CHAPTER IV

The Devil and His Allies

"Ghosts are few but devils are plenty," said Cotton Mather, but his saying would need to be inverted to fit present-day English fiction. Now we have ghosts in abundance but devils are scarce. In fact, they bid fair to become extinct in our romances, at least in the form that is easily recognizable. Satan will probably soon be in solution, identified merely as a state of mind. He has been so Burbanked of late, with his dæmonic characteristics removed and humanities added that, save for sporadic reversion to type, the old familiar demon is almost a vanished form. The modern mind seems to cling with a new fondness to the ghost but has turned the cold shoulder to the devil, perhaps because many modernists believe more in the human and less in the supernatural--and after all, ghosts are human and devils are not. The demon has disported himself in various forms in literature, from the scarlet fiend of monkish legend, the nimble imp and titanic nature-devil of folk-lore to Milton's epic, majestic Satan, and Goethe's mocking Mephistopheles, passing into allegoric, symbolic, and satiric figures in later fiction. He has been an impressive character in the drama, the epic, the novel, in poetry, and the short story. We have seen him as a loathly, brutish demon in Dante, as a superman, as an intellectual satirist, and as a human being appealing to our sympathy. He has gradually lost his epic qualities and become human. He is not present in literature now to the extent to which he was known in the past, is not so impressive a figure as heretofore, and at times when he does appear his personality is so ambiguously set forth that it requires close literary analysis to prove his presence.

In this chapter the devil will be discussed with reference to his appearances on earth, while in a later division he will be seen in his own home. It would be hard to say with certainty when and where the devil originated, yet he undoubtedly belongs to one of our first families and is said to have been born theologically in Persia about the year 900 B.C. He has appeared under various aliases, as Ahriman of the Zoroastrian system, Pluto in classical mythology, Satan, Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness, and by many other titles. In his _Address to the De'il_ Burns invokes him thus:

"Oh, Thou! whatever title suit thee,-- Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Cloutie!"

He has manifested himself in fiction under diverse names, as Demon, Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles, Prince Lucio, The Man in Black, and so forth, but whatever the name he answers to, he is known in every land and has with astonishing adaptability made himself at home in every literature.

The devil has so changed his form and his manner of appearance in later literature that it is hard to identify him as his ancient self. In early stories he was heralded by supernatural thunder and lightning and accompanied by a strong smell of sulphur. He dressed in character costume, sometimes in red, sometimes in black, but always indubitably diabolic. He wore horns, a forked tail, and cloven hoofs and was a generally unprepossessing creature whom anyone could know for a devil. Now his rôle is not so typical and his garb not so declarative. He wears an evening suit, a scholar's gown, a parson's robe, a hunting coat, with equal ease, and it is sometimes difficult to tell the devil from the hero of a modern story. He has been deodorized and no longer reeks warningly of the Pit.

The mediæval mind conceived of the devil as a sort of combination of mythologic satyr and religious dragon. It is interesting to note how the pagan devil-myths have been engrafted upon the ideas of Christianity, to fade out very slowly and by degrees. In monkish legends the devil was an energetic person who would hang round a likely soul for years, if need be, on the chance of nabbing him. Many monkish legends have come down to us.

The diabolic element in English folk-lore shows a rich field for study. The devil here as in the monkish legendry appears as an enemy of souls, a tireless tempter. He lies in wait for any unwary utterance, and the least mention of his name, any thoughtless expletive, such as "The devil take me if--" brings instant response from him to clinch the bargain. Yet the devil of rustic folk-lore is of a bucolic dullness, less clever than in any phase of literature, more gullible, more easily imposed on. English folk-lore, especially the Celtic branches, shows the devil as very closely related to nature. He was wont to work off his surplus energy or his wrath by disturbing the landscape, and many stories of his prankish pique have come down to us. If anything vexed him he might stamp so hard upon a plain that the print of his cloven hoof would be imprinted permanently. He was fond of drinking out of pure springs and leaving them cursed with sulphur, and he sometimes showed annoyance by biting a section out of a mountain, Devil's Bit Mountain in Ireland being one of the instances. In general, any peculiarity of nature might be attributed to the activities of Auld Hornie.

The devil has always been a pushing, forward sort of person, so he was not content with being handed round by word of mouth in monkish legend or rustic folk-lore, but must worm his way into literature in general. Since then many ink-pots have been emptied upon him besides the one that Luther hurled against his cloister wall. The devil is seen frequently in the miracle plays, showing grotesquerie, the beginnings of that sardonic humor he is to display in more important works later. In his appearance in literature the devil is largely anthropomorphic. Man creates the devil in his own image, one who is not merely personal but racial as well, reflecting his creator. In monkish tradition an adversary in wait for souls, in rustic folk-lore a rollicking buffoon with waggish pranks, in miracle plays reflecting the mingled seriousness and comic elements of popular beliefs, he mirrors his maker. But it is in the great poems and dramas and stories that we find the more personal aspects of devil-production, and it is these epic and dramatic concepts of the devil that have greatly influenced modern fiction. While the Gothic romance was but lightly touched by the epic supernaturalism, the literature since that time has reflected it more, and the Satanic characters of Dante, Milton, Calderon, Marlowe, and Goethe have cast long shadows over modern fiction. The recent revival of interest in Dante has doubtless had its effect here.

Burns in his _Address to the De'il_ shows his own kindly heart and honest though ofttimes misdirected impulses by suggesting that there is still hope for the devil to repent and trusting that he may do so yet. Mrs. Browning, in her _Drama of Exile_, likewise shows in Lucifer some appeal to our sympathies, reflecting the pitying heart of the writer,--showing a certain kinship to Milton's Satan yet with weakened intellectual power. She makes Gabriel say to him:

"Angel of the sin, Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath-- Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls, A monumental, melancholy gloom, Seen down all ages whence to mark despair And measure out the distances from good."

Byron's devil in _A Vision of Judgment_ is, like Caliban's ideas of Setebos, "altogether such an one" as Byron conceived himself to be. He is a terrible figure, whose

"Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved Eternal wrath on his immortal face."

He shows diabolical sarcasm when he says, "I've kings enough below, God knows!" And how like Oscar Wilde is the devil he pictures to us in his symbolic story, _The Fisherman and his Soul_. The prince of darkness who appears to the young fisherman that wishes to sell his soul to the devil is "a man dressed in a suit of black velvet cut in Spanish fashion. His proud face was strangely pale, but his lips were like a proud red flower. He seemed weary and was leaning back toying in a listless manner with the pommel of his saddle." When the fisherman unthoughtedly utters a prayer that baffles the fiend for the time, the demon mounts his jennet with the silver harness and rides away, still with the proud, disdainful face, sad with a _blasé_ weariness unlike the usual alertness of the devil. He has a sort of Blessed Damozel droop to his figure, and the bored patience of a lone man at an afternoon tea. Wilde shows us some little mocking red devils in another of his stories,[143] and _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is a concept of diabolism.

[143] _A Legend of Sharp._

Scott in _The Talisman_ puts a story of descent from the Evil One in the mouth of the Saracen, the legend of the spirits of evil who formed a league with the cruel Zohauk, by which he gained a daily sacrifice of blood to feed two hideous serpents that had become a part of himself. One day seven sisters of wonderful beauty are brought, whose loveliness appeals to the immortals. In the midst of supernatural manifestations the earth is rent and seven young men appear. The leader says to the eldest sister:

I am Cothreb, king of the subterranean world. I and my brethren are of those who, created out of elementary fire, disdained even at the command of Omnipotence, to do homage to a clod of earth because it is called man. Thou mayest have heard of us as cruel, unrelenting, and persecuting. It is false. We are by nature kind and generous, vengeful only when insulted, cruel only when affronted. We are true to those that trust us; and we have heard the invocations of thy father the sage Mithrasp, who wisely worships not only the Origin of Good, but that which is called the Source of Evil. You and your sisters are on the eve of death; but let each give to us one hair from your fair tresses in token of fealty, and we will carry you many miles to a place of safety where you may bid defiance to Zohauk and his ministers.

The maidens accept the offer and become the brides of the spirits of evil.

The devil in Scott's _Wandering Willie's Tale_,[144] also speaks a good word for himself. When the gudesire meets in the woods the stranger who sympathizes with his obvious distress, the unknown offers to help him, saying, "If you will tell me your grief, I am one that, though I have been sair miscaa'd in the world, am the only hand for helping my freends." The gudesire tells his woes and says that he would go to the gates of hell, and farther, to get the receipt due him, upon which the hospitable stranger conducts him to the place mentioned. The canny Scot obtains the document, outwits the devil, and wins his way back to earth unscathed.

[144] In _Red Gauntlet_.

One marked aspect of recent devil-fiction is the tendency to gloze over his sins and to humanize him. This is shown to a marked degree in Marie Corelli's sentimental novel, _The Sorrows of Satan_, where she expends much anxious sympathy over the fiend. To Miss Corelli's agitated mind Satan is a much maligned martyr who regretfully tempts mortals and is grieved when they yield to his beguilements. Her perfervid rhetoric pictures him as a charming prince, handsome, wealthy, yet very lonesome, who warns persons in advance that he is not what he seems and that they would do well to avoid him. But the fools rush in crowds to be damned. According to her theory, the devil is attempting to work out his own salvation and could do so save for the weakness of man. He is able to get a notch nearer heaven for every soul that resists his wiles, though in London circles his progress is backward rather than forward. How is Lucifer fallen! To be made a hero of by Marie Corelli must seem to Mephisto life's final indignity! Her characterization of the fiend shows some reminiscence of a hasty reading of Milton, Goethe, and the Byronic Cain.

The devil has a human as well as dæmonic spirit in Israel Zangwill's _They that Walk in Darkness_, where he appears as Satan Maketrig, a red-haired hunchback, with "gigantic marble brow, cold, keen, steely eyes, and handsome, clean-shaven lips." He seems a normal human being in this realistic Ghetto setting, though he bears a nameless sense of evil about with him. In his presence, or as he passes by, all the latent evil in men's souls comes to the surface. He lures the rabbi away from his wife, from God, and from all virtue, yet to see him at the end turn away again in spirit to the good, spurning the tempter whom he recognizes at last as dæmonic. There is a human anguish in the eyes of Satan Maketrig, that shows him to be not altogether diabolic, and he seems mournful and appealing in his wild loneliness. His nature is in contrast to that of the fiend in Stanley J. Weyman's _The Man in Black_. Here his cold, sardonic jesting that causes him to play with life and death, so lightly, his diabolic cunning, his knowledge of the human heart and how to torture it, remind us of Iago. The dark shade extends to the skin as well as to the heart in the man in black in Stevenson's _Thrawn Janet_, for he exercises a weird power over his vassal, the old servant, and terrifies even the minister. And _War Letters from a Living Dead Man_, written by Elsa Parker but said to be dictated by a correspondent presumably from somewhere in hell, shows us His Satanic Majesty with grim realism up to date.

The devil appears with mournful, human dignity, yet with superhuman gigantism in Algernon Blackwood's _Secret Worship_, where the lost souls enter into a riot of devil-worship, into which they seek to draw living victims, to damn them body and soul. One victim sees the devil thus:

At the end of the room where the windows seemed to have disappeared so that he could see the stars, there rose up into view, far against the sky, grand and terrible, the outline of a man. A kind of gray glory enveloped him so that it resembled a steel-cased statue, immense, imposing, horrific in its distant splendor. The gray radiance from its mightily broken visage, august and mournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with the powers of spiritual evil.

Here, as in many instances elsewhere, the sadness of the diabolic character is emphasized, a definite human element. The Miltonic influence seems evident in such cases.

Kipling has a curious dæmonic study in _Bubble Well Road_, a story of a patch of ground filled with devils and ghosts controlled by an evil-minded native priest, while in _Haunted Subalterns_ the imps terrorize young army officers by their malicious mischief.

The allegorical and symbolic studies of diabolism are among the more impressive creations in later fiction, as in Tolstoi's _Ivan, the Fool_, where the demons are responsible for the marshaling of armies, the tyranny of money, and the inverted ideas of the value of service. The appearance of the devil in later stories is more terrible and effective in its variance of type and its secret symbolism than the crude enginery of diabolism in Gothic fiction, as the muscular fiend[145] that athletically hurls the man and woman from the mountain top, or the invisible physical strength manifested in _Melmoth, the Wanderer_. The crude violence of these novels is in keeping with the fiction of the time, yet modern stories show a distinct advance, as such instances as J. H. Shorthouse's _Countess Eve_, where the devil appears differently to each tempted soul, embodying with hideous wisdom the form of the sin that that particular soul is most liable to commit. He bears the shape of committed sin, suggesting that evil is so powerful as to have an independent existence of its own, apart from the mind that gave it birth, as the devil appears as evil thought materialized in Fernac Molnar's drama, _The Devil_. Fiona McLeod's strange Gaelic tale, _The Sin-Eater_ introduces demons symbolically. The sin-eater is a person that by an ancient formula can remove the sins from an unburied corpse and let them in turn be swept away from him by the action of the pure air. But if the sin-eater hates the dead man, he has the power to fling the transgressions into the sea, to turn them into demons that pursue and torment the flying soul till Judgment Day.

[145] In _The Monk_ or _Zofloya_.

One aspect of the recent stories of diabolism is the subtleness by which the evil is suggested. The reader feels a miasmatic atmosphere of evil, a smear on the soul, and knows that certain incidents in the action can be accounted for on no other basis than that of dæmonic presence, as in Barry Pain's _Moon Madness_, where the princess is moved by a strange irresistible lure to dance alone night after night in the heart of the secret labyrinth to mystic music that the white moon makes. But one night, after she is dizzy and exhausted but impelled to keep on, she feels a hot hand grasp hers; someone whirls her madly round and she knows that _she is not dancing alone_! She is seen no more of men, and searchers find only the prints of her little dancing slippers in the sand, with the mark of a cloven hoof beside them. The most revolting instances of suggestive diabolism are found in Arthur Machen's stories, where supernatural science opens the way for the devil to enter the human soul, since the biologist by a cunning operation on the brain removes the moral sense, takes away the soul, and leaves a being absolutely diabolized. Worse still is the hideousness of _Seeing the Great God Pan_, where the dæmonic character is a composite of the loathsome aspects of Pan and the devil, from which horrible paternity is born a child that embodies all the unspeakable evil in the world.

In pleasant contrast to dreadful stories are the tales of the amusing devils that we find frequently. The comic devil is much older than the comic ghost, as authors showed a levity toward demons long before they treated the specter with disrespect,--one rather wonders why. Clownish devils that appeared in the miracle plays prepared the way for the humorous and satiric treatment of the Elizabethan drama and late fiction. The liturgical imps were usually funny whether their authors intended them as such or not, but the devils in fiction are quite conscious of their own wit, in fact, are rather conceited about it. Poe shows us several amusing demons who display his curious satiric humor,--for instance, the old gentleman in _Never Bet the Devil your Head_. When Toby Dammit makes his rash assertion, he beholds

the figure of a little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect. Nothing could be more reverend than his whole appearance; for he not only had on a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned down very neatly over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a girl's. His hands were clasped pensively over his stomach, and his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head.

This clerical personage who reminds us of the devil in _Peer Gynt_, who also appears as a parson, claims the better's head and neatly carries it off. This is a modern version of an incident similar to Chaucer's _Friar's Tale_, where the devil claimed whatever was offered him in sincerity. The combination of humor and mystery in Washington Irving's _The Devil and Tom Walker_ shows the black woodsman in an amusing though terrifying aspect, as he claims the keeping of the contracts made with him by Tom and his miserly wife. When Tom goes to search for his spouse in the woods, he fails to find her.

She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though the female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however, for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handsful of hair that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse shock of the black woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the fierce signs of clapper-clawing. "Egad!" he said to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"

The devil amuses himself in various ways, as is seen by the antics of the mysterious stranger in Poe's _The Devil in the Belfry_, who comes curvetting into the old Dutch village with his audacious and sinister face and curious costume, to upset the sacred time of the place. The visitant in _Bon Bon_ is likewise queer as to dress and habits. He wears garments in the style of a century before, having a queue but no shirt, a cravat with an ecclesiastic suggestion, also a stylus and black book. His facial expression is such as would have struck Uriah Heap dumb with envy, and the hint of hoofs and a forked tail is cleverly given though not obtruded. The most remarkable feature of his appearance, however, is that he has no eyes, simply a dead level of flesh. He declares that he eats souls and prefers to buy them alive to insure freshness. He has a taste for philosophers, when they are not too tough.

The satiric devil, like the satiric ghost, is seen in modern fiction. Eugene Field has a story of a demon who seems sympathetic, weeping large, gummy tears at hearing a mortal's woes, and signing the conventional contract on a piece of asbestos paper. He agrees to do everything the man wishes, for a certain term of years, in return for which he is to get the soul. If the devil forfeits the contract, he loses not only that victim but the souls of two thousand already in his clutches. The man shrewdly demands trying things of him, but the demon is game, building and endowing churches, carrying on philanthropic and reform work without complaint, but balking when the man asks him to close the saloons on Sunday. Rather than do that, he releases the two thousand and one souls and flies away twitching his tail in wrath.[146]

[146] _Daniel and the Devil._

The most recent, as perhaps the most striking, instance of the satiric devil is in Mark Twain's posthumous novel, _The Mysterious Stranger_. A youth, charming, courtly, and handsome appears in a medieval village, confessing to two boys that he is Satan, though not the original of that name, but his nephew and namesake. He insists that he is an unfallen angel, since his uncle is the only member of his family that has sinned. Satan reads the thoughts of mortals, kindles fire in his pipe by breathing on it, supplies money and other desirable things by mere suggestion, is invisible when he wills it so, and is generally a gifted being. This perennial boy--only sixteen thousand years old--makes a charming companion. He says to Marget that his papa is in shattered health and has no property to speak of,--in fact, none of any earthly value,--but he has an uncle in business down in the tropics, who is very well off, and has a monopoly, and it is from this uncle that he drew his support. Marget expresses the hope that her uncle and his would meet some day, and Satan says he hoped so, too. "May be they will," says Marget. "Does your uncle travel much?"

"Oh, yes, he goes all about,--he has business everywhere."

The book is full of this oblique humor, satirizing earth, heaven, and hell. The stranger by his comments on theological creeds satirizes religion, and Satan is an intended parody of God. He sneers at man's "mongrel moral sense," which tells him the distinction between good and evil, insisting that he should have no choice, that the right to choose makes him inevitably choose the wrong. He makes little figures out of clay and gives them life, only to destroy them with casual ruthlessness a little later and send them to hell. In answer to the old servant's faith in God, when she says that He will care for her and her mistress, since "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His Knowledge," he sneers, "But it falls, just the same! What's the good of seeing it fall?" He is a new diabolic figure, yet showing the composite traits of the old, the dæmonic wisdom and sarcasm, the superhuman magnetism to draw men to him, and the human qualities of geniality, sympathy, and boyish charm.

One of the most significant and frequent motifs of the diabolic in literature is that of the barter of the human soul for the devil's gift of some earthly boon, long life or wealth or power, or wisdom, or gratification of the senses. It is a theme of unusual power,--what could be greater than the struggle over one's own immortal soul?--and well might the great minds of the world engage themselves with it. Yet that theme is but little apparent in later stories. We have no such character in recent literature that can compare with Marlowe's Dr. Faustus or Goethe's Mephistopheles or Calderon's wonder-working magician. Hawthorne's Septimius Felton makes a bargain with the devil to secure the elixir of life, there is a legend in Hardy's _Tess of the D' Urbervilles_ of a man that sold himself to the minister of evil, and the incident occurs in various stories of witchcraft, yet with waning power and less frequence. The most significant recent use of it is in W. B. Yeats's drama.[147] This is a drama of Ireland, where the peasants have been driven by famine to barter their souls to the devil to buy their children food, but their Countess sells her own soul to the demon that they may save theirs. This vicarious sacrifice adds a new poignancy to the situation and Yeats has treated it with power. This is the only recent appearance of the devil on the stage for he has practically disappeared from English drama, where he was once so prominent. The demon was a familiar and leading figure on the miracle and Elizabethan stage, but, like the ghost, he shows more vitality now in fiction. The devil is an older figure in English drama than is the ghost, but he seems to have played out.

[147] _Countess Cathleen._

The analysis and representation of the devil as a character in literature have covered a great range, from the bestiality of Dante's Demon in the _Inferno_ to Milton's mighty angel in ruins, with all sorts of variations between, from the sneering cynicism of Goethe's Mephisto to the pinchbeck diabolism of Marie Corelli's sorrowful Satan, and the merry humor and blasphemous satire of Mark Twain's mysterious stranger. We note an especial influence of Goethe's Mephistopheles in the satiric studies of the demon, an echo of his diabolic climax when in answer to Faust's outcry over Margaret's downfall and death, he says, "_She is not the first_!" One hears echoing through all literature Man Friday's unanswerable question, "Why not God kill debbil?" The uses of evil in God's eternal scheme, the soul's free choice yet pitiful weakness, are sounded again and again. The great diabolic figures, in their essential humanity, their intellectual dignity, their sad introspection, their pitiless testing of the human soul to its predestined fall, are terrible allegorical images of the evil in man himself, or concepts of social sins, as in _Ivan, the Fool_. The devils of the great writers, reflecting the time, the racial characteristics, the personal natures of their creators, are deeply symbolic. Each man creates the devil that he can understand, that represents him, for, as Amiel says, we can comprehend nothing of which we have not the beginnings in ourselves. As each man sees a different Hamlet, so each one has his own devil, or _is_ his own devil. This is illustrated by the figure in Julian Hawthorne's _Lovers in Heaven_, where the dead man's spirit meets the devil in the after life,--who is his own image, his dæmonic double. Some have one great fiend, while others keep packs of little, snarling imps of darkness. A study of comparative diabolics is illuminating and might be useful to us all.

=The Wizard and the Witch.= The demon has his earthly partners in evil members of the firm of Devil and Company. Certain persons that have made a pact with him are given a share in his power, and a portion of his dark mantle falls upon them. The sorcerer and the witch are ancient figures in literature, and like others of the supernatural kingdom, notably the devil, they have their origin in the East, the cuneiform writings of the Chaldeans showing belief in witchcraft. And the Witch of Endor, summoning the spirit of Samuel to confront Saul, is a very real figure in the Old Testament. The Greeks believed in witches, as did the Romans. Meroe, a witch, is described in the _Metamorphoses_ of Lucius Appuleius, from whom perhaps the witch Meroe in Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_ gets her name and character. In classical times witches were thought to have power to turn men into beasts, tigers, monkeys, or asses--some persons still believe that women have that power and might give authenticated instances.

The sorcerer, or wizard, or warlock, or magician, as he is variously called, was a more common figure in early literature than in later, perhaps because, as in so many other cases, his profession has suffered a feminine invasion. The Anglo-Saxon word _wicca_, meaning "witch," is masculine, which may or may not mean that witchcraft was a manly art in those days, and the most famous medieval enchanter, Merlin, was a man, it should be noted. The sorcerer of primitive times has been gradually reduced in power, changing through the astrologer and alchemist of medieval and Gothic romance into the bacteriologist and biologist of recent fiction, where he works other wonders. In general, warlocks and wizards, while frequent enough in early literature and in modern folk-tales, have become less numerous in later fiction. Scott[148] has a medical magician with supernatural power of healing by means of an amulet, which, put to the nostrils of a person practically dead, revives him at once, but which loses its efficacy if given in exchange for money. Hawthorne has an old Indian sachem with wizard power,[149] who has concocted the elixir of life. We see the passing of the ancient sorcerer into the scientific wonder-worker in such fiction as Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu stories that depict a Chinese terror, or in H. G. Wells's supernatural investigators in his various stories of science. The magician is not really dead in fiction but has passed over into another form, for the most part.

[148] In _The Talisman_.

[149] In his _Septimius Felton_.

We still have the hoodoo man of colored persuasion, and the redskin medicine-man, together with Oriental sorcerers from Kipling and others. Examples are: _In the House of Suddoo_, by Kipling, where the wonder-worker unites a canny knowledge of the telephone and telegraph along with his unholy art; _Red Debts_, by Lumley Deakin, where the Indian magician exacts a terrible penalty for the wrong done him, and where his diabolic appearance to claim his victim leaves one in doubt as to whether he has not sent his chief in his place; _The Monkey's Paw_, by W. W. Jacobs, a curdling story of a magic curse given by an Oriental sorcerer, by which the paw of a dead monkey grants three wishes that have a dreadful boomerang power; _Black Magic_, by Jessie Adelaide Weston,--who claims that all her supernatural stories are strictly true--the narrative of an old Indian sorcerer that changes himself into a hair mat and is shot for his pains. He has obtained power over the house by being given a hair from the mat by the uninitiated mistress. Hair, you must know, has great power of evil in the hands of witches and sorcerers, as in the case of the evil ones in _The Talisman_, who received their thrall over the maidens by one hair from each head. F. Marion Crawford's _Khaled_ is a story of magic art. Khaled is one of the genii converted by reading the Koran, who wishes to be a mortal man with a soul. He is given the right to do so if he can win the love of a certain woman. Hence he is born into the world, like Adam, a full-grown man, to be magically clothed and equipped, by the transformation of leaves and twigs into garments and armor, and the changing of a locust into an Arabian steed. After many supernatural adventures, he receives his soul from an angel. The soul, at first a crescent flame,

immediately took shape and became the brighter image of Khaled himself. And when he had looked at it fixedly for a few minutes--the vision of himself had disappeared and before he was aware it had entered his own body and taken up its life with him.

This is a parallel to the cases of ghostly doubles discussed in the previous chapter.

The magician shows a disposition to adapt himself to contemporary conditions and to change his personality with the times. Not so the witch. She is a permanent figure. She has appeared in the various forms of literature, in Elizabethan drama, in Gothic romance, in modern poetry, the novel and the short story, and is very much alive to-day. We have witches young and old. We have the fake witch, like the hoax ghost; the imputed witch and the genuine article. We have witch stories melodramatic, romantic, tragic, comic, and satiric, showing the influence of the great creations of past literature with modern adaptations and additions. English poetry is full of witchery, perhaps largely the result of the Celtic influence on our literature. The poetic type of witchcraft is brought out in such poems as Coleridge's _Christabel_, where the beauty and suggestiveness veil the sense of unearthly evil; or in Shelley's _Witch of Atlas_, where the woman appears as a symbol of alluring loveliness possessing none of the hideous aspects seen in other weird women. The water enchantress in Shelley's fragment of an unfinished drama might be mentioned as another example while Keats's _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ has a magical charm all her own. Christina Rossetti's _Goblin Market_ shows a peculiar aspect of magic, as also Mrs. Browning's _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_. On the contrary, Milton's _Comus_, Robert Herrick's _The Hag_, and James Hogg's _The Witch of Fife_ illustrate the uglier aspects of enchantment.

There are two definite types of witches seen in English fiction, the first being merely the reputed witch, the woman who is falsely accused or suspected of black arts, and who either is persecuted, or else gains what she wishes by hints of her traffic in evil, like the Old Granny Young in _Mine Host and the Witch_, by James Blythe, who chants as a charm-rune,

"A curse shall lay on water and land For the thing denied the witch's hand,"

so that everybody is afraid to refuse her whatever she demands. This is a highly conventionalized type of the motif and, though it is found in great numbers in modern fiction, is not particularly important. The principal complications of the plot are usually the same, the character known as the witch being either an appealing figure winning sympathy because of her beauty and youth, or else touching to pity because of her age and infirmities. No person of average age or pulchritude is ever accused of witchcraft in English fiction. She is always very old and poor or young and lovely. Item also, she invariably has two lovers, in the latter case. She is merely a romantic peg on which to hang a story, not always real as a human being and not a real witch. In these stories the only magic used is love, the fair maid having unintentionally charmed the heart of a villain, who, failing to win her, accuses her of witchcraft in order to frighten her into love. In some of the novels and stories the victim is actually executed, while in others she is rescued by her noble lover at the fifty-ninth second. We have the pursuing villain, the distressed innocence, the chivalric lover disporting themselves in late Gothic fashion over many romances. Even Mary Johnston with her knowledge of Colonial times and her power to give atmosphere to the past does not succeed in imparting the breath of life to her late novel of witchcraft, _The Witch_. These pink-and-white beauties who speak in Euphuistic sentences, who show a lamblike defiance toward the dark tempters, who breathe prayers to heaven for protection and forgiveness to their enemies in one breath, who die or are rescued with equal grace and propriety,--one is carried away from the scaffold by Kidd, the pirate, thus delaying for several chapters her rescue by her faithful lover--do not really touch the heart any more than they interest the intellect. Yet there are occasional instances of the imputed witch who seems real despite her handicap of beauty and youth, as Iseult le Desireuse, in Maurice Hewlett's _Forest Lovers_, whom Prosper le Gai weds to save from the hangman. The young woman in F. Marion Crawford's _Witch of Prague_ might be called a problematic witch, for while she does undoubtedly work magic, it is for the most part attributed to her powers of hypnotism rather than to the black art itself. We find an excellent example of the reputed witch who is a woman of real charm and individuality, in D'Annunzio's _The Daughter of Jorio_, where the young girl is beset by cruel dangers because of her charm and her lonely condition, and who rises to tragic heights of sacrifice to save her lover from death, choosing to be burned to death as a witch to save him from paying the penalty of murder. She actually convinces him, as well as the others, that she has bewitched him by unholy powers, that she has slain his father and made him believe that he himself did it to save her honor, and she goes to her death with a white fervor of courage, with no word of complaint, save one gentle rebuke to him that _he_ should not revile her.

The aged pseudo-witch is in the main more appealing than the young one, because more realistic. Yet there is no modern instance that is so touching as the poor old crone in _The Witch of Edmonton_, who is persecuted for being a witch and who turns upon her tormentors with a speech that reminds us of Shylock's famous outcry, showing clearly how their suspicion and accusation have made her what she is. We see here a witch in the making, an innocent old woman who is harried by human beings till she makes a compact with the devil. Meg Merrilies[150] is a problematic witch, a majestic, sibylline figure, very individual and human, yet with more than a suggestion of superhuman wisdom and power. Scott limned her with a loving hand, and Keats was so impressed with her personality that he wrote a poem concerning her. Elizabeth Enderfield, in Hardy's _Under the Greenwood Tree_, is a reputed witch and witch-pricking is also tried in his _Return of the Native_. Various experiments with magic are used in Hardy's work, as the instance of the woman's touching her withered arm to the neck of a man that had been hanged, consulting the conjurer concerning butter that won't come, and so forth. Old Aunt Keziah in Hawthorne's _Septimius Felton_ might be called a problematic witch, as the woman in _The Witch_ by Eden Phillpotts. She has a great number of cats, and something dreadful happens to anyone who injures one of them; she calls the three black toads her servants and goes through incantations over a snake skeleton, the carcass of a toad, and the mummy of a cat. Mother Tab may or may not be a _bona fide_ witch, but she causes much trouble to those associated with her.

[150] Of Scott's _Guy Mannering_.

The unquestioned witch, possessing indubitable powers of enchantment, occurs frequently and conveys a genuine thrill. Her attributes have been less conventionalized than those of her youthful companions who are merely under the imputation of black art, and she possesses a diabolic individuality. Though she may not remain long in view, she is an impressive figure not soon forgotten. The old crone in Scott's _The Two Drovers_ gives warning to Robin Oig, "walking the deasil," as it is called, around him, tracing the propitiation which some think a reminiscence of Druidical mythology,--which is performed by walking three times round the one in danger, moving according to the course of the sun. In the midst of her incantation the hag exclaims, "Blood on your hand, and it is English blood!" True enough, before his journey's end young Robin does murder his English companion. In the same story other evidences of witchcraft are shown, as the directions for keeping away the evil influence from cattle by tying St. Mungo's knot on their tails.

The subject of witchcraft greatly interested Hawthorne, for he introduces it in a number of instances. _Young Goodman Brown_ shows the aspects of the diabolic union between the devil and his earthly companions, their unholy congregations in the forest, reports their sardonic conversations and suggestions of evil in others, and pictures the witches riding on broomsticks high in the heavens and working their magic spells. The young husband sees in that convocation all the persons whom he has most revered--his minister, his Sabbath-school teacher, and even his young wife, so that all his after-life is saddened by the thought of it. Witchcraft enters into _The Scarlet Letter_, _Main Street_, and _Feathertop_, and is mentioned in other stories.

Old Mother Sheehy in Kipling's _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_ pronounces a malediction against Private Mulvany and the girl he loves, prophesying that he will be reduced in rank instead of being promoted, will be a slave to drink so that his young wife will take in washing for officers' wives instead of herself being the wife of an officer, and that their only child will die,--every bitter word of which comes true in after years. The old witch mother in Howard Pyle's _The Evil Eye_ inspires her daughter to cast a spell over the man she loves but who does not think of her, causing him to leave his betrothed and wed the witch daughter. When understanding comes to him, and with it loathing, the girl seeks to regain his love by following the counsel of an old magician, who gives her an image to be burnt. But that burning of the image kills her and looses the man from her spell. That incident is similar to that in D'Annunzio's _Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_ where the Dogaressa seeks to slay her rival, both probably being based on the unforgettable employment of the theme in Rossetti's _Sister Helen_, where the young girl causes the death of her betrayer by melting the image.

In Gordon Bottomley's play, _Riding to Lithend_, three old women enter, who seem to partake of the nature of the Parcæ as well as of Shakespeare's Weird Sisters. They have bat-webbed fingers, the hound bays uncannily at their approach, they show supernatural knowledge of events, and they chant a wild prophecy of doom, then mysteriously disappear. Fate marches swiftly on as they foretell.

The young and beautiful witch can work as much evil as the ancient crone, perhaps more, since her emotions are wilder and more unrestrained. She can project a curse that reaches its victim across the ocean, when the one who sent the curse is rotting in the tomb, as in _The Curse of the Cashmere Shawl_, where a betrayed and deserted woman in India sends a rare shawl to her rival, then drowns herself. Months after, when the husband, forgetful of the source, lays the shawl around his wife's shoulders, the dead woman takes her place. After this gruesome transfer of personality, the wife, impelled by a terrible urge she cannot understand, drowns herself as the other has done months before. Oscar Wilde[151] shows a young and lovely witch with a human longing for the love of the young man who throws away his soul for love of a mermaid. Through life's tragic satire, she is compelled, in spite of her entreaties, to show him how he may damn himself and win the other's affection. The jealousy shown here and in other instances is an illustration of the human nature of the witch, who, like the devil, makes a strong appeal to our sympathy in spite of the undoubted iniquity.

[151] In _The Fisherman and his Soul_.

The element of symbolism enters largely into the witch-creations, even from the time of Shakespeare's Three in _Macbeth_, who are terrible symbolic figures of the evil in man's soul. They appear as the visible embodiment of Macbeth's thoughts, and by their mysterious suggestive utterances tempt him to put his unlawful dreams into action. They seem both cause and effect here, for though when they first appear to him his hands are innocent of blood, his heart is tainted with selfish ambition, and their whispers of promise hurry on the deed. In _Ancient Sorceries_, by Algernon Blackwood, the village is full of persons who at night by the power of an ancestral curse, a heritage of subliminal memory, become witches, horrible cat-creatures, unhuman, that dance the blasphemous dance of the Devil's Sabbath. The story symbolizes the eternal curse that rests upon evil, the undying quality of thought and action that cannot cease when the body of the sinner has become dust, but reaches out into endless generations.

In _Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts_ by A. T. Quiller-Couch, we see a witch, a young woman whose soul is under a spell from the devil. She gives rich gifts to the church, but her offerings turn into toads and vipers, defiling the sanctuary, and as she sings her wild songs the bodies of drowned men come floating to the surface of the water and join in the words of her song. Her beauty is supernatural and accursed, yet her soul is innocent of wish to do evil, though it leaves her body and goes like a cresseted flame at night to follow the devil, while the body is powerless in sleep. Finally the devil comes in the form of a Moor, possibly a suggestion from _Zofloya_, and summons her, when she dies, with a crucifix clasped over her heart.

W. B. Yeats has pictured several witches for us, as the crone of the gray hawk, in _The Wisdom of the King_, a woman tall with more than mortal height, with feathers of the gray hawk growing in her hair, who stoops over the royal cradle and whispers a strange thing to the child, as a result of which he grows up in a solitude of his own mystic thoughts with dreams that are like the marching and counter-marching of armies. When he realizes that the simple joys of life and love are not for him, he disappears, some say to make his home with the immortal demons, some say with the shadowy goddesses that haunt the midnight pools in the forest. In _The Curse of the Fires and the Shadows_, Yeats pictures another witch, tall and in a gray gown, who is standing in the river and washing, washing the dead body of a man. As the troopers who have murdered the friars and burned down the church ride past, each man recognizes in the dead face his own face,--just a moment before they all plunge over the abyss to death.

There are witches in most collections of English folk-tales, for the simpler people, the more elemental natures, have a strong feeling for the twilight of nature and of life. The weird woman has power over the forces of nature and can evoke the wrath of the elements as of unholy powers against her enemies. Stories of witches, as of sorcerers, occur in Indian folk-tales, as well as in those of the American Indian, differing in details in the tribal collections yet showing similar essential ideas. The Scotch show special predilection for the witch, since with their tense, stern natures, they stand in awe of the darker powers and of those that call them forth. They relate curious instances of the relations between the animal world and witchcraft, as in _The Dark Nameless One_, by Fiona McLeod, the story of a nun that falls in love with a seal and is forced to live forever in the sea, weaving her spells where the white foam froths, and knowing that her soul is lost. This is akin to the theme that Matthew Arnold uses,[152] though with a different treatment, showing similarity to Hans Christian Andersen's tale of _The Little Mermaid_. The cailleachuisge, or the water-witch, and the maighdeanmhara, the mermaid, and the kelpie, the sea-beast, are cursed with dæmonic spells and live forever in their witchery. When mortals forsake the earth and follow them their children are beings that have no souls. The Irish folk-tales, on the other hand, while having their quota of witches, do not think so much about them or take them quite so seriously, inclining more to the faëry forms of supernaturalism suited to their poetic natures. The sense of beauty of the Irish is so vivid and their innate poetry so intense that they glimpse the loveliness of magic, and their enchanted beings are of beauty rather than of horror.

[152] In his _Forsaken Merman_ and _The Neckan_.

We even have the humorous and satiric witch, to correspond to similar representations of the ghost and the devil in modern fiction. The instance in Burns's _Tam O'Shanter_ needs only to be recalled, with the ludicrous description of the wild race at night to escape the dread powers. _Bones, Sanders, and Another_, by Edgar Wallace, introduces a witch with comic qualities, a woman whose husband has been a magician, and the reputed familiar of a devil. She cures people by laying her hands on them, once causing a bone that was choking a child to fly out with "a cry terrible to hear, such a cry as a leopard makes when pursued by ghosts." When this witch with a sense of humor is arrested as a trouble-maker by an army officer, she "eradicates" her clothes, causing very comic complications. The best example of the satiric witch is Hawthorne's Mother Rigby, in _Feathertop_, who constructs a man from a broomstick and other materials for a scarecrow. In this satiric sermon upon the shams and hypocrisies of life, Mother Rigby, with her sardonic humor, her cynical comments, parodies society, holds the mirror up to human life and shows more than one poor painted scarecrow, simulacrum of humanity, masquerading as a man. The figure that she creates, with his yearnings and his pride, his horror when he realizes his own falsity and emptiness, is more human, more a man, than many a being we meet in literature or in life.

Barry Pain has several witch stories that do not fall readily into any category, curious stories of scientific dream-supernaturalism, in the realm of the unreal. _Exchange_ is the account of a supernatural woman, whether a witch or one of the Fates, one does not know, who comes, clad in scarlet rags, to show human souls their destinies. She permits an exchange of fate, if one is willing to pay her price, which is in each case terrible enough. One young girl gives up her pictured future of life and love, and surrenders her mind for the purpose of saving her baby brother from his destined fate of suicide in manhood. The crone appears to an old man that loves the child, who takes upon himself her fate of being turned into a bird to be tortured after human death, so that the young girl may have his future, to be turned into a white lamb that dies after an hour, then be a soul set free. _The Glass of Supreme Moments_ is another story of prophetic witchery, of revealed fate seen in supernatural dreams. A young man in his college study sees the fireplace turn into a silver stairway down which a lovely gray-robed woman comes to him. She shows him a mirror, the glass of supreme moments, in which the highest instants of each man's life are shown. She says of it, "All the ecstasy of the world lies there. The supreme moments of each man's life, the scene, the spoken words--all lie there. Past and present and future--all are there." She shows an emotion meter that measures the thrill of joy. After he has seen the climactic instants of his friends' lives he asks to see his own, when she tells him his are here and now. She tells him that her name is Death and that he will die if he kisses her, but he cries out, "I will die kissing you!" And presently his mates return to find his body fallen dead across his table.

There is something infinitely appealing about the character of the witch. She seems a creature of tragic loneliness, conscious of her own dark powers, yet conscious also of her exile from the good, and knowing that all the evil she evokes will somehow come back to her, that her curses will come home, as in the case of _Witch Hazel_, where the witch, by making a cake of hair to overcome her rival in love, brings on a tempest that kills her lover and drives her mad. Each evil act, each dark imagining seems to create a demon and turn him loose to harry humanity with unceasing force, as Matthew Maule's curse in _The House of Seven Gables_ casts a spiritual shadow on the home. Yet the witch is sometimes a minister of good, as Mephistopheles says of himself, achieving the good where he meant evil; sometimes typifying the mysterious mother nature, as the old Wittikin in Hauptmann's _Sunken Bell_, neither good nor evil, neither altogether human nor supernatural. Her strange symbolism is always impressive.

=Dæmonic Spirits--Vampires.= Closely related to the devil are certain diabolic spirits that are given supernatural power by him and acknowledge his suzerainty. These include ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and other demoniac animals, as well as the human beings that through a compact with the fiend share in his dark force. Since such creatures possess dramatic possibilities, they have given interest to fiction and other literature from early times. This idea of an unholy alliance between earth and hell, has fascinated the human mind and been reflected astonishingly in literature. In studying the appearance of these beings in English fiction, we note, as in the case of the ghost, the witch, and the devil, a certain leveling influence, a tendency to humanize them and give them characteristics that appeal to our sympathy.

The vampire and the ghoul are closely related and by some authorities are considered the same, yet there is a distinction. The ghoul is a being, to quote Poe, "neither man nor woman, neither brute nor human" that feeds upon corpses, stealing out at midnight for loathsome banquets in graveyards. He devours the flesh of the dead, while the vampire drains the blood of the living. The ghoul is an Asiatic creature and has left but slight impress upon English literature, while the vampire has been a definite motif. The vampire superstition goes back to ancient times, being referred to on Chaldean and Assyrian tablets. William of Newbury, of the twelfth century in England, relates several stories of them; one vampire was burned in Melrose Abbey, and tourists in Ireland are still shown the grave of a vampire. Perhaps the vampire superstition goes back to the savagery of remote times, and is an animistic survival of human sacrifices, of cannibalism and the like. The vampire is thought of as an evil spirit issuing forth at night to attack the living in their sleep and drain the blood which is necessary to prolong its own revolting existence. Certain persons were thought to be especially liable to become vampires at death, such as suicides, witches, wizards, persons who in life had been attacked by vampires, outcasts of various kinds, as well as certain animals, werewolves, dead lizards, and others.

The vampire superstition was general in the East and extended to Europe, it is thought, by way of Greece. The Greeks thought of the vampire as a beautiful young woman, a lamia, who lured young men to their death. The belief was particularly strong in central Europe, but never seemed to gain the same foothold in England that it did on the continent, though it is evident here and has influenced literature. The vampire has been the inspiration for several operas, and has figured in the drama, in poetry, in the novel and short story, as well as in folk-tales and medieval legends. The stories show the various aspects of the belief and its ancient hold on the popular mind. The vampire, as well as the ghost, the devil, and the witch, has appeared on the English stage. _The Vampire_, an anonymous melodrama in two acts, _The Vampire_, a tragedy by St. John Dorset (1821), _The Vampire Bride_, a play, _Le Vampire_, by Alexander Dumas _père_, and _The Vampire, or the Bride of the Isles_, by J. R. Planche, were presented in the London theater. The latter which was published in 1820 is remarkably similar to _The Vampyre_, a novelette by Polidori, published in 1819,--the story written after the famous ghost session where Byron, the Shelleys, and Polidori agreed each to write a ghostly story, Mary Shelley writing _Frankenstein_.

Polidori's story, like the play referred to, has for its principal character an Englishman, Lord Ruthven, the Earl of Marsden, who is the vampire. In each case there is a supposed death, where the dying man asks that his body be placed where the last rays of the moon can fall upon it. The corpse then mysteriously vanishes. In each story there is a complication of a rash pledge of silence made by a man that discovers the diabolical nature of the earl, who, having risen from the dead, is ravaging society as a vampire. In each case a peculiar turn of the story is that the masculine vampire requires for his subsistence the blood of young women, to whom he must be married. He demands a new victim, hence a hurried wedding is planned. In the play the ceremony is interrupted by the bride's father, but in the novelette the plot is finished and the girl becomes the victim of the destroyer. It is a question which of these productions was written first, and which imitated the other, or if they had a common source. The author of the drama admits getting his material from a French play, but where did Polidori get his?

Byron seems to have been fascinated with the vampire theme, for in addition to his unsuccessful short story, he has used the theme in his poem, _The Giaour_. Here he brings in the idea that the vampire curse is a judgment from God for sin, and that the most terrible part of the punishment is the being forced to prey upon those who in life were dearest to him, which idea occurs in various stories.

"But first on earth as Vampyre sent Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place And suck the blood of all thy race; There from thy _daughter_, _sister_, _wife_, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid, living corse. Thy victims, ere they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire; As, cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem. But one, that for thy crime must fall, The youngest, best-beloved of all, Shall bless thee with a _father's_ name-- That word shall wrap thy heart in flame! Yet must thou end the task and mark Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark, And the last glassy glance must view Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue; Then with unhallowed hand shall tear The tresses of her yellow hair, Of which, in life, a lock when shorn Affection's fondest pledge was worn,-- But now is borne away by thee Memorial of thine agony! Yet with thine own best blood shall drip Thy gnashing teeth and haggard lip; Then stalking to thy sullen grave Go--and with ghouls and Afrits rave, Till these in horror shrink away From specter more accursed than they!"

Southey in his _Thalaba_ shows us a vampire, a young girl in this case, who has been torn away from her husband on their wedding day. The curse impels her to attack him, to seek to drain his lifeblood. He becomes aware of the truth and takes her father with him to the tomb, to await her coming forth at midnight, which is the striking hour for vampires. When she appears, "in her eyes a brightness more terrible than all the loathsomeness of death," her father has the courage to strike a lance through her heart to dispel the demon and let her soul be at peace.

"Then howling with the wound The fiendish tenant fled.... And garmented with glory in their sight Oneiza's spirit stood."

Keats uses the Greek idea of the vampire as a lamia or beautiful young woman luring young men to death,--the same theme employed by Goethe in his _Die Braut von Corinth_. In _Lamia_, when the evil spirit in the form of a lovely, alluring woman, is accused by the old philosopher, she gives a terrible scream and vanishes. This vanishing business is a favorite trick with vampires--they leave suddenly when circumstances crowd them.

F. Marion Crawford, in _For the Blood Is the Life_, has given us a terrible vampire story, in which the dream element is present to a marked degree. The young man, who has been vainly loved by a young girl, is after her death vampirized by her, something after the fashion of Turgeniev's Clara Militch, and when his friends get an inkling of the truth, and go to rescue him, they find him on her grave, a thin red line of blood trickling from his throat.

And the flickering light of the lantern played upon another face that looked up from the feast,--upon two deep, dead eyes that saw in spite of death--upon parted lips redder than life itself--upon gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop.

The hawthorne stake is driven through her heart and the vampire expires after a terrific struggle, uttering diabolic, human shrieks. There is a certain similarity between this and Gautier's _La Morte Amoreuse_, where the truth is concealed till the last of the story and only the initiated would perhaps know that the reincarnated woman was a vampire. It is also a bit like Turgeniev's _Phantoms_, where a subtle suggestion at the last gives the reader the clue to vampirism, though the author really asks the question at the close, Was she a vampire? The character of the woman is problematic here, as in Gautier's story, less pronounced than in Crawford's.

The idea of occult vampirism used by Turgeniev is also employed by Reginald Hodder in his work, _The Vampire_. Here peculiar power is possessed by a woman leader of an occult band, who vampirizes by means of a talisman. Her ravages are psychic rather than physical. Theosophists, according to the _Occult Magazine_, believe in vampires even in the present. According to their theory, one who has been very wicked in life is in death so inextricably entangled with his evil motives and acts that he is hopelessly lost and knows it, yet seeks to delay for a time his final damnation. He can ward off spiritual death so long as he can keep alive by means of blood his physical corpse. The _Occult Review_ believes that probably only those acquainted with black magic in their lifetime can become vampires,--a thought comforting to some of us.

It is in Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ that one finds the tensest, most dreadful modern story of vampirism. This novel seems to omit no detail of terror, for every aspect of vampire horror is touched upon with brutal and ghastly effect. The combination of ghouls, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and other awful elements is almost unendurable, yet the book loses in effect toward the last, for the mind cannot endure four hundred pages of vampiric outrage and respond to fresh impressions of horror. The initial vampire here is a Hungarian count, who, after terrorizing his own country for years, transports himself to England to start his ravages there. Each victim in turn becomes a vampire. The combination of modern science with medieval superstition to fight the scourge, using garlic and sprigs of the wild rose together with blood transfusion, is interesting. All the resources of modern science are pitted against the infection and the complications are dramatically thrilling. The book is not advised as suitable reading for one sitting alone at night.

There are other types of vampirism in addition to the conventional theme and the occult vampirism. H. G. Wells gives his customary twist of novelty to supernaturalism by the introduction of a botanical vampire in his _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid_. An orchid collector is found unaccountably dead in a jungle in the Andaman Islands, with a strange bulb lying under him, which bulb is brought to England and watched carefully by a botanist there till it comes to flower. When at last its blossoms burst open, great tentacles reach out to grasp the man, sucking his blood and strangling him. The tentacles dripping blood have to be torn away and the man snatched violently from the plant just in time to save his life.

Algernon Blackwood, who has touched upon every terrible aspect of supernaturalism, gives us two types of vampires in his story, _The Transfer_. The one is a psychic vampire, stealing the vital power from others, a human sponge, absorbing the strength, the ideas, the soul, of others. The governess describes him: "I watched his hard, bleak face; I noticed how thin he was, and the curious, oily brightness of his steady eyes. And everything he said or did announced what I may dare to call the _suction_ of his presence." This human vampire comes in contact with one of another sort, a soil vampire, the Forbidden Corner, a bald, sore place in the rose garden, like a dangerous bog. The woman and a little child know the truth of this spot so barren in the midst of luxurious growth, so sinister in its look and implication. The child says of it, "It's bad. It's hungry. It's dying because it can't get the food it wants. But I know what would make it feel right." The earth vampire stretches out silent feelers from its secret strength when the man comes near the evil spot; the empty, yawning spot gives out audible cries, then laughs hideously as the man falls forward into the middle of the patch. "His eyes, as he dropped, faded shockingly, and across the countenance was written plainly what I can only call an expression of destruction." The man lives on physically, yet without vitality, without real life. But it was otherwise with the Forbidden Corner, for soon "it lay untouched, full of great, luscious, driving weeds and creepers, very strong, full-fed and bursting thick with life."

And so the vampire stories vary in theme and in treatment. Indian folk-tales appearing in English show that the Jigar-Khor, or Liver-eater of India is a cousin to the vampire, for he can steal your liver by just looking at you. (It has long been known that hearts can be filched in this way, but the liver wrinkle is a new one.) There are several points to be noted in connection with these stories of the Un-dead, the incorruptible corpses, the loathsome spirits that haunt the living. Many of the stories have a setting in the countries where the vampire superstition has been most common, though there are English settings as well. Continental countries are richer in vampire lore than England, which explains the location of the incidents even in many English stories and poems. Another point to be noted is the agreement of the stories in the essential features. While there are numerous variants, of course, there is less divergence than in the case of ghosts, for instance. The description of the dæmonic spirit tenanting the body of a dead person, driving him by a dreadful urge to attack the living, especially those dear to him in life, is much the same. The personality of the vampire may vary, in one line of stories being a young woman who lures men to death, in the other a man who must quench his thirst with the blood of brides. These are the usual types, though there are other variants.

=The Werewolf and Others.= Another dæmonic figure popular in fiction is the werewolf. The idea is a very old one, having been mentioned by various classical writers, it is said, including Pomponius Mela, Herodotus, and Ovid. The legend of the werewolf is found in practically all European countries, especially those where the wolf is common. In France many stories of the loup-garou are current. The werewolf is a human being cursed with the power or the obligation to be transformed into an animal who goes forth to slay and devour. Like a vampire, he might become such as a curse from God, or he might be an innocent victim, or might suffer from an atavistic tendency, a cannibalistic craving for blood. Distinction is to be made between the real werewolf and the lycanthrope,--the latter a human being who, on account of some peculiar twist of insanity, fancies himself a wolf and acts accordingly. There is such a character in _The Duchess of Malfi_, a maniac who thinks himself a mad wolf, and another in _The Albigenses_, a creature that crouches in a corner of its lair, gnawing at a skull snatched from the graveyard, uttering bestial growls. Algernon Blackwood has a curdling story of lycanthropy, where the insane man will eat nothing but raw meat and devours everything living that he can get hold of. He confesses to a visitor that he used to bite his old servant, but that he gave it up, since the old Jew tasted bitter. The servant also is mad, and "hides in a vacuum" when his master goes on a rampage. Stories of lycanthropy illustrate an interesting aspect of the association between insanity and the supernatural in fiction.

The most revolting story of lycanthropy is in Frank Norris's posthumous novel, _Vandover and the Brute_. This is a study in soul degeneration, akin to the moral decay that George Eliot has shown in the character of Tito Melema, but grosser and utterly lacking in artistic restraint. We see a young man, at first sensitive, delicate, and with high ideals, gradually through love of ease and self-indulgence, through taking always the line of least resistance, becoming a moral outcast. The brute that ever strains at the leash in man gains the mastery and the artist soul ends in a bestial creature. Dissipation brings on madness, called by the doctors "lycanthropy-mathesis." In his paroxysms of insanity the wretch thinks that his body is turned into the beast that his soul symbolizes, and runs about his room, naked, four-footed, growling like a jungle animal and uttering harsh, raucous cries of _Wolf-wolf!_

Kipling's _The Mark of the Beast_ is midway between a lycanthrope and a werewolf story, for while the soul of the beast--or whatever passes for the brutish soul--enters into the man and drives out his spirit, and while many bestial characteristics result, including the revolting odor, the man does not change his human form.

While lycanthropy has never been a frequent theme in fiction, the werewolf is a common figure, appearing in various forms of literature, from medieval ballads and legends to modern short stories. Marie de France, the Anglo-Norman writer,[153] tells of a werewolf that is by day a gallant knight and kindly gentleman, yet goes on nocturnal marauding expeditions. When his wife shows curiosity concerning his absences and presses him for an explanation, he reluctantly tells her that he is a werewolf, hiding his clothes in a hollow tree, and that if they were removed he would have to remain a wolf. She has her lover steal his clothes, then marries the lover. One day long afterward the king's attention is called to a wolf that runs up to him and acts strangely. It is a tame and well-mannered beast till the false knight and his wife appear, when he tries to tear their throats. Investigation reveals the truth, the clothes are fetched, and the curse removed. Arthur O'Shaughnessy's modern version of this, as of others of Marie's _lais_, is charming.

[153] In her lay of _Bisclavret_.

Like the vampire, the werewolf is under a curse that impels him to prey upon those dearest to him. Controlled by a dæmonic spirit, the human being, that in his normal personality is kindly and gentle, becomes a jungle beast with ravening instincts. The motif is obviously tangled up with the vampire superstition here, and it would be interesting, if possible, to trace out the two to a point of combination. This irresistible impulse to slay his dear ones introduces a dramatic element into the plot, here as in the vampire stories. The wolf is not the only animal around whom such plots center, but being most common he has given his name to the type. _The Albigenses_ tell of a young husband who, as a werewolf, slays his bride, then vanishes to be seen no more.

There are interesting variants of the werewolf story, introducing other elements of supernaturalism. In _A Vendetta of the Jungle_,[154] we have the idea of successive infection of the moral curse, similar to the continuation of vampirism. Mrs. Crump, a lady in India, is eaten by a tiger, who has a good digestion for he assimilates not only her body but her soul. So that now it is Mrs. Crump-Tiger, we might say, that goes about the jungle eating persons. In time she devours her successor in her husband's affection. The man is aware that it is his first wife who has eaten his second, so he starts out to kill the animal to clear off the score. But by the time he reaches the jungle the beast has had time to digest his meal and when the husband levels his gun to fire, the eyes that look out at him from the brutish face are his beloved's eyes. What could he do?

[154] By Arthur Applier and H. Sidney Warwick.

Eugene Field gives a new turn to the idea by representing the werewolf curse as a definite atavistic throw-back. His wolf-man is an innocent marauder, the reincarnation of a wicked grandfather, yet a gentle, chivalrous soul very different from his grandparent. The old gentleman has left him heir to nothing but the curse and a magic spear given him by the witch Brunhilde. The werewolf bears a charmed life against which no weapon of man can avail, and the country is panic-stricken over his ravages. The legend is that the beast's fury cannot be stopped till some man offers himself as a voluntary sacrifice to the wolf. The youth does not know that he is the guilty one until his reprehensible grandfather appears to him in a vision, demanding his soul. He hears that there is to be a meeting in the sacred grove on a certain day and begs his beloved to remain away, lest the werewolf come. But when she insists that she will go, he gives her his magic spear, telling her to strike the wolf through the heart if he approaches her. True to his accursed destiny the wolf does come to the grove and lunges at the girl. All the men flee but one, and his weapons fail,--then the terrified girl hurls the spear, striking the beast to the heart. But when he falls, it is young Harold who is dying, who has given himself a voluntary sacrifice to save others. The curse is lifted but he is dead.

In _The Camp of the Dog_, by Algernon Blackwood, we have another unconscious werewolf, a gentle, modest, manly young fellow madly in love with a girl who doesn't care for him. In his sleep he goes questing for her. While his body lies shrunken on a cot in his tent, his soul takes the form of a wolf and goes to the hilltop, uttering unearthly howls. By an equally strong psychic disturbance the girl is impelled to go in a somnambulistic state to the hilltop. Each is in waking hours utterly unaware of their strange jaunts, till the father shoots the wolf. The young man in this case suffers only curious psychic wounds, from which he recovers when the girl promises to marry him, and the wolf is seen no more.

The panther plays his part in this were-menagerie. Ambrose Bierce, in _The Eyes of the Panther_, tells of a young girl who, because of a prenatal curse similar to that affecting Elsie Venner, is not wholly human. She is conscious of her dual nature and tells the man she loves that she cannot marry him since she is a panther by night. He thinks her mildly insane till one night a settler sees a beast's eyes glaring into his window and fires. When they follow the blood-tracks, they find the girl dying. This is one of the conventions of the werewolf story, the wounding of an animal that escapes and the blood-trail that leads to a human being wounded just as the beast was.

Elliott O'Donnell, in a volume called _Werewolves_ published in London in 1912, gives serious credence to the existence of werewolves not only in the past but also in the present. He tells a number of stories of what he claims are authenticated instances of such beings in actual life. He relates the experience of a man who told him that he had himself seen a youth turn himself into a tiger after preparatory passes of enchantment. The watcher made haste to climb a sacred Vishnu tree when the transformation was complete. O'Donnell tells a tale of a widow with three children that married a Russian nobleman. She saw him and his servant change into werewolves, at least partially, remaining in a half state, devouring her children whom she left behind in her escape.

O'Donnell relates several stories of authentic (according to him) werewolf stories of England in recent times, giving the dates and places and names of the persons who saw the beasts. The incidents may be similar to those spoken of in Dickens's _Haunted House_, where the famous "'ooded woman with the howl" was seen,--or at least, many persons saw the owl and knew that the woman must be near by. These witnesses of werewolves may have seen animals, all right enough. Modernity is combined with medieval superstition here, and it seems uncanny, for instance, to identify a werewolf by means of an electric pocket flashlight.

In collections of folk-tales, the tribal legends of the American redmen as well as of Kipling's India and of England, there are various stories of werewolves. Among primitive peoples there is a close relation between the brute and the human and the attributing of human characteristics and powers to the beast and _vice versa_ is common, so that this supernatural transfer of personality is natural enough. A madwolf might suggest the idea for a werewolf.

Algernon Blackwood advances the theory that the werewolf is a true psychical fact of profound importance, however it may have been garbled by superstition. He thinks that the werewolf is the projection of the untamed slumbering sanguinary instincts of man, "scouring the world in his fluidic body, the body of desire." As the mind wanders free from the conscious control of the will in sleep, so the body may free itself from the fetters of mind or of custom and go forth in elemental form to satisfy its craving to slay, to slake its wild thirst for blood. O'Donnell says that werewolves may be phantasms of the dead that cannot be at peace, or a certain kind of Elementals. He also thinks that they may be the projection of one phase of man's nature, of the cruelty latent in mankind that seeks expression in this way. According to that theory, a chap might have a whole menagerie inside him, to turn loose at intervals, which would be exciting but rather risky for society. It was doubtless a nature such as this that Maupassant attempts to describe in his story _The Wolf_, where the man has all the instincts of the wolf yet never changes his human form.

The werewolf in fiction has suffered the same leveling influence that we have observed in the case of the ghost, the devil, the witch, and the vampire. He is becoming a more psychical creature, a romantic figure to be sympathized with, rather than a beast to be utterly condemned. In recent fiction the werewolf is represented as an involuntary and even unconscious departure from the human, who is shocked when he learns the truth about himself. Whether he be the victim of a divine curse, an agent of atavistic tendencies, or a being who thus gives vent to his real and brutish instincts, we feel a sympathy with him. We analyze his motives--at a safe distance--seek to understand his vagaries and to estimate his kinship with us. We think of him now as a noble figure in fiction, a lupine Galahad like Blackwood's, a renunciatory hero like Eugene Field's or what not. Or we reflect that he may be a case of metempsychosis and treat him courteously, for who knows what we may be ourselves some day? The werewolf has not figured in poetry or in the drama as have other supernatural beings, as the ghost, the devil, the witch, the vampire,--one wonders why. He is a dramatic figure and his character-analysis might well furnish themes for poetry though stage presentation would have its difficulties.

* * * * *

Perhaps the revival of interest in Elizabethan literature has had a good deal to do with the use of supernatural beings in literature of recent times. The devil and the dæmonic spirits he controls, the witches and wizards, the vampires, the enchanted animals, to whom he delegates a part of his infernal power, appear as impressive moral allegories, mystical stories of life, symbols of truths. As literature is a reflection of life, the evil as well as the good enters in. But since the things of the spirit are intangible they must be represented in concrete form, as definite beings whom our minds can apprehend. Thus the poets and dramatists and story-makers must show us images to shadow forth spiritual things. As with a shudder we close the books that tell us horrifying tales of satanic spirits, of accursed beings that are neither wholly animal nor human, of mortals with diabolic powers, we shrink from the evils of the soul that they represent, and recognize their essential truth in the guise of fiction.