Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. It's Accidental Anne Radcliffe
Speaker 1: Week YEP. Today is part two of the life of
Speaker 1: Anne Radcliffe, who is considered in many ways one of
Speaker 1: the pioneers of gothic fiction. You'll see that phrase thrown
Speaker 1: about a lot. In part one, we talked about Anne's
Speaker 1: early life and her marriage, and her literary career, which
Speaker 1: she abruptly stepped away from after publishing her fifth novel,
Speaker 1: The Italian. Today, we will pick up right there, starting
Speaker 1: with the many theories that people started to come up
Speaker 1: with about why she stopped publishing her work. Some of
Speaker 1: these are ones that happened right then, and others have
Speaker 1: developed over time via literary historians. So yeah, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned last time, Radcliffe had a brief but also extremely successful,
Speaker 1: few year career of publishing novels, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of theories about why she stopped. One was that
Speaker 1: she wanted to step away from writing fiction, and gothic
Speaker 1: fiction in particular, because it was a problematic genre. Well
Speaker 1: before Anne, this genre had sort of a seedy reputation
Speaker 1: at the worst status as more of a pulpy, trash
Speaker 1: kind of fiction at best. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: not a surprising perception to anyone who has read horror
Speaker 1: or other genre fiction today. Anne was really the standout, though,
Speaker 1: and her insistence that she was writing romances may have
Speaker 1: been an effort on her part to try to align
Speaker 1: her work with another genre, one that was not gothic
Speaker 1: or horror. And during her again very successful, the very
Speaker 1: brief career, she was lauded for elevating gothic writing, other
Speaker 1: writers were perceived as going in the opposite direction. For example,
Speaker 1: Matthew Lewis released The Monk in seventeen ninety six, and
Speaker 1: it featured a monk named Ambrosio and his struggle with
Speaker 1: the temptation of lustful desires. It also had a number
Speaker 1: of other salacious elements and created a total scandal when
Speaker 1: it hit the market, particularly as it featured women also
Speaker 1: being tempted by sexual desire and there were comparisons made
Speaker 1: between her work and his, and she did not like that,
Speaker 1: So this may have been another reason that she stepped
Speaker 1: away from a successful career. That was a theory that
Speaker 1: Sir Walter Scott publicly supported Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: one of those things where again we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: last episode that she made what was for the time
Speaker 1: a lot of money on her last two books, and
Speaker 1: other people immediately kind of do that thing where they
Speaker 1: try to run to where the lightning struck last and
Speaker 1: see if they can get in on that same kind
Speaker 1: of success. And so a lot of people started churning
Speaker 1: out their versions of Gothic romances, which were often very,
Speaker 1: very trashy by the standards of the day. If we
Speaker 1: read them today, we'd be like, this is really tame.
Speaker 1: But at the time, the idea that a woman was
Speaker 1: grappling with sexual attraction and whether or not to act
Speaker 1: on it was like pornography to them in many ways.
Speaker 1: So another aspect of her experience as an author that
Speaker 1: may have made her no longer wish to publish was
Speaker 1: a barrage of attacks in literary circles. There were a
Speaker 1: few different kinds of these, but there's one example which
Speaker 1: seems to have been particularly painful for Radcliffe, although it
Speaker 1: happened after she had retired, but it may have kept
Speaker 1: her from going back to publishing. In this case, confusion
Speaker 1: had arisen when a work titled Plays on the Passions
Speaker 1: was published anonymously in seventeen ninety eight. Anne and William
Speaker 1: were visiting the country for William's health at the time.
Speaker 1: They didn't know any about it, but there was a
Speaker 1: lot of speculation going around London about whether the plays
Speaker 1: were actually Anne Radcliffe's work. They were not. They were
Speaker 1: the work of dramatist Joanna Bailey. That was revealed in
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred when Bailey acquiesced to include her name on
Speaker 1: the third printing. The way this story and Radcliffe's dismay
Speaker 1: about it all plays out is a bit of a
Speaker 1: social and timeline tangle. So we're going to work through
Speaker 1: it pretty carefully. I hope I even got it right.
Speaker 1: I read several different accounts of it, like several different
Speaker 1: layouts of it. It's very confusing, so we're we're going
Speaker 1: slow for my benefit more than anyone's. This particular drama
Speaker 1: that happened did not get to Radcliffe until years after
Speaker 1: the fact, when she was already retired, and at that
Speaker 1: point one of the key players had already died. But
Speaker 1: it still was very upsetting. So first we have to
Speaker 1: introduce Anna Seward, who was a poet and a woman
Speaker 1: of letters. Born in seventeen forty two, her nickname was
Speaker 1: the Swan of Litchfield. She was really connected to sort
Speaker 1: of everyone of social and intellectual standing in England in
Speaker 1: the late eighteenth century. She died in eighteen oh nine,
Speaker 1: more than a decade after Plays on the Passions came
Speaker 1: out in eighteen eleven. Seward's letters were published posthumously as
Speaker 1: Letters of Anna Seward, written between the year seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: four and eighteen oh seven. Whereas Anne Radcliffe left behind
Speaker 1: almost no examples of personal correspondence when she died, Anna
Speaker 1: Seward left behind a lot her letters filled six volumes,
Speaker 1: and a letter that was included in the fifth volume
Speaker 1: from May seventeen ninety nine, written to Sarah ponsonby, who
Speaker 1: he talked about in Our Ladies of lang Coffin episode,
Speaker 1: Anne Radcliffe's name comes up specifically. Anna Seward is relaying
Speaker 1: to Sarah Ponsonby the impression that another woman named only
Speaker 1: as Missus Jackson had of the Plays on the Passion
Speaker 1: and why she thought Anne Radcliffe was the anonymous author.
Speaker 1: This opinion is not kind so and what's attributed to
Speaker 1: this Missus Jackson? The description is as follows quote before
Speaker 1: the author was known. I observed so much of the
Speaker 1: power and defects of Missus Radcliffe's composition in these dramas
Speaker 1: as to believe them hers, and I hear she owns them.
Speaker 1: Missus Radcliffe, in whatever she writes, attentive solely to the end,
Speaker 1: is not sufficiently attentive to observe probability in the means
Speaker 1: she uses to attain it. She bends her plan, or
Speaker 1: if it will not bend, she breaks it to her
Speaker 1: catastrophe by making it grow out of preceding events. Still,
Speaker 1: she always takes hold of the reader's feelings and affects
Speaker 1: her purpose boldly, if not regularly. Her descriptive talent used
Speaker 1: to satiety in her novels, is here employed with more
Speaker 1: temperance and consequently to better purpose. This an interesting setup
Speaker 1: in and of itself, because it's like, we already know
Speaker 1: who the who the true writer is at this point,
Speaker 1: because it opens with before the writer was known. But
Speaker 1: then it also says I think she owns them, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't. It's what's going on here, gossip.
Speaker 1: So at the point when all of this correspondence was published,
Speaker 1: it was known to absolutely everyone that Joanna Bailey had
Speaker 1: written the plays on the Passions, but it is also
Speaker 1: apparent that Seward and her friends continued to gossip about
Speaker 1: whether Anne had written them for a while after that letter,
Speaker 1: and Seward also accused Radcliffe of basically plagiarizing another writer,
Speaker 1: William Godwin, when it came to the plot of the plays,
Speaker 1: which she had not written. Seward also wrote to another
Speaker 1: person a month after the Sarah Ponsenbee letter, this time
Speaker 1: to a Reverend Wally, that quote in all Missus Radcliffe's
Speaker 1: writings attentive only to terrific effects, She bestows no care
Speaker 1: upon their causes, and rashly cuts the knot of probability,
Speaker 1: which she seems to want patients to untie. One has
Speaker 1: heard of a laboring mountain bringing forth a mouse. In
Speaker 1: missus Ours writings, mice bring forth mountains. Even once the
Speaker 1: confusion over who exactly had written Plays on the Passions
Speaker 1: had been cleared up, Anna Seward still wrote some barbs
Speaker 1: about Radcliffe in her correspondence, noting in one letter that
Speaker 1: even though the plays have some of the same problems
Speaker 1: that Radcliffe's work has, she did always think some sections
Speaker 1: were just too good to have been her work. Biographer
Speaker 1: Richter Norton noted in his nineteen ninety nine book that
Speaker 1: the missus Jackson who started this rumor that Radcliffe had
Speaker 1: written the plays was Eliza E. Jackson, who was a
Speaker 1: very smart woman who, along with Seward and several other
Speaker 1: ladies of England's Salon Society, seemed to like to just
Speaker 1: talk trash about Anne Radcliffe in their letters. Just in
Speaker 1: case you thought people hating on successful creatives was a
Speaker 1: brand new thing. Yeah, this reads like so many drama
Speaker 1: spols within the worlds of like authors and publishing. Yes,
Speaker 1: that I've seen play out on social media. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: just doing the same thing over and over. None of
Speaker 1: us are. Originally, when Seward's Letters were published in eighteen eleven,
Speaker 1: all of this was hugely upsetting to Anne. She tried
Speaker 1: to track down Missus Jackson, first hearing that she was
Speaker 1: in Bath and then in Edinburgh to set the record straight.
Speaker 1: Missus Jackson knew Sir Walter Scott, and Radcliffe was worried
Speaker 1: that he might believe the rumors that made her look
Speaker 1: like she would let other people think she wrote something
Speaker 1: that she had not written. The reality was she didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about anyone attributing Bailey's work to her until
Speaker 1: just way later. So to outsiders, her silence on this
Speaker 1: whole matter may have looked like she was like enjoying
Speaker 1: all of this attention. She wasn't. She had no idea
Speaker 1: any of this was going on for a decad which
Speaker 1: also reminds me of the many times I have seen
Speaker 1: someone on whatever social media saying so and so has
Speaker 1: not even acknowledged this. It's exactly what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they were not online at the moment. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: and William were both very upset about all of this
Speaker 1: and how it was going to make her look and
Speaker 1: that people might think ill of her for something she
Speaker 1: wasn't even aware of. But she didn't manage to find
Speaker 1: missus Jackson by the time she looked her up in
Speaker 1: Edinburgh I believe through one of her lawyers, she was
Speaker 1: not living there any longer, so she could not source
Speaker 1: the origin point of this rumor. So she didn't feel
Speaker 1: comfortable reaching out to Joanna Bailey, although she wanted to
Speaker 1: to assure her that she would never let a rumor
Speaker 1: continue that suggested anyone else's work was her own. Because
Speaker 1: there was no resolution to this whole thing. It really
Speaker 1: weighed on her for a long time. In a biography
Speaker 1: written shortly after her death, the writer states, quote the subject,
Speaker 1: which was always painful to her, is rather now alluded
Speaker 1: to as an instance of the singular apprehensiveness of her
Speaker 1: moral sense than as at all required for the vindication
Speaker 1: of her character. So one of the aspects of her
Speaker 1: having a pretty small social circle in her life that
Speaker 1: probably wound up causing her some grief was that in
Speaker 1: these instances where other people said something about her that
Speaker 1: caused her to feel hurt or wronged, those things seemed
Speaker 1: even larger than they might have if she had had
Speaker 1: like a bigger, wider social circle as a backdrop to
Speaker 1: kind of dilute the impact of all of it. It
Speaker 1: really seems like Anne was subjected to the barbs of
Speaker 1: fame without really indulging in any of its luxuries. And
Speaker 1: to her these comments never seemed offhanded. They always felt
Speaker 1: like or seemed to be very pointed attacks. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're not talking to everybody and you're not in
Speaker 1: the noise of like a bigger social sphere, it's seems
Speaker 1: like everyone is talking about me and saying that I
Speaker 1: let someone think I wrote some something that I didn't
Speaker 1: and I never would. But like to those people, probably
Speaker 1: anyone who was part of that or had moved on
Speaker 1: from it didn't even remember it. But to Anne it
Speaker 1: was very, very heartbreaking. Coming up, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the weird rumors that circulated about Anne, including the
Speaker 1: time that she was reported as dead when she was
Speaker 1: still very much alive. But before that, we will take
Speaker 1: a quick sponsor break. Anne Radcliffe's low profile life also
Speaker 1: led at one point to the false rumor that she
Speaker 1: had died well before her time came. In eighteen ten,
Speaker 1: a poem called Ode to Terror was published and that
Speaker 1: stated rather confidently that the author had died a deranged woman.
Speaker 1: She was still very much alive. There were also some additional,
Speaker 1: extraordinarily outlandish claims about her life. There was one that
Speaker 1: went around that she ate raw meat before bed to
Speaker 1: fuel nightmares to give her inspiration so she could get
Speaker 1: back to writing her terror novels. She chose not to
Speaker 1: address any such rumors publicly. Now there is to me
Speaker 1: a bit of coincidence in all of this, because Radcliff's
Speaker 1: own writings were full of things that seemed terrifying or
Speaker 1: fantastic but then turned out to be mundane, and if
Speaker 1: her speculating fans or public had learned anything from her novels,
Speaker 1: they may have come to the boring but truthful conclusion
Speaker 1: that her retirement was just that it was the understandable
Speaker 1: and mundane desire of a woman who just wanted to
Speaker 1: retire from work. As Anne and William got older, their
Speaker 1: twice yearly travels became less frequent and shorter in distance,
Speaker 1: although they did keep spending summers traveling by carriage around
Speaker 1: London and the surrounding area and just stopping wherever their
Speaker 1: hearts desired. Sometime around eighteen ten or eighteen eleven, And
Speaker 1: began having serious issues with asthma, and her health generally declined.
Speaker 1: In the autumn of eighteen twenty two, she visited the
Speaker 1: seaside town of Ramsgate in the hopes of improving her health,
Speaker 1: and she was refreshed by it temporarily. In early January,
Speaker 1: she had what one biographer called end quote attack of
Speaker 1: her disease. Per that account, which we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in a little more depth in a moment, A
Speaker 1: doctor was called two days after her issues began, arriving
Speaker 1: on January eleventh, eighteen twenty three. In an odd detail
Speaker 1: in that account, it stated that she read about a
Speaker 1: recent murder a couple of weeks later, and that due
Speaker 1: to her weekend state and the shock of this information
Speaker 1: that she read, which the biographer says happened accidentally, she
Speaker 1: experienced a temporary delirium. But though that passed and she
Speaker 1: was doing well the first week of February, Anne Radcliffe
Speaker 1: died in her sleep on February seventh, eighteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: Perhaps more unsettling than anything Radcliffe ever wrote in her
Speaker 1: work was her biographer's claim that quote her countenance after
Speaker 1: death was delightfully placid, and continued so for some days.
Speaker 1: She was interred at Saint George's at Hanover Square in
Speaker 1: the Chapel of Ease. Yeah, I'm like you just watched
Speaker 1: her look peaceful for several days, okay. Perhaps indicative of
Speaker 1: the quiet style of her life. There were not a
Speaker 1: ton of obituaries in the papers, the way that you
Speaker 1: would normally expect to see for a famous person. The
Speaker 1: ones that do appear are brief. One from the Yorkshire
Speaker 1: Harold Reads in its entirety quote on Friday week Missus
Speaker 1: Anne Radcliffe. The wife of William Radcliffe, Esquire of Stafford Place, Pimlico.
Speaker 1: This is like, that's the whole sentence, because it's like
Speaker 1: a list of obituaries. So when you're like, that doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. That's why. She had been indisposed for some
Speaker 1: time with a violent cold, which terminated in inflammation and
Speaker 1: took from this life. The much admired author of the
Speaker 1: Mysteries of Udolpho and other works of imagination and genius,
Speaker 1: almost equally popular among the female ornaments of English literature,
Speaker 1: she will long hold one of the highest places. Missus
Speaker 1: r was we believe, between fifty and sixty years of age.
Speaker 1: She was a lady of the most amiable and interesting character,
Speaker 1: possessed not only of all the accomplishments, but all the
Speaker 1: virtues that could adorn her sex. She had lived long
Speaker 1: enough to see her own work satirized. Shortly after Jane
Speaker 1: Austen's death in eighteen seventeen, her novel Northanger Abbey was published.
Speaker 1: This story is a satire of Gothic novels, and one
Speaker 1: of the characters is given a copy of Mysteries of Udolpho.
Speaker 1: Austin is said to have completed this book in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh three, so it would have been a fairly fresh
Speaker 1: response to Radcliffe's famous works, being part of the zeitgeist
Speaker 1: of the time. In eighteen twenty six, Radcliffe's last work
Speaker 1: of fiction was published, titled Gaston de BLANDVILLEU. She probably
Speaker 1: called it Gaston de Blondeville. We don't know. She had
Speaker 1: actually written this book well before her death in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh two, after being inspired by a visit to Kenilworth Castle,
Speaker 1: but she chose not to publish it. The book is
Speaker 1: set in Anne's contemporary time, but the bulk of it
Speaker 1: was a story within a story that's set in the
Speaker 1: thirteenth century, and it was, according to the accompanying text,
Speaker 1: that it got with publication. Never intended to be published,
Speaker 1: but it was written merely as an amusement for Anne
Speaker 1: and William. Preceding the release of this book, in October
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five, the Sunday Dispatch of London ran a
Speaker 1: blurb that read, mister Radcliffe, husband of the great enchantress
Speaker 1: Anne Radcliffe, author of the Mysteries of Udolpho the Italian,
Speaker 1: The Romance of the Forest, etc. And who died about
Speaker 1: the year eighteen twenty three, has at length though very
Speaker 1: reluctantly consented to publish a romance which this celebrated lady
Speaker 1: left behind her. The plot of Gaston de Blainville is
Speaker 1: very much in line with Radcliffe's other books. The thirteenth
Speaker 1: century story unfold at his wedding, which is held in
Speaker 1: the court of King Henry the Third, when Gaston is
Speaker 1: accused of murder by a merchant. At the event, the
Speaker 1: king holds a trial to uncover all of the evidence.
Speaker 1: There is a biography of her at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book, written by Sir Thomas Nuon Talford, with information
Speaker 1: supplied in part by William This is the biography we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. I originally was calling it a brief biography,
Speaker 1: but then I realized it takes up a full one
Speaker 1: third of the book, and the rest of her work
Speaker 1: is the next two thirds. This book begins with the
Speaker 1: following rather charming and quaint description. And when I say quaint,
Speaker 1: I mean I mean that in a way that is
Speaker 1: maybe not the kindest quote. The life of Missus Radcliffe
Speaker 1: is a pleasing phenomenon in the literature of her time,
Speaker 1: during a period in which the spirit of personality has
Speaker 1: extended its influence till it has rendered the habits and
Speaker 1: conversation of authors almost as public as their compositions. She
Speaker 1: confines herself with delicate apprehensiveness to the circle of domestic
Speaker 1: duties and pleasures known only by her works. Her name
Speaker 1: was felt as a spell by her readers. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about this biography, but Telford's biography, which is written
Speaker 1: it's described as a biographical memoir, suggested that Radcliffe retired
Speaker 1: from publishing when she did because she didn't see a
Speaker 1: way to surpass her last two novels and thought it
Speaker 1: better to retire on top. This opening also goes on
Speaker 1: to mention that once she'd retired from her fiction career,
Speaker 1: the supernatural tone of her writing led her devoted fan
Speaker 1: base to come up with all kinds of wild stories
Speaker 1: about what had happened to her and why she stopped publishing.
Speaker 1: There were rumors that she had died or that she
Speaker 1: had a mental illness, but the reality was most likely
Speaker 1: that she had made enough money from her work she
Speaker 1: didn't need to work anymore unless she wanted to, and
Speaker 1: at that point she wrote mostly for herself. This eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty six biography states that she was quote thankfully enjoying
Speaker 1: the choicest blessings of life with a cheerfulness as equable
Speaker 1: as if she had never touched the secret springs of horror. Now,
Speaker 1: that mention of horror would have probably irked Anne Radcliffe,
Speaker 1: while she was considered the grand d'aume of Gothic fiction.
Speaker 1: To her, there was a very important distinction between terror
Speaker 1: and horror, and she wrote about that in an unfinished
Speaker 1: essay that was included with the publication of Gaston de Blanville,
Speaker 1: titled on the Supernatural in Poetry, which means it was
Speaker 1: published right alongside this memoir. She wrote in it, terror
Speaker 1: and horror are so far opposite that the first expands
Speaker 1: the soul and awakens the faculty to a high degree
Speaker 1: of life. The other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.
Speaker 1: I apprehend that neither Shakespeare nor Milton, by their fictions,
Speaker 1: nor mister Burke, by his reasoning anywhere, looked to positive
Speaker 1: horror as a source of the sublime, though they all
Speaker 1: agree that terror is a very high one. That mister Burke,
Speaker 1: she referenced there was Edmund Burke. She was making a
Speaker 1: callback to his essay, A philosophical inquiry into the origin
Speaker 1: of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, in which
Speaker 1: he suggested that terror was a source of the sublime
Speaker 1: and that it could be used to produce the strongest
Speaker 1: of human emotions. And in a move that seems sort
Speaker 1: of weird, there's a statement from Anne's doctor in the
Speaker 1: introductory biography. It's intended to put to rest all the
Speaker 1: various rumors of madness. Doctor Scudmore's statement reads quote. Missus
Speaker 1: Radcliffe had been for several years subject to severe catarrhal coughs,
Speaker 1: and also was occasionally afflict with asthma. In March eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, she was ill with inflammation of the lungs
Speaker 1: and for a considerable time remained much indisposed. With the
Speaker 1: summer season and change of air, she regained a tolerable
Speaker 1: state of health. In the early part of January eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, in consequence of exposure to the cold, she
Speaker 1: was again attacked with inflammation of the lungs, and much
Speaker 1: more severely than before. Active treatment was immediately adopted, but
Speaker 1: without the desired relief, and the symptoms soon assumed a
Speaker 1: most dangerous character. At the end of three weeks, However,
Speaker 1: and contrary to all expectation, the inflammation of the lungs
Speaker 1: was overcome, and the amendment was so decided as to
Speaker 1: present a slight prospect of recovery. Alas, our hopes were
Speaker 1: soon disappointed. Suddenly, in the very moment of seeming calm
Speaker 1: from the previous violence of disease, a new inflammation seized
Speaker 1: the membranes of the brain. The enfeebled frame could not
Speaker 1: resist this freshness. So rapid in their course were the
Speaker 1: violent symptoms that medical treatment proved wholly unavailing. In the
Speaker 1: space of three days, death closed the melancholy scene. The
Speaker 1: doctor's statement goes on to say that other than the
Speaker 1: end when she had a brain infection, Missus Radcliffe's mind
Speaker 1: quote was perfect in its reasoning powers. All of this information,
Speaker 1: which is odd to have a doctor's statement of biography,
Speaker 1: was included, though, according to Telford, because in the wake
Speaker 1: of Anne's death the rumors of mental illness had begun again.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the memoir of Anne Radcliffe that
Speaker 1: he wrote reads so flowery in its praise of her
Speaker 1: that there have been a lot of questions over the
Speaker 1: years as to whether this was kind of a very
Speaker 1: carefully developed piece of writing intended to establish the most
Speaker 1: perfect version of her on the public record. And when
Speaker 1: we say flowery praise, here's the kind of thing we're
Speaker 1: talking about. It described her in terms like inquisitely proportioned
Speaker 1: and perfectly well bred. So it kind of feels like
Speaker 1: he's going beyond what you might normally write about someone,
Speaker 1: even if you deeply admire them. So is this a
Speaker 1: scenario where the biographer was simply prone to flowery wording
Speaker 1: or is it one where there is a clear intention
Speaker 1: to really puff up the subject's image. We don't really know.
Speaker 1: One bit of insight that comes from Telford's analysis of
Speaker 1: Radcliffe's work, because that's also included here, is that she
Speaker 1: always explained the scary components in her books as simply
Speaker 1: following the rules and conventions of Gothic novels. She felt
Speaker 1: that she did not have the leeway as a creator
Speaker 1: to claim that something supernatural was real. That's something that
Speaker 1: she was often criticized for, like, oh, why do you
Speaker 1: dial it back at the end, But that is the
Speaker 1: explanation that Talford gave. Whether that's true or not, it's
Speaker 1: certainly an interesting take. Next, we'll talk about the volume
Speaker 1: of poetry that was published after Anne Radcliffe's death, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. And it's less than enthusiastic reviews
Speaker 1: after we hear from the sponsors. That keeps stuffymus in
Speaker 1: history class going. Radcliffe's epic poem Saint Alban's Abbey was
Speaker 1: also published posthumously. It was not well received. Biographer Ruth
Speaker 1: Facer wrote of it, quote, it does her no justice.
Speaker 1: It is long, rambling and tedious. I will give you
Speaker 1: the poem's opening stanza, which will give you a pretty
Speaker 1: clear indication of what the whole thing is like. No, Ye,
Speaker 1: that pale and ancient choir, whose Norman tower lifts its
Speaker 1: pinnacled spire, where the long abbey aisle extends and battled
Speaker 1: roof or rufe ascends, cornered with buttresses shapely and small,
Speaker 1: that sheltered the saint in a canopied stall, and enlightened
Speaker 1: with hanging turret's fair that's so proudly they're mental coronals
Speaker 1: wear they blend with a holy, a warlike air, while
Speaker 1: they guard the murder's tomb beneath and patient warriors laid
Speaker 1: in death. This wasn't the first time her poetry had
Speaker 1: been published, but it was the first time An authorized
Speaker 1: book of her poetry was released in eighteen sixteen. An
Speaker 1: unauthorized book was assembled from various pieces of poetry that
Speaker 1: she had included in the narratives of her prose. Christina Rosetti,
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century writer famous for Goblin Market and
Speaker 1: other poems, attempted a biography of Radcliffe during her career,
Speaker 1: but found that there just was not enough material available
Speaker 1: to her to complete it. That project was intended to
Speaker 1: be part of a series initiated by John Ingram titled
Speaker 1: Eminent Women. But aside from a handful of brief biographies
Speaker 1: that did not hold a lot of information, there's the
Speaker 1: one from Talford we talked about, and one from Sir
Speaker 1: Walter Scott Rossetti was only able to turn up a
Speaker 1: short letter and a small amount of journal material, which
Speaker 1: was about travel details. For example, the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that Anne wrote in her travel journals were things like quote,
Speaker 1: made our way in the gig through the long, narrow
Speaker 1: streets and then leaving Chatham on the left, mounted a
Speaker 1: very steep road, having wide views of Chatham, the docks,
Speaker 1: the shipping, the new barracks, a town themselves rising up
Speaker 1: a hill with cannon and two small artificial hills with
Speaker 1: flags a great prospect, but too broken and full of
Speaker 1: scars and angles of fortifications and other buildings and excavations
Speaker 1: to be quite pleasing. So it's an interesting example of
Speaker 1: writing about surroundings and the details she included, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really offer insights into the author's personal story and
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't help a biography much beyond lake she was
Speaker 1: in this place at this time. Anne Radcliffe had not,
Speaker 1: to the best of anyone's knowledge, kept a personal journal
Speaker 1: or written friends or family about her private thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 1: Her descriptions of places often read like little stories, but
Speaker 1: there about the things she saw and her imagined life
Speaker 1: for them. When visiting Noll House in the town of
Speaker 1: Seven Oaks, southeast of London in eighteen oh seven, she
Speaker 1: wrote of this Holme's impressive portrait gallery quote and the
Speaker 1: little closet of entrance. The countenance of Guardini, the composer,
Speaker 1: gives you the idea that he is listening to the
Speaker 1: long drawn notes of his own violin Holbeinn's Erasmus, and
Speaker 1: the gallery must be truth itself. There are some exceptions,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of few and fleeting. For example, in
Speaker 1: one entry. While she and William were visiting Seaford in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen nineties, and who really loved that visit
Speaker 1: wrote an entry that gives insight into her religious views
Speaker 1: and her feelings on having lost her parents. Quote. Saw
Speaker 1: the sunset behind one of the vast hills. The silent
Speaker 1: course over this great scene awful, the departure melancholy. Oh God,
Speaker 1: Thy great laws will one day be more fully known
Speaker 1: by thy creatures. We shall more full understand thee and ourselves.
Speaker 1: The God of order and of all this, and of
Speaker 1: far greater grandeur. The creator of that glorious sun, which
Speaker 1: never fails in its course, will not neglect us. His intelligent,
Speaker 1: though frail creatures, not suffer us to perish. Who have
Speaker 1: the consciousness of our mortal fate long before it arrives,
Speaker 1: And of him, He who called us from nothing, can
Speaker 1: again call us from death into life. In this month,
Speaker 1: on the twenty fourth of July, my dear father died.
Speaker 1: Two years since on the fourteenth of last March, my
Speaker 1: poor mother followed him. I am the last leaf on
Speaker 1: the tree. The melancholy greatness with which I was surrounded
Speaker 1: this evening made me very sensible of this, with lack
Speaker 1: of ready information about Anne might have been part of life.
Speaker 1: For a long time, scholarly interests in her work really
Speaker 1: died back quite a bit. What there was of it
Speaker 1: was often riddled with assumptions, are colored by the rumors
Speaker 1: of madness that had sprung up while Anne was still
Speaker 1: al live. The texts of her books had been the
Speaker 1: bulk of what people actually knew and little else. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the late twentieth century that biographers really started
Speaker 1: trying to dig deeper into what might be available to
Speaker 1: piece together the otherwise disparate pieces of information that were
Speaker 1: known about her personal life. Literature professor Dale Townsend, writing
Speaker 1: for the British Library in twenty fourteen, points to David
Speaker 1: Puncher's book The Literature of Terror, released in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: as the spark that reignited scholarly interest in Radcliffe. We
Speaker 1: did find mention of her in major press that predated that, though,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't as though no one was talking about
Speaker 1: Anne Radcliffe in her work. The press mention that I
Speaker 1: found and read was in The Guardian in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty four, and it was part of an
Speaker 1: article by Donald Thomas that was titled Queen of Terrors
Speaker 1: and was all about Anne. One of the biographies published
Speaker 1: since then, Mistress of Udolpho, was written by historian Richter
Speaker 1: Norton in nineteen teen ninety nine, and it offered up
Speaker 1: details which had not been known until Norton hunted them
Speaker 1: down in obscure places. One of the things that Norton
Speaker 1: points out, which is often left out of the more
Speaker 1: brief narratives regarding Radcliffe, is that she was definitely a classist.
Speaker 1: She could be really condescending to people that she perceived
Speaker 1: as of a lower class than herself. Yeah. He shares
Speaker 1: some examples of them, and it is a little like
Speaker 1: that's a pity. In twenty fourteen, there was a surprise
Speaker 1: in the Anne Radcliffe story when a letter that she
Speaker 1: had written her mother in law was found amongst a
Speaker 1: batch of other miscellaneous letters by Greg Boswell, a British
Speaker 1: Library curator. That letter, which is dated August thirty first,
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety seven, reads, Dear Madam, we are concerned to
Speaker 1: hear such frequent complaints. The reasonableness of things in Yorkshire
Speaker 1: is well known, but without insisting upon that if you
Speaker 1: cannot be acommodated with the necessaries of life, and without
Speaker 1: being a burden to anybody. If the supplies which William
Speaker 1: sends are not sufficient, we can only desire you to
Speaker 1: come and live with us, where you shall always find plenty.
Speaker 1: Whatever you may do elsewhere, you will recollect the unwillingness
Speaker 1: which William formerly expressed to send money to you at Broughton,
Speaker 1: and your positive desire and assurances upon the subject. In
Speaker 1: my last I assured you we did not for a
Speaker 1: moment suppose you had received a two pound note when
Speaker 1: you assured us to the contrary, and it was therefore
Speaker 1: unnecessary for you to vindicate yourself again. He joins me
Speaker 1: in love and good wishes to you, and I remain
Speaker 1: dear Madam your affectionate A Radcliffe. So it seems like
Speaker 1: William and Ann had sent William's mother Deborah Radcliffe some money,
Speaker 1: but it had not arrived. So Anne's essentially saying, this
Speaker 1: would be a heck of a lot easier if you
Speaker 1: would move to London so we could take care of you.
Speaker 1: Mister Buzzwell believes this may be an indicator that Anne's
Speaker 1: relationship with Zabra Burah had informed the strained relationship between
Speaker 1: the character of Elena Rosalba in the book The Italian
Speaker 1: and her fictional mother in law. I do love that
Speaker 1: bit at the end of like you told me you
Speaker 1: didn't get it. I believed you. You don't have to
Speaker 1: keep telling me. There are two quotes that make the
Speaker 1: most sense to me, at least to end on when
Speaker 1: summing up the life of Anne Radcliffe. The first is
Speaker 1: by Sir Walter Scott, and it sums up her literary life. Quote.
Speaker 1: Missus Radcliffe as an author has the most decided claim
Speaker 1: to take her place among the favored few who have
Speaker 1: been distinguished as the founders of a class or school.
Speaker 1: She led the way in a particular style of composition,
Speaker 1: affecting powerfully the mind of the reader, which has since
Speaker 1: been attempted by many, but in which no one has
Speaker 1: attained or approached the excellencies of the original inventor. In
Speaker 1: his biography of Anne Radcliffe, Richter Norton wrote this description
Speaker 1: of her, which it seems like a good place to
Speaker 1: end things, since it sums her up not so much
Speaker 1: as a writer, but as a person. Quote. The public
Speaker 1: image of Missus Radcliffe as a mad genius and the
Speaker 1: sensational nature of her novels are in sharp contrast to
Speaker 1: the ordinary preoccupations of her middle class domestic life. She
Speaker 1: loved dogs and music, enjoyed excursions to Dover and Worthing,
Speaker 1: was fond of the sound of Greek, though she could
Speaker 1: not understand a word of it, and felt it was
Speaker 1: at least as important to be considered a gentlewoman as
Speaker 1: a genius. Anne Radcliffe, I hope we find tons more
Speaker 1: stuff of hers, but I doubt we will. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: somewhere there's a cash of letters where she's like those
Speaker 1: mean girls. I doubt it. I have listener mail. This
Speaker 1: is another one that goes back to William Morgan, the
Speaker 1: gift that keeps giving because lots of people have thoughts
Speaker 1: about William Morgan. This one is from our listener Alice,
Speaker 1: who writes, thank you Holly and Tracy for the recent
Speaker 1: podcast on William Morgan. I listened to with special interest
Speaker 1: remembering a news article I'd seen on my second great
Speaker 1: grandfather's connection to Morgan. Judge Moses Taggart Esquire, my second
Speaker 1: great grandfather, was credited with a part in the Memorial
Speaker 1: to Morgan in eighteen eighty two. I'm including a link
Speaker 1: to one article citing Taggart's participation. My ancestors have a
Speaker 1: long history as judges, postmasters and attorneys in Batavia. I
Speaker 1: sincerely wish I could get back there to visit. Thank
Speaker 1: you for helping to bring this bit of my history
Speaker 1: to life. A little from that paper, she includes a quote.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, it is reported in the same
Speaker 1: paper that the Wetland Ladies had supplemented Missus Morgan's little
Speaker 1: New Year's gift with twenty dollars. Her card of acknowledgment
Speaker 1: is worth reading. The undersign tenders to the Ladies of
Speaker 1: Wheatland her warmest expressions of gratitude for their friendly condolence
Speaker 1: and benevolent and well timed donation. Such expressions of kindness
Speaker 1: serve to gladden the heart of a disconsolate and helpless
Speaker 1: female suffering under one of the most singular and distressing
Speaker 1: bereavings that has ever befallen her sex. She is a
Speaker 1: stranger in a strange land, and dependent on charity for support.
Speaker 1: This affecting epistle was written, it is said, by mister Taggart,
Speaker 1: a lawyer of Batavia, who, at the dedication of Morgan's
Speaker 1: monument at Batavia September eleventh, eighteen eighty two, was among
Speaker 1: the liveliest in his reminiscences of that martyr. Alice also
Speaker 1: attaches pictures of fur babies. Yeah, Gandolf, the Gray and
Speaker 1: Bonds who are twelve years old and very beautiful babies,
Speaker 1: both of them. I don't know. We have twelve year
Speaker 1: old cats that I think are speeding up. I'm a
Speaker 1: little scared of it, but we'll see what happens. Alice,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sharing this. I always love
Speaker 1: when people have connections to the stories that we tell.
Speaker 1: If you have such a connection, maybe you have a
Speaker 1: secret letter from Mann Radcliffe, please write us. If you do,
Speaker 1: you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as missed
Speaker 1: in History and it's a great time to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the show if you haven't already. You can do that
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.