Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

by Charles Robert Maturin

  *

  The prisoner underwent the first and second applications with unshrinking courage, but on the infliction of the water-torture, which is indeed insupportable to humanity, either to suffer or relate, he exclaimed in the gasping interval, he would disclose every thing. He was released, refreshed, restored and the following day uttered the following remarkable confession

  *

  The old Spanish woman further confessed to Stanton, that

  *

  and that the Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighbourhood since; – seen, as she had heard that very night. ‘Great G—d!’ exclaimed Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom the lightning had struck and blasted.

  ***

  As the manuscript, after a few blotted and illegible pages, became more distinct, Melmoth read on, perplexed and unsatisfied, not knowing what connexion this Spanish story could have with his ancestor, whom, however, he recognized under the title of the Englishman; and wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow him to Ireland, write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in Spain, and leave it in the hands of his family, to ‘verify untrue things,’ in the language of Dogberry, – his wonder was diminished, though his curiosity was still more inflamed, by the perusal of the next lines, which he made out with some difficulty. It seems Stanton was now in England.

  *

  About the year 1677, Stanton was in London, his mind still full of his mysterious countryman. This constant subject of his contemplations had produced a visible change in his exterior, – his walk was what Sallust tells us of Catiline’s, – his were, too, the fædi oculi. He said to himself every moment, ‘If I could but trace that being, I will not call him man,’ – and the next moment he said, ‘and what if I could?’ In this state of mind, it is singular enough that he mixed constantly in public amusements, but it is true. When one fierce passion is devouring the soul, we feel more than ever the necessity of external excitement; and our dependence on the world for temporary relief increases in direct proportion to our contempt of the world and all its works. He went frequently to the theatres, then fashionable, when

  The fair sat panting at a courtier’s play,

  And not a mask went unimproved away

  The London theatres then presented a spectacle which ought for ever to put to silence the foolish outcry against progressive deterioration of morals, – foolish even from the pen of Juvenal, and still more so from the lips of a modern Puritan. Vice is always nearly on an average: The only difference in life worth tracing, is that of manners, and there we have manifestly the advantage of our ancestors. Hypocrisy is said to be the homage that vice pays to virtue, – decorum is the outward expression of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the Second’s reign. – A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under their liveries), surrounding the sedan of a popular actress,* whom they were to carry off vi et armis, as she entered it at the end of the play. At the other side waited the glass coach of a woman of fashion, who waited to take Kynaston (the Adonis of the day), in his female dress, to the park after the play was over, and exhibit him in all the luxurious splendour of effeminate beauty, (heightened by the theatrical dress), for which he was so distinguished.

  Plays being then performed at four o’clock, allowed ample time for the evening drive, and the midnight assignation, when the parties met by torch-light, masked, in St James’s park, and verified the title of Wycherly’s play, ‘Love in a Wood.’ The boxes, as Stanton looked round him, were filled with females, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well testified in the paintings of Lely, and the pages of Grammont, might save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit for persons of ‘honour and reputation’ to appear at; but in spite of this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the still cherished love-lock, which Prynne himself had not been able to write down.

  The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the ‘men of wit and pleasure about town,’ distinguished by their Flanders lace cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a royal mistress, (n’importe whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell Gwynne;) their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee and Otway, and quoted Sedley and Rochester; – the other class were the lovers, the gentle ‘squires of dames,’ equally conspicuous for their white fringed gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of* ‘Oh Jesu!’, or the softer, but equally unmeaning one of ‘I beseech you, Madam,’ or, ‘Madam, I burn†.’ One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in language borrowed from Orondates worshipping Cassandra, in the next accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of Covent Garden.*

  The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed cap-a-pee from Aristode and Bossu; these men dined at twelve, dictated at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the templars, spruce, pert and loquacious; and here and there a sober citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into these ‘tents of Kedar.’ There were females, too, but all in vizard masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah’s in Tristram Shandy, served to conceal them from the ‘young bubbles’ they were in quest of, and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed the doors.† In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the fulfilment of Dryden’s promise in one of his prologues;‡ no matter to them whether it were the ghost of Almanor’s mother in her dripping shroud, or that of Laius, who, according to the stage directions, rises in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants behind him, – a joke that did not escape l’Abbe le Blanc,§ in his recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time called out for the ‘burning of the Pope;’ but though

  ‘Space was obedient to the boundless piece,

  Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,’

  it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement, as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain; Sir Robert Howard, Elkanah Settle, and John Dryden, all agreeing in their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays. Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked, enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly patronize, and verifying Gay’s characteristic description, though it was written many years later,

  ‘Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,

  And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.’

  Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who ‘could not be moved to smile at any thing.’ He turned to the stage, the play was Alexander, then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have compelled the audience to believe that they beheld the ‘son of Ammon.’

  There were absurdi
ties enough to offend a classical, or even a rational spectator. There were Grecian heroes with roses in their shoes, feathers in their hats, and wigs down to their waists; and Persian princesses in stiff stays and powdered hair. But the illusion of the scene was well sustained, for the heroines were rivals in real as well as theatrical life. It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the veteran Betterton,* Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil, which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell fainted, the performance was suspended, and, in the commotion which this incident caused in the house, many of the audience rose, and Stanton among them. It was at this moment that, in a seat opposite to him, he discovered the object of his search for four years, – the Englishman whom he had met in the plains of Valentia, and whom he believed the same with the subject of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there.

  He was standing up. There was nothing particular or remarkable in his appearance, but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence, – a mist overspread his eyes, – a nameless and deadly sickness, accompanied with a creeping sensation in every pore, from which cold drops were gushing, announced the

  *

  Before he had well recovered, a strain of music, soft, solemn and delicious, breathed round him, audibly ascending from the ground, and increasing in sweetness and power till it seemed to fill the whole building. Under the sudden impulse of amazement and pleasure, he inquired of some around him from whence those exquisite sounds arose. But, by the manner in which he was answered, it was plain that those he addressed considered him insane; and, indeed, the remarkable change in his expression might well justify the suspicion. He then remembered that night in Spain, when the same sweet and mysterious sounds were heard only by the young bridegroom and bride, of whom the latter perished on that very night. ‘And am I then to be the next victim?’ thought Stanton; ‘and are those celestial sounds, that seem to prepare us for heaven, only intended to announce the presence of an incarnate fiend, who mocks the devoted with “airs from heaven,” while he prepares to surround them with “blasts from hell”?’ It is very singular that at this moment, when his imagination had reached its highest pitch of elevation, – when the object he had pursued so long and fruitlessly, had in one moment become as it were tangible to the grasp both of mind and body, – when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at discovering the course of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History. The feeling which he had dwelt on so long, that he had actually converted it into a duty, was after all mere curiosity; but what passion is more insatiable, or more capable of giving a kind of romantic grandeur to all its wanderings and eccentricities? Curiosity is in one respect like love, it always compromises between the object and the feeling; and provided the latter possesses sufficient energy, no matter how contemptible the former may be. A child might have smiled at the agitation of Stanton, caused as it was by the accidental appearance of a stranger; but no man, in the full energy of his passions, was there, but must have trembled at the horrible agony of emotion with which he felt approaching, with sudden and irresistible velocity, the crisis of his destiny.

  When the play was over, he stood for some moments in the deserted streets. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he saw near him a figure, whose shadow, projected half across the street, (there were no flagged ways then, chains and posts were the only defence of the foot-passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had been so long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the imagination, that he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing them. He walked up to the object, and observing the shadow only was magnified, and the figure was the ordinary height of man, he approached it, and discovered the very object of his search, – the man whom he had seen for a moment in Valentia, and, after a search of four years, recognized at the theatre.

  *

  ‘You were in quest of me?’ – ‘I was.’ ‘Have you any thing to inquire of me?’ – ‘Much.’ ‘Speak, then.’ – ‘This is no place.’ ‘No place! poor wretch, I am independent of time and place. Speak, if you have any thing to ask or to learn?’ – ‘I have many things to ask, but nothing to learn, I hope, from you.’ ‘You deceive yourself, but you will be undeceived when next we meet.’ – ‘And when shall that be?’ said Stanton, grasping his arm; ‘name your hour and your place.’ ‘The hour shall be mid-day,’ answered the stranger, with a horrid and unintelligible smile; ‘and the place shall be the bare walls of a mad-house, where you shall rise rattling in your chains, and rustling from your straw, to greet me, – yet still you shall have the curse of sanity, and of memory. My voice shall ring in your ears till then, and the glance of these eyes shall be reflected from every object, animate or inanimate, till you behold them again.’ – ‘Is it under circumstances so horrible we are to meet again?’ said Stanton, shrinking under the full-lighted blaze of those demon eyes. I never,’ said the stranger, in an emphatic tone, – ‘I never desert my friends in misfortune. When they are plunged in the lowest abyss of human calamity, they are sure to be visited by me.’

  *

  The narrative, when Melmoth was again able to trace its continuation, described Stanton, some years after, plunged in a state the most deplorable.

  He had been always reckoned of a singular turn of mind, and the belief of this, aggravated by his constant talk of Melmoth, his wild pursuit of him, his strange behaviour at the theatre, and his dwelling on the various particulars of their extraordinary meetings, with all the intensity of the deepest conviction, (while he never could impress them on any one’s conviction but his own), suggested to some prudent people the idea that he was deranged. Their malignity probably took part with their prudence. The selfish Frenchman* says, we feel a pleasure even in the misfortunes of our friends, – à plus forte in those of our enemies; and as every one is an enemy to a man of genius of course, the report of Stanton’s malady was propagated with infernal and successful industry. Stanton’s next relative, a needy unprincipled man, watched the report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim. He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and restless, and, after a few moments’ conversation, he proposed a drive a few miles out of London, which he said would revive and refresh him. Stanton objected, on account of the difficulty of getting a hackney coach, (for it is singular that at this period the number of private equipages, though infinitely fewer than they are now, exceeded the number of hired ones), and proposed going by water. This, however, did not suit the kinsman’s views; and, after pretending to send for a carriage, (which was in waiting at the end of the street), Stanton and his companions entered it, and drove about two miles out of London.

  The carriage then stopped. ‘Come, Cousin,’ said the younger Stanton, – ‘come and view a purchase I have made.’ Stanton absently alighted, and followed him across a small paved court; the other person followed. ‘In troth, Cousin,’ said Stanton, ‘your choice appears not to have been discreetly made; your house has something of a gloomy aspect.’ – ‘Hold you content, Cousin,’ replied the other; ‘I shall take order that you like it better, when you have been some time a dweller therein.’ Some attendants of a mean appearance, and with most suspicious visages, awaited them on their entrance, and they ascended a narrow staircase, which led to a room meanly furnished. ‘Wait here,’ said the kinsman, to the man who accompanied them, ‘till I go for company to divertise my cousin in his loneliness.’ They were left alone. Stanton took no notice of his companion, but as usual seized the first book near
him, and began to read. It was a volume in manuscript, – they were then much more common than now.

  The first lines struck him as indicating insanity in the writer. It was a wild proposal (written apparently after the great fire of London) to rebuild it with stone, and attempting to prove, on a calculation wildly false and yet sometimes plausible, that this could be done out of the colossal fragments of Stonehenge, which the writer proposed to remove for that purpose. Subjoined were several grotesque drawings of engines designed to remove those massive blocks, and in a corner of the page was a note, – ‘I would have drawn these more accurately, but was not allowed a knife to mend my pen.’

  The next was entitled, ‘A modest proposal for the spreading of Christianity in foreign parts, whereby it is hoped its entertainments will become general all over the world.’ – This modest proposal was, to convert the Turkish ambassadors, (who had been in London a few years before), by offering them their choice of being strangled on the spot, or becoming Christians. Of course the writer reckoned on their embracing the easier alternative, but even this was to be clogged with a heavy condition, – namely, that they must be bound before a magistrate to convert twenty mussulmans a day, on their return to Turkey. The rest of the pamphlet was reasoned very much in the conclusive style of Captain Bobadil – these twenty will convert twenty more a piece, and these two hundred converts, converting their due number in the same time, all Turkey would be converted before the Grand Signior knew where he was. Then comes the coup declat, – one fine morning, every minaret in Constantinople was to ring out with bells, instead of the cry of the Muezzins; and the Imaum, coming out to see what was the matter, was to be encountered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in pontificalibus, performing Cathedral service in the church of St Sophia, which was to finish the business. Here an objection appeared to arise, which the ingenuity of the writer had anticipated. – ‘It may be redargued,’ saith he, ‘by those who have more spleen than brain, that forasmuch as the Archbishop preacheth in English, he will not thereby much edify the Turkish folk, who do altogether hold in a vain gabble of their own.’ But this (to use his own language) he ‘evites,’ by judiciously observing, that where service was performed in an unknown tongue, the devotion of the people was always observed to be much increased thereby; as, for instance, in the church of Rome, – that St Augustine, with his monks, advanced to meet King Ethelbert singing litanies, (in a language his majesty could not possibly have understood), and converted him and his whole court on the spot; – that the sybilline books