The Mysteries of Udolpho (123 page)

4.
But a terror of this nature… the object, from which we appear to shrink
: Radcliffe frequently makes the reader aware of the aesthetic basis of her art. Utilizing the theories of Edmund Burke and Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld, she uses mysteriousness and obscurity creatively to raise suspense and link it to sublime terror. See Edmund Burke,
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757): ‘To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary' (facsimile edn New York: Garland Publishing, 1971, p. 99). Also Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld, ‘On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror' in
Miscellaneous Pieces
(1773): ‘A strange and unexpected event awakens the mind, and keeps it on the stretch' (3rd edn, London: J. Johnson, 1792, p. 125).

5.
Horror occupied her mind
: In ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry', published posthumously in
New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal
(No. 16 (1826), pp. 145–52), Radcliffe contrasted terror and horror as follows:

Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreader evil?

Unlike Matthew Lewis, author of the sensational gothic novel
The
Mon
k
(1796), which
he wrote in response to
Udolpho
, Radcliffe generally avoids explicit, graphic descriptions of horror.

6.
Condottieri
: Mercenary troops, or captains of such; Montoni is a
condottiere
. Because of their commercial and cultural interests, urban Italians at this time were reluctant to engage in military pursuits and employed mercenary troops to do their fighting. These troops either were composed of brigand-like adventurers or were the subjects of the smaller states with their prince, who let himself out on hire with his army, at times to the highest bidder. The
condottieri
seem to have prolonged wars while involving themselves in as little real action and danger as possible. See H. M. Vernon (K. Dorothea Ewart),
Italy from 1494 to 1790
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), p. 15. Radcliffe comments on the origins of ‘
condottieri
' (from ‘
condotta
', Italian for ‘contract') in Vol. III, Ch. III.

7.
ideal terrors
: ‘Terrors confined to thought or imagination; imaginary, opposite to real or actual. Hence sometimes not real or actual; based on idea or fancy. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall
(1776) I.x.272: “They despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition”' (
OED
).

8.
with a repulsive gesture
: Tending to repel or push away by physical gesture or coldness of manner, as in Vol. III, Ch. VII, of Samuel Richardson's
Clarissa
: ‘she… repulsively quitting my assisting hand'.

9.
to regulate her conduct by the nicest laws
: To follow only those codes which are refined or cultured; see also ‘so nice a subject' in Ch. VII.

1.
Milton [Comus]
: ll. 208–9; ‘And aery tongues' in the original; ‘Of ' picked up from the previous line.

2.
sequin
: An Italian gold coin (originally Venetian) worth about nine shillings (
OED
).

1.
Shakespeare [Antony and Cleopatra]
: III.xiii.20–21; ‘upon him' in the original.

2.
petits soupers
: Intimate or informal suppers.

3.
herself a scientific performer
: The Countess Lacleur plays an instrument or sings with methodical skill.

4.
had often deep play at her house
: Allowed ruinous gambling. The term ‘deep play' is repeated in Vol. III, Ch. XIII. Gambling was an integral part of eighteenth-century life and of great importance in France. There gambling occurred ‘in respectable houses on the footing of an assembly, where the banker paid the lady of the house for the privilege of fleecing her guests'. See Jeremy Black,
The British and The Grand Tour
(London, Sydney, Dover, New Hampshire: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 117; also pp. 116, 118–19.

1.
[Shakespeare] King John
: IV.ii.71–3.

2.
‘steal the lark's wing, and mount the swiftest gale'
: James Cawthorn, ‘Eloisa to Abelard', l.60. His
Poems
, first published in 1771, are virtually unknown today. Rictor Norton (
Mistress of Udolpho
, p. 197), in discussing Radcliffe's conscious use of scenery corresponding to psychological mood, alludes to her use of one of Cawthorn's poems in her
The Romance of the Forest
.

1.
Sayers [Moina: A Tragedy]
: II, ll. 224–7; ‘Shall no tear wet the grave / where Moina lies?' in the original. A practising physician, Frank Sayers (1763–1817) was a member of a Norwich literary circle. Perhaps under the influence of Ossian (see note 3 to Vol. III, Ch. V), he was attracted to unrimed verse.
Moina: A Tragedy
is in unrimed Pindaric stanzas.

2.
reigning Doge
: ‘Doge' was the title of rulers of Venice from 697 to 1797.

3.
that sort of Venice glass… poisoned liquor
: An allusion to the reputation of Venetian drinking glasses of the Middle Ages, taken up by Byron in
The Two Foscari
(1821) when he has the Doge say, ‘ 'Tis said that our Venetian crystal has / Such pure antipathy to poison, as / To burst, if aught of venom touches it' (V.i).

1.
Sayers [Moina: A Tragedy]
: II, l. 140.

1.
Shakespeare [Measure for Measure]
: V.i.115–18.

1.
[Shakespeare] Macbeth
: III. i.128–30.

2.
she fell senseless at the foot of the couch
: The second occasion when Emily has been overcome by horror in contrast to terror (see note 5 to Vol. II, Ch. VI). The striking similarity of this explicit description to the former teasing one of Emily's unveiling of the portrait which ‘was no picture' is a deliberate device to fuel readers' speculation that what Emily had previously seen was a skeleton, perhaps of the missing Lady
Laurentini. In Jane Austen's partly parodic
Northanger Abbey
(Vol. I, Ch. VI), this is what Catherine Morland believes Emily has seen.

3.
‘For since my father died… forsakes me'
: Emily, in her distracted state, echoes Ophelia, whose madness is ‘the poison of deep grief ' at the loss of both father and lover in
Hamlet
, IV.v.

1.
[Milton] Il Penseroso
: ll. 89–2.

1.
Milton [Comus]
: ll. 470–72.

2.
She perceived the figure move… the action
: Radcliffe here draws on the opening scenes of
Hamlet
, in which a ghost appears to the guards on the castle platform and later beckons Hamlet to follow it.

1.
[Shakespeare] Julius Cæsar
: II.ii.14–16.

1.
Mason [‘Elegy on the Death of a Lady']
: ll. 1–4.

2.
Domenichino
: The abbreviated name of Domenico Zampieri (1581–1641), who was a major Italian baroque painter of church ceiling frescos and altar tableaux. His landscape paintings were admired by the French painters Claude Gelée (Lorrain) and Nicolas Poussin (see note 6 to Vol. I, Ch. III). Radcliffe is fond of simulating tableaux effects in her prose.

3.
Ossian [Fingal: An Ancient Poem]
: Final sentence of Book V. The epic prose poems
Fingal
(1762) and
Temora
(1763), purporting to be translations from the Gaelic of a legendary third-century warrior and poet called Ossian, were actually the work of James Macpherson (1736–96), who perpetrated an elaborate hoax not uncovered until after his death. ‘Ossian' was fêted throughout Europe and became an icon of Romanticism.

1.
Milton [Comus]
: ll. 343–9; ‘bowes' (l. 349) in the original.

2.
‘her place of dearest residence'
: Mason,
Elfrida; Written on the Model of the Ancient Greek Tragedy
(1752), l. 8.

3.
‘With many a foul, and midnight murder stain'd'
: Gray,
The Bard
,(1757), II.iii.87; ‘With many a foul and midnight murther fed' in the original.

4.
See the Abbe Berthelon on Electricity
: Correct spelling ‘Bertholon' – a French scientist and cleric who wrote
De l'eélectriciteé du corps humain dans l'eétat de santeé et de maladie
(1780),
De l'eélectriciteé des veégeétaux
(1783), and
De l'eélectriciteé des meéteéores
(1787).

5.
‘darkness visible'
: Milton,
Paradise Lost
, I.63.

1.
kest
: a dialectical variation of ‘cast', especially in the sense of ‘cast aside'; also used to mean ‘outdid' and ‘kissed'.

2.
Thomson [The Castle of Indolence]
: I.iii; ‘beds of pleasant green' (l. 4) in the original.

3.
This poem… periodical publication
: The publication has not been traced.

4.
sticcado
: A kind of xylophone.

5.
vermeil
: suffused with vermilion or bright red.

6.
Hesper
: The evening star. Cf. Beattie's
Pastoral
(1761), x.124: ‘Lo beamy Hesper gilds the western sky.'

1.
[Shakespeare] Richard II
: II.ii.197–9.

2.
Denunzie secrete, or lions' mouths
:
Denunzie segrete
(Italian), secret or anonymous denunciations. The carved lion's mouth (
bocca de leone
), in which political information could be deposited, was outside the Sala della Bussola in the Doge's palace. The Doge and his Council of Ten would give attention to such anonymous information to administer justice and maintain rule in the realm. While, in its assurance of anonymity, this system was in some respects like modern-day police-administered ‘crime-stoppers' arrangements, it was also subject to abuse and was feared by innocent and guilty citizens alike. The ‘secret prisons' of the Doge were located underneath his palace.

3.
‘loud lament'
: Milton,
Paradise Lost
, VIII.244; also ‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity', l. 83.

1.
Lapponian's
: Laplander's.

2.
‘When Sol from Cancer'
: ‘Sol' is the sun personified; ‘Cancer' is the zodiacal constellation of the crab.

3.
Beattie [The Minstrel]
: I.lix; ‘the season bland / and in their northern caves the storms are bound' (ll. 525–6) in the original.

4.
‘As when… stream'
: Thomson,
The Castle of Indolence
, I.xx; ‘portal' in the original.

5.
Arcadia
: A mountainous region in the Peloponnese, taken as an ideal region of rural contentment.

6.
‘under the opening eye-lids of the morn'
: Unidentified.

7.
without a hat… necessary article of dress
: In eighteenth-century England, respectability required ladies to wear a hat in public. This passage is contradicted later by one in which Emily unlocks a little box containing ‘some letters of Valancourt with some drawings she had sketched during her stay in Tuscany' (Ch. XIII): Emily must have done more than ‘throw on her veil' as she left Udolpho. In accord with the didactic purpose required of novels in her day, Radcliffe goes to what now seem ridiculous lengths to guard the perfect propriety and morality of her heroine. Eaton Stannard Barrett was to parody Emily's purchase of ‘a little straw hat' in his thoroughgoing burlesque
The Heroine, or Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader
(1813). See
The Heroine
, with an Introduction by Michael Sadleir (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1928), p. 67.

8.
Leghorn
: Modern Livorno in Tuscany. England imported plaiting for straw hats from Leghorn.

9.
lucciola… cicala
: Lucciola, a firefly, an insect which has the property of emitting phosphorescent light; cicala, a cicada, a large insect noted for the shrill chirping or clicking sound produced by the vibrating membranes on the underside of the abdomen in the male.

10.
Collins [‘Ode to Evening']
: ll. 11–14.

11.
gulf of Lyons
: Gulf of Lion (
Golfe du Lion
).

1.
[More] Sacred Dramas
:
David and Goliath
, ii.74–8, from
Sacred Dramas; Chiefly Intended for Young Persons
(1782) (London: T. Cadell Jun and W. Davies, 1799). An eminent member of the Blue Stocking Circle, Hannah More (1745–1833) wrote a number of plays, beginning with
The Search for Happiness, a Pastoral Play for Schools
(1773). Author of the proto-feminist poem
Bas Bleu
, she acted as patron to ‘plebeian' poet Ann Yearsley, whose ‘primitive genius' she discovered and championed in her circle. In later years she wrote tracts directed to reform of the poor and of female education.