The son is the original of Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey," and in General Tilney does Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis of Mazzini. But the Marquis's wife, to be sure, is NOT dead; like the first Mrs. Rochester she is concealed about the back premises, and, as in "Jane Eyre," it is her movements, and those of her gaolers, that produce mystery, and make the reader suppose that "the place is haunted." It is, of course, only the mystery and the "machinery" of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronte adapted. These passages in "Jane Eyre" have been censured, but it is not easy to see how the novel could do without them. Mrs. Radcliffe's tale entirely depends on its machinery. Her wicked Marquis, having secretly immured Number One, has now a new and beautiful Number Two, whose character does not bear inspection. This domestic position, as Number Two, we know, was declined by the austere virtue of Jane Eyre.
"Phenomena" begin in the first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance,"mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and are vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis.
This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia.
Jealousy and revenge are clearly indicated. But, in chasing mysterious lights and figures through mouldering towers, Ferdinand gets into the very undesirable position of David Balfour, when he climbs, in the dark, the broken turret stair in his uncle's house of Shaws (in "Kidnapped"). Here is a FOURTH author indebted to Mrs. Radcliffe: her disciples are Miss Austen, Byron, Miss Bronte, and Mr. Louis Stevenson! Ferdinand "began the ascent. He had not proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had just quitted gave way, and, dragging with them those adjoining, formed a chasm in the staircase that terrified even Ferdinand, who was left tottering on the suspended half of the steps, in momentary expectation of falling to the bottom with the stone on which he rested. In the terror which this occasioned, he attempted to save himself by catching at a kind of beam which suspended over the stairs, when the lamp dropped from his hand, and he was left in total darkness."Can anything be more "amazing horrid," above all as there are mysterious figures in and about the tower? Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps always fall, or are blown out, in the nick of time, an expedient already used by Clara Reeve in that very mild but once popular ghost story, "The Old English Baron" (1777). All authors have such favourite devices, and I wonder how many fights Mr. Stanley Weyman's heroes have fought, from the cellar to their favourite tilting ground, the roof of a strange house!
Ferdinand hung on to the beam for an hour, when the ladies came with a light, and he scrambled back to solid earth. In his next nocturnal research, "a sullen groan arose from beneath where he stood," and when he tried to force a door (there are scores of such weird doors in Mrs. Radcliffe) "a groan was repeated, more hollow and dreadful than the first. His courage forsook him"--and no wonder! Of course he could not know that the author of the groans was, in fact, his long-lost mother, immured by his father, the wicked Marquis. We need not follow the narrative through the darkling crimes and crumbling galleries of this terrible castle on the north coast of Sicily. Everybody is always "gazing in silent terror," and all the locks are rusty. "A savage and dexterous banditti" play a prominent part, and the imprisoned Ferdinand "did not hesitate to believe that the moans he heard came from the restless spirit of the murdered della Campo." No working hypothesis could seem more plausible, but it was erroneous. Mrs.
Radcliffe does not deal in a single avowed ghost. She finally explains away, by normal causes, everything that she does not forget to explain. At the most, she indulges herself in a premonitory dream. On this point she is true to common sense, without quite adopting the philosophy of David Hume. "I do not say that spirits have appeared," she remarks, "but if several discreet unprejudiced persons were to assure me that they had seen one--Ishould not be bold or proud enough to reply, it is impossible!"But Hume WAS bold and proud enough: he went further than Mrs.
Radcliffe.
Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffe's employment of explanations. He is in favour of "boldly avowing the use of supernatural machinery," or of leaving the matter in the vague, as in the appearance of the wraith of the dying Alice to Ravenswood. But, in Mrs. Radcliffe's day, common sense was so tyrannical, that the poor lady's romances would have been excluded from families, if she had not provided normal explanations of her groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures. The ghost-hunt in the castle finally brings Julia to a door, whose bolts, "strengthened by desperation, she forced back." There was a middle-aged lady in the room, who, after steadily gazing on Julia, "suddenly exclaimed, 'My daughter!' and fainted away." Julia being about seventeen, and Madame Mazzini, her mamma, having been immured for fifteen years, we observe, in this recognition, the force of the maternal instinct.
The wicked Marquis was poisoned by the partner of his iniquities, who anon stabbed herself with a poniard. The virtuous Julia marries the chaste Hippolytus, and, says the author, "in reviewing this story, we perceive a singular and striking instance of moral retribution."We also remark the futility of locking up an inconvenient wife, fabled to be defunct, in one's own country house. Had Mr.
Rochester, in "Jane Eyre," studied the "Sicilian Romance," he would have shunned an obsolete system, inconvenient at best, and apt, in the long run, to be disastrous.