Radcliffe

“ Radcliffe's heroines are all descendents of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, but under more romantic circumstances. They are beset with a thousand difficulties; carried off by masked ruffians, immured in convents, held captive in robber castles, encompassed with horrors natural and supernatural, persecuted, threatened with murder and with rape. But though perpetually sighing, blushing, trembling, weeping, fainting, they have at bottom a kind of toughness that endures through all. ”

“ Radcliffe's castles, with their suites of rooms opening one into another; but yet its very domesticity--its look as if long ago it had been lived in--made it only the more ghostly; and so Redclyffe felt the more as if he were wandering through a homely dream; sensible of the ludicrousness of his position, he once called aloud; but his voice echoed along the passages, sounding unwontedly to his ears, but arousing nobody. It did not seem to him as if he were going afar, but were bewildered round and round, within a very small compass; a predicament in which a man feels very foolish usually. ”

“ We know how Clarissa and Pamela happened to come to Radcliffe. Clarissa now confessed that she had learned at Cambridge that it was a good thing to live in a conventional place for a time and get the sharp edges rubbed off. She added that at school she had always been considered the smartest girl, but Radcliffe, she had found, was made up of the smartest girls from a good many schools, and the majority seemed to be able to hold their own quite as well as she. ”

“ Radcliffe, with passion-lined faces and gleaming eyes, stalk—or, if occasion demand it, glide—through all her romances, and as she grows more familiar with the type, her delineations show increased power and vigour. ”

“ In each generation,
Sophomores will be Sophomores in the same old way.”
Thus under her breath Clarissa, from her seat in the Auditorium, hummed a strain from a Radcliffe song. Girls were gathering in the room to witness an Idler play.
“Sometime,” said Clarissa, “I’ll be a Senior, and have a front seat. But if you can’t have the first, the fifth row isn’t so very bad.”
While waiting for the play to begin, the girls in Clarissa’s neighborhood chatted gaily. The play had attracted many of the Alumnæ, because it was the work of a Radcliffe girl who had been out of college a year or two. ”

“ Duffham knew no more till she was in Frank’s arms, sobbing and crying.
Ring! knock! shake! Shake! knock! ring! It was at the front-door of the Torr, and old Jones was doing it. He had gone there to apprehend Stephen Radcliffe, a whole posse of us at his tail—where we had no business to be—and the handcuffs in his side-pocket.
By the afternoon of the day just told of, the parish was up in arms. Had Frank Radcliffe really risen from the dead, it could scarcely have caused more commotion. ”

“ Selina leaned from the window to look below: and saw a gravel-path with some grass on either side it, but no flowers.
It was a week later. Mr. Radcliffe sat in the parlour, busily examining some samples of new wheat, when there came a loud ring at the outer bell, and presently Stephen Radcliffe walked in. The father and son resembled each other. Both were tall and strongly built, and had the same rugged cast of features: men of few words and ungenial manners. But while Mr. Radcliffe’s face was not an unpleasing one, Stephen’s had a most sullen—some might have said evil—expression. ”

“ John Radcliffe, the eccentric, niggardly, self-indulgent, ill-educated, and intensely Jacobitish physician, who, at the end of the seventeenth century, rose to an eminent place in the capital and at Court, was the son of a comfortable Yorkshire yeoman. He resided for some years at Oxford University, and afterwards practised there; but in 1684 he went up to London, and speedily made himself a great name and income. ”

“ He gave short, gruff orders to his men; called attention to straps and buckles that every one knew were in as perfect order as they could be; criticized the horses and his men; and every one, even the horses, bore it with perfect composure. They were all showing off and felt the importance of the moment.
Presently the car door opened and Mr. Radcliffe came out on the platform accompanied by his son—a handsome reckless looking fellow—his daughter Hazel, and Mr. Hamar, a thick-set, heavy-featured man with dark hair, jaunty black moustache and handsome black eyes. ”

“ There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.
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Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford nothing less than perfection. ”

“ The family of Radcliffe continued, during several centuries after the intermarriage with the De Derwentwaters, to increase in wealth and importance. It was not, however, ennobled until the reign of James the Second, in 1688, when, in consequence of the eldest son of Sir Francis Radcliffe having married during his father's life time the Lady Mary Tudor, a natural daughter of Charles the Second, by Mistress Mary Davis, Sir Francis was created Earl of Derwentwater, Baron Dilstone, and Viscount Langley. ”

“ Radcliffe declined the offer, owing to the calls of his private practice; but for eleven years he cleared on the average over six hundred guineas a year by his attendance on the king. In March 1690 Radcliffe was elected M.P. for Bramber, and he sat for that borough until the dissolution in 1695. He seems to have saved the king's life during a dangerous attack of asthma in 1690, and next year he attended William, duke of Gloucester, the infant son of the Princess Anne, with such good result that Queen Mary ordered the lord chamberlain to present him with one thousand guineas. ”

“ What would she think if she were living now, and could see over a thousand novels published every year in England? Already Mrs. Radcliffe had woven around English hearths the spell of her rather feeble terrors, and young and old shuddered and quaked in the subterranean corridors of castles amid the gloomy Apennines. Why a quiet, cheerful, retiring woman like Mrs. Radcliffe, who hated notoriety, and who loved country life, and afternoon drives, and all that was comfortable and commonplace, should have written "The Mysteries of Udolpho" passes our comprehension ”

“ We said good-night to Stephen Radcliffe with as much civility as could be called up under the circumstances, and went home [117] in the fly. The next day we steamed up to London again to make inquiries at Gibraltar Terrace. It was not that the Squire exactly doubted Stephen’s word, or for a moment thought that he had dealt unfairly by Frank: nothing of that sort: but he was in a state of explosion at the deceit Stephen Radcliffe had practised on him; and needed to throw the anger off. Don’t we all know how unbearable inaction is in such a frame of mind? ”

“ It was natural that there should be many little coteries at Radcliffe, and that some should be more devoted than others to study, and others more devoted to the lighter side of college life. Julia, now that she and Ruth were less inseparable, found herself turning more and more to Lois, and for Lois she began to feel even more sympathy than for Pamela. ”

“ Some of the girls living at home in Cambridge or Boston entertained more or less. In addition there were various college affairs to which the outside world was invited, and those students who acted as hostesses or ushers were especially conspicuous.
Simplicity was the keynote of most of the entertainments offered outside of Radcliffe, as well as in the college itself. This was disappointing sometimes to the occasional girl, conscious of her father’s wealth, who had come to Cambridge expecting this wealth to count for as much in her college life as it had counted at her own home. ”

“ The Count is the barrier between us; but he shall not long remain so.'
'You are, indeed, distracted,' said Emily, 'the Count is not your enemy; on the contrary, he is my friend, and that might, in some degree, induce you to consider him as yours.'—'Your friend!' said Valancourt, hastily, 'how long has he been your friend, that he can so easily make you forget your lover? Was it he, who recommended to your favour the Monsieur Du Pont, who, you say, accompanied you from Italy, and who, I say, has stolen your affections? But I have no right to question you;—you are your own mistress. ”

“ She pursued her way through the groves to the terrace, often pausing as memory awakened the pang of affection, and as reason anticipated the exile, into which she was going.
And now the moon was high over the woods, touching their summits with yellow light, and darting between the foliage long level beams; while on the rapid Garonne below the trembling radiance was faintly obscured by the lightest vapour. Emily long watched the playing lustre, listened to the soothing murmur of the current, and the yet lighter sounds of the air, as it stirred, at intervals, the lofty palm-trees. ”

“ Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his fascinating adulator; "and I'll tell you a sure secret to make your fortune—use all mankind ill." Radcliffe carried out his rule by wringing as much as possible from, and returning as little as possible to, his fellowmen. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a sense of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had been employed to do a job to the stones before the doctor's house in Bloomsbury Square (whither the physician removed from Bow Street) , could not get his money without a contest. ”

“ What was the name of the people, at these lodgings?”
Stephen Radcliffe, sitting down again, put his hands on his knees, apparently considering; but I saw him take an outward glance at the Squire from under his grey eyebrows—very grey and bushy they were now. He could see that for once in his life the pater was resolute.
“Her name was Mapping,” he said. “A widow. Mrs. Mapping.”
“Put that down, Johnny. ‘Mrs. Mapping, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district.’ And now, Mr. Radcliffe, where is Pitt to be found? He has left Dale House.” ”

“ Each Senior, too, looked her very best in her simple white gown, and the crowds of Harvard students who were in attendance testified that socially at least Radcliffe was in no way unpopular with the older college. So weary were the Seniors as the evening advanced that they had little strength left to dance in the new Gymnasium. But the undergraduates and their other guests made up for their own lack in this respect. ”

“ Three or four operettas have been composed and given by Radcliffe girls with great success. Why, I came out with my mother the year ‘A Copper Complication’ was given, and I never saw anything more entertaining in my life. What one girl can accomplish another can, I mean if she has the same kind of talent. Why, there have been several Radcliffe operettas—‘Princess Perfection,’ ‘A Copper Complication.’”
The urgings of Polly and Ruth, however, might not have led Julia to take up the work had not the Emmanuel Society needed funds. ”

“ In her eagerness to do her college justice, Ruth forgot that she was taking Clarissa’s side of the argument.
“Besides,” added Julia, “many Radcliffe girls live at home in Boston, or Cambridge, or the suburbs, coming to the college only for lectures, so that we ought not to be under more restrictions than they.”
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“I did not mean to start so serious a discussion,” said Mrs. Blair. “I’m glad to see your piano here, Julia; music is so womanly an accomplishment;” and Mrs. Blair sipped her tea with satisfaction. “You make a good cup of tea, too.” ”

“ Pym represented Radcliffe as an inferior orb governed by a greater planet. ‘In the crimes committed by the Earl there appears to be more haughtiness and fierceness ... but in those of Sir George Radcliffe there seems to be more baseness and servility, having resigned and subjected himself to be acted by the corrupt will of another.’ Strafford, having less knowledge of the law and stronger passions, was easily led into illegality. ”

“ Radcliffe returned to his prison. Much has been written of the arrogance and intemperance of his conduct and language, but much must be allowed for the subservience of the contemporary writers, as well as for the irritated feelings of the man. Considering himself as a nobleman, and meeting with disrespect, and, perhaps, harsh usage, a quick temper was aggravated almost to madness. To his inferiors the passion and pride of his character were so offensive that the warders of the Tower could be scarcely induced to give him their attendance ”

“ Radcliffe was delighted with his youthful acquaintance—loved him almost as well as he had loved Billy Nutley.
"Mead," cried the enthusiastic veteran to the young man, who anyhow had not fallen from his chair, "you are a rising man. You will succeed me."
"That, sir, is impossible," Mead adroitly answered; "You are Alexander the Great, and no one can succeed Radcliffe; to succeed to one of his kingdoms is the utmost of my ambition."
Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed,
"By ——, I'll recommend you to my patients." ”

“ I hope, however, that all Radcliffe girls who can do anything to entertain us, who are willing to act or sing, or even write plays, will speak with me or with some of the Idler officers on the subject. We cannot afford to let any talent lie hidden ”