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CHARLES MATURIN

Melmoth the Wanderer

The romances of Charles Robert Maturin mark the transition stage between the old crude “Gothic” tales of terror and the subtler and weirder treatment of the supernatural that had its greatest master in Edgar Allan Poe.  Maturin was born at Dublin in 1782, and died there on October 30, 1824.  He became a clergyman of the Church of Ireland; but his leanings were literary rather than clerical, and his first story, “Montorio” (1807), was followed by others that brought him increasing popularity.  Over-zealousness on a friend’s behalf caused him heavy financial losses, for which he strove to atone by an effort to write for the stage.  Thanks to the good offices of Scott and Byron, his tragedy, “Bertram,” was acted at Drury Lane in 1816, and proved successful.  But his other dramatic essays were failures, and he returned to romance.  In 1820 was published his masterpiece, “Melmoth the Wanderer,” the central figure of which is acknowledged to be one of the great Satanic creations of literature.  The book has been more appreciated in France than in England; one of its most enthusiastic admirers was Balzac, who paid it the compliment of writing a kind of sequel to it.

I.—­The Portrait

“I want a glass of wine,” groaned the old man; “it would keep me alive a little longer.”

John Melmoth offered to get some for him.  The dying man clutched the blankets around him, and looked strangely at his nephew.

“Take this key,” he said.  “There is wine in that closet.”

John knew that no one but his uncle had entered the closet for sixty years—­his uncle who had spent his life in greedily heaping treasure upon treasure, and who, now, on his miserable death-bed, grudged the clergyman’s fee for the last sacrament.

When John stepped into the closet, his eyes were instantly riveted by a portrait that hung on the wall.  There was nothing remarkable about costume or countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels they wish they had never seen.  In the words of Southey, “they gleamed with demon light.”  John held the candle to the portrait, and could distinguish the words on the border:  “Jno.  Melmoth, anno 1646.”  He gazed in stupid horror until recalled by his uncle’s cough.

“You have seen the portrait?” whispered old Melmoth.

“Yes.”

“Well, you will see him again—­he is still alive.”

Later in the night, when the miser was at the point of death, John saw a figure enter the room, deliberately look round, and retire.  The face of the figure was the face of the portrait!  After a moment of terror, John sprang up to pursue, but the shrieks of his uncle recalled him.  The agony was nearly ended; in a few minutes old Melmoth was dead.

In the will, which made John a wealthy man, there was an instruction to him to destroy the portrait in the closet, and also to destroy a manuscript that he would find in the mahogany chest under the portrait; he was to read the manuscript if he pleased.