Nightmare Abbey (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Thomas Love Peacock

Published in 1818, this nimble satire of gothic novels and Romanticism focuses on Christopher Glowry and his son, Scythrop, who dwell in their ancestral home of Nightmare Abbey.  There, a succession of moody, melancholy philosophers and poets—based on historical personages—engage their hosts in debate, while young Scythrop pursues romance with various unobtainable women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Apr 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411446977

Book preview

NIGHTMARE ABBEY

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-4697-7

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

INTRODUCTION

I HAVE nearly finished 'Nightmare Abbey,' writes Peacock to Shelley about the middle of 1818. I think it necessary to make a stand against the encroachments of black bile. Let it be noted that this adversary of the atrabilious was himself the author of The Philosophy of Melancholy; and, if Jefferson Hogg's probably exaggerated gossip may be trusted, had posed among his friends as one (Platonically) enamoured of suicide. But set a thief to catch a thief. Nothing could exceed the sanity of Peacock's protest against pessimism except its humour: and it certainly was not uncalled for. Wordsworth, indeed, was a grand example of a thoroughly healthy minded author; but his influence had as yet only affected the higher minds. Three years before the publication of Nightmare Abbey, an almost perennial spring of the purest, soundest, most thoroughly genial and most thoroughly objective literature that the world had seen since Homer had been unsealed by the publication of Waverley, but Scott's merits were never adequately recognised by Peacock. If, however, his protest seems in any respect exaggerated, it is because the morbid stuff that provoked it has mostly made room for fresh developments of the decadence which, in letters as in nature, goes on pari passu with healthy growth, leaving the good literature of the period invested in our eyes with a more representative character than it in fact possessed. We can depend upon Jane Austen, whose young ladies in Northanger Abbey are found making it a condition that the novels they procure from the Bath circulating library shall all be horrid. The titles preserved to us (few will care to explore further) bear out this character, and it is on record that it paid the publisher to bring out Shelley's St Irvyne and Zastrozzi. The fashion of the terrific in fiction and drama had been imported from Germany: naturally enough, for it is but a crude form of romanticism, and the rise of the German romantic school had anticipated the English by twenty years. No one had written more horrifically than the youthful Tieck, soon to develop into the consummate master of humourous poetical persiflage. Coleridge, in a striking sonnet, had asserted that, rather than redescend to the level of ordinary mortality, he would have been willing and even anxious to expire, if he could but have made his famishing father shriek as Schiller had made his. As the taste for these crude effects waned, mind prevailing over matter as it always should, the merely horrible melted gradually into the misanthropic, and Giaour and Corsair took the places of the One-handed Monk and the Castle Spectre. The ghosts, says Mr Flosky, in this novel, have been laid, and the devil has been cast into outer darkness, and now the delight of our spirits is to dwell on all the vices and blackest passions of our nature, tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and disappointed benevolence. At this juncture Peacock came forward to defend the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity against Childe Haroldism as impersonated in Mr Cypress, and the Coleridgean transcendentalism of Mr Flosky, and the political methods of Spartacus Weishaupt, the immortal founder of the sect of the Illuminati; to say nothing of the blue devils chargeable partly upon climate and domestic worries, partly upon tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution. If the execution appears fantastic, the object was highly practical: and even in the few particulars in which the satire may seem no longer applicable, it will be found that Attic salt does not readily become obsolete. Nightmare Abbey further possesses abiding interest as a contemporary survey of men of eminence, factors in the intellectual life of our own day, from a point of view not frequently taken.

The novel, then, had a more definite purpose than Shelley was willing to allow, and one entirely consonant with the nature of the author, who assuredly had more call to be a literary than a moral or a political reformer. Artistically considered, indeed, it is much more definite than Melincourt, and possesses greater unity of interest. In Melincourt the foothold which the excellent conception of Sir Oran Haut-ton had seemed to afford the author, soon gives way, and the action scrambles about in quest of another. In Nightmare Abbey, on the other hand, Scythrop's dual attachment affords the nearest approach to a regular plot to be found anywhere in Peacock. The character, however, is inconsistent to a degree only to be explained by the supposition that Peacock feared Shelley's taking it for his own (as it appears that he actually did), and was thus kept on the right, but, artistically speaking, the wrong side of burlesque. While Scythrop's behaviour is in general simply farcical, some of the best sayings in the book are put into his mouth, especially a dignified rebuke of Mr Cypress's (Byron's) desertion of his country, which would have better become Mr Hilary. He is throughout an incongruous blending of the sanguine enthusiast with the disconsolate pessimist, and it is only on the former side that he bears any resemblance to Shelley, except in the sensitiveness to real or imaginary unkindness, which seems pourtrayed from personal observation. The reader, however, is not likely to inquire too anxiously into the coherence of a character which affords from first to last such infinite amusement. The other personages are as usual abstract qualities individualised, but richer in flesh and blood than heretofore, and the satire is more mellow and urbane. The inept caricature of Coleridge in Melincourt as Mr Mystic, of Cimmerian Lodge, is replaced by a view of him as a transcendentalist really not unfair, considering that Peacock, devoutly believing the oracles of Kant to be comprehensible only by the initiated, had taken no superfluous trouble to understand them; and that the oral delivery of Coleridge's own oracles, and their fragmentary publication when they did get into print, rendered it difficult to obtain a complete view of him as a philosopher. In fact, the very comprehensiveness of this great man's mind made him obscure. He saw every side of a question at once, and in his anxiety to guard his thought from every possible misconstruction, ended by imprisoning her in a labyrinth. As a thinker, he appears to most advantage in the obiter dicta recorded and probably condensed by his friends, or the notes in books where brevity of comment was forcibly inculcated by exiguity of margin. Shelley, whose appreciation of Coleridge was very high, had probably effected something towards modifying Peacock's original point of view. Another distinct advance in liberality was probably spontaneous, the more favourable estimate of the clergy. Mr Portpipe in Melincourt, if a clerical King Cole, is still a worthy man, and a great improvement upon the mere bigot and glutton of Headlong Hall; but in the Mr Larynx of Nightmare Abbey, we have the first instance of the genuine Peacockian divine, with every professional characteristic sternly repressed; but ready, bright, obliging, every one's friend; destined to further evolution into the massive sense and genial scholarship of Doctor Folliot and Doctor Opimian. Of the style of Nightmare Abbey it is impossible to speak too highly; it is rather engraved than written.

A French translation of Nightmare Abbey is extant in MS., under the title of L'Abbaye de Cochemar. It does not appear when or by whom it was made, but probably somewhere about 1830. Its merits and demerits have hitherto been screened under the triple aegis of execrable paper, execrable ink, and execrable handwriting. Should any encouragement come from across the Channel, the present possessor would make a serious effort to disclose its virtues and educe its frailties, and perhaps the indecipherable portions could be translated de novo.

NIGHTMARE ABBEY

There's a dark lantern of the spirit,

Which none see by but those who bear it,

That makes them in the dark see

Reviews for Nightmare Abbey (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The short, satirical novels of Thomas Love Peacock are unlike any other genre. They are often recognized as "novels", but they also have characteristics of drama or colloquia. They do not have a plot, but consist of pleasant and often humorous conversations. In these short novels, Peacock satirized his contemporaries and issues of his day. Despite the fact that most of the satire is lost on the average twenty-first century reader, they are still very readable, and might even provoke an occasional smile, but from what I understand they may have provoked bulderous laughter in their own day.Nightmare Abbey (1818) is the most famous of Peacock's short novels. Thomas Love Peacock was a contemporary and friend of most of the Romantic poets and their circle. In Nightmare Abbey some of these poets appear in disguise, Percy Bysshe Shelley as “Scythrop Glowry,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “Mr Ferdinando Flosky” and, Lord Byron in as “Mr Cypress” but I must admit that I did not recognize them as such. According to the introduction, Shelley is reported to have said that his house was instantly recognisable in the story, but I suppose it would require a great deal of biographical information to see through that. In fact, Raymond Wright writes that (at least in 1986, i.e. when the introduction was written) many of the side characters in Peacock's novels had not yet been identified.However, as I said before, all that literary criticism can be left for what it is, and these short novels can be enjoyed in their own right, with an occasional chuckle.

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In 2015 The Guardian published a list of the 100 best novels published in English, listed in chronological order of publication. Under Covid inspired lockdown, I have taken up the challenge.This is book 9 in the chronological listing. Short, novella more than novel, and quite different from earlier books. This is a bit of fun, nudging the ribs of the various stereotypes in gentle society of the times (published in 1818).As an aside, many of the early books in this list portray love affairs of the upper class of England at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, one would have to say that the mating habits of the time and class seem uniformly ineffective in every way. The pool of possible partners is so small; the capacity to get to know prospective spouses is so limited; and the influence of parents and others so inordinately large, that it is a wonder that Britain survived the era and became a world power!

[philsyphe · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm reviewing this four years to the day that I finished reading it. Lasting impressions? I can barely remember it, though words like "boredom" and "dull" come to mind. I know the story didn't come close to the promising title.It would doubtless be a nightmare to read it twice.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Young Scythrop Glowry lives with his father in a desolate castle, his bitter mother having died suddenly, to his father's joy. Scythrop recently graduated from a university, where his head was filled with nothing but he picked up the habit of drinking too much. Both Scythrop and his father enjoy the miserable things in life, but Scythrop is young and quickly falls in love with Emily, who quickly marries another, leaving Scythorpe in a romantic depression. When his father's many miserable friends come to visit, there also arrives beautiful and cruel Marionetta, and The Honourable Mr. Listless, who lies on the sofa reading, as doing any more is too taxing.Published in 1818, this is a satire of the Gothic romance novels that were popular at the time. The characters are thinly veiled caricatures of Lord Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth.

[amanda4242_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read [Nightmare Abbey] because it came up as a recommendation for people who liked [[Jane Austen]]'s [Northanger Abbey], a novel I read and loved earlier this year. While the two novels do have similarities, I found [Nightmare Abbey] to be much more like [Candide] in its skewering of the Romantic movement.This one will probably be best appreciated by people who are pretty familiar with the Romantics, as Peacock makes many references to a number of Romantic works and based most of his characters on some of the leading names of the movement, including [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], [[Mary Shelley]], [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], and [[Lord Byron]]. Although knowing all of the allusions aren't necessary for enjoying the book, which has some great passages, the Wikipedia page can help with some of the more esoteric passages.While [Nightmare Abbey] wasn't the book I was expecting it to be, I did enjoy the book that it is. It will never be one of my all-time favorites, but its wit, and short length, will probably have me rereading it in the future.

[jacoombs_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very funny if somewhat outdated. To be read as a spoof of romantic writing and, perhaps, philosophical debates but - as much satire - wanting on character, plot development.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this spoof on the Kantian/Transcendentalist books of the late 1700s & early 1800s.

[wirkman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's been nearly thirty years since I've read this. All I can remember of it is that I thought it quite good. Very funny. One of those few comedies of the 19th century to carry over in mirth to the present day.