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Fantasy Fan, v. 1, issue 12, August 1934

Page 186

186     THE FANTASY FAN, August, 1934

sodes of Vathek," intended for insertion in the tale as narratives of Vathek's fellow-victims in Eblis' infernal halls, which remained unpublished throughout the author's lifetime and were discovered as recently as 1909 by the scholar Lewis Melville whilst collecting material for his "L[[upside down "i"]]fe and Letters of William Beckford." Beckford, however, lacks the essential mysticism which marks the acutest form of the weird; so that his tales have a certain knowing Latin hardness and clearness preclusive of sheer panic fright.
But Beckford remained alone ln his devotion to the Orient. Other writers, closer to the Gothic tradition and to European life in general, were content to follow more faithfully in the lead of Walpole. Among the countless producers of terror-literature in these times may be mentioned the Utopian economic theorist WilliamGodwin, who followed his famous but non-supernatural "Caleb Williams" (1794) with the intendediy weird "St. Leon" (1799) in which the theme of the elixir of life, as developed hy the imaginary secret order of "Roticrucians," is handled with ingeniousness if not with atmospheric convincingness. This element of Rosicrucianism, fostered by a wave of popular magical interest exemplified in the vogue of the charlatan Cagliostro and the publication of Francis Barrett's "TheMagus" (1801), a curious and compendius treatise on occult principles and ceremonies, of which a reprint was made as lately as 1896, figures in Bulwer-Lytton and in many late Gothic novels, especially that remote and enfeebled posterity which straggled far down into the nineteenth century and was represented by George W.M. Reynolds' "Faust and the Demon" and "Wagner and the Wehr-Wolf." "Caleb Williams," though non-supernatural, has many authentic touches of terror. It is the tale of a servant persecuted by a master whom he has found guilty of a murder, and displays an invention and skill which have kept it alive in a fashion of this day. It was dramatised as "The Iron Chest," and in that form was almost equally celebrated. Godwin, however, was too much the conscious teacher and prosaic man of thought to create a genuine weird masterpiece.
His daughter, the wife of Shelley, was much more successful; and her inimitable "Frankenstein; or The Modern Promethus" (1817) is one of the horror-classics of all time. Composed in competition with her husband, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori in an effort to prove supremacy in horror-making, Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" was the only one of the rival narratives to be brought to an elaborate completion; and criticism has failed to prove that the best parts are due to Shelley rather than to her. The novel, somewhat tinged but scarcely marred by moral didacticism, tells of the artificial human being moulded from charnel fragments by Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student. Created by its designer "in the mad pride of intellectuality," the monster possesses full intelligence bu owns a hideously loathsome form. It is rejected by mankind, becomes embittered, and at length begins the successive murder of all whom young

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186 THE FANTASY FAN, August, 1934 sodes of Vathek," intended for insertion in the tale as narratives of Vathek's fellow-victims in Eblis' infernal halls, which remained unpublished throughout the author's lifetime and were discovered as recently as 1909 by the scholar Lewis Melville whilst collecting material for his "L[[upside down "i"]]fe and Letters of William Beckford." Beckford, however, lacks the essential mysticism which marks the acutest form of the weird; so that his tales have a certain knowing Latin hardness and clearness preclusive of sheer panic fright. But Beckford remained alone ln his devotion to the Orient. Other writers, closer to the Gothic tradition and to European life in general, were content to follow more faithfully in the lead of Walpole. Among the countless producers of terror-literature in these times may be mentioned the Utopian economic theorist WilliamGodwin, who followed his famous but non-supernatural "Caleb Williams" (1794) with the intendediy weird "St. Leon" (1799) in which the theme of the elixir of life, as developed hy the imaginary secret order of "Roticrucians," is handled with ingeniousness if not with atmospheric convincingness. This element of Rosicrucianism, fostered by a wave of popular magical interest exemplified in the vogue of the charlatan Cagliostro and the publication of Francis Barrett's "TheMagus" (1801), a curious and compendius treatise on occult principles and ceremonies, of which a reprint was made as lately as 1896, figures in Bulwer-Lytton and in many late Gothic novels, especially that remote and enfeebled posterity which straggled far down into the nineteenth century and was represented by George W.M. Reynolds' "Faust and the Demon" and "Wagner and the Wehr-Wolf." "Caleb Williams," though non-supernatural, has many authentic touches of terror. It is the tale of a servant persecuted by a master whom he has found guilty of a murder, and displays an invention and skill which have kept it alive in a fashion of this day. It was dramatised as "The Iron Chest," and in that form was almost equally celebrated. Godwin, however, was too much the conscious teacher and prosaic man of thought to create a genuine weird masterpiece. His daughter, the wife of Shelley, was much more successful; and her inimitable "Frankenstein; or The Modern Promethus" (1817) is one of the horror-classics of all time. Composed in competition with her husband, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori in an effort to prove supremacy in horror-making, Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" was the only one of the rival narratives to be brought to an elaborate completion; and criticism has failed to prove that the best parts are due to Shelley rather than to her. The novel, somewhat tinged but scarcely marred by moral didacticism, tells of the artificial human being moulded from charnel fragments by Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student. Created by its designer "in the mad pride of intellectuality," the monster possesses full intelligence bu owns a hideously loathsome form. It is rejected by mankind, becomes embittered, and at length begins the successive murder of all whom young