

  77. Marston Moor: Yorkshire, where a battle was fought on 2 July 1644 between the Royalists and the Parliamentary army.

  78. Carisbrook Castle: Isle of Wight, where Charles I was imprisoned.

  79. copper nose: A red nose, caused by disease or intemperance. Usually refers to Oliver Cromwell. Here ‘it’ refers metaphorically to the (verdigris-covered) Tower itself.

  80. calf’s head: A calf’s head used to be eaten on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution (Grant).

  streaming with blood: The blasphemous allusion is to Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, V, ii, 141: ‘See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.’

  81. ebriety: Drunkenness.

  82. where be your companions, etc.: Shakespeare, King John, I, i, 193 (adapted). This is a portmanteau: in Shakespeare, there is no phrase: ‘Where be your companions?’ The quotation reads: ‘peaked man of countries’.

  83. where you…are eaten: Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, iii, 19, spoken sardonically of the corpse of Polonius whom Hamlet has just killed.

  84. gnashing of teeth: Matt, xiii, 50. Christ’s warning of the fate of the wicked at the Apocalypse: that the angels shall sever the wicked from the just and cast them into the furnace of fire and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  85. serve for an instance: Note the rhetorical manoeuvre of providing a relatively harmless example which intensifies the following speech of Melmoth.

  86. Supra-lapsarian (lit. ‘one above the Fall’): A Calvinist who believes that salvation and damnation were decreed before the creation and the fall.

  Sub-lapsarian: One who believes they were decreed after.

  Arminians: Adherents of Arminianism, a ‘liberal’ reaction to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which stressed free will; named after Jacob Arminius, a Dutch theologian at the University of Leyden. In the seventeenth century, a favourite doctrine of High Church anti-puritan Protestants.

  87. ten thousand: Song of Solomon v, 10: ‘My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.’

  88. the calcined…manuscript: Herculaneum was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. First investigated 1709. Formal excavations began in 1748.

  Petronius: Petronius Arbiter (d. AD66), close friend of Nero and author of the Satyricon, a portrait of Rome’s decadence.

  Martial: Marcus Valerius Martial (AD38-C.103), a writer of (sometimes obscene) epigrams.

  Spintriæ: Male prostitutes.

  89. orgies of the Phallic worshippers: The superb Dionysiac frescoes of the Mysteries at the Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii, show the initiation of a girl into the Bacchic mysteries: in the third panel, the girl is unveiling an erect phallus and receiving flagellation.

  90. master-passion: Typically for Maturin, the pleasure implied in the exercise of the ruling passion is a form of ‘torment’ too.

  91. nor…answered: 1 Kings xviii, 26. This passage concerns idolatry. Elijah challenges the worshippers of Ba’al to call him forth, but nothing happens: the analogy is with taking the Portrait out of its frame: nothing happens.

  CHAPTER IV

  1. William Falconer, The Shipwreck, Canto I, 913–14 (Grant).

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sp; 2. Terror…love, etc.: This passage is typical of the way Maturin uses observations about the psychology of terror on two levels at once: as general commentary, and as a form of rhetoric which intensifies local effects.

  3. Cromwell’s death: 3 September 1658.

  4. mutatis mutandis: Allowing for differences; an admission of how grand and baroque is the comparison between the religious divisions of the historical seventeenth century and the fictional Wicklow storm.

  5. they…head: Shakespeare, King Lear, II, ii, 50 – in Lear’s line, ‘they’ are ‘the Great Gods’.

  6. spanselled’: Fettered, or hobbled.

  7. the secrets…deep’: Hoary: of hair, grey with age. Job xli, 32: ‘He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.’ This is part of God’s reply to Job. The ‘secrets’ are Maturin’s own.

  8. the jack: A lever that controls the draught of a grate; sometimes called the ‘smoke-jack’.

  9. actual: Used here in the French sense of ‘momentary’.

  10. It is…him: An exemplum of the opposite to Pride. Cf. Shelley: ‘I alit/On a great ship lightning-split,/And speeded hither on the sigh/Of one who gave an enemy/His plank, then plunged aside to die.’ Second Spirit’s song, Prometheus Unbound, Act I, 717–22.

  11. the compound…good: This reveals an explicit scepticism about the labels ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in this novel.

  12. Fang and Snare: The officers sent for by Mistress Quickly to arrest Falstaff for the debt he owes her in Shakespeare, II Henry IV, i, 21.

  vice: Grasp, grip. When Falstaff actually appears, this bravado melts away.

  13. He seemed…water: Ps. lxvi, 12. The verse is about people and everything else being above you – this is the test which God made for them.

  CHAPTER V

  1. Don Quixote, Pt I, ch. 25. Sancho Panza means that once a man is in Hell, he can’t get out, unlike Purgatory. The reference indicates a connection with the self-conscious comic novel coming up from Cervantes.

  2. defecated: Emptied.

  3. the invalids…Spenser: Bards are discussed in A View of the Present State of Ireland, 1596.

  4. gossip’s…ears: Joanna Baillie, Ethwald: a Tragedy, Pt II, Act iv (A Series of Plays, 1821, ii, 305).

  5. vexing…man: Shakespeare, King John, III, iv, 109: Lewis describes the loss of joy: ‘Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale/Vexing…’, etc.

  6. not…Latin: This incident shows how even a good priest keeps the peasants ignorant of the truth by circumlocution, thus fuelling their natural tendencies to superstition. The implication is that Reformation Protestantism associates with ‘candour’. Narrative time is 1816 and Pro- and Anti-Catholic lobbies are locked in a pitched propaganda war, fuelled by the prospect of Catholic emancipation.

  7. the pale: An allusion to the eastern coastal strip called the Pale (i.e. palisade, fence) established by the Tudor Protestant colonists of Ireland, beyond which ‘civilization’ ended. Here the author supplies the colonial term, while the priest’s language refuses it.

  8. exordium: Rhetorical term for the beginning of a speech.

  9. with…Melmoth: The relation between reader and text is here re-negotiated. John Melmoth becomes a listener-in-the-text, but one largely excluded from representation by editorial summary.

  10. capa: Cape.

  11. a convent…Ex-Jesuits: The Society of Jesus was banned in Spain in 1757 and from the Spanish Empire in 1767. In 1717, Pope Clement XIV issued a decree abolishing the Society. In 1814, Pope Pius VII re-established it.

  12. the whole house…masquerade: Evidently metaphorical. But Jesuit education emphasized theatrical representation as an educational technique. This is a structural comparison – cf. the narrative of Stanton, in which another closed institution – the madhouse – was represented as a kind of theatre.

  13. hypocrite: From Gr. ypokritos: actor.

  14. casuists: Logic-choppers, sophists; those who apply ethical and theological rules to cases of conscience. Casuistry is traditionally the sign of Jesuitism from a popular Protestant point of view.

  15. Esau: Gen. xxvii, 37–8. The quotation is a mixture of the two verses. Esau was the brother of Isaac and the analogy between them and the Monçada brothers is an apt one. Later, Juan Monçada uses the same analogy.

  16. sap: The digging of a covered trench.

  17. like…Saul: 1 Sam. xxviii, 14. Saul goes to consult the Witch of Endor who raises the ghost of Samuel out of the earth: the incident is a traditional reference point for Gothic horror.

  18. Fiat voluntas tua: Have it your own way.

  19. the still…there: 1 Kings xix, 12. Elijah confronts God in the wilderness and he is not in the earthquake, nor the fire – but after the fire ‘a still small voice’ is there.

  20. What…truth?: John xviii, 38: Pontius Pilate’s rhetorical question is traditionally a symptom of his lack of moral commitment. But the point of the analogy is the vista of ambiguity that opens out as soon as we interrogate our own emotions.

  21. partizan: Footsoldier.

  party: A member of a confederacy, one who has taken sides.

  22. supplicating…grace: God’s free gift to man, who, though born in sin, may obtain grace through prayer; here represented in monastery jargon.

  23. dissimulation…dissimulation: Cf. William Blake’s lyric, ‘The Poison Tree’: ‘I was angry with my friend/I told my wrath/My wrath did end.’ Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789–94).

  24. the whirlwind…angel: For the figure of the Destroying Angel, see i Chron. xxi, 1. For the wind, see Acts ii, 2. The first reviewers seized on this passage as a particularly contemptible exaggeration.

  25. FIX…IMPRESSION’: i.e. in the wax. A sinister piece of Jesuitical code. Here the text exposes the blackmail of ‘the future state’.

  26. John Buffa, Travels through the Empire of Morocco, 1810. Anachronism prepense: i.e. ‘deliberate anachronism’ in citing Buffa. The note confirms Maturin’s desire to ‘break the frame’ of Scott’s historical romance, plausibility, etc. But in fact, since Monçada is telling this Tale in 1816, there is no literal anachronism (Hayter).

  27. chaunt: Chant, i.e. plainsong. The archaism combined with sarcastic emphasis also suggests an actual item from an affected, sing-song mode of speech.

  28. Sacrifice of jephtha: Handel’s oratorio Jephthah, first performed in 1752. An appropriate choice: a brigand-hero of Israel who avenged injustices to the Israelites, at the cost of having to sacrifice his daughter to Yahweh.

  29. auto de fe: Act of faith. Refers to the act of passing judgement by the Inquisition, and, then, by transfer, to the process of punishment: those convicted of heresy were burnt alive in a public place.

  30. deceitful…wicked: Jer. xvii, 9: ‘the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’

  31. My son…bore you: Shakespeare, Coriolanus, V, iii, 120ff. The speech is a paraphrase of Volumnia’s plea to her son, Coriolanus, to leave Rome in peace.

  32. My life…tide: The beginning of a subtext of mechanism and automatism, a special version of ‘artificiality’. Cf. Diderot, La Réligieuse (1760: repr. Paris, Livre de poche, 1983), p.46: ‘J’étais presque réduite à l’état d’un automate!’ (‘I was almost reduced to the condition of an automaton!’), which is the probable source.

  33. the Simorgh in the Eastern fable: Simurgh, the monstrous bird of Persian fable, possessed of reason and the power of speech in every language, and of immense age. Maturin may be thinking of William Beckford’s Vathek (1789), which mentions it and has a footnote, based on Tales from Inatulla (1768), apparently the fable referred to.

  34. toils: Traps, snares, nets.

  35. turning-box: A device, usually set in a wall, for collecting outside offerings.

  36. you…senses: This passage reflects later eighteenth-century debate after the sceptical intervention of philosopher David Hume (1711–76) over the criteria for a miracle in the chapter called ‘On Miracles’ of his Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (1748).

  37. Pope Sixtus: Probably Sixtus V, the unanimously elected successor to Gregory XIII on 5 April 1585, who was the Papal State’s only choice, not because he was suspected of imbecility, but because various parties had objections to all the other potential candidates.

  38. Ebrietas: Ebriety, drunkenness.

  39. Satana…Satana: Get thee behind me, Satan. Matt, xvi, 23.

  apage: From Gr. ypage. Christ says this to Peter, who thinks he can avoid going into Jerusalem and being crucified.

  40. Murillo: The Spanish painter Bartolomé Estebân Murillo (1617–82), famous for picturesque rustic scenes involving saintly females and beggar boys, whose eyes are invariably raised to heaven. After the 1650s, Murillo assumed the grand manner of baroque portraiture, which had become fashionable at the Spanish court.

  41. mad Orestes: Greek tragic hero, maddened by the Furies as a punishment for parricide. This is a portmanteau comparison between Greek tragedy, painting (‘groupe’) and sculpture, which makes of the young man a kind of baroque saint.

  42. There…externals: The traditional Protestant Reformation objection to Catholic ritual – it deadens the conscience and results in a merely external form of obeisance.

  43. Vide…Delmour: Mme de Genlis (1746–1830), an Enlightenment author, published her novel Les Parvenus, ou les Amours de Julien Delmour, in 1819.

  44. kissing the crucifix: i.e. the cross, together with the effigy of the suffering Christ upon it. Protestants regard the icon and the action with revulsion, as ritualistic: they use the unadorned Cross, a symbol only.

  45. Francis Xavier: St Francis Xavier (1506–52), a Basque, one of the original founders of the Society of Jesus, the second-in-command to Ignatius Loyola and his right-hand man on the Eastern missions. The Portuguese Inquisition in Goa (1561) was established according to his instructions.

  46. odour of sanctity: A sweet balsamic odour stated to have been exhaled by the bodies of eminent saints at their death. Hence: ‘reputation for holiness’, often used ironically.

  47. the moon…brightness: Job xxxi, 26.

  48. Scire…timeri: They wish to know the family secrets, and so to be feared (Juvenal, Satires, iii, 113). Juvenal, the Roman, on Greeks: a nation of play-actors who make it their business to blackmail their way into the Roman family and debauch its members. The analogy is with the Jesuits.

 

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