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Part II: Burlesques in the Magazines of the Time
A favorite method of satire among the British magazinists appears to have been the ridiculing of some literary lion of the hour. The great popularity in 1830 of Edward Bulwer as a novelist and magazinist has already been mentioned.(13) He was not only the subject of “puffing” in the magazines of the period, but equally the butt of burlesques and quizzes, and indulged himself in the warfare of burlesque. Poe followed. Bulwer's career with interest, referred to him at an early date as an example of a successful fictionist,(14) and continued, throughout his life, to familiarity with, and admiration for, the British writer. British magazinists made fun of Bulwer [page 258:] and his popularity in very much the fashion that Poe is said to have ridiculed Willis's pretensions to “lionship.” Almost immediately upon the first appearance of “Monos and Daimonos,”(15) it was the inspiration for satire. A burlesque sketch of it in Fraser's,(16) also entitled “Monos and Daimonos,” imitated its style and made it ridiculous by detailing a similar autabiographical account of a bear. It was introduced with the following note:
Before, however, we present the reader with this very interesting document, we must protest against the absolute piracy which has been committed against our friend. We appeal to those very respectable publishers, Messrs. Colburn and Bentley, whether it was liberal — whether it was right or Christian-like in their correspondent (the writer, whoever he may be, of “Monos and Diamonos,” — to follow so closely the footsteps of our contributor. The following little narrative, it is true, remained in the original Buffalese tongue till very lately: but it is pretty well known that there are two or three in travellers fully capable of transferring all its native beauties into the English language. We trust that we need say no more, to prevent a repetition of so unprecedented an act.
We make no apology for introducing our readers to a story that is, perhaps, unique in literature. [page 259:]
The story is related as ‘The Memoir of Monos the Ursine,” a bear whose mother died “a victim to the fur trade,” and chose father perished of a “surfeit of trout.”
When my father died (of excess of trout), I set off and penetrated the woods and desarts alone. I dwelt in perpetual solitude. I hated my mind. No one loved me; no one fed me, helped me, defended me. I was obliged to do all things for myself; and I become a bear hater. To me the delights of female society have ever been denied. I was fated to be alone — MONOS! Yet I strove to overcome my destiny. Once — accursed day! — I yielded to my passions. My heart yearned towards a pretty brunette, who, with her parents, had travelled to our country from Red Cedar Lake. But what as my requital? — She bit my ear through, in answer to my admiration; and I renounced the sex forever I said to myself — ‘I will travel: I will seek the savages in towns and cities: I wished to give up all for her: but she — she has doomed me to eternal woe.’
Thus the Ursine began his extensive travels and arrived at length in London to be shewn.
Now the vast misfortune of my life began. Let me speak of it calmly, — if possible, philosophically. I respect the sincerity of the soul. I will not swerve the breadth of a hair from the strictest truth. I became — a lion. I was transferred from house to house; allured by insidious invitations; but in reality viewed in the same light with the subaltern Paap, or the unfortunate Crochemi. I dined with Bulwer and Rogers, I took tiffin with Buckingham and Sir James — I sat ‘below the salt’ at Holland House — I took tea with Thellwall and Robert Montgomery — I saw all that was great and noble. I was viewed with awe; I was avoided by all — except one. But he — ! That one! But I will be collected. [page 260:]
The one who was always present and sought him ever, took siestas on his window-ledge and ate on the tiles of an outhouse that ran shelving beneath his chamber was Pongo, a monkey, or ape, introduced into English society by a lovely English woman. The Ursine attempted to rid himself of his tormentor by dropping a dumb-bell out of the window upon him, but the wily Pongo avoided it by ducking. At length the persecuted one hugged Pongo to death. “But he never quitted me.” Finally the Ursine started back to America and was found dead in a Liverpool inn with the New Monthly magazine (for May) open at the first article, ‘Monos and Daimonos.”
Nothing could be more open than the satire of this sketch; it must have appeared to Poe, if he read it, as sinning on the side of blatancy in its ridicule. It may be, therefore, that he designed a burlesque of the same tale which should be done with finesse. Professor Wilson believes that Poe's “Silence” was designed as a mockery of Transcendental mysticism done in the manner of Bulwer.(17) It is possible that Poe so intended it, though 1 find it difficult to believe that this beautiful sketch owed its origin to any such purpose. [page 261:] Certainly, however, it bears resemblance to “Monos and Daimonos,” Bulwer's tale had borne the sub-title, “A Legend.” Poe's carried the tag, “A Fable. In the manner of the Psychological Autobiographists.” Bulwer's language is poetic and his theme strange and mystical. Poe's “Siope,” or “Silence,” as he called it afterwards, in even more mystical than Bulwer's “Monos and Daimonos,” his setting dramatically concentrated, and his language effects heightened sometimes to the point of absurdity, if one insists upon logic in what seems to me obviously poetry.
A similar attempt to ridicule the successful author appeared in Fraser's for August, 1832.(18) The author of “Elizabeth Brownrigge. A Tale” dedicated his production to the “Author of Eugene Aram. A Novel.” He declared that he had, without success, tried everything to get emoluments from his literary exertions. In despair he assembled his rejection letters and found that the “very identical phrase” occurred in all of them — his productions were not of a “popular description,” though they possessed every merit except that “of suiting the reigning taste of the public.” [page 262:] Resolving then to apply himself, on the instant, to the reformation of his mode of composition, he procured from a circulating library the last most popular novel in order “to study its style and manner, to investigate the principles on which was written, to imbibe its spirit, and to compose my next new work as nearly as possible upon its model.” when he explained the latest novel, Eugene Aram, he discovered his previous errors. He had mistakenly thought it necessary to interest his readers in virtue, to give an agreeable view of life, to draw characters in correspondence with the general principles of nature. He had written “Elizabeth Brownrigge,” therefore, in opposition to these views, and had found it instantly acceptable for magazine publication. The tale which is presented with this elaborate introduction is an exaggerated account of the life, crimes, and trials of a schoolmistress who whipped her assistant to death.
Bulwer was also slashed unmercifully in reviews in Fraser's. His show of polish in French and Latin phrases came directly, one reviewer declared, from such books as Rockefoucault's Book of Maxims and Colton's Lacon, and his pretense of being a philosopher [page 263:] was an absurdity.(19) Bulwer was accused in burlesque of having written an effulgent eulogy of himself in the New Monthly “literary portrait” for May, 1831,(20) and he was held up to ridicule in a burlesque poem called “The Siamese Twins” as having been guilty of self-exaltation in his work by that title.(21)
Bulwer himself indulged in satire frequently through the columns of the New Monthly, though, so far as I have discovered in tracing his pieces, he chose general topics for the object of his ridicule. His “Asmodeus at Large,” which ran irregularly through the years, 1832 and 1833, is an extended philosophical satire on politics, literature, and society in general. [page 264:] “The World as It Is” ridicules human credulity and equally human distrust in a society that mixes malicious cruelty most bafflingly with kindness and generosity.(22) “Fi-ho-ti” attacks those people who use their association with celebrities to further their own purposes and advance their on reputations.(23) “Hereditary Honours” is an especially interesting burlesque upon the peerage done in the style of Bulwer's “Too Handsome for Anything” and “Lionizing.”(24) It is a brief tale elaborately arranged in nine short chapters, each section being formally entitled and supplied with a motto. The hero of the story talked so mysteriously to his sweetheart, whom he has met by accident, of hereditary honours and duties that she believed him a nobleman; and he referred so darkly to a secret in his life that her father, a lawyer, believed that he had killed his man. Circumstances later led them to suspect that he had been dead for twelve [page 265:] months and was really an animated corpse, if not a vampire. From a sense of duty father and daughter attended the hanging of their Cousin Jack. Laura spied her lover upon the platform with the condemned man. “My lover!” she exclaimed. “my eye!” replied bystander. “That's the Hereditary Hongman!” An English lord also present at the execution murmured, “What a burlesque on the Peerage!”
Lady Morgan, another, lion, or would-be lion, of 1830, was also a favorite subject of satire in the magazines. Fraser's published in 1831 a “quiz” purporting to be a review from the pen of one of Lady Morgan's ardent admirers.(25) This sketch pokes fun at Lady Morgan's lack of modesty, her personal appearance, her assumption of a “lionship” in Paris, her decision to write her book in “the Hibernian dialect of French, English, and Italian,” and her habit of mentioning only dead celebrities among her friends by, their full names, all others being designated as “Count L——” and “Prince G——.”(26) Lady Morgan was the [page 266:] butt of another quiz entitled “Remonstrance from Lady Morgan to Oliver York.”(27) This is a pretended letter from Lady Morgan attacking the author of an article, “Female Intellectuals,” which had appeared in Fraser's a short time before,(28) and remonstrating with the editor for his failure to insist that she be included among the intellectuals discussed.
Quizzes of a different sort, designed to ridicule not individuals but customs, were frequent. The Philosophy of Burking. By a Modern Pythagorean”(29) is a satire on the resurrectionists supplied bodies for dissection. According to the quiz, the resurrectionists, Hare and Burke, were so intensely interested in promoting the welfare and advancement of anatomy, surgery, and midwifery that they devised means to secure bodies more safely. Since the cemeteries sere being rigidly guarded, they feared for the decline of anatomical science unless they out their wits to work. They hit upon the scheme of “Burking” people, that is, of giving their victims a dose of laudanum and killing [page 267:] them by a secret process. In that way they kept one Doctor Knox amply supplied with bodies. Burke, who was really only Hare's assistant, grew bold and tried the process alone; he kept his “shot” too long, was detected, and the two were brought to trial. For the sake of science, Hare sacrificed his own feelings and testified against Burke in order that the more gifted of the two great beneficiaries of humanity, himself, night remain alive. Burke was of course convicted and Hare was compelled to practice his profession with extreme circumspection. A note appended by the editor of Fraser's calls this “an excellent quiz” and says that the Pythagorean seems inspired “with the same ludicrous desire to practice on the gullibility of the reader” as had Swift and De Quincey.
“The Philosophy of Sneering,”(30) also by “A Modern Pythagorean,” is a double quiz on people who sneer at everything and on those who allow themselves to be excessively irritated by such sneering. The narrator of the story, a student at the University of Göttingen had been so excessively annoyed by a fellow-student, William Smalldshodt, who sneered at everything, that he even tried to devise means of murder. [page 268:] At first he had endured Smalldshodt because he believed him a person of genius, in desperation, however, he resorted to a friend, Stein, for advice. The latter suggested that Smalldshodt and the “I” of the story journey to Venice. Stein wrote a letter of introduction for his friend to a certain reputable brigand, or bravo, of Venice, requesting that as a great favor of Stein, the bravo should kill Smalldshodt. The bravo revealed that Smalldshodt has brought to him a similar letter from another friend of the Venetian murderer, requesting that the narrator be murdered. The bravo wished to play fair and announced his intention of killing both students or of letting both off. The students naturally declined to be killed and journeyed back to Göttingen. The irritated one found himself miraculously delivered of his irritation.
Of a slightly different nature is the gruesome burlesque upon burial customs called “The Climax of Cemeteries”(31). The writer declared that he had travelled around the world, had studied every language and had learned all about burials everywhere on the face of the globe. Out of his knowledge and experience [page 269:] he had devised an up-to-date method, spectacular, humane, and financially successful; he would distill the bodies for gas lighting purposes use the by-products profitably. It is possible that this quiz was directed at the current popularity of gruesome stories.
The fashion of writing burlesques was by no means confined to the British magazines. The French journals abounded in satires and jesting sketches of every kind. Lady Morgan testified to the great fondness among the French for what they termed “mystifications.” She half suspected that she herself became the victim of one of these jests upon one occasion.(32) As one reads the French tales of the 1830's, one is inclined to wonder with Lady Morgan just how many of them are to be taken seriously or to be read as satire. A good many are manifestly, humorous. Like Washington Irving, Gérard de Nervel often gave what would have otherwise appeared as a perfectly serious story a fantastically satiric fillip by way of conclusion, but some of his tales are bold travesties. He contributed to the Gastronome such a story, a delightful burlesque [page 270:] of Hoffmann's tales of horror, which he called “Cauchemar d’un Mangeur.”(33) It is one in the manner of “Das Majorat.” One Péregourdin had been invited on a hunting party at an old chateau. Naturally timid, he had been rendered more so by the conversation at the dinner table. He tried vainly, after retiring to his apartment, to boost his courage. He was lodged in a room where an old Revolutionist had died of his wounds, and he found his imagination conceiving fearful visions. The whole atmosphere of the apartment with its faded tapestries, its portraits made sinister by the smoke, its old damask bed with high canopy, its quantity of massive pieces of furniture, was over-poweringly awesome. He rolled a large arm-chair before the fire and forced himself to think only of “digestive preoccupations.” That proved his downfall. He dozed. Suddenly his limbs froze in terror. Something hit him a terrific blow in the stomach. A long string of sausages enwrapped his limbs stranglingly, and a huge spoon, lank and fantastic, attacked his nose with the ferocious greediness of a hungry duck. The poor hunter resisted no longer; his fate seemed [page 271:] certain — he was undoubtedly going to lose his nose — that which made life one beautiful aream. He awoke with a start and seized the malevolent spoon. It was his pipe.
The sketches written by Gautier for the volume, Les Jeunes France, published by the great editor of the French Romanticists, Eugène Renduel, in 1833 an again in 1834, are of interest in pointing out analogues to Poe's early satires, particularly to his “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and “A Predicament.” Gautier was himself an enthusiastic representative of the Romantic group, but this did not prevent him from detecting its weaknesses and from writing excruciatingly funny caricatures of the Romantic excesses. “Daniel Jovard, or the Conversion of a Classicist, “(34) is an account of the transformation of a confirmed classicist into a flagrant Romanticist through the able instruction of Young Ferdinand, a representative of the new movement. Gautier opened his story with [page 272:] two alleged quotations from Jovard's writings. The first, an extract from his or “Before Conversion,” is as follows:
With divine afflatus filled, my brain reels again!
A breath runs o’re my quivering lyre;
Ye muses, Sisters Chaste, and thou, Apollo great,
Adown the sacred vale my steps now guide!
My blight upbear, my mind inspire!
For deep I mean the Pierian spring to drain,
And on its verdant bank, under the myrtles prove,
To make the echoes with my song resound.
“After Conversion” he wrote:
Hell and damnation! I feel a fierce desire
To tear with fang-like teeth her flesh, and drag,
With bloody shreds of livid, greenish skin,
Her putrid heart from out her open breast!
Gautier adopted for his narration a ludicrously matter-of-fact style.
Daniel was neither handsome nor ugly; he possessed a pair of eyes with eyebrows set over them, a nose in the middle of his face; a mouth below that, and a chin below the mouth; he had two ears, neither more nor less, and hair of an uncertain colour. It would not be telling the truth to say he did not look well. He had no look in particular; he looked like everybody else; he was a representative of the multitude, the type of the typeless, and it was the easiest thing in the world to mistake him for somebody else.
His dress was in no wise remarkable ... its only use was to prevent his going about in a state of nudity. ... He ate, drank, slept, digested, and classically performed all the functions of life. [page 273:]
The great change in his outlook on life came through a chance encounter at the theater with Young Ferdinand, who delivered an ovation on the new age and the art of writing:
The profession of author is the only one nowadays that does not call for preparation; all that is necessary is to be indifferently acquainted with French and scarcely at all with orthography. Now if you want to write a book all you have to do is to take several books, which is essentially different from the recipe in the cookery book that runs like this: ‘To make jugged hare: Take a hare! You, on the other hand, cut out a leaf here and a leaf there, you make up a preface and a preface, you adopt a pseudonym, you state that you died of a consumption or that you have blown out your brains; you dish the concern up hot, and at once you enjoy the finest success imaginable.
There is one thing you must be very particular about; epigraphs. You must have epigraphs in English, in German, in Spanish, in Arabic, and if you can manage to get hold of one in Chinese, it will prove very effective; and you will find yourself, without being a Panurge, in the enjoyment of a nice little reputation of polyglot and scholar, which you can very easily exploit.
Ferdinand told him further that books are written in three weeks, read in an hour, forgotten in fifteen minutes; the newspapers are really our go-betweens. Daniel was bewildered and troubled by this startling information. The next day he called upon his friend and noted the eccentricity and amazing nonchalance of Ferdinand's room and his appearance. His host proceeded at once with the business of converting his caller. [page 274:]
In a few words he laid bare before him all the secrets of the trade; took him behind the scenes at his very first lesson; taught him to put on a medieval look; showed him how to acquire individuality and an air of his own; revealed to him the innermost meaning of the slang of the week; explained to him that was meant by “the ropes,” “chic,” “air,” “art,” “artistic,” “artist,” simplification of “frumpish,” ‘stunning,” “busted”; opened up to him a vast repertory of formulae of admiration and of reprobation: phosphorescent, transcendental, pyramidal, astounding, blasting, annihilating, and innumerable others ... he exhibited to him the ascending and descending scale of the human mind; that at twenty a man was young France, a Coningsby at twenty-five and a Childe Harold at twenty-eight, provided he had travelled as far as Saint-Denis or Saint-Cloud; that thereafter a man did not count, and was successively known by the following appellations: back number, old fogey, zany, clod-pate, Boeitian, driveller, dotard, down to the lament depth of decrepitude, until the most degrading epithet of all was reached, — Academician and member of the institute.
David returned home, burned his classical books, bought clothes from Ferdinand”s tailor, and called again upon his teacher.
Then Ferdinand, completing what he had so admirably begun, taught him a number of recipes and dodges for the production of various styles both in prose and verse. He showed him how to do the dreamy business, the home, the artistic, the Dantesque, the under-a-curse, and all this in the course of a single morning. For the dreamy business, he needed only a skiff, a lake, a weeping willow, a harp, a consumptive lady, and a few verses from the Bible; for the home, an old shoe, a jug, a wall, a broken pane, and a burned steak or other equivalent sorrow of the soul; for the artistic, to open at haphazard the first catalogue he came upon, and to take the names of painters ending in -i or -o, and especially to take care to call Titian Tigiano, and Veronese Paolo Cagliari; for the Dantesque, to use plentifully “therefore,” “it,” “now,” “because,” ‘”that is why”: [page 275:] for the under-a-curse, to stick into every line “Ah!” “Oh!” “Anathema!” “Malediction!” “Hell” and so on, until life gave out.
He also showed him how to set about finding rich rimes; he smashed a number of lines for him. He taught him how to make one Alexandrine gaily perform the high kick in the face of the next one, after the manner of a dancer ends her pirouette with her toe against the nose of the other who is hopping up and down behind her; he exhibited to him a flamboyant palette: black, red, blue, all the colours of the rainbow, a regular peacock's-tail; he also made him commit to memory a number of anatomical terms in order to be in a position to talk of dead bodies in suitable language, and dismissed him as a past master in the gay science of Romanticism.
Daniel forthwith became the most ardent of Romanticists. He outdid even Ferdinand in. eccentricity of dress and manner, shaved off an inch or two of hair’ in order to have a “mighty brow,” and began at once to associate only with those would add to his notoriety. Gautier concluded his sketch thus:
I’ve told you how to be a great man, reader. ... It lies with you to be a great man; you now know how to set about it. It is, in sooth, riot difficult and if I myself am not a great man, it is simply because I do not care to be one. I too proud.
It would be pleasant to believe also that Poe read Gautier's “The Bowl of Punch,” a very open and very ludicrous travesty of the extravagancies of Romantic writing. It is written in a solemnly matter-of-fact style interrupted occasionally by conscious [page 276:] bursts of flowery language. It is the manner of its telling rather than the story itself that is exceedingly funny. For that reason I shall quote from the translated version or it at some length.(35) It is headed with the motto; “The dishevilled orgy,” given four times and attributed first to De Balzac, then to Jules Janin, P. L. Jacob, and Eugène Sue. Gautier introduced first a group of young men sitting boredly in a strange room, which he proceeded to describe with a catalogue of its numerous furnishings. Parenthetically he commented upon his own style flatteringly and called it simply superb; it was composed he declared, in accordance with the most recent recipes and yielded pride of place to none except Balzac, for “he only can write a longer description.” The author announced:
I am going to show that I can dress up my writing. At every paragraph I shall hereafter let off fireworks of style; there shall be golden rains of nouns, Roman candles of adverbs, and Bengal fires of personal pronouns. It shall he so gorgeous, refulgent, rutilant, phosphorescent, and scintillant, that you will have to close your eyes in order to read it. [page 277:]
The group of young men assembled in the room were bored to death. Suddenly one proclaimed an idea; they should have an orgy. It was indispensable to be up to the mark; it was perfectly up-to-date, since every new novel had one; and it was certainly necessary to a manly life and to a book published by Eugène Renduel. Thereupon the group determined upon an orgy, “a pyramidal, a phenomenal orgy a mad, wild-haired, howling orgy,” as in Balzac's “L’Peau Chagrin,” in Janin's “Barnave,” Eugène Sue's “Salamander,” and in Bibliophile Jacob's “Danse macabre.” They divided their number to “stand by” one of the four writers named, and they must act a part in accordance with their various choices. It was decided that the party should take place at Theodore's house around a horse shoe table, one side to be given over to the “fine society” group, the other to the “low-life” roisterers.
The guests arrived that evening dressed in keeping, and each new arrival was greeted with frantic hurrahs. By each plate was a copy of one of the four books so that each guest could conscientiously follow the account of an orgy and keep it up in proper style. The first course was disposed of without much happening. One of the Balzacians complained that he had [page 278:] got no farther than the description of the first course, for “Balzac is never done.” Rudolph shouted that he had ten pages to go through before reaching the right spot; he had drunk two or three bottles of wine and Frederick had done the same, but neither had yet felt the effects described in Sue's “Salamander.” Rudolph's nose had not changed color; it was still only red, though Sue said that in a characteristic orgy red turned purple and purple violet. He was told to keep it up. “We’re not drunk enough yet.”
At this point the narrative is interrupted by another auctorial comment:
Until they are dead drunk I shall, to pass the time, indulge in a very brief description that with the help of God and epithets shall not be more than five or six pages. ... You are probably tired of my uncouth style, but I haven’t forgot my promise.
It was certainly a strange sight to see all those young fellows assembled round the table; the feast had the air of being a reunion of wizards and demons.
Pshaw! that is a stinking beginning; it is the stock image of 1829. It is as idiotic as yesterday's newspaper, as stale as the morning news. If you are not hard to please, reader mine, I can tell you I am. ... And my descriptions also are according to the latest pattern. Therefore let us try again.
‘Oh! the orgy giving to the winds its heaving breasts, red with kisses; the orgy shaking out its perfumed hair upon the bare shoulders, dancing, shouting, holding one hand out to this man and the other to that one; the orgy, hot courtesan, that yields readily to every fancy, that drinks punch, and laughs, that stains the [page 279:] cloth and its gown, that dips its garland of flowers in a bath of Malmsey wine; the ribald orgy showing it foot and its leg, letting its heavy hand fall to right or left; the quarrelsome, blaspheming orgy, quick to snatch its stiletto from its garter; the quivering orgy that has only to stretch out its hand to turn an idiot into a poet and a poet into an idiot; the orgy that duplicates our being and sends fire running through our vein, set diamonds in our eyes and rubles on our lips; the orgy, the only poetry that is possible in these prosaic days; the orgy;
— —
Whew! that is terrifically long sentence. ... Let me moisten my lips and take breath. ... I could have put it differently; like this, for instance ... but this form of sentence, which flourished last week, is now quite gone out, and, besides, the other is more wild-haired and dithyrambic.
The author declared that ended the lyrical portion of his description; he would next devote himself to the technical business of describing the table and the menu. He was forced to call for a cookery book in order to find dishes anacreontic enough to fill up this bill of fare. He decided that since the party must not be sufficiently drunk to mnize their conduct interesting he would turn to them again. Theodore reluctantly poured wine inside his vest to slake his thirst, for “so it in expressly stated at page 171 of “L’Peau Chagrin.” Roderick shoved a napkin down Rudolph's throat in accordance with direction. [page 280:] Theodore flipped a borrowed coin “to see whether there's God or not,” as the Balzacian reveller had done. Rosette interrupted the party with loud protests because of Philadelphus’ proposal that he be allowed to press her bosom with his foot as his novelist had directed, but she was force to act her part. Other women were “chucked out of the window” in order to keep up the orgy in approved style. The whole group got uproariously drunk, the lighted bowl of punch was brought in, and the orgy faded away into snores. When the heroes awoke next day, they were a ghastly color of green and blue which would not come off, and they were arrested by the police for disturbing the peace of the neighborhood. “And this ought to teach young fellow how dangerous it is to try to live a modern novel,” the author solemnly concluded.
In America, too, the comic vein was being exploited by Poe's contemporary, Washington Irving. In general Irving's work displays more of the nature of grotesquerie than of burlesque; yet some of his tales, particularly the “Strange Stories By a Nervous Gentleman” included in Tales of a Traveller(36) are travesties [page 281:] upon Germanic horrors. Frequently they progress with an air of gravity to the very conclusion only to end with what F. L. Pattee has called a “Knickerbocker caper.” Until the last two pages, “The Story of My Aunt” is a perfectly good ghost tale; then the ghastly animation of a picture turns out to be a lurking vagabond, and the aunt solves her problem of loneliness in the country by marrying the roistering squire. “The Bold Dragoon” manages to arouse some legitimate thrills over the dancing furniture before it ends lamely in coarse grotesquerie. “The Story of a German Student” achieves a splendid effect of horror only to end farcically. The narrator vouches for his tale as “A fact not to be doubted” because it was told to him by an inmate of a Parisian madhouse. Poe himself commented upon “The Young Italian” as being especially good; he objected to the tales as a whole, however, as “insufficiently climacic” in their conclusions.(37)
It is evident that Poe had, in every quarter, ample precedents in his attempts to create burlesques of literary styles. We shall now examine more closely some of the results of his early experiments.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 257:]
13. See Chapter II, section II.
14. In. the letter previously cited to T. White of the Messenger, April 30, 1835, Poe referred to the “MS. Found in a Madhouse” and “Monos and Daimonos” of the London New Monthly as being similar in tone to his “Berenice” and added that they “were written by no less a man than Bulwer.” This section of the letter is quoted by F. L. Pattee, op. cit., 140.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 258:]
15. The New Monthly Magazine, XXVIII (May, 1830), 387-392.
16. II (August, 1830), 10ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 260:]
17. “The Devil was in It,” loc. cit., 215.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 261:]
18. VI (August, 1832), 67ff and (Sept., 1832), 131ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 263:]
19. “Fashionable Novels,” Fraser's Magazine, I (April, 1630), 322. It is interesting to compare with this comment of the Fraser's reviewer, Poe's allusion to Bulwer's annoying habit of using little French sentences without any excuse and to his attempt to appear profound in the philosophical discussions interspersing his fictions. Review of Night and Morning, Graham's, April, 1841. Works, X, 129-131.
20. “Autobiography of Edward L. Bulwer, Esq.” Ibid., IV (July, 1831), 407fr.
21. Ibid., III (March, 1831), 218ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 264:]
22. New Monthly Magazine, XXII (Nov., 1831), 420fr.
23. Ibid., XXXVIIII (Aug., 1833), 417ff.
24. Ibid., XXXIV (May, 1832), 433ff. I have assumed this sketch to be by Bulwer since it is signed with one of his noms de plume “Mitio.” “Too Handsome for Anything” will be discussed below in connection with Poe's tale, “Lionizing.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 265:]
25. “France in 1829-30. By Lady Morgan. Reviewed by Her Ladyship's Cortejo, Morgan Rattler.” III (Feb., 1831), 75ff.
26. A review similar in tone but more serious in general intent of Lady Morgan's France appeared in the American Quarterly Review, IX (March, 1831).
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 266:]
27. Ibid., VIII (July, 1033), 118ff.
28. VIII, (May, 1833), 118.
29. Ibid., V (Feb., 1832), 52ff. This sketch was based on an actual incident in Scotland.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 267:]
30. Ibid., VIII (July, 1833), 302ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 268:]
31. Fraser's, V (March, 1832), 144ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 269:]
32. France in 1829-1830, in two volumes, New York, Harper's, 1830, I, 77.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 270:]
33. This appeared May 22, 1831. OEuvres Complètes, Paris, 1928, II, 135ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 271:]
34. Pheophile Gautier, Works, edited and translated by F. C. Sumicrast, Boston and New York, 1903, XXII, 295ff. I have not yet read Gautier's stories in the original French. All quotations from his works cited in English will, upon publication, be given in French.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 276:]
35. Ibid., XXII, 316ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 280:]
36. Tales of a Trave1ler was first published in 1824. 1 have used the revised edition, New York, 1895.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 281:]
37. “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Godey's Lady's Book, Nov., 1847. Works, XIII, 153.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RLH35, 1935] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story (Hudson)