The House by the Churchyard.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

Le Fanu (1814-1873) is known, in so far as he is known at all, for some chilling vampire stories and for the prominent position that he occupies in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. (The House by the Churchyard was one of the four volumes that made up the ‘library’ of John Stanislaus Joyce, James Joyce’s father.) To get a copy of The House by the Churchyard requires application to the used book dealer of your choice since the book is not in print or easily available in the United States.

Le Fanu, descended from the great Richard Sheridan, came from an educated family of Dublin Anglo-Irish. He worked as a journalist and as a writer of short stories (tales actually) and novels. But his great literary output began after the death of his wife in 1863. In this year he wrote The House by the Churchyard (hereinafter referred to as House) and in the following year Uncle Silas. His work, even in the English setting of Uncle Silas, is very Irish with incertitudes and exaggerations abundant but cleverly directed.

House is a generously proportioned book. It has more pages than the conventional mainstream novel of today and it has characters by the dozen. What it does not have is a well-defined hero and heroine. Gypsy Devereux and Lilias Walsingham (note the genius of an author who appreciates the merit of colorful names) come closest but do not command the book in the conventional hero and heroine manner. It is an example in fact of an uncommon genre: the long novel with a little bit of everything. It is a romance, it is a thriller, it is a mystery story. Its structure is tight enough to sustain interest but not so tight as to exclude digressions and these show considerable skill and are brilliant examples of bravura writing. Le Fanu adds to his distinction in that he writes of his characters with feeling but without sentimentality.

The opening is a trial for the modern reader. The narrator is an initially intrusive old man who adds much that could not have been otherwise expressed but whose presence tends to overshadow the value of the privilege that he exercises. He fades from the picture as a positive nuisance and the narrative itself establishes a convincing picture of life in Eighteenth Century Chapelizod, a small village on the outskirts of Dublin, just south of Phoenix Park.

There is clandestine burial in the dark of night (Yes, it was a dark and stormy night, as it happens.) One of the mourners is the young and mysterious Mr. Mervyn who takes up residence in the Tiled House. (The haunted condition of the Tiled House is described in loving - and spooky - detail.) Although the burial was conducted with the utmost discretion, everyone knows about it. Only Zekiel Irons, the moody clerk of the church, recognizes by an insignificant ornament on the coffin that the deceased was a man of rank. The dead man is Mervyn’s father, Lord Dunoran who took his own life while waiting trial for a murder that he did not commit.

The narration in House is accumulative rather than economical. Event will follow event with seeming irrelevance. In these early pages, for example, we witness a shooting competition, a dinner party and a gathering after this party where Nutter, agent at the mill for a local landlord, and Fireworker O’Flaherty quarrel and make preparations for a duel. Le Fanu spreads before us an exotic society. He details it and examines the underlying tensions of the civilians and soldiers that make up the population of the story.

The duel, based on comical misunderstanding, develops like a loose cannon of folly and farce. Inadvertently Fireworker O’Flaherty ingests, if not poison, some potent medicine not intended to be consumed. This, a remedy for a hangover, his friend and second, First Lieutenant Puddock, compounds and administers. The vindictive Dr. Sturk, the military doctor, administers an anecdote. It is so strong that it disables O’Flaherty and he withdraws from the field without the duel’s taking place. This is prelude to the dinner given by General Chattesworth to welcome Paul Dangerfield, steward come to inspect the condition of his employer’s Irish estates. It quickly becomes obvious that he too, like Mr. Mervyn, is a mysterious figure. It is a characteristic that serious or at least sinister plot elements will cross and recross in all sorts of ingenious patterns with the comic or romantic. No character of any importance will be long away from the reader’s consideration. In this way Le Fanu will need to do little in the way of characterization in the usual heavy-handed Victorian manner. He defines characters by what they do and in this way House is a very good example of ‘show-don’t-tell’ writing.

The dinner is a success for Lieutenant Puddock, infatuated with the general’s daughter, and for Captain Cluffe, who has designs on Aunt Becky, the general’s sister, but for Dr. Sturk it is troubling. He knows that he has seen Dangerfield before but he cannot remember the occasion except that it was unpleasant. Although the general’s daughter, Gertrude, takes kind notice of Puddock, it is obvious that she is much taken with Mervyn. The story takes a very close look at Sturk. He is, obviously, the pivot around which the plot will revolve. He plans on retirement from the military and he covets both Nutter’s position at the mill and Dr. Toole’s practice among the civilians. To achieve either he has been conducting an underhand campaign of detraction. In a parallel action Dangerfield, jealous of Mervyn’s position in Gertrude Chattesworth’s esteem, determines to undermine him. He achieves this purpose almost immediately and attempts to replace him in Gertrude’s affections. It further transpires, as Dangerfield fishes with Irons, that Irons had seen Sturk twenty-two years ago at what will turn out to be the scene of a crime, the murder for which Lord Dunoran was accused. Sturk, recovering from an injury and sedated with laudanum, was not called as a witness. Dangerfield pretends to be the friend of both Nutter and Sturk with the result that Nutter is maddened with rage at Sturk who is furthering his plan to supplant Nutter, a course necessary to him since he faces certain ruin as a result of poor investments. These investments, incidentally, turn out to be exercises in usury, a practice that Joyce later showed to be mostly in the hands of the native Irish.

Minor characters? There are many but that does not prevent them from providing major connections. The Widow Macnamara, present as a comic background figure almost from the beginning, becomes a serious one as a mysterious woman from Dublin blackmails her. Dr. Toole gains her confidence and together they lay a plot for Mary Matchwell, the blackmailer.

Dangerfield has made his suit for Gertrude to her aunt and the aunt favors him but Gertrude steadily refuses to marry him. He has made gifts to Aunt Becky of exotic birds. Captain Cluffe, misunderstanding the object of Dangerfield’s attentions, in alarm buys exotic birds to counteract Dangerfield.

We are not far advanced in the book and the busy-ness of the events – one can hardly speak of plot in the usual sense - is less a burden than a delight to the reader who gains a great amount of entertainment from all this liveliness. Le Fanu enhances the liveliness of House by the brevity of his chapters, few of which are longer than three pages. Devereux’s aunt calls him away and it appears that he may not return to his military duties in Chapelizod. A woman and her daughter, the Widow Glynn and Nan, visit Lilias and give a convincing account of Devereux’s guilty involvement with the daughter. Nutter and O’Flaherty settle their difference amiably but the passage of time brings the distraught Sturk nearer and nearer to ruin. It is an aggravation of his plight that he owes a great amount to Nutter from whom he can expect no mercy. Gertrude, publicly cool to Mervyn, meets him in secret. Zekiel Irons confronts Mervyn with information about Lord Dunoran, Mervyn’s father. Irons asserts Lord Dunoran’s innocence but insists that the time for full disclosure is still to come. Devereux proposes marriage to Lilias through her father and she refuses him.

Barnabus Sturk fails to raise the money but little – and ‘little’ is an adjective that Le Fanu uses often to display his fond attachment to a character – Mrs. Sturk applies to Dangerfield and he gives her the money. The scene in which Sturk discharges his obligations to his enemy Nutter is superb and deserves to be quoted in full. It is not only good in itself, it is important because the crisis of the book pivots on the quarrel between these men.

“In a little more than a quarter of an hour after, Dr. Sturk descended his door-steps in full costume, and marched down the street and passed the artillery barrack, from his violated fortress [his home had been occupied by bailiff’s men], as it were, with colours flying, drums beating, and ball in mouth. He paid the money down at Nutter’s table, in the small room at the Phoenix, where he sat in the morning to receive his rents, eyeing the agent with a fixed smirk of hate and triumph, and telling down each piece on the table with a fierce clink that had the ring of a curse in it. Little Nutter met his stare of suppressed fury with an eye just as steady and malign, and a countenance blackened by disappointment. Not a word was heard but Sturk’s insolent tone counting the gold at every clang on the table.

“Nutter shoved him a receipt across the table, and swept the gold into his drawer.

“‘Go over, Tom,’ he said to the bailiff, in a stern low tone, ‘and see the men don’t leave the house until the fees are paid.’”

“And Sturk laughed a very pleasant laugh, you may be sure, over his shoulder at Nutter, as he went out at the door.

“When he was gone Nutter stood up, and turned his face toward the empty grate. I have seen some plain faces once or twice look so purely spiritual, and other at times so infernal, as to acquire in their homeliness a sort of awful grandeur; and from every feature of Nutter’s dark wooden face was projected at that moment a supernatural glare of baffled hatred that dilated to something almost sublime.”

Sturk now remembers Dangerfield and his previous life as Charles Archer, a very finished villain. He confronts Dangerfield with an ominous more than suggestion of blackmail. Dangerfield acquiesces to Sturk’s demands but orders him to continue his routine – involving a trip to Dublin – to avoid suspicions of the gossipy community. On the heels of this blackmail arrives Mary Matchwell to persecute the Widow Macnamara. The widow sends her maid to fetch the doctor so that he can take up his secret station to apprehend Matchwell but the plan goes awry. Together Matchwell and Mrs. Macnamara visit Mrs. Nutter where Matchwell’s fortune telling reduces Mrs. Nutter to distraction. Nutter returns home and broods over what he thinks is the imminent victory of Sturk. Although he orders tea within the half-hour, he disappears and is gone for some time.

Cluffe and Puddock set out to serenade their mistresses and avoid publicity by the most indirect route. Unfortunately this dumps Cluffe into the Liffey and strands Puddock on a fisherman’s jetty. Would-be rescuers retrieve a dead pig from the water. Puddock jumps to the conclusion that it is the dead body of Cluffe and breaks out in lamentation. The whole adventure of these feckless troubadours ranks as one of the funniest in the ranks of understated humor. Cluffe, having witnessed Dangerfield secreting a weapon, is actually home in bed sipping a sack posset. The confused crew of rescuers does retrieve a hat from the Liffey. It is Nutter’s. Mrs. Nutter and Mrs. Sturk alike spend a fearful night in the absence of their respective husbands.

Next day a boy discovers Sturk’s body in Phoenix Park. Sturk is just barely alive and unconscious. The soldiers assigned to his rescue transport him carefully to his home while the local magistrate studies the site. An unknown assailant attacked Sturk with a blunt instrument and left footprints that the magistrate, Mr. Lowe, copies and traces for some distance from the scene of the crime. Dangerfield, who has threatened Irons with the mysterious and ruthless Charles Archer, meditates on the danger that Archer presents. And it is at the midpoint of the book that the author himself, ignoring the restraint presently observed regarding ‘spoilers,’ allows the reader to know that Paul Dangerfield is the same person as Charles Archer. This casts a striking and revelatory light on the schizophrenia of Dangerfield’s inner reflections on Archer. Clearly Le Fanu had a tenuous grasp on the phenomenon that came much later to be known as schizophrenia.

Nutter continues missing and Mr. Lowe identifies the boots that made the prints near the fallen Sturk. They are the prints of Nutter’s brogues. Dr. Toole, present at the scenes of the investigation, considers that Nutter has thrown himself in the Liffey or has absconded. Lilias Walsingham’s health, always delicate, grows worse. Gypsy Devereux, having quarreled with his aunt and patron, returns but he is a bad way, discouraged over his failed marriage offer to Lilias, distressed by creditors and the campaign against him of the Widow Glynn. He meets Nan, her daughter, clandestinely, tells her goodbye and gains her promise to revisit the parsonage and to confess that there was never a promise of marriage between them. At this midway point, the danger point of any novel as Gide pointed out, there is a pronouncedly quieter tone, a sorting out of situations and characters. Of absorbing interest to a reader, it is not material with which a reviewer can decently examine in detail. It is sufficient to note that the sorting out process furthers the story and refines the basis upon which it is to continue.

 

Le Fanu picks up the story with boldness. A body has been retrieved from the Liffey at Ringsend and it is thought to be that of Charles Nutter. But Moggy and Betty, the Nutter servants, are disturbed in the night by the appearance of a ghostly figure that they recognize as their master.

On yet another dark and stormy night Zekiel Irons comes to Mervyn with another installment of his story concerning the twenty-two year old murder of one Beauclerc for which Lord Dunoran was found guilty. But Charles Archer was the murderer, he and Irons and Glascock who tried to blackmail Archer and was murdered by him on a deserted moor and in the presence of Irons who helped to hide the body. Irons tells Mervyn all this as he poises for flight, afraid of reprisal from Archer. He still conceals that Archer and Dangerfield are the same person. Mervyn in ignorance seeks help from Dangerfield who convinces him with a newspaper clipping that Charles Archer is dead. But Dangerfield feels that the situation before him is dangerous and considers flight.

And then Mary Matchwell reappears with a scurvy attorney by her side. She claims to be the true Mrs. Nutter and the Nutter home her possession and from it she vows to expel the Mrs. Nutter that we have so far accepted as the true one. On her way she gains Mrs. Macnamara’s signature to a note. Matchwell and her attorney, Dirty Davy, gain entrance into the Nutter home through a ruse and Moggy sets out to get help. Since Dr. Toole is away, she seeks out Father Roach. He assists Mrs. Nutter but is unable to dislodge Matchwell. Dr. Toole returns from Dublin where he successfully demonstrated that the body found in the Liffey was not Nutter. His demonstration was perhaps unneeded since Nutter has been arrested for the attempt on the life of Sturk.

Dangerfield undertakes to press to a conclusion. He goes to see Sturk and to talk to his wife. He convinces her that she must allow surgery that will enable her husband to regain consciousness and either establish or deny that Nutter was guilty of the attack on him. Dangerfield goes to Dublin to engage Black Dillon, a brilliant surgeon but odd, even wild, in the manner of his life. He has, in the meantime, pointed Mr. Mervyn in the direction of a document that, purportedly the deathbed confession of Charles Archer, would clear Lord Dunoran of the murder of Beauclerc.

Lilias Worthington dies and Devereux is wild with grief. Only the presence and kindness of Puddock keeps him from drowning himself. Dangerfield attends Sturk while he waits for Black Dillon and takes the opportunity when alone with Sturk to attempt his life. He is prevented by the entrance of Magnolia Macnamara, the widow’s daughter. Dangerfield despairs of the arrival of Dillon who does in fact arrive after Dangerfield’s departure. He operates successfully and Sturk recovers consciousness and says that his attacker was Charles Archer and he tells Mr. Lowe and Dr. Toole that Archer is actually living in Chapelizod under a different name. He tells them who that is but the name is withheld from the reader.

Dangerfield meets Irons who has returned and bribes him to swear away Nutter’s life. But Irons hears that Sturk has regained consciousness and he goes to Mr. Lowe to tell him the truth, not only about Sturk but also about Beauclerk. In ignorance of much of what has occurred, Dangerfield waits at the Brass Castle but at least has the forethought to burn the more incriminating of his papers. Mr. Lowe arrives with a warrant and Dangerfield resists arrest and shoots a constable but he has taken and sent to the jail in Dublin.

Matchwell still holds Nutter’s home as his wife and Nutter’s attorney admits that the documents that she presents in proof of her claim are genuine. Dr. Toole is indignant at the apparent indifference of the attorney and of Nutter, now released. Sturk has made the relevant dispositions to Mr. Lowe and his life, so long a tenuous thing, flickers out and he is gone.

Nutter had married Matchwell but not legally since Matchwell was already married, a fact soon known to Nutter and he relied upon her act of bigamy as a protection evermore for himself. The authorities take Matchwell and her entourage from Chapelizod and presumably to imprisonment. Cluffe, emulating Dangerfield’s gifts to Aunt Becky, had bought for her a pelican. It now to his considerable wretchedness arrives and his unhappiness is increased by the engagement that now takes place between Aunt Becky and Puddock. He decides to take credit for the match and gives Aunt Becky the cursed bird.

In all the farcical elements of this conclusion the evil Dangerfield gets shoved to the side and it is only after the several marriages – including that between Mervyn (now Lord Dunoran) and Gertrude – peculiar to a novel like this that we get to consider Dangerfield at all. By a not very convincing device he meets with Lord Dunoran and opens his black heart completely. The act that told most for him was his bringing Sturk together with Black Dillon. But Archer intended that Black Dillon should murder Sturk in the course of the operation, not restore him to the consciousness that sealed Archer’s fate. Archer takes his own life in prison. Le Fanu’s subtle perception of schizophrenia, noted earlier, was too incomplete for him to have known how to deal with it successfully in an 1863 work of fiction.

Another marriage ends the book. Magnolia Macnamara marries Fireworker O’Flaherty and Le Fanu executes another of his captivating digressive episodes.

Such a work does not yield itself easily to the methods of literary analysis. Its serious and even solemn happenings are neighbored closely by comedy and farce and characters pass from the first condition to the second convincingly. Lilias is always serious (and like many heroines of Nineteenth Century novels a bit boring) but Gypsy Devereux, however serious his last condition, in the beginning has a place in all the worlds of the novel. It is the testimony of pompous, comic Cluffe that tells heavily against Archer at his trial and it is the endearing Puddock who holds the tragically grieving Devereux back from self-destruction. The wide range of characters, the speed of the narrative and the diversity of the incidents produces a book that constantly astonishes the reader. Its neglect underlines the incapacity of our age to maintain its Alexandrian reputation. This is one of the many marvelous productions - old or new - that we have let slip undeservedly into oblivion.

Bob Williams

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