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206 pages

English

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The Purcell Papers is a comprehensive collection of Sheridan Le Fanu's early short stories, and they reflect his interest in Irish folklore, as well as his burgeoning fascination with the supernatural. Some of the tales have a charming, humorous tone, while others are characterized by the spine-chilling twists and turns that would later launch Le Fanu to the top of the gothic horror genre.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776586554
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE PURCELL PAPERS
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SHERIDAN LE FANU

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The Purcell Papers First published in 1880 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-655-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-656-1 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu VOLUME I The Ghost and the Bone Setter The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh The Last Heir of Castle Connor The Drunkard's Dream VOLUME II Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess The Bridal of Carrigvarah Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter Scraps of Hibernian Ballads VOLUME III Jim Sulivan's Adventures in the Great Snow A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family An Adventure of Hardress Fitzgerald, a Royalist Captain 'The Quare Gander' Billy Malowney's Taste of Love and Glory Endnotes
Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, theLe Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,deprived of their ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, andCresseron; but, owing to their possessing influential relatives at thecourt of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed to quit their country forEngland, unmolested, with their personal property. We meet with John LeFanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu de Cresseron, as cavalry officersin William the Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a member ofthe King's staff that he was presented with William's portrait from hismaster's own hand. He afterwards served as a major of dragoons underMarlborough.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, William Le Fanu was the solesurvivor of his family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de Puggibaut,the last of another great and noble Huguenot family, whose escapefrom France, as a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in highposition at the French court, was effected after adventures of the mostromantic danger.
Joseph Le Fanu, the eldest of the sons of this marriage who left issue,held the office of Clerk of the Coast in Ireland. He married for thesecond time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and sister of RichardBrinsley Sheridan; his brother, Captain Henry Le Fanu, of Leamington,being united to the only other sister of the great wit and orator.
Dean Thomas Philip Le Fanu, the eldest son of Joseph Le Fanu, became byhis wife Emma, daughter of Dr. Dobbin, F.T.C.D., the father of JosephSheridan Le Fanu, the subject of this memoir, whose name is so familiarto English and American readers as one of the greatest masters of theweird and the terrible amongst our modern novelists.
Born in Dublin on the 28th of August, 1814, he did not begin to speakuntil he was more than two years of age; but when he had once started,the boy showed an unusual aptitude in acquiring fresh words, and usingthem correctly.
The first evidence of literary taste which he gave was in his sixthyear, when he made several little sketches with explanatory remarkswritten beneath them, after the manner of Du Maurier's, or CharlesKeene's humorous illustrations in 'Punch.'
One of these, preserved long afterwards by his mother, represented aballoon in mid-air, and two aeronauts, who had occupied it, fallingheadlong to earth, the disaster being explained by these words: 'See theeffects of trying to go to Heaven.'
As a mere child, he was a remarkably good actor, both in tragic andcomic pieces, and was hardly twelve years old when he began to writeverses of singular spirit for one so young. At fourteen, he produceda long Irish poem, which he never permitted anyone but his mother andbrother to read. To that brother, Mr. William Le Fanu, Commissioner ofPublic Works, Ireland, to whom, as the suggester of Sheridan Le Fanu's'Phaudrig Croohore' and 'Shamus O'Brien,' Irish ballad literature owesa delightful debt, and whose richly humorous and passionately patheticpowers as a raconteur of these poems have only doubled that obligationin the hearts of those who have been happy enough to be his hearers—toMr. William Le Fanu we are indebted for the following extracts from thefirst of his works, which the boy-author seems to have set any store by:
'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers! Strike once again thy wreathed lyre! Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers! Kindle again thy long-extinguished fire!
'Why should I bid thee, Muse of Erin, waken? Why should I bid thee strike thy harp once more? Better to leave thee silent and forsaken Than wake thee but thy glories to deplore.
'How could I bid thee tell of Tara's Towers, Where once thy sceptred Princes sate in state— Where rose thy music, at the festive hours, Through the proud halls where listening thousands sate?
'Fallen are thy fair palaces, thy country's glory, Thy tuneful bards were banished or were slain, Some rest in glory on their deathbeds gory, And some have lived to feel a foeman's chain.
'Yet for the sake of thy unhappy nation, Yet for the sake of Freedom's spirit fled, Let thy wild harpstrings, thrilled with indignation, Peal a deep requiem o'er thy sons that bled.
'O yes! like the last breath of evening sighing, Sweep thy cold hand the silent strings along, Flash like the lamp beside the hero dying, Then hushed for ever be thy plaintive song.'
To Mr. William Le Fanu we are further indebted for the accompanyingspecimens of his brother's serious and humorous powers in verse, writtenwhen he was quite a lad, as valentines to a Miss G. K.:
'Life were too long for me to bear If banished from thy view; Life were too short, a thousand year, If life were passed with you.
'Wise men have said "Man's lot on earth Is grief and melancholy," But where thou art, there joyous mirth Proves all their wisdom folly.
'If fate withhold thy love from me, All else in vain were given; Heaven were imperfect wanting thee, And with thee earth were heaven.'
A few days after, he sent the following sequel:
'My dear good Madam, You can't think how very sad I'm. I sent you, orI mistake myself foully, A very excellent imitation of the poet Cowley,Containing three very fair stanzas, Which number Longinus, a verycritical man, says, And Aristotle, who was a critic ten times morecaustic, To a nicety fits a valentine or an acrostic. And yet for all mypains to this moving epistle, I have got no answer, so I suppose I maygo whistle. Perhaps you'd have preferred that like an old monk Ihad pattered on In the style and after the manner of the unfortunateChatterton; Or that, unlike my reverend daddy's son, I had attempted theclassicalities of the dull, though immortal Addison.
I can't endure this silence another week; What shall I do in order to make you speak? Shall I give you a trope In the manner of Pope, Or hammer my brains like an old smith To get out something like Goldsmith? Or shall I aspire on To tune my poetic lyre on The same key touched by Byron, And laying my hand its wire on, With its music your soul set fire on By themes you ne'er could tire on? Or say, I pray, Would a lay Like Gay Be more in your way? I leave it to you, Which am I to do? It plain on the surface is That any metamorphosis, To affect your study You may work on my soul or body. Your frown or your smile makes me Savage or Gay In action, as well as in song; And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray, Express but the word and I'm Young; And if in the Church I should ever aspire With friars and abbots to cope, By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior— By a word you render me Pope. If you'd eat, I'm a Crab; if you'd cut, I'm your Steel, As sharp as you'd get from the cutler; I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel, And your livery carry, as Butler. I'll ever rest your debtor If you'll answer my first letter; Or must, alas, eternity Witness your taciturnity? Speak—and oh! speak quickly Or else I shall grow sickly, And pine, And whine, And grow yellow and brown As e'er was mahogany, And lie me down And die in agony.
P.S.—You'll allow I have the gift To write like the immortal Swift.'
But besides the poetical powers with which he was endowed, in commonwith the great Brinsley, Lady Dufferin, and the Hon. Mrs. Norton, youngSheridan Le Fanu also possessed an irresistible humour and oratoricalgift that, as a student of Old Trinity, made him a formidable rival ofthe best of the young debaters of his time at the 'College Historical,'not a few of whom have since reached the highest eminence at the IrishBar, after having long enlivened and charmed St. Stephen's by their witand oratory.
Amongst his compeers he was remarkable for his sudden fiery eloquence ofattack, and ready and rapid powers of repartee when on his defence.But Le Fanu, whose understanding was elevated by a deep love of theclassics, in which he took university honours, and further heightened byan admirable knowledge of our own great authors, was not to be temptedaway by oratory from literature, his first and, as it proved, his lastlove.
Very soon after leaving college, and just when he was called to theBar, about the year 1838, he bought the 'Warder,' a Dublin newspaper,of which he was editor, and took what many of his best friends andadmirers, looking to his high prospects as a barrister, regarded at thetime as a fatal step in his career to fame.
Just before this period, Le Fanu had taken to writing humorous Irishstories, afterwards published in the 'Dublin University Magazine,' suchas the 'Quare Gander,' 'Jim Sulivan's Adventure,' 'The Ghost and theBone-setter,' etc.