Cloudesley; A Tale. By the Author of Caleb Williams
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
source date: May 1830

Mary Shelley Cloudesley; A Tale. By the Author of Caleb Williams. [London, Colburn and Bentley, 1830 [Shelley's note]. This article appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 27 (May 1830): 711-16. This review article is tentatively attributed to Mary Shelley in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 , ed. Wa;ter E. Houghton, University of Toronto Press, 1966. This edition of the article was prepared for The Criticism Archive by Victoria L. Stewart and Mary A. Waters.]

In his able preface to this work, Mr Godwin sets the writer of fiction in a very high place. He compares him with the historian and the dramatist, and gives him the preference. He says—and his late occupation of the History of the Commonwealth has informed him of the truth of the assertion—that "individual history and biography are mere guesses in the dark." "The writer collects his information of what the great men on the theatre of the world are reported to have said and done, and then endeavours with his best sagacity to find out the explanation; to hit on that thread, woven through the whole contexture of the piece, which, being discovered, we are told

No prodigies remain,
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain. [Alexander Pope, An Epistle To The Right Honourable Richard Lord Visct. Cobham (1733), lines 208-9.]

But man is a more complex machine than is dreamed of in our philosophy, and it is probable that the skill of no moral anatomist has yet been consummate enough fully to solve the obscurities of any one of the great worthies of ancient or modern times." While the writer of fiction, Mr Godwin goes on to say, "when he introduces his ideal personage to the public, enters upon the task with a preconception of the qualities that belong to this being, the principle of his actions and its concomitants. He has thus two advantages: in the first place, his express office is to draw just conclusions from assigned premises, a task of no extraordinary difficulty; and, secondly, while he endeavours to aid those conclusions by consulting the oracle in his bosom, the suggestions of his own heart, instructed as he is besides by a converse with the world, and a careful survey of the encounters that present themselves to his observation, he is much less liable to be cribbed and cabined in by those unlooked-for phenomena, which in the history of an individual seem to have a malicious pleasure in thrusting themselves forward to subvert the best digested theories. In this sense, then, it is infallibly true that fictitious history, when it is the work of a competent hand, is more to be depended upon, and comprises more of the science of man, than whatever can be exhibited by the historian." The writer of fiction, Mr Godwin asserts, has besides many advantages over the dramatist; "he has leisure to ripen his materials; to draw out his results one by one, even as they grow up and unfold themselves in the 'seven ages' of man. He is not confined, like the dramatist, to put down the words that his characters shall utter. He accompanies the language made use of by them with his comments, and explains the inmost thoughts that pass in the bosom of the upright man and the perverse."

Such, indeed, have been the characteristics of Mr Godwin's novels. While other writers represent manners rather than passions, or passions at once vague and incomplete, he conceives, in its entireness, the living picture of an event with all its adjuncts; he sets it down in its vivid reality: no part is dim, no part is tame. We have the clear and distinct representation of his conception, and are made to feel that his portraiture is endowed with the very essence and spirit of our nature. Mr Bulwer had, in his delightful novel of "Pelham," described his idea of a work of fiction. Story, he renders the subordinate. The almost common events of life are his groundwork; or where he mingles the romantic, it is made rather an episode than an intrinsic part of his machinery. Mr Bulwer does not take the materials of the world around, first separating, and then, by aid of the inventive faculty, moulding them into a new form, whose exact appearance depends on a preconceived notion of what must be, to fulfil his idea; but he gives us rather himself, his experience, his opinions, his emotions. The high-wrought and noble tone of his mind spreads a sacred and even mysterious grandeur over his pages. His wit enlivens them, his acute observations and peculiar and beautiful power of poetically linking the apparently dissimilar by their real similitudes, are the value and charm of his works.

But though Mr Bulwer’s exceeding talent exalts this species of compostition, it is not in itself of so high a grade as the other, which in fact almost infringes on the ideality of the drama by a sort of unity, wanting, in what we may call in comparison with this the "narrative," the "didactic novel." The temple which presents to our eyes the proportions and harmonious accords of architecture, is a finer production than a rambling palace, though the apartments of the latter may be more glittering, lustrous, and delightful. There seems in our human nature a necessity of self-restraint, before we can reach the highest kind of excellence. If simplicity is the best,—if those,

Who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth,
Glad hearts without reproach or blot,
Who do thy work and know it not,— [William Wordsworth, Ode to Duty (1807), lines 10-14.]

and if the works which are the type of this artless celestial nature hold the first rank, yet both characters and productions of this kind are too rare and too individual to form a class:[^1] an example they cannot be, for their characteristic is, that they are genuine and untaught. Putting, therefore, these out of the question, I repeat, that a certain degree of obedience to rule and law is necessary for the completion and elevation of our nature and its productions. Of all writers, Shakspeare, whom the ignorant have deemed irregular, is the closest follower of these laws, for he has always a scope and an aim, which, beyond every other writer, he fulfils. The merely copying from our own hearts will no more form a first-rate work of art, than will the most exquisite representation of mountains, water, wood, and glorious clouds, form a good painting, if none of the rules of grouping or colouring are followed. Sir Walter Scott has not attained this master art; his wonderful genius developes itself in individual characters and scenes, unsurpassed, except by Shakspeare, for energy and truth; but his wholes want keeping—often even due connexion.

[^1: The beautiful tale of Rosamond Gray, by Charles Lamb, occurs to us as the most perfect specimen of the species of writing to which we allude [Shelley's note]. Lamb's A Tale of Rosamund Gray, and Old Blind Margaret was published in 1798.]

Of all modern writers, Mr Godwin has arrived most sedulously, and most successfully, at the highest species of perfection his department of art affords. He sketches in his own mind, with a comprehensive and bold imagination, the plan of his work; he digs at the foundations, and learns all the due bearings of his position; he examines his materials, and sees exactly to what purpose each is best fitted; he makes an incident; he unerringly divines the results, both of the event and passion, which this incident will bring forth. By dint of the mastery of thought, he transfuses himself into the very souls of his personages; he dives into their secret hearts, and lays bare, even to their anatomy, their workings; not a pulsation escapes him,—while yet all is blended into one whole, which forms the pervading impulse of the individual he brings before us. Who, remembering Falkland, but feels as if he had stood by that noble ruin, and watching its downfall! Who but writhes under the self-dejection of Mandeville, and feels the while his own heart whisper fearful oracles of the tameless and sad incongruities of our souls! Who but exulted madly with St Leon, when he obtained his specious gifts! We pass with their creator into the very form and frame of his creatures: our hearts swell responsive to every emotion he delineates. When we heard of another tale by the same author, we wondered what new magic circle was traced, within which we were to stand side by side with the enchanter, seeing the spirits that rise to his call, enthralled by the spell he casts over us.

Cloudesley is before us, a fresh example of what we have been saying. This tale contains a train of events, each naturally flowing one from the other, and each growing in importance and dignity as they proceed. We have no extraneous ornaments; no discursive flights. Comparing this book with others, we felt as if we had quitted gardens and parks, and tamer landscapes, for a scene on nature's grandest scale; that we wandered among giants' rocks, "the naked bones of the world waiting to be clothed." [Shelley paraphrases Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Letter V.] We use this quotation, because it suggested itself to our minds as we read these volumes, but we must guard our meaning from the idea of there being any turgidness in Cloudesley. Grace and dignity, joined to power, are its characteristics. The first volume is the least interesting. The author digs at the foundation, and then places the first stones; then we begin to feel the just proportions and promising beauty of the plan, till the tantalizing work of preparation finally yields to the full manifestation of the conception of the artist. If we may be permitted another metaphor, and this last is the most just, we will say that this work reminds us of the solemn strain of some cathedral organ. First, a few appropriate chords are fitfully and variously struck; a prelude succeeds to awaken our attention, and then rises the full peal, which swells upon the ear, till the air appears overcharged and overflowing with majestic harmonies. As far as an image can go, this exactly pourtrays our sensations on reading Cloudesley. The composer rapts us from ourselves, filling our bosoms with new and extraordinary emotions, while we sit soul-enchained by the wonders of his art.

The story of Cloudesley is of the younger brother of a nobleman, placed under peculiarly tempting circumstances, on the death of his elder, of his concealing that elder's new-born heir, and so stepping into the place and honours of the orphan. We have here three prominent characters;—the guilty uncle, his agent, who conceals and brings up the child, and the child himself. The contrast of these situations and characters produces a group matchless for interest, while the circumstances that grow out of the first committed fraud, are the influences that mould these characters at will. The conflicting emotions of the uncle are first brought forward, and then the remorse that quickly follows his crime. Remorse it may emphatically be called, and not repentance, since he does not desire to repair the injuries he has committed: a carking, self-consuming bitterness of spirit. He hates himself—but no love for another engenders a generous return to right. He finds himself the very dupe of ambition;—he wished to be the peer he would naturally have become, had his brother died childless,—so he puts aside the child, and assumes his station in the world, and then finds that he is not what he expected to be. Not the noble, the gentleman of vast possessions, inheritor of a spotless name; not the lineal successor to honours and power, such as thousands would envy. This, indeed, he appears in the eyes of the world, but in his own heart, he knows himself to be the opposite of this. He is a robber, a swindler, a villain; he would exchange back all for his former innocence, but his terror of infamy is greater than his love for virtue, and he clings tenaciously to the fruits of his crime, as the sole compensation for the consciousness of guilt. Remorse is at first a trifling punishment. God's justice follows in the premature deaths of his own children, and the loss of his beloved wife: he feels the finger of the Eternal marking with torturous traces in his soul the judgement due to crime.

More slowly—for he has no instinct of nature to quicken his emotions—the agent of the false uncle, Cloudesley, awakes to penitence. Remorse in the brother was inspired by the injury he had done the dead, in Cloudesley, by that inflicted on the living. In the former it was a barren feeling, wasting the soul; in the latter, quickened into life by the spirit of love, it grows into an earnest desire to repair the wrongs in which he took part. Thus he devotes himself to the preservation and education of the orphan boy. And here we have the third personage. The description of the bringing up of the injured outcast child, is replete with grace, and with many a lesson to be conned by parents, and followed by preceptors. Time rolls on, bringing to maturity these seeds of events, these various elements of passion and of action, until there grows up before one’s eyes their natural results, recorded by the hand of truth, graced by the charms of imagination.

At first Cloudesley's penitence manifests itself by the exemplary attention and affection which he bestows on his charge. He is a father to him in appearance; in reality, almost more, being tutor and servant at the same time, as he is the protector. He considers the injured offspring of his early and kind patron as a being superior to himself, whom he reverences as well as loves. As the boy grows up, he becomes more keenly alive to the injustice done him. He remonstrates with the usurper by letter, vainly. The only effect of his epistle is to increase the wretchedness of the successful criminal, not to change his intents. At last he visits him in person, and their interview is a highly-wrought scene of passionate eloquence. Still the uncle is obdurate. Cloudesley educated his ward in Italy. He had to travel far northward to seek his false relative. He leaves the boy, the nursling of love, on whose ear no unkind or harsh work had ever grated, under the guardianship of a man whose integrity, strangely blended with rudeness, renders him a very unfitting supplier of his place. This event brings on the catastrophe. We will not mar its interest by a lame abridgement. It is the peculiar excellence of Mr Godwin's writing, that there is not a word too much, and curtailment of the narrative would be like displaying the unfilled-up outline of beauty; we might feel that it was there, and yet remain in ignorance of its peculiar features. The interest is imperative, but unconstrained; nature dwells paramount in every part. As it proceeds, it becomes high-wrought, without being harrowing. To the end, the tragedy is tempered by the softest spirit of humanity; it touches the verge of terror, only to bring us the more soothingly back to milder feelings. We close the book, not tantalized by a sense of the injustice of fate, nor tormented by a painful depicting of unrebuked guilt, but with a compassion for the criminal, and a love or admiration for the innocent, at once elevating and delightful. The few last pages are indeed a record of truths and sentiments, which, as coming from one who has lived so long, and, synonymous with this expression, suffered so much, inculcates a philosophy very opposite from the misanthropical one so prevalent a little while ago.

Mr Godwin's style is at once simple and energetic; it is full, without being inflated. We turn over the pages to seek an impressive passage, but it is difficult to find one sufficiently disconnected with the story, to quote. The description of the feelings of the unhappy deceived man of ambition, when he first finds himself fully entered on the path of guilt, is full of eloquence. Thus he speaks:

It was my determination to return with all practicable speed to the British dominions. I loathed the country which had been the scene of these recent events. They had succeeded each other with such rapidity, as to confound my apprehension. I felt as if I had a load of guilt on my soul, almost too vast and overpowering for human ability to endure. My feelings were those of a murderer! And yet I had committed no murder. Could I not with a safe conscience assure myself that I had in no way been a party to the destruction of Arthur, or of Irene? Their child was not dead. But he was by my means civilly dead to his property, his rank, and his country. I had determined that he should be an outcast, belonging to no one, an uncertain and solitary wanderer on the face of nature!

Oh! how I detested myself in the recollection of the base and hypocritical scene that I had caused to be played in the presence of the corpse of Irene! I had laid by her chaste and spotless side, the corpse of a child, the offspring of disgrace and infamy! I have often read that the blood of a murdered man would flow anew from his veins the instant his body was touched by the finger of his murderer. Well might I have expected that the hapless Irene should start again into life with indignation at the lie I imposed upon her, the contamination with which I approached her. She was certainly dead! If the smallest particle of perception had remained in any portion of her frame, it would have shrunk and shuddered on this dreadful occasion. I had tried the question to its utmost. I had never seen death till now. Never was such a penetrating trial, such a demonstrative ordeal of its reality, devised by man. Her features were calm; there was a sweet and complacent serenity on her countenance. She was turned to earth. (Vol. ii p. 38.)

I was alone in my carriage as I traversed Germany from Vienna to Ostend, or worse than alone, with my valet in the same vehicle to speak when he was spoken to, and do as he was directed. I traversed in my route many extensive forests and many sandy and dismal plains. My journey was made in the blackest and most naked season of the year. Dark clouds were perpetually hurried along the horizon, and the air was nipping and severe. I seldom slept in my carriage, but was left to the uncomfortable communion of my own thoughts. I slept not, but was lost in long and vague reveries, unconscious how the time passed, but feeling that it was insupportably monotonous and tedious. My mind was in that state in which a man has an undefined feeling that he exists, but in which his sensations rarely shape themselves into any thing that deserves the name of thought.

In this situation, particularly when the shades of evening began to prevail, and in the twilight, my senses were bewitched, and I seemed to see a multitude of half-formed visions. Once, especially, as I passed through a wood by moonlight, I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon them. The countenance was as white as death, and the expression was past speaking pitiful. It was by degrees that the features shewed themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow. I gazed upon it intently. Presently, it faded away by as insensible degrees as those by which it had become thus agonizingly clear. After a short time it returned. I saw also Irene and the child, living and dead, and then living again. No tongue can tell what I endured on these occasions. It was a delirium and confusion and agitation that continued for hours. The fits were not periodical. If I had a visitation of this kind at night, that afforded no security that it would not return in the morning, and again at noon. My appetite deserted me, my eyes became fiery and bloodshot. (Vol ii. p. 45.)

We lingered to select another extract from many beautiful passages, containing descriptions first of the domestic happiness, and then of the misfortunes, of the usurper: we feel inclined to take instead, the description of the injured boy himself, as containing one of the sweetest pictures of educated, civilized youth we ever remember to have read:

In the various pursuits, therefore, of classical studies and the English language, in a word, of every thing adapted to his years, the progress of Julian was at this time astonishingly rapid. In the course of the next six or seven years, he shook off every thing that was childish and puerile, without substituting in its stead the slightest tincture of pedantry. The frankness and nobility of his spirit defended him from all danger on that side. The constitution of his nature was incapable of combining itself with any alloy of the fop or the coxcomb. All his motions were free, animated, and elastic. They sprung into being instant, and as by inspiration, without waiting to demand the sanction of the deliberative faculty. They were born perfect, as Minerva is feigned to have sprung in complete panoply from the head of Jove. The sentiments of his mind unfolded themselves, without trench or wrinkle, in his honest countenance and impassioned features. Into that starry region no disguise could ever intrude; and the clear and melodious tones of his voice were a transparent medium to the thoughts of his heart. Persuasion hung on all he said, and it was next to impossible that the most rugged nature and the most inexorable spirit should dispute his bidding. And this was the case, because all he did was in love, in warm affection, in a single desire for the happiness of those about him. Every one hastened to perform his behests, because the idea of empire and command never entered into his thoughts. He seemed as if he lived in a world made expressly for him, so precisely did all with whom he came into contact appear to form their tone on his.

And, in the midst of all his studies and literary improvement, he in no wise neglected any of that bodily dexterity by which he had been early distinguished. His mastery in swimming, in handling the dart and the bow, in swiftness of foot, and in wrestling, kept pace with his other accomplishments. Nor was his corporal strength any way behind his other endowments. He could throw the discus higher and farther than any of his competitors. But his greatest excellence in this kind was in horsemanship. He sprang from the ground like a bird, as if his natural quality had been to mount into the air. He vaulted into his seat like an angel that had descended into it from the conveyance of a sunbeam. He had a favourite horse, familiar, as it were, with all the thoughts of his rider, and that shewed himself pleased and proud of the notice of the noble youth. He snorted, and bent his neck in the most graceful attitudes, and beat the ground with his hoofs, and shewed himself impatient for the signal to leave the goal, and start into his utmost speed. Julian was master of his motions. He would stop, and wind, and exhibit all his perfection of paces, with a whisper, or the lifting of a finger, from him whose approbation excited in the animal the supremest delight. In a word, Julian won the favour of his elders by the clearness of his apprehension, and his progress in every thing that was taught him; and of his equals, by his excellence in all kinds of sport and feats of dexterity, which could be equalled only by the modesty, the good humour, and accommodating spirit, with which he bore his honours, rendering others almost as well satisfied with his superiority as if the triumph had been their own. (Vol. ii p. 184.)

Mr Godwin quotes three lines from the Iliad, applicable to himself, as Homer made them applicable to Nestor. "Two generations of speech-gifted men had passed away, with whom he had dwelt in green Pylos: he now lived among the third."[^2] Well may Mr Godwin be proud of emulating

Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skill'd, [Along with the next quoted line, also from Book I of Alexander Pope's 1715-1720 translation of Homer's Illiad .]

[^2: Thus paraphrased by Pope, and so changed by him as to be inadmissable by the author:

Two generations now had pass'd away,
Wise by his rules, and happy by his sway;
Two ages o'er his native realm he reign'd,
And now the example of the third remain'd.

[Shelley's note]. The quote is from Book I of Alexander Pope's 1715-1720 translation of Homer's Illiad .]

who

Words sweet as honey from his lips distill'd.

It is a proud distinction thus to retain the power of creative thought, at a time when the grave is all too near, and our material frames are burdened with tokens of affinity to the clod beneath. To see mind triumph over mortality, the flame burning brighter, and yet more gently, in the decay of our animal powers, is in itself a tale to ponder over with a glad and thankful spirit. This last emanation of the master-mind of Godwin bears in it a soothing mildness, that reminds us of Wordsworth's exquisite description of

An old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night. [William Wordsworth, "To a Young Lady, Who had been reproached for taking long Walks in the Country" (1815), lines 17-18.]

Here is nothing harsh and crabbed, nothing morbid and disheartening: every page displays freshness and vigour, each one containing some lesson to teach us confidence, love, and hope. This philosophy, as emanting from experience, is a precious boon, such as, since the days of the philosophers of old, has seldom been bequeathed to us. Let the reader turn to the last page of the third volume, and learn thence, that a glory still remains to the earth, an attribute to our mortal natures, that must elevate and bless us while man remains; and let our hearts exult, when one of the wisest men of this or any age tells us, that "the true key of the universe is love." [From Cloudesley , vol. 3, p. 352.]