As a lifelong fan of Gothic literature, my taste tends toward the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classics. While I’ve read many more recent Gothic works, few have grabbed my attention like Leigh M. Hall’s new novel The Chambermaids. This novel is so good it won a Claymore Award for Best Southern Gothic Novel before it was even published. What makes it so good? So many things, but most of all, the way Hall builds unrelenting suspense. Until the final chapter, you wonder what will happen, and let me tell you, you won’t see the ending coming. The conclusion completely surprised me. It seems to open up new vistas for Gothic literature. The Chambermaids is far from your typical nineteenth-century kill the monster or have the villain experience redemption plot.
Describing such a bone-chilling work is difficult since I don’t want to create any spoilers, but I’ll summarize a bit of the plot to give a sense of what it’s about.
Elouise and Wilbur Saxton have a farm in the East that has gradually failed. Wilbur is fifty-nine, and Elouise is his third wife. We aren’t told how old she is, but she can’t be more than thirty. We also aren’t told what year it is, but it’s definitely after the Civil War, and since Elouise reads Henry James’ A Portrait of a Lady (1880), it must be early in the 1880s. Wilbur and Elouise have been married for several years but have had no children. Wilbur has a son, Johnathan, from an earlier marriage. Johnathan is only four years younger than Elouise, and they have developed a strong friendship, which Elouise suspects at times makes Wilbur jealous, but Johnathan is now grown and living on his own.
When the novel opens, Elouise has just inherited her uncle’s farm in Texas. She remembers visiting it as a little girl with her sisters. However, her uncle left it solely to her, perhaps because she was the only one not married when he wrote his will. The farm is a godsend to Elouise and Wilbur because of their financial situation. They make their way to Texas, find a ride to the farm, and take up residence there. Elouise’s late uncle’s lawyer visits to go over the will, but other than that, they are completely alone and struggle to keep up with all the work.
Enter the chambermaids. Mary and Margo Malkowitz unexpectedly show up to offer their help. They explain they used to work for Elouise’s uncle, but at the end of his life, he sent them away, wanting to die alone. They have been living with the Wilkersons—Elouise and Wilbur’s nearest neighbors—near being fourteen miles away. Mary and Margo now want to work at the farm again, and they soon show Wilbur and Elouise how capable they are by capturing the bull who has been running loose.
Elouise realizes she should be grateful for the help, but something about the sisters doesn’t sit right with her. She feels they don’t know their place, are nosy, and try to have their own way about things. When a mailman stops by to deliver a letter from Johnathan saying he is coming to visit soon, Elouise asks the mailman about her neighbors. He has never heard of the Wilkersons. For Elouise, that confirms that her misgivings about the sisters are not just her imagination.
A series of events follows that makes Elouise not only suspicious of the sisters, but afraid something very strange is happening. Even before the sisters arrived, she was hearing whispers in the house, but no one was there. She also sees a tall, shadowy figure outside. She wonders who took care of the chickens after her uncle’s death, and she wonders how it is possible they are multiplying so quickly.
Once the sisters arrive, life does become easier Elouise and Wilbur until Johnathan comes to visit. Elouise is excited to see him, but he only stays a short time, and then mysteriously disappears at night. Later, Elouise comes upon a pile of smoldering ash outside. She is certain it is Johnathan’s wagon, and she fears he has been killed. When she breaks the news to Wilbur, he and the Malkowitz sisters go out to investigate, but they claim to have found nothing. Soon, Elouise fears she is hallucinating, delusional, perhaps even insane, or being tricked or drugged by the Malkowitz sisters.
I’m not giving anything away by saying that Mary and Margo appear to be sinister. But Hall does a wonderful job of keeping the reader guessing whether Elouise is really just losing her mind.
I think literary critics could have a field day with this novel. Perhaps I am overinterpreting, but the novel reminded me a lot of Dracula because Elouise and Wilbur’s surname is Saxton, a very English name, while the sisters’ name is Slavic name with Jewish connections. In Dracula, the vampire is also of Eastern European origins and has even been interpreted as Jewish, while, of course, the other characters are English. Dracula’s desire to conquer England has been read as a metaphor for fear of reverse colonization by all the Eastern immigrants flooding into England at the time. While I did not pick up any racial undertones in The Chambermaids, the choice of Malkowitz as a surname was curious since Texas in the nineteenth century didn’t have a large Slavic population.
Hall has done something else interesting by making the Malkowitz sisters appear to be tied to the land itself. In this novel, the Anglo-Saxon American characters are more like the invaders since they come to Texas from far away, though Elouise’s family roots are there. Rather than conquer, in the end, it seems they assimilate or are conquered by the sisters, or perhaps not—depending on how you read the novel’s end, which I don’t want to give away.
A feminist strain also flows through the novel. At first, it doesn’t seem like a feminist novel given that Elouise is at odd with the Malkowitz sisters through most of the novel, but the surprising end changes that.
However you choose to interpret The Chambermaids, I guarantee you will keep wondering what is about to happen. The climax is disturbing, yet the resolution is deeply satisfying in what remains a rather unsettling way. I guarantee the ending will stun you. I can barely restrain myself from writing about it because it is so completely different from the end of any other Gothic novel I’ve read. This novel is definitely pushing against the genre’s boundaries to create something new.
In the acknowledgments, Hall mentions that this is her fifteenth novel, but her first attempt at horror. She asks, “How did I do?” Leigh M. Hall, you totally creeped me out! The Malkowitz sisters will be haunting me for a long time to come. Neither Mrs. Radcliffe nor Bram Stoker could have done any better.
____________________________________
Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and The Mysteries of Marquette: A Novel, plus many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.
In Chapter 34 of Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds (1873) a character reads The Bandit Chief. Per the endnote (Penguin Classics edition), this book is The Bandit Chief, or Lords of Ursino (1818). Assuming it might be a Gothic novel, I tried to find it online, but unsuccessfully. However, I did discover The History of Rinaldo Rinaldini: The Bandit Chief (1798) by Christian August Vulpius (1762-1827). I had never heard of it or Vulpius, but what I treasure I found.
Christian August Vulpius
Vulpius was a German novelist and playwright who wrote a series of novels, operas, and plays on romantic themes, the most notable being Rinaldo Rinaldini. Today, he is best known as the brother-in-law of Goethe since his sister, Christine, married the famous author.
Rinaldo Rinaldini appears to have been all but forgotten today, at least in the English-speaking world though it seems to remain known in Germany. The few mentions of it online I found do not praise it. Wikipedia describes it as “A typical ‘penny dreadful’ of the period, it was often translated and much imitated, but unrivaled in its bad eminence.” This description is not accurate nor fair since penny dreadfuls originated in 1830s England, and it was written in Germany in 1798. It likely inspired English penny dreadfuls, and it reminded me of Varney the Vampire (1846) because its title character is full of remorse over the crimes he committed as a bandit. Similarly, Varney is remorseful about being a vampire. I am uncertain when Rinaldo Rinaldini became familiar to British audiences. I read an 1848 translation by L. Hinckley published in the United States. However, as I’ll mention below, it likely was known to several prominent British Gothic novelists.
But first, let’s look at what makes the novel fascinating. Admittedly, the plot and structure are clumsy, but some magnificent themes and moments in it make it noteworthy.
A more modern cover of the novel
The novel opens with Rinaldo being morose. The bandits he leads assume he is lovestruck, but he is actually unhappy with his lot as a bandit chief. Only at the novel’s end do we get his backstory, which appears to have been an afterthought by the author to explain what happens in the novel’s second half. Truthfully, the first half is readable enough, even if episodic without any real plot, but it transcends normal picaresque literature in its second half.
The plot itself is almost impossible to summarize. Rinaldo repeatedly robs people, then feels remorse. The sense is he is a type of Robin Hood, but we don’t really see him helping anyone. He frequently disguises himself as a nobleman or someone respectable. The result is he frequently overhears conversations by everyday people about himself. Sometimes he then reveals he is the famous bandit Rinaldo Rinaldini, creating shock and surprise. He constantly evades the law, but occasionally, he is captured and then escapes. He has affairs with more women than I could keep track of, including Aurelia, who marries another man; Rosalie, who follows him about but eventually dies; Olympia, whom he never seems to love but who keeps coming back because she’s in love with him; and Diaspora, whom he finally ends up with. These escapades with women and evasions of the law are all episodic, picaresque, and written in a similar vein to the 1830s English highwaymen or Newgate novels.
Most interesting to me was what makes the novel Gothic—its supernatural elements. To explore this, I’ll mention Rinaldo’s backstory first, even though we don’t learn it until the novel’s end. Rinaldo was born in the Italian part of Switzerland to poor parents. He grows up in a pastoral setting, caring for goats. One day he befriends a neighboring hermit named Ontario. This man teaches him how to read and introduces him to literature from the ancient Greek classics to history and romantic tales of knights. These books fuel Rinaldo’s imagination. Then one day Ontario disappears, but he leaves behind him directions that Rinaldo is to be his heir. Rinaldo sells everything except the books and uses the money to purchase a position in the army. When he becomes insubordinate and is punished, he kills his superior officer with a stiletto. After that “he wandered through Italy an outcast from society, and destitute of a place of rest.” Eventually, he joins a robber band and soon becomes their leader. He has been the band’s leader for many years when the novel opens.
Among the novels’ more interesting features is that one of Rinaldo’s chief companions is Ludovico. In one scene, he and Rinaldo explore a castle thought to be haunted. I was struck by this passage since Ludovico is a character in Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and he is the brave one who explores the haunted places in the novel. This makes me think Vulpius read Mrs. Radcliffe, who was extremely popular on the continent.
a more historical cover
More metaphysical and supernatural things happen when Rinaldo wanders outside of a castle he is staying at and falls asleep in the grass. He wakes to find an old man in a long robe reading a book near him. The man is watching over him and says he killed a serpent that was about to attack Rinaldo. The dead snake is nearby to prove the man has Rinaldo’s wellbeing at heart. This hermit turns out to be the Old Man of Frontenac as he is known in the novel. (Later, we will learn he is also Ontario, though Rinaldo does not recognize him). The Old Man invites Rinaldo to visit him, which Rinaldo does, discovering the Old Man has many acolytes, including twenty-one men and at least two women known as Daughters of Wisdom; they are all exploring the mysteries of nature. The Old Man tells Rinaldo his story as follows:
“‘From my earliest youth upward, I was a friend and eager inquirer into all mysteries, and to this day I must tell you, that I have always succeeded in developing the secrets of all ages and nations.’
“Rinaldo beheld him with surprise, and the old man proceeded.
“‘I studied the symbolical mythology of the Greeks and Egyptians, the theology, cosmogony, and all the sacred learning of the most ancient nations; I studied the sh aster of the Gentoo s [sic], the zendavesta of the Persians, the Edda of the Icelanders, the Chou-king and lying of the Chinese. Chinese. I developed the nature of the kakasophia and kakodaemonia, studied the anthroposophia, and at length became what I am now, a true theosophist. This name I have now adopted. You must imagine it took a long period of time to accomplish so much and that time heaven has granted me….”
The Old Man then tells Rinaldo the people at the castle where he is staying are uneasy about his absence, and to prove it, he shows him their images in a “large mirror formed of a plate of polished metal.” The mirror’s function is like a modern video camera. It would have been like magic in the eighteenth century, and I was reminded of the Magic Picture in L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels.
Next, the Old Man provides Rinaldo with insight into mysteries and even shows him the Karat repose:
“Rinaldo received from the old man some previous instruction relative to the secrets of the Egyptian mysteries, and then saw the spectacle performed, in which the initiated went through all the seven degrees of Karat Repose. He saw him ascending the holy ladder, consisting of seven steps, amid thunder and lightning—heard the language of Hicrophants—saw the gate of man and the black chamber, the temptation scene of the priestesses, opposite to whom the initiated stood, the water scene, the serpent chamber, the griffin and the columns. He saw the initiated pass through the gate of death, and refuse the crown; beheld him in Circus, and heard the lessons given him. Here he fancied he saw the battle of the shades, the pit of the fend, and the dead virgin. He saw the battle of Or us [sic] and Typhus, and the great trial by fire. He saw the initiated before the gate of the gods, the priest’s dance, representing the course of stars, after which the initiated drank the drink of Oimelas and his trials ended in his final reception into the great sanctuary.”
Rinaldo then returns to the castle from which he came, but the Old Man continues to show up in the novel and provides evidence he has supernatural powers beyond those of normal men. He also has a number of followers, including Olympia, one of Rinaldo’s lovers. As the novel progresses, Olympia and the Old Man of Frontenac want Rinaldo to aid them in freeing Corsica from French rule. At first, Rinaldo agrees to this, seeing the opportunity to redeem his past villainy by being a hero. However, as the novel progresses, he changes his mind. When the Old Man tries to convince him, Rinaldo says he will not be the Old Man’s machine, but the Old Man says he already is and has been for some time:
“Old Man. You stipulate for no particular cases. We are treating generally, and in all cases. Give yourself up to me unconditionally, and I will rescue you from prison and from death.
“Rinaldo. I am no machine. Good night.
“Old Man. What ill-timed pride! You have been nothing but a machine ever since you began your celebrated career.
“Rinaldo. What say you?
“Old Man. You have—and that without knowing it.
“Rinaldo. Indeed!
“Old Man. Yes; a machine, and my machine—you behold me with wonder: I repeat it, you were my machine, are so still, and will continue so as long as I please. On me and my plans depend your destruction or salvation. ’Tis true your misfortunes were not my work, but I always knew how to save you, however frequently you would have run yourself into destruction.”
Rinaldo insists he’ll be free, but the Old Man says he’ll be tried by a criminal tribunal instead.
Eventually, Rinaldo has a run in with a tribunal, although they are not part of the government but vigilante renegades outside of the law. One night, a man in black enters Rinaldo’s room, summoning him to be judged for his crimes by a tribunal. Rinaldo tries to avoid the tribunal, shooting at the black figure when it reappears, but it throws him across a room with supernatural strength.
Rinaldo then meets Ludovico upon the road in bad shape. He has been beaten and flogged by the tribunal for his past crimes. Eventually, Rinaldo’s bandits have a final showdown with the black men or black judges. After several of them die in the skirmish and Rinaldo manages to steal their treasure, they send a letter asking that their parties join together. They wish him to become their general and lead an army against the tyrannical government, but Rinaldo refuses, saying he is no rebel against his king.
Eventually, Rinaldo reunites with Diaspora and her friend Violetta and they retreat to a Sicilian island to live in peace, but they know peace won’t last so they plan to migrate to the Canary Islands. However, before they can depart, the Old Man of Frontenac shows up saying that the rest of his followers accuse him of killing Rinaldo since he has disappeared. He asks Rinaldo to show himself to them so they will know he lives. Rinaldo refuses. Soon after, the Old Man also tells Rinaldo he will die the next day if he doesn’t leave the island and go to Corsica. Again, Rinaldo refuses.
However, troubled by the Old Man’s prediction, Rinaldo plans to depart the next day for the Canary Islands. Before he can leave, Sicilian soldiers surround his house. One of the black men enters and points him out to the soldiers. They are about to arrest him when the Old Man of Frontenac rushes into the room, stabs Rinaldo before the soldiers can take him, and tells him he should have become a hero rather than a robber (the future he had intended for Rinaldo when he had been his tutor Ontario).
But that is not the end of Rinaldo. The conclusion tells us he did not die from his wound. He and the Old Man were brought before the Sicilian authorities but rescued by powerful friends. Rather than be killed, they were banished. Rinaldo then went to France where he became known as the Chevalier de Bayard. He joined the Marquis de Lafayette and other foreigners in going to the United States to aid General Washington in the American Revolution, thus finally becoming the hero he was meant to be. After the war, Rinaldo took up residence in New York, dying there in August 1797.
A cover with Rinaldo perhaps fleeing from the law
Why is Rinaldo Rinaldini worth reading? Besides its intriguing and suspenseful story, Jess Nevins’ blogpost on The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana states that the Old Man was the inspiration for the title character in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Zanoni (1842). Nevins doesn’t cite her source for this statement, but elsewhere she references Patrick Bridgwater’s The German Gothic Novel in Anglo-German Perspective, which is likely the source. (I would have consulted Bridgwater’s book myself, but copies are $256, so I’ve added it to my wish list for someday.)
The novel’s secret tribunal also fascinates me because it predates similar secret vigilante groups in British Gothic novels such as Sir Walter Scott’s Anne of Geierstein (1829) and George W. M. Reynold’s Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals (1847). Notably, though, another German novel Horrid Mysteries by Carl Grosse (published in England in 1796), has a secret society.
I would love to know more about whether Rinaldo Rinaldini did influence British Gothic novelists. Since it likely influenced Zanoni, a Rosicrucian novel (the Old Man says he is a theosophist but he speaks like a Rosicrucian, though he has no interest in the elixir of life or the philosopher’s stone), I wonder if the novel was known by William Godwin, whose Rosicrucian Gothic novel St. Leon (1799) appeared the next year. I could not find confirmation Bulwer-Lytton or Godwin read the novel when I searched online, but according to AI (no source given), Matthew Lewis, author of The Monk (1796) read the first draft “mit Vergnügen” (with pleasure) and suggested improvements in a letter to Vulpius. Lewis introduced a lot of German literature to British readers so this connection is not surprising.
Certainly, more research is needed on the novel’s influence. It must have been significant if fifty years after its publication, it was being translated in the United States. Wikipedia notes it was translated into many languages and some other German authors even wrote sequels to it. In the twentieth century, German films have been made of it.
According to Nevins referencing Bridgwater, Rinaldo Rinaldini is based on the thief Angelo Duca, hanged in Salerno in 1784, who acted like Rinaldini in protecting the weak and making his band of thieves act in a relatively moral way. Hinckley states he would not have translated the novel if not assured of it being a true story. More info on Duca can be found at the website Executed Today.
As for Christian August Vulpius, I think he deserves more attention than he has received. Goethe is the big name in German literature, but his The Sorrows of Young Werther bored me, despite its significant influence at the time. I’d rather read Rinaldo Rinaldini any day. I hope to explore more of Vulpius’ works, though they appear hard to find in English, other than out-of-print copies of The Knight of Malta.
Any lover of the Gothic could do worse than to explore the thrills of Rinaldo Rinaldini.
____________________________________
Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and The Mysteries of Marquette: A Novel, plus many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.
The Gothic Wanderer