 WRITING
FOR THE SPECTRE OF
POVERTY
Exhuming Sarah Wilkinson’s Bluebooks and Novels
Franz Potter
I
In 1803, a curious account was
appended to a short Gothic tale that appeared
in the Tell-Tale Magazine; it was
published anonymously and narrated the distressing
and dismal ‘Life of an Authoress , Written by
Herself’. It was published as a
warning [to] every indigent
woman, who is troubled with the itch of scribbling,
to beware of my unhappy fate […] and beg her to
take this advice; that, whatever share of learning
or wit she may have, if she has nothing better
to recommend her to public favour, she must be
content to hunger and thirst all her days in a
garret, as I have done. [ 1]
The unfortunate ‘authoress’,
after a series of distressing circumstances, had
found herself alone in London and determined to
subsist as a writer of novels. Reduced to her
last five guineas, by ‘scribbling night and day’
she finished a four-volume novel. She approached
a bookseller, but the naïve ‘authoress’ was greatly
shocked at his terse response:
A novel! Nothing of this kind
is now read, I assure you. Novels are a
drug; a mere drug: they are as dead a weight upon
our hands as sermons. Surely, Madam, you
must know that this kind of writing is perfectly
exploded! No such things are read now-a-days (p. 32).
Distressed to the find the novel
out of fashion and further reduced to poverty,
the authoress is compelled to
undertake the most slavish
of all employments, that of translating […] for
the booksellers. The life of a galley-slave is
even preferable to my state of slavery: I am a
beggar, without enjoying air and liberty: I have
the confinement of a servant, with the regular
diet and wages which a servant receives, and am
condemned to perform a severe task, by a certain
period of time, which, when with the utmost difficulty
it is performed, I am often obliged to transcribe
the whole work again […] To add to my distresses,
I have written myself almost blind, with continually
poring on the old authors I have been so long
engaged with; and have, besides, from the constant
posture of writing, contracted a disorder in my
lungs, which, I imagine, will soon put an end
to a life of pain and misery (pp. 33–34).
The ‘authoress’, concluding her
own tale, admonishes other women to ‘apply themselves
sooner to the spinning-wheel, than the
pen, that they may not be pining, with
hunger and cold, in a wretched garret’ (p. 34).
The ‘authoress’ in this case was Sarah Wilkinson
and her life and texts illustrate the unique diversification
of Gothic fiction that occurred during the first
three decades of the nineteenth century. Her vast
output of varied fiction—some twenty-nine volumes
and above a hundred smaller publications—illustrates
the demanding conditions ‘trade’ authors, who
produced fiction as part of a profitable industry
rather than an art form, endured living by the
pen. [2]
Born
on 14 December 1779 to William and Hannah Wilkinson,
Sarah Carr Wilkinson, like many of her contemporaries
including Eliza Parsons , Charlotte Smith and
Frances Burney, ‘lived by the pen’; but unlike
these authors, she never had the comfort of literary
or economic success. Her life was unmistakably
difficult and fraught with hardship and illness.
Little is known about Wilkinson’s early life or
education, apart from that she was ‘selected by
Mrs. [Frances] Fielding as one of the young persons
who read to her mother Lady C[harlotte] Finch
when deprived of sight’. [3]
Charlotte Finch (1725–1813), daughter of Thomas
Fermor, Earl of Pomfret, was the Governess of
the children of King George III between 1762 and
1792. The relationship between Wilkinson and the
Pomfrets would indeed last throughout her long
life; many of her works are dedicated to members
of that family. However, the publication of three
textbooks for schools strongly suggests that she
was well educated and was perhaps a governess
or educator. [4]
Sarah
Wilkinson’s literary career began in 1803 with
several short works appearing in Ann Lemoine ’s
Tell-Tale Magazine, a periodical
specialising in short stories that were simultaneously
sold as bluebooks: typical examples include The
Subterraneous Passage ; or the Gothic Cell
and Lord Gowen; or, the Forester’s Daughter.
Robert Mayo, in The English Novel in the Magazines
1740–1815, speculates that the amount of ‘short
stories’ published by Wilkinson in the Tell-Tale
suggests that she was actually the ‘editor’ of
the magazine, though there is little evidence
beyond an extraordinary production of sixteen
‘tales’ to substantiate this claim. [5]
Between 1803 and 1806 she published at least sixteen
bluebooks with Lemoine including Horatio and
Camilla: Or, the Nuns of St Mary
(1804) and The Water Spectre; or, An Bratach
(1805); most of these bluebooks, but not all,
appeared in the Tell-Tale Magazine. However,
Wilkinson’s literary relationship with Lemoine
was not exclusive, and she simultaneously published
at least nine bluebooks with five other publishers:
for example, The Ghost of Golini; or, the Malignant
Relative. A Domestic Tale (1820) was published
by Simon Fisher; Zittaw the Cruel: Or, the
Woodman’s Daughter [n.d.] with Mace; Monkcliffe
Abbey (1805) with Kaygill; The Spectre;
or, the Ruins of Belfont Priory (1806) with
J. Ker; and John Bull; or the Englishman’s
Fire-side (1803) with Thomas Hughes.
Sarah
Wilkinson, however, did not confine herself entirely
to bluebooks. In 1806 she published The Thatched
Cottage; or, Sorrows of Eugenia , a Novel
by subscription with Thomas Hughes. The novel
is dedicated to Mrs Frances Fielding (1748–1815)
and the subscribers include the Princesses Sophia
(1777–1848) and Amelia (1783–1810), the Duchess
of Gloucester, the Margravine of Anspach, Lady
Mary Coke (to whom Horace Walpole inscribed the
sonnet which fronts The Castle of Otranto
(1764)), Lady Crespigny, the Right Honourable
Earl of Pomfret, and perhaps, most intriguingly,
a Mr Scadgell.
The
financial success of the her first novel enabled
Wilkinson to commence in the library business
in Westminster at No. 2 Smith-Street; and the
following year she gave birth to a daughter Amelia
Scadgell, though it is unclear whether or not
she married Mr Scadgell. It was about this time
when the name on many of her publications began
to appear as Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson. There is
no proof that the misspelling of her name, however,
was an attempt to use a pseudonym. Many of her
works which appear with Scudgell are published
by Dean & Munday; other publishers did not
adopt the middle name. [6]
Achieving relative success with her library, Wilkinson
continued to publish novels including The Fugitive
Countess; or, the Convent of St Ursula
, a Romance (1807), The Child of Mystery
, a Novel (1808), and the Convent of
the Grey Penitents; or, the Apostate Nun ,
a Romance (1810). The modest success of her
novels, however, was offset by the failure of
the library sometime after 1811; to survive, Wilkinson
was compelled to take lodgers into her home, an
arrangement which lasted some years ‘till overwhelmed
with losses by lodgers due to sickness and domestic
troubles’, she returned to teaching and living
by the pen (RLF, 10 February 1824).
Wilkinson
began teaching at the White Chapel Free School
on Gower Walk, sometime after 1812; and writing
for periodical publications (‘Torbolton Abbey
’ in New Gleaner in 1810), and only occasionally
publishing Gothic bluebooks such as Priory
of St Clair; or, Spectre of the Murdered Nun
(1811) and Edward and Agnes (1812), both
with Arliss. After 1812, however, she began to
exclusively focus on writing children’s books;
these included
a vast number of books, of
which she can pretend no merit but their moral
tendency amongst the later ones, are local geography,
William’s Tour, or, a peep into numbers, Jack
and his Grandmother, or, Pounds, Shillings, and
Pence, Moral Emblems, Aunt Anne’s Gift, Mary and
her Doll, or, the new A, B, C, and the whole forming
a set for the nursery and may be purchased at
Mr. Bailey’s 116 Chancy Lane […] (RLF, 15 November
1820)
In 1819, Wilkinson returned to
the Gothic, publishing the novel The Bandit
of Florence (re-titled New Tales (1819)
by the publisher Matthew Iley). That same year,
on the recommendation of a Mrs Lovell, the Headmistress
of the White Chapel Free School, she was engaged
to be the ‘Mistress of the [Free] School at Bray
in Berkshire, at a very good salary, coach and
a house to live in and my child to be with me
and expect to be sent for with every prospect
of being comfortable for life’ (RLF, 1819). But
her health, which had been steadily declining
since 1816, forced her to resign just nine months
later; cancer had developed under her right arm.
Wilkinson
returned to Westminster in May of 1820, but deprived
of a constant income, she again turned to the
pen, publishing at least seven bluebooks, four
Valentine Readers [7]
, serving ‘several persons regularly with periodical
publications and some small shops with small books
wholesale which is at present until I can get
some employment to occupy my time and only means
of subsistence’ (RLF, 15 November 1820) and also
publishing Lanmere Abbey, in two volumes,
re-titled The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey; or,
the Mystery of the Blue and Silver Bag, a Romance
(1820) with William Mason. Later that year she
opened a parlour which sold small books and pictures
for children (RLF, 15 November 1820), but found
it increasingly difficult to procure books and
almanacs. The small profits from sales were barely
enough to support herself and Amelia.
In
March 1821, however, Wilkinson’s desperate situation
was somewhat alleviated; she was engaged by the
publishers Dean & Munday to ‘conduct’ a part
of the Lady’s Monthly Museum. Her small
parlour, though, continued to fail, and in a letter
to the Royal Literary Fund she bitterly lamented
that she was not ‘able to earn enough by a business
I follow independent of my pen to procure the
most common necessaries of life’ (RLF, March 1821).
In June she lost both her business and her home
and was again forced to support herself with regular
periodical publications, bluebooks and Valentine
Readers. For the next decade, she had no permanent
home, but was forced to occupy boarding houses.
Unfortunately,
Wilkinson’s difficulties only continued to increase,
an accident of a shutter blowing in high wind,
which broke two segments of glass, causing an
unexpected debt of one pound nine. Unable to pay,
she was summoned to court, and advised to ‘expect
nothing else but confinement and to be taken from
[her] home and Daughter’ (RLF, 12 December 1821).
In desperation she again petitioned the Royal
Literary Fund for assistance, but they twice rejected
her plea. Increasingly frantic, she sought out
a former patron, Lord Pomfret, who interceded
on her behalf with two letters, but only upon
receipt of a letter from her daughter Amelia Scadgell
did the Royal Literary Fund vote her two pounds.
But
as Wilkinson’s ill health continued, more for
the want of necessities (proper food, clothes
and medical attention), than from illness, she
persisted in writing bluebooks, short pieces for
periodicals, children books and ‘moral’ novels.
Unable, however, to support herself, she complained:
I have not the least income
for me and my child and my only certain dependence
half a guinea a month derived from the Ladys Monthly
magazine, called the Museum, repeated confinement
from illness during the last twelvemonths has
not only rendered my poverty more severe, but
compelled me to part with my wearing apparel,
also expecting every hour my few remaining goods
to be seized for arrears of rent […] (RLF, 11
December 1822)
Her distress, however, was further
increased as she was diagnosed with breast cancer
in 1824 and forced to write, once again, to the
Royal Literary Fund for assistance, this time
for an operation at the Westminster Hospital.
Augmenting her misfortune, her new manuscript
entitled The Baronet Widow , in three volumes,
had not yet been published—
a novel but of strict moral
tendency dedicated by permission to Lord Pomfret,
and having several copies of his Lordship and
other noble families I have fair prospect from
the produce should God think it proper to spare
my life to be enabled once more to commence in
the Book trade—the failure of a Bookseller with
whom I had made arrangements has caused a fatal
delay to me, of at least two or three months but
it is now placed at a most respectable house (RLF,
14 January 1824).
These unfortunate circumstances
combined to compel Wilkinson to solicit actively
the support of her publishers in obtaining assistance
from the Royal Literary Fund . Most of her applications
after 1824 were endorsed by individual publishers
and two separate letters were subsequently included
in her petitions:
The Publishers & c. c.
whose names are Undersigned begs permission to
recommend to the consideration of the Honourable
Society that confers the Literary Fund, Mrs. Sarah
Scudgell [sic] Wilkinson as a deserving
Unfortunate individual, deprest by a long and
increasing illness, and the poverty attending
thereon. Also esteeming her worth their notice,
from her Abilities and general deportment while
in their occasional employ as a writer of Original
works, Abridgements, c. c.
Dean and Munday , G. Martin,
Hughes, Dimanche (RLF, 1824).
The obliging publishers included
a Mr E. Langley (whom she had known for eighteen
years), Thomas Hughes, George Martin, Dimanche,
and Dean & Munday—all of whom continually
supported Wilkinson’s application, specifically
underlining her illness and poverty. Another intervention,
this time by Dr. Holland and Sir James Mackintosh,
assisted in placing her daughter Amelia with a
Lady residing in Henley on Thames (RLF, 14 January
1824). [8]
During
1825 Wilkinson’s cancer worsened, and frustration
mounted at continued delay in the publishing of
her novel. The same publishers sent another letter
of support to the Royal Literary Fund , not only
underlining her illness, but emphasising the decline
in the bluebook industry.
Gentleman, The undersigned
Publishers beg to recommend to your consideration
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson as a respectable industrious
person of considerable abilities who has been
occasionally employed by us during a long series
of past years but latterly owing to the introduction
of a small period works in which no original matter
is required the line of literature in which she
principally engaged has been completely stagnated
which as materially tended to increase her distress.
Signed: Mr. Langley, Hughes
(35 Ludgate) and Dean and Munday.
Wilkinson’s applications increasingly
point to the significant decline in the general
book trade and the distress this induces: ‘I need
not point out to you that the depression in the
Book trade and consequently scantiness of employ
in Juvenile works has been great […] Forsake
me and I perish’ (RLF, 12
December 1825). Her application was again endorsed
by Dean & Munday and George Martin. Once more,
she attempted to find work outside of the book
trade, taking embroidery lessons, in the hope
that it would eventually enable her to procure
a more substantial subsistence.
However,
the state of Wilkinson’s health continued to decline
between 1826 and 1827; she underwent two more
operations at St George’s Hospital. During these
difficult times she was ‘chiefly employed in poetry
for the composers of music which I have derived
small endowments’ (RLF, 8 January 1828).
That same year the consequences of the 1826 book
trade crisis cost Wilkinson her one constant employment:
she long conducted a part of
the Ladies Museum a magazine published by Dean
and Munday , Threadneedle (for a series of years)
and by its discontinuation was denied of a Guinea
a month which added to the stagnation of trade
and the introduction of cheap periodicals where
no original matters is required has materially
tended along with her personal afflictions to
a state of poverty she did not in the least anticipate
(RLF, 12 Februrary 1828)
In her last application to the
Royal Literary Fund in 1830, Wilkinson was overwhelmed
by illness and poverty, ‘incapable of procuring
the merest trifling employment’, but had recently
finished The Curator’s Son ‘a novel of
moral and improving tendency’ (RLF, 12 April 1830).
[9]
It was endorsed by Dean & Munday, E. Langley,
George Martin and Mrs Wellington (her landlady,
to whom she owed three months rent). Sometime
after April 1830, destitute and ailing, Sarah
Wilkinson became a resident of St Margaret’s Workhouse,
Westminster. She died 19 March 1831, aged fifty-two.
In ‘The Life of an Authoress
’, written twenty-eight years earlier, Wilkinson
had once expressed the fond hope that a hospital
for ‘decayed’ authors would be established:
I remember to have read in
a periodical paper, some years ago, a proposal
for building an hospital for decayed authors,
which gave me real satisfaction; as I was in hopes
some part of so charitable an institution might
perhaps be appropriated to the relief of decayed
authoresses likewise. If the aged, the sick, and
the blind, are universally esteemed objects of
compassion, how much more so are those who have
so intensely used their understanding for the
benefit of others, that they are thereby rendered
unfit for every self pursuit! How many sublime
geniuses (as a celebrated writer remarks) do we
daily see, who have so long feasted their minds
with pierian delicacies, as to leave their bodies
to perish with hunger and nakedness (p. 28).
For Sarah Wilkinson, living by
the pen was not only financially fraught, but
physically burdensome. She continually sought
to break away from living by the pen, whether
it was through teaching, running a library, a
parlour, or the needle: the pen never brought
the financial reward or personal success she had
so desired.
II
THE
BLUEBOOKS
Sarah Wilkinson is primarily remembered
as the author of well over one hundred ‘short tales’,
chapbooks, or bluebooks, at least fifty of those, Gothic.
The majority of these bluebooks were composed between
1803 and 1812; and, after 1820, published with at least
twenty-five publishers. Wilkinson’s most important attribute
as a bluebooker was the ability to construct clear and
simple story lines free from dense subplotting that
often encumbered Gothic novels. Her bluebooks are derived
from a mixture of Lewisite horror and Radcliffean terror
with equal proficiency and familiarity with both branches
of Gothic fiction. What Wilkinson does is to blend the
pleasing aesthetics and the enticing suspension of terror
found in Radcliffe and the rapidity of horrifying shocks
distinctive of Lewis . Her heroes and heroines are archetypal
Radcliffe: not only are they noble, they are sensitive;
prone to appreciate the aesthetics of ruins, quick to
haughtily dismiss any suggestions of the supernatural;
nevertheless, they are predictably positioned in a Lewisite
landscape of spectres and blood. Her stories, though,
never divest themselves of the genteel trappings of
the Gothic in favour of gratuitous horror. In The
Spectre; or, the Ruin of Belfont Priory (1806),
for instance, it is the noble Theodore Montgomery and
Matilda Maxwell, compelled to reside in the haunted
Belfont priory, who are confronted by two horrific,
albeit noble, spectres, yet the hapless Harmina in The
Castle of Montabino; or, the Orphan Sisters (1809),
the daughter of a jeweller, though confined to a turret,
never sees a ghost. In The Mysterious Novice; or,
Convent of the Grey Penitents (1809), [10]
for example, the narrative is clear and compelling,
nevertheless, it possesses an overwrought, abbreviated
style and a simple clichéd setting. However, this example
does not justify the common complaint that ‘horror in
all of the shilling shockers is rapid, crude, and where
Sarah Wilkinson’s bloody pen is involved,—an arrant
act of Gothic plundering’. [11]
On the
contrary, Wilkinson’s handling of horrific wandering
spectres (murderers and murdered), like those whose
‘body [was] covered with wounds, and one large gash
in his forehead, from which the blood still appeared
to flow in copious streams’, [12]
is measured and leisurely, never hurried or vulgar.
While Sarah Wilkinson is at her most Gothic in bluebooks,
it is in these works that she also comes the closest
to parodying the mode. For example, in The Eve of
St Mark; or, the Mysterious Spectre. A Romance
(1820), published by J. Bailey, the heroine, Margaret,
daughter of the Steward of the De Clifford Family, utilises
well-known Gothic strategies (for instance, the animated
portrait) to deceive her parents about her attachment
to the Earl De Clifford. The character of Margaret was
readily identifiable to the readers of Gothic fiction:
‘Margaret was very romantic, and well skilled in all
legendary tenets, nor was there a tale of horror or
interest on the shelves of the circulating library in
the next town but what had passed through her fair hands.’
[13]
As Jane Austen gently derided Catherine Morland’s longing
for ‘Gothic’ adventures in her visit to the Tilneys’
country home in Northanger Abbey
(1818), Wilkinson’s Margaret is similarly portrayed
as unable to discern fiction from reality, steeping
herself in local legend and tales of castles.
Margaret frequently dressed her head
so as to resemble the picture, and, in fact, almost fancied
herself a Lady Bertha. She sighed for the young Hubert
of the Glen Cottage, a lover as romantic as herself, but,
of course, wished for a happier denouement of their love,
and that Hubert of the nineteenth century might not prove
like his name-sake of old, and stab the resemblance of
Bertha to the heart should her truant fancy prefer another.
(p. 6)
A working knowledge of Gothic motifs,
however, allows Wilkinson (and Margaret) to exploit
and exaggerate the familiar experience of the animated
portrait:
Accordingly, at the appointed hour, the earl assembled
his family in the room so long known as Lady Bertha’s;
some were very loath indeed to come, and their footsteps
moved very tardily, but my lord would be obeyed, and
no one was excused except Mr. Cavendish, from this domestic
assemblage. Earl De Clifford heard some of them whispering
that there ought to be a clergyman present. ‘You are
mistaken, my good friends,’ said he, ‘I am not going
to exorcise the spirits in a common way; such a charming
creature must not be treated like a common ghost. No,
I will woo her for a bride—descend, my gentle Bertha,
and fill these adoring arms.’
Obedient to his call
the lovely figure stept out of the frame upon a table
that stood close to it, from thence on a chair, and
thence, by the aid of a foot-stool, to the ground.
Her ladyship descended
with cautious slowness, when most of the domestics took
to flight, precipitating one another down the back stairs,
without ceremony, as if they thought the old saying
held good, of woe be to the hindmost—as for those that
remained, their good sense led them to perceive a happy
termination to the romance of real life.
Lady Bertha glided to
the outstretched arms of the earl, while the canvass
shewed that the painted figure had been cut out and
a niche behind the frame had opportunely served to place
in its room a breathing resemblance of the angelic form.
‘I will not banish this
fair spirit from the castle,’ said the earl, ‘I cannot
think of enriching the red sea with her; no, she shall
reign in this mansion its adored, its benevolent mistress.
Look not so anxious, my good friends,’ continued he,
addressing Mr. and Mrs. Oakley; ‘Margaret is my legal
wife.’ (pp. 23–24)
This is a rather coarse version of
the ‘explained supernatural’—in which the Earl sets
his wife up as a spectre to thrill his neighbours. Wilkinson
here seems to be offering a more pragmatic approach
to the Gothic, relying on readers to discriminate between
reality and romance.
Significantly,
Wilkinson wrote at least seventeen adaptations and translations:
one implied ‘translation’ from German, Albert of
Werdendorff ; or, the Midnight Embrace. A Romance
from the German, and one from the Spanish Love
and Perfidy; or, the Isolated Tower from the
Spanish (1812). Both of these bluebooks were published
by Angus & Son and not translated at all, only marketed
as such. On the other hand, Therese; or, the Orphan
of Geneva ; an Interesting Romance (1821)
was translated from Henri Joseph Brahain Ducange’s 1821
original and The White Pilgrim; or, Castle of Olival
(1820) from the French novel, Le Pélerin Blanc
; both were published by Dean & Munday.
As well
as novels, plays, operas, and melodrama were deftly
adapted into bluebooks by Wilkinson: in fact, she redacted
at least seven such productions. Among these is The
Wife of Two Husbands Translated from the French
Drama and Formed into an Interesting Story (1804)
published by Lemoine , which claimed to be a translation
from the French drama of the ‘La Femme à Deux Maris’
by René-Charles Guilbert , though upon textual comparison
I found that it is actually a redaction of the English
translation of ‘The Wife of Two Husbands; A Musical
Drama’ by James Cobb . Inkle and Yarico; or, Love
in a Cave (1805) published by Lemoine, was redacted
from the opera of the same name by George Colman the
Younger (1762–1836), while The Travellers; or, Prince
of China (1806) published by Lemoine is a redaction
of the opera ‘The Travellers’ by Domenico Corri , libretto
by Andrew Cherry , first performed at Drury Lane on
22 January 1806. The Water Spectre; or, An Bratach.
A Romance , is founded on the popular melodrama
by Charles Dibdin (1768–1833), as performed at the
Aquatic Theatre, Sadler’s Wells (1805) published by
Lemoine . The Ruffian Boy: Or, the Castle of Waldemar,
a Venetian Tale (1820) was based on the
popular melodrama, itself taken from Mrs Opie’s celebrated
tale of that name, published by J. Bailey; while Conscience;
or the Bridal Night. An Interesting Venetian Tale Written
from the Tragedy of J. H. (1820) was adapted
from the tragedy of James Haynes and published by Dean
& Munday. Wilkinson also adapted two versions of
Matthew Lewis’s melodrama ‘The Castle Spectre ’ publishing
The Castle Spectre; or, Family Horrors in 1807
with Thomas Hughes, and The Castle Spectre; an Ancient
Baronial Romance in 1820 with John Bailey.
Wilkinson
not only adapted dramas, she redacted ‘popular’ novels
including: The Pathetic and Interesting History of
George Barnwell. Founded on Facts. Carefully Abridged
from Mr Surr’s Celebrated Novel(1804) published
by Lemoine. John Bailey, who published her adaptation
of The Castle Spectre, also published another
redaction of Lewis’s The Monk : The Castle
of Lindenberg; or, the History of Raymond and Agnes
in 1820. It appears that Wilkinson was probably
commissioned by Bailey to produce redactions of Lewis,
as these made up the bulk of works published with him.
Dean
& Munday, on the other hand, published Wilkinson’s
redactions of other ‘popular’ novels (non-Gothic) including:
The Pastor’s Fireside; or, Memoirs of the Athelstan.
Abridged from the Popular Novel by Jane Porter (1822),
The Pirate, or the Sisters of Burgh Westra: A Tale
of the Islands of Shetland and Orkney Epitomized from
the Celebrated Pirate of Sir Walter Scott (1820)
and Waverley; or, the Castle of Mac Iver [sic]:
A Highland Tale, of Sixty Years since from the Pen of
the Celebrated Author of ‘Kenilworth’ &c.; Epitomized
from the Original [n.d.]. What is interesting about
the redaction of these novels is that Wilkinson includes
the author of the original work in the title indicating
that there was no attempt to hide or disguise the fact
that these were redactions. The title’s inclusion, in
fact, was as much a selling-point as its abridgement.
THE
NOVELS
Wilkinson also wrote novels and while
she found no critical (and limited financial) success
with her novelistic attempts, they are however, useful
insights into the Gothic novel from the view point of
a bluebook author. Her novels demonstrate a clear assimilation
of bluebooks into Gothic novels as a direct consequence
of the tremendous outpouring of such productions in
the early nineteenth century.
Of
all Wilkinson’s novels The Fugitive Countess; or,
the Convent of St Ursula, a Romance (1807), most
clearly illustrates this assimilation of bluebooks into
the form of a legitimate Gothic novel. Like Horace Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto (1764), Ann Radcliffe’s
Sicilian Romance (1790), and Eliza Parsons’s
The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793), The Fugitive
Countess, centres on the crimes of the past which
return to threaten the present and is essentially a
novel of retribution and reconciliation. As in all of
her novels and most bluebooks, the central figure is
a rejected wife, Magdalena, Countess of Ottagio, who
unwittingly discovers her husband’s crimes and is forced
to become a fugitive in the Convent of St Ursula. Throughout
the novel, Wilkinson is fascinated by the possibilities
of adapting bluebooks for their simple and straightforward
moral story unhindered by complicated subplotting. In
The Fugitive Countess, Wilkinson not only develops
simple subplots which would eventually compose the matter
of her bluebooks, she carefully integrates a well-known
drama she had earlier redacted into the text. The flexibility
of the bluebook plot was such that it could be utilised
by Wilkinson and reworked into subplots that often diverted
the readers’ attention from the main story, affording
Wilkinson the appropriate opportunity to moralise and
educate.
The novel
centres on Magdalena, who is tyrannised and victimised
by her cruel and capricious husband, the Count Ottagio.
Like her aristocratic progenitors, Magdalena is a victim
of her father’s debt, her husband’s greed and the duplicity
of an evil agent, Stefano. Similarly, she shares with
her antecedents formidable morals which are only second
to her (obligatory) compassion for the sufferings of
others.
The
Fugitive Countess opens with Magdalena in extreme
distress. The Count is attempting to murder her, for
it would seem on the onset that the Countess’s morals
are not only in doubt, but in serious danger. The bitter
exchange between the Count and Countess immediately
draws the readers’ attention to a pronounced moral division,
common in Wilkinson’s works, between a husband and his
wife:
‘Spare me—for heaven’s
sake—for your own sake—spare me!—Plant not the
horrors of unavailing remorse within your bosom; should
you be allowed to escape the vengeance of your fellow
creatures, and your crimes remained concealed from human
knowledge; yet, remember, there is, above, an all-seeing
eye, from whom no secret is hid. O strike not, suspend
your uplifted arm—I have yet another plea to offer—Innocence.’
‘Innocent!’ repeated
the Count, with a malignant sneer,—‘then you are better
prepared to meet your impending doom.’ [14]
For Wilkinson, the issue of moral disparity
within a marriage, is invariably the basis for an immediate
and often permanent separation. A well-timed knock at
the door distracts the Count, allowing a disguised Magdalena
to flee the Castle of Ottagio to seek sanctuary in the
Convent of St Ursula under the protection of her maternal
aunt, Lady Viola Del Serina.
The horror
of secret, arranged, or forced marriages is another
theme commonly found in Wilkinson’s novels and bluebooks.
For Wilkinson such marriages will inevitably remain
loveless where ‘the first duties, next to chastity,
in a female is filial and connubial obedience; and nothing
more hateful in her than a spirit of argument and contradiction’
(II, 28). Like Lady Emily
de Cleve in The Subterraneous Passage ; or,
Gothic Cell (1803) and Rosalthe di Zoretti in The
Convent of the Grey Penitents; or, the Apostate Nun
(1809), Magdalena has been forced into a marriage
with the Count of Ottagio to whom she feels both ‘aversion’
and ‘horror’. In Wilkinson’s bluebooks such as The
Subterraneous Passage, her characters are often
delivered by deception into the hands of a nefarious
suitor: Emily de Cleve is kidnapped by Dubois, the leader
of banditti with the assistance of Madam Rambouillet,
Emily’s governess. Rambouillet and Dubois were partners
in vice; Dubois wanted Emily’s money and Madam Rambouillet
wanted the daughter out of the way, that she might not
hinder her designs on the father, the Marquis de Cleve.
Marriage is forcibly performed with Emily the unwilling
partner: ‘In vain she shrieked, and implored for mercy:
no friendly hand was near to give her aid; and the servile
priest performed the office in spite of her resistance,
and pronounced them man and wife’. [15]
Similarly, Magdalena’s father, the Count di Verona in
The Fugitive Countess, having squandered her
inheritance at the gaming table, has arranged to settle
his debt with Ottagio by offering the hand of his daughter.
However, unprepared to counter Magdalena’s aversion
to the Count, Di Verona challenges his daughter to prepare
for the loss of his life (and soul) as consequence of
what he bitterly terms her ‘caprice’. In a dramatically
staged confrontation, the Count di Verona contemptuously
invites Magdalena to ‘exult over the ashes of a parent’
(II, 9–10)
Despite
deploring forced and arranged marriages, Wilkinson fundamentally
supports the traditional importance of duty within that
marriage, a quality which Magdalena (despite her name)
not only upholds but strictly separates from affection.
Throughout The Fugitive Countess, Wilkinson clearly
delineates between Magdalena’s duty to her husband and
her love for the Count, and she extends this throughout
the novel in her refusal to disclose the crimes of her
husband, which would free her from her hated marriage
vows. Safely secreted in the Convent, the Countess is
able cautiously to unveil the Count’s crime through
a series of fragmentary documents and personal histories.
The first disclosure, in fact, is related through Magdalena’s
servant, Laura who fled the castle with her mistress.
The suddenness and gravity of Magdalena’s
flight overwhelms the ‘fugitive’ Countess, who almost
immediately succumbs to illness. During the long hours,
Laura’s attention shifts to the book-press where she
searches ‘for some work of imagination, that should
be adapted to her taste, which it must be owned rather
bordered on the romantic’ (I, 19).
For Wilkinson, the most unassuming and obvious method
of reintegrating the bluebook is through the inclusion
of a fragment of manuscript. The fragment’s ominous
opening naturally reflects the Countess’s position as
a ‘fugitive’:
The storm sill raged—the gusts of wind
were repeated with, if possible, increased violence—Eudora
pressed her babe to her woe-worn breast—‘Alas! my child,
but for thee,’ exclaimed the wretched mother, ‘the warring
elements might pass unheeded—the drenching rain—the lightning’s
glare—the thunder’s tremendous peal—could not affect a
wretch like me. The storm within my breast makes me callous
to that without. (I, 21)
The overtly
moralistic plot of the inset tale centres on
the consequences of Eudora’s seduction, betrayal and
the deception of Lord Willibald. ‘[S]educed from the
paths of virtue, to the precipice of vice’, Eudora and
her young son Willibald, endeavour in vain to remind
him of his promised pledge just days after his wedding
to the Heiress of Passenger. In anger, he murders both
the baby and Eudora and eventually takes his own life.
The fragment ends with a typical Wilkinson punishment
of the lecherous and ‘unnatural Baron’:
Every night, at the exact hour Eudora
was murdered, the isolated castle is supernaturally illumined;—lord
Willibald, the self-destroyed Baron, can be distinctly
seen through the gothic windows, by those who have the
courage to gaze thereon, flying from chamber to chamber,—pursued
by the shrieking Eudora, clasping her infant to her bleeding
bosom, and demanding heaven’s vengeance on the head of
their destroyer. (II, 60)
The moral of the tale is simply: ‘[b]eware,
lest a vile villain’s insidious arts should destroy
both thy body and thy soul’ (II, 42).
Wilkinson’s fragment, concentrates on the quick administration
of morality and the horrific.
Wilkinson’s
use of personal histories, like fragmentary documents,
are essential to reveal the Count’s crimes; therefore,
individual histories are only disclosed in order to
influence the present as well as underlining the moral.
According to Wilkinson, to elucidate the mysteries attending
to Magdalena’s behaviour, it is requisite to inform
the reader of her history. Raised by her father, Magdalena
was initially educated by a governess and then sent
to the Convent of St Ursula. Like Emily in The Mysteries
of Udolpho (1794) and Elena in The Italian
(1797), Magdalena initially appears unsociable, if
not withdrawn, and is attracted to the demanding life
of the nuns, even contemplating taking vows. Her aunt,
Viola, the abbess, however, while sympathetic to her
desires, admonishes her to avoid such a life and in
doing so narrates her own story.
The abbess,
as a young woman, although the elder of two sisters,
was forced into the convent, due in part to the fact
that her mind was of a more serious nature than her
worldly sister.—‘My boudoir was filled with select
authors, globes, and drawing utensils. I wrote essays
on various subjects, poems, &c. &c. corresponding
with the tone of my mind, which was unfortunately sensitive
to a painful degree’ (II, 91–92).
Though disappointed, Viola thrived until an accidental
meeting with Horace Beverly, the brother of Sister Frances.
Love inevitably followed as did an escape from the convent.
Fleeing to a castle, Viola was discovered by her father
instead of her lover. Horace, imprisoned by the Count
Del Serina, eventually dies and Viola is returned to
the Convent.
The Abbess’s
story, like the fragment, is intended by Wilkinson as
instructional. The tale anticipates Magdalena’s most
distressing challenge, that of unfeigned filial duty
to her father. After several years of disinterest in
his daughter, the Count di Verona, arrives to take Magdalena
to Ottagio castle. As I have already indicated, Magdalena
was offered to Ottagio in lieu of Verona’s debt. On
the night of the wedding, Magdalena discovers the Count
and his accomplice Jacintha as they enter the library,
and, following, she watches them descend through a trapdoor
in the chapel. Resolved to discover their secret, the
following night she descends down the trapdoor and discovers
Thomasina, the housekeeper, who promises to reveal their
secret. The Count’s dreadful secret is, of course, that
the Count’s first wife, Lady Clementina di Lusini, and
their daughter, Adeline are alive, immured in a subterraneous
dungeon. The plot element of the imprisoned wife is
familiar enough in Gothic romance; it had been much
utilised writers in the eighteenth century and was in
common use in nineteenth century Gothic. To a contemporary
reader, this scene would have recalled memories of many
others: perhaps the key scene in Sophia Lee’s The
Recess (1785), or Ann Radcliffe ’s A Sicilian
Romance (1790), in which Julia discovers her mother,
Marchioness Mazzini, imprisoned in the deserted wing
of their decaying mansion.
Wilkinson,
it appears, was particularly practised in the confinement
of distressed females: in The Subterraneous Passage
Emily de Cleve discovers Madame Dubois, the wife of
the murdered Count Dubois, imprisoned by her brother-in-law
to obtain her property and, in The Priory of St Clair;
or, the Spectre of the Murdered Nun, Julietta,
a young nun, is kidnapped from her Convent by the Count
de Valve, and imprisoned in the dungeon beneath his
castle until her ignominious death. Similarly, Clementina
di Lusini’s distressful tale, as related to Magdalena,
parallels many of Wilkinson’s bluebook plots. Clementina’s
tale, narrated over several trips to the subterraneous
dungeon, confirms Magdalena’s suspicions regarding the
Count and prefigures certain elements in Magdalena’s
future or textual past. The tale is an adaptation of
an earlier Wilkinson bluebook The Wife of Two Husbands
and a subplot in Eliza Parsons’s Mysterious Warnings
(1796). Wilkinson’s The Wife of Two Husbands
(1804), which (as previously mentioned) claimed to be
a translation from the French drama of the ‘La Femme
à Deux Maris’ by René-Charles Guilbert and ‘formed into
an interesting story’, was actually based on the musical
adaptation of James Cobb as performed at the Theatre-Royal,
Drury-Lane. The bluebook, like the drama, relates the
story of Eliza, whom marries Isidore Fritz against her
father’s wish. Fritz is a man of deceit, who whilst
in prison, fakes his own death. Believing that she is
a widow, the Count Belfior marries her. Years later,
Fritz returns to claim his wife, as well as her property.
Eliza, caught between duty to a husband whom she loves
and one whom she despises, concedes that she should
leave the Count, but his friend recognises Fritz as
a deserter and has him immediately arrested. Spared
the death penalty through Eliza’s intercession, Fritz
repays her kindness by attempting to murder the Count,
but is himself slain.
Wilkinson
has reworked her adaptation of Eliza’s tale into Clementina’s.
There are many similarities between the bluebook and
the inset tale: both Eliza and Clementina marry against
the wish of their father; both mistakenly believe their
first husbands to be dead; and both are confronted by
the horror of their contrasting duties. As I have already
argued, for Wilkinson, the traditional importance of
duty within a marriage is fundamental. By placing Eliza
and Clementina in a situation which brings them into
direct conflict with this duty, Wilkinson underlines
a woman’s imprisonment in an institution that binds
one party by certain rules and restrictions which are
flouted by the other. However, despite these broad similarities,
there are important differences in presentation and
emphasis between Eliza’s and Clementina’s tales, and
these can be understood as a response to changes from
bluebook to a tale within a novel.
While
Wilkinson took the basic plot structure from her dramatic
adaptation, she simultaneously drew from other popular
themes found in Gothic novels, most notably from Eliza
Parsons’s The Mysterious Warning. The inset
tale, which was later extracted verbatim and published
anonymously as The Horrible Revenge; or, the Assassin
of the Solitary Castle by Fairburn in 1828,
contained the memoirs of Baron S—— which records, with
exacting detail, the imprisonment of his wife and ‘husband’.
Baron S—— saves Count Zimchaw and his daughter Eugenia
from banditti. In gratitude Zimchaw offers the Baron
Eugenia’s hand in marriage, and though she appears hostile
to the union, the father’s will prevails and they are
united. That night, Eugenia disappears from her room;
all searches prove futile. This humiliation drives the
Baron to distraction: ‘[f]or my part, neither time nor
disappointment had abated my passion; I still loved
to a degree of fury, for rage, and a desire of revenge
on her and her paramour, went hand in hand with my inclination
for her person’. [16]
Eventually, the Baron discovers Eugenia and her lover,
Count M——. Baron S—— accuses his wife: ‘you, who at
the altar gave me your hand and faith, and now live
as an adultress with the man you swore never to be join
with without your father’s consent; know you are still
my wife, and I will prove my right by my power of punishing
you’ (p. 18). This threat is similar to the threats
of Count Ottagio: ‘I regard not your marriage, unsanctioned
by parental consent, as any bar to my wishes;’ said
Ottagio, fiercely, ‘but look on you in the light of
a base adulterer, striving to dishonour my name’ (Fugitive
Countess, II, 151).
But as with Clementina, Eugenia had secretly married
Count M—— before meeting the Baron. The Baron moved
the family, consisting of the Count, Eugenia and young
daughter, to a dungeon. In an act of unadulterated evil,
Baron S—— dashes the family’s water to the floor, just
as their young daughter is dying from thirst. The cruel
Baron eventually dies and the Count M—— and Eugenia
are freed from their prison.
Again,
the similarities between Parsons’s and Wilkinson’s inset
tales are consistent: second marriages, cruel revenge,
and conflicting duty (though more focused on the tension
between filial and matrimonial). Wilkinson’s attraction
to this inset tale though is directly associated with
its male perspective. There are broad similarities between
Count Ottagio and Baron S—— which link the two texts.
While The Wife of Two Husbands focuses on the
dreadful circumstance from the viewpoint of the wife,
Parsons’s inset tale (extracted as The Horrrible
Revenge) illustrates the viewpoint of the Baron.
In similar terms, Wilkinson’s inset tale focuses on
Clementina’s perspective of discovering that Leonardo
still lives, while Ottagio’s cruel revenge, seen from
his perspective, is defending his honour. The amalgamation
of the two perspectives allows Wilkinson to contrast
their individual roles within marriage. For the Count
it is honour, for Clementina (and Magdalena) it is merely
duty.
The bluebook
incidents such as these are utilised by Wilkinson to
moderate the pace of the narrative, often allowing characters
the time and ability to reflect on circumstances in
the past. For example, in the case of Magdalena, Clementina’s
distressful confinement in a dungeon confirms all of
her growing suspicions about the Count. Throughout The
Fugitive Countess, Wilkinson is continually experimenting
with assimilating bluebooks, as inset tales, into her
novels as a method of both moralising and revealing
the past. Recycling her ‘trade’ into novels is not unexpected,
but they indicate a fluidity and connection to the larger
Gothic market that is politely ignored by critics who
view the Gothic merely as an art form.
Sarah
Wilkinson’s diverse literary corpus reflects not only
the perilous pitfalls of living by the pen, but also
the shifting readers’ interest in Gothic fiction in
the early nineteenth century. Her enormous output of
bluebooks underlines the existence of a distinct bluebook
‘trade’, separate from the book publishers, one where
morality, decency and education was equally important
as sensational and horrific. Her novels, while relying
on recycled scenes and motifs, uniquely show the amalgamation
of the bluebook and the novel.
NOTES
1. ‘The
Life of an Authoress, Written by Herself’, Tale 57 in Tell-Tale
Magazine (London: Ann Lemoine, 1803), p. 28. Further references
to this tale are given in the text.
2. The
tale is attached to The Eastern Turret; or, Orphan of Navona.
A Romance, which, though not attributed, has the distinct
characteristics and language found in Wilkinson’s other Tale-Tell
stories. Particularly, Wilkinson’s discussion of female wit
is found verbatim in later novels of hers, such as The
Convent of Grey Penitents (1810).
3. Letter
to the Royal Literary Fund, 10 Feb 1824: Loan No. 96 (Case
375), British Library. Hereafter referred to as RLF and accompanied
by the date of the letter.
4.
These textbooks comprised: A Visit to London: Containing
a Description of the Principal Curiosities in the British
Metropolis (1810), A Visit to a Farm-House (1805)
both published at the Juvenile and School Library by M‘Millan,
and The Instructive Remembrancer: Being an Abstract of
the Various Rites and Ceremonies of the Four Quarters of the
Globe. For the Use of Schools (1805) published by M‘Kenzie,
5.
Robert Mayo identifies eleven works by Wilkinson, though,
my research indicates at least sixteen. See Mayo’s The
English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815 (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1962), p. 368, which lists
the following tales, all of which appeared in the Tell-Tale:
The Adopted Child, or the Castle of St Villereagh,
The History of George Barnwell, Lissette of Savoy,
or the Fair Maid of the Mountains, Lord Gowen, or the
Forester’s Daughter, The Maid of Lochlin, or Mysteries
of the North, The Marriage Promise, Monastic
Ruins, or the Invisible Monitor, The Mountain Cottager,
or the Deserted Bride, Orlando, or the Knight of the
Moon, The Sorcerer’s Palace, or the Princess of Sinadone,
The Wife of Two Husbands.
6.
For example, the name Sarah Wilkinson appears on the title
page of The Spectres; or, Lord Oswald and Lady Rosa
published by Langley in 1814 and Sara Scudgell Wilkinson appears
on the title page of The White Pilgrim; or, Castle of Olival
published by Dean & Munday in 1820.
7.
Valentine Readers were collections of poems written, generally,
for the working class, often for specific occupations and
events such as proposals of marriage.
8. ‘Mackintosh,
Sir James (1765–1832), British writer and public servant,
b. Scotland. His Vindiciae Gallicae (1791), a spirited
reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution,
was the leading Whig statement in favour of the French Revolution,
but from 1796 he grew hostile to French radicalism. His writings
include several historical works.’—Dictionary of National
Biography: Index and Epitome (London: Smith, Elder, &
Co., 1906), p. 819.
‘Holland, Sir Henry (1788–1873),
physician, son of Peter Holland, medical practitioner, and
the medical attendant on the Princess of Wales (afterwards
Queen Caroline). He became one of the best known men in London
society, the friend and adviser of almost every man of note.
In 1837 he was appointed physician extraordinary to Queen
Victoria, in 1840 physician in ordinary to the prince consort,
and he declined a baronetcy offered by Lord Melbourne in 1841.
He was made physician in ordinary to the queen in 1852, and
accepted a baronetcy in 1853.’—ibid., p. 631.
9. The
novel almost certainly remained unpublished at her death.
10.
The bluebook Mysterious Novice;
or, Convent of the Grey Penitents should be distinguished
from her two-volume romance, Convent of Grey Penitents;
or, the Apostate Nun (London: J. F. Hughes, 1810).
11.
Frederick Frank, The First
Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel,
(London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987), p. 412.
12.
‘The Spectre; or, the Ruins of Belfont Priory’, in The
Lifted Veil, ed. by A. Susan Williams (London: Xanadu,
1992), p. 16.
13.
Sarah Wilkinson, The Eve of St Mark; or, the Mysterious
Spectre (London: J. Bailey, 1820), p. 5. Further references
to this tale are given after quotations in the text.
14.
Sarah Wilkinson, The Fugitive Countess; or, the Convent
of St Ursula. A Romance (London: J. F. Hughes, 1807),
i, 1–2. Further references to this novel are given in the
text.
15.
Sarah Wilkinson, The Subterraneous Passage; or, Gothic
Cell. A Romance (London: Anne Lemoine and J. Roe, 1803),
p. 15.
16. The
Horrible Revenge; or, the Assassin of the Solitary Castle
(London: Fairburn, 1828), p. 11.
COPYRIGHT
INFORMATION
This article is copyright © 2003 Centre
for Editorial and Intertextual Research, and is the result
of the independent labour of the scholar or scholars credited
with authorship. The material contained in this document
may be freely distributed, as long as the origin of information
used has been properly credited in the appropriate manner
(e.g. through bibliographic citation, etc.).
REFERRING
TO THIS ARTICLE
F. POTTER. ‘Writing for the Spectre of
Poverty: Exhuming Sarah Wilkinson’s Bluebooks and Novels’,
Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text 11 (Dec
2003). Online: Internet (date accessed): <http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/corvey/articles/cc11_n02.html>.
CONTRIBUTOR
DETAILS
Franz Potter received his doctorate from
the University of East Anglia for his thesis, ‘Twilight
of a Genre: Art and Trade in Gothic Fiction, 1814–1834’.
Currently, he is teaching writing and composition at Plymouth
State University and Southern New Hampshire University.
He is the site manager of ‘The Gothic Literature Page’
<http://members.aol.com/iamudolpho/basic.html>
and runs Zittaw Press <http://www.zittaw.com>,
a small press which specialises in exact reproductions
of Gothic chapbooks and bluebooks.
Last modified
12 January, 2004
.
This document is maintained by Anthony Mandal (Mandal@cf.ac.uk).
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