It is some years since I read any Sheridan Le Fanu novels, I read The House by the Churchyard, The Wyvern Mystery and The Rose and the Key although I find I can no longer remember anything much about them, I do know they were fabulously atmospheric reads. Le Fanu was an Irish writer of gothic fiction, in his time he was a leading writer of ghost stories, although is probably now best known for his novels of mystery and horror.
“Knowledge is power-and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.”
Maud Ruthyn is a dutiful daughter, living quietly with her wealthy father Austyn Ruthyn who practises his strange religion of Swedenborgism and sees little company. Austyn Ruthyn’s brother Silas is the Uncle Silas of the title. A man Maud had never met – yet about whom she can’t help but be fascinated having lived her whole life with a portrait of him as a young man. As a younger man Silas was involved in a scandal and suspected of a terrible crime. Although the two brothers have not met in many years, Austyn Ruthyn has always professed to believe in his brother’s innocence. Living in quiet seclusion at Bartram-Haugh in Derbyshire with his son and daughter, Silas is victim to frequent catatonic fits apparently brought about by his overuse of opium.
Maud’s father hires a governess for his daughter, and Madame de la Rougierre’s presence in the formally happy if rather strange household, casts a frightening shadow. For Madame de la Rougierre is a very odd woman, deceitful, bullying constantly spying on Maud and her father, Maud comes quickly to fear her. Following a couple of peculiar and frightening encounters while out walking with Madam, encounters Maud entirely suspects Madam of having orchestrated, her fear is only increased. Maud succeeds in convincing her father of Madam’s duplicity when she finds her rifling through Austyn’s locked desk. Much to the relief of Maud and her old faithful servant Mary Quince, Madam leaves the Ruthyn home under a cloud. During this time Maud has become attached to her cousin Lady Monica Knollys, who many years earlier knew Maud’s mysterious Uncle Silas, imparting the full story of his past and further fuelling Maud’s interest as well as her slight fear of him.
However things are destined to get a lot worse for poor Maud, when her affectionate old father dies. His will leaves the guardianship of his daughter to his brother Silas – until her twenty first birthday more than three years’ away. Should Maud die in that time, her entire fortune would be transferred to Silas. Despite her Cousin Lady Monica and her father’s friend, executor and fellow Swedenborgian Dr Bryerly’s obvious strong disapproval and suspicion Maud agrees to go to Bartram-Haugh. Removing herself from the company of her two kindest allies – Maud moves to her uncle’s rambling estate of dark passageways and impenetrable rooms. Here with trusty Mary Quince at her side, Maud finally meets her peculiar uncle and her cousin Milly, her uncle’s daughter, who he has cruelly kept uneducated and starved of affection. Life in her Uncle’s house is a little odd, but not unhappy, Maud and Milly become inseparable, roaming the estate together. While some of the servants are rude and difficult, Maud finds her Uncle kind to begin with, although she sees little of him. There is a sense of dark foreboding hanging over the narrative however, the reader sensing Maud’s own growing unease. Later her unpleasant boorish cousin Dudley arrives home, again looking for money, and in him Maud is terrified to find a man she first met in the company of Madam de la Rougeierre. Here in her Uncle Silas’s house Maud is destined to meet Madam again, when she will finally realise how much the sinister governess is really involved with everything that has so far occurred.
“Well, one room more, just that whose deep-set door fronted me, with a melancholy frown, at the opposite end of the chamber. So to it I glided, shoved it open, advancing one step, and the great bony figure of Madame de la Rougierre was before me.
I could see nothing else.
The drowsy traveller who opens his sheets to slip into bed, and sees a scorpian coiled between them, may have expereienced a shock the same in kind, but immeasurably less in degree”
Uncle Silas is great piece of Victorian sensation fiction, with its first person narrative, locked cabinets, old scandals, inheritances, abductions, dark passageways, and the mysterious arrival of carriages in the dead of night. Le Fanu doesn’t give us a rip-roaring plotted novel; the thrills come more slowly, teased out in the way of a psychologically crafted story. Readers of Wilkie Collins will possibly make comparisons with Le Fanu’s characters of Silas and Madam Rougierre to those of Count Fosco and his wife in The Woman in White. Silas is a very different character to that of the brilliant Count Fosco – a small, opium taking invalid, living in seclusion; he is quietly chilling and unpleasant. Le Fanu knew well how to hook his readers, and create suspense, and in this novel does so brilliantly. I have a small collection of Le Fanu’s short stories In a Glass Darkly resting on my to be read bookcase – I think I may save them for those dark October nights when such books are so delicious – but I am certainly looking forward to them.
I read Through a Glass Darkly years ago and I remember loving it, so I don’t know why I haven’t read more by Le Fanu yet. I have The House by the Churchyard and The Wyvern Mystery, and I’ll be on the look out for this one now.
I may even have to re-read The House by the Churchyard and the others one of these days – because I only remember they were very good. Looking forward to Through a Glass Darkly.
Sounds very spooky and very fab, Ali – definitely one for the wishlist and dark autumn nights!
Oh yes perfect for then 🙂
I read this a few years ago and enjoyed it, but it’s still the only Le Fanu book I’ve read. I do have a copy of The House by the Churchyard, but saving it for the dark October nights sounds like a good idea!
Oh certainly, looks like we’ll all be reading Le Fanu in October
I have a Dover edition of four short stories. Thanks to your review I now want to read them.
I’m glad you like the sound of Le Fanu.
I really enjoyed this book when I read it. I cannot wait to revisit it in years to come. Glad you liked it!
You must have really liked it, if you are going to re-read it, have you read anything else by Le Fanu?
It’s been quite a while since I last read any Le Fanu, but I remeber liking (or rather being terrified by) “The Room in the Dragon Volant”. It made a lasting impression on me…
You might just tempt me to give this one a try, it sounds so good!
I really hope you do give it a go.
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