Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📕
Description
Published in 1818, Peacock’s novella Nightmare Abbey is a gentle satire of the then-popular gothic movement in literature. He pokes fun at the genre’s obsessions and most of the book’s characters are caricatures of well-known personages of the time.
Young Scythrop is the only son of Mr. Glowry, living in the semi-ruined Nightmare Abbey on his estate in Lincolnshire. Mr. Glowry, the survivor of a miserable marriage, is addicted to the depressing and the morbid, surrounding himself with servants whose names, such as Raven, Graves and Skellet, reflect his obsessions. His friends, also, are chosen from those who best reflect his misanthropic views.
Scythrop himself imagines himself a philosopher with a unique view of the world, and to this end has written a treatise titled “Philosophical Gas; or, a Project for a General Illumination of the Human Mind.” Only seven copies of this treatise have ever been sold, and Scythrop dreams of being united with one of the buyers. His passions, though, become more earthy when he falls in love both with his cousin Marionetta and then also with a mysterious woman who appears in his apartment and begs him for asylum, thus creating a situation of romantic farce as he tries to decide between the two.
These events are interleaved between entertaining discussions among the varied guests at Nightmare Abbey, richly filled with humor, allusions and quotation.
Nightmare Abbey is probably Peacock’s most successful work of fiction, and helped establish his position as an important satirist of his times. His satire, though, is light-hearted rather than savage and is directed more at foolish opinions than attacking particular persons.
Read free book «Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Thomas Love Peacock
Read book online «Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📕». Author - Thomas Love Peacock
Scythrop was still in this position when Raven entered to announce that dinner was on table.
“I cannot come,” said Scythrop.
Raven sighed. “Something is the matter,” said Raven: “but man is born to trouble.”
“Leave me,” said Scythrop: “go, and croak elsewhere.”
“Thus it is,” said Raven. “Five-and-twenty years have I lived in Nightmare Abbey, and now all the reward of my affection is—Go, and croak elsewhere. I have danced you on my knee, and fed you with marrow.”
“Good Raven,” said Scythrop, “I entreat you to leave me.”
“Shall I bring your dinner here?” said Raven. “A boiled fowl and a glass of Madeira are prescribed by the faculty in cases of low spirits. But you had better join the party: it is very much reduced already.”
“Reduced! how?”
“The Honourable Mr. Listless is gone. He declared that, what with family quarrels in the morning, and ghosts at night, he could get neither sleep nor peace; and that the agitation was too much for his nerves: though Mr. Glowry assured him that the ghost was only poor Crow walking in his sleep, and that the shroud and bloody turban were a sheet and a red nightcap.”
“Well, sir?”
“The Reverend Mr. Larynx has been called off on duty, to marry or bury (I don’t know which) some unfortunate person or persons, at Claydyke: but man is born to trouble!”
“Is that all?”
“No. Mr. Toobad is gone too, and a strange lady with him.”
“Gone!”
“Gone. And Mr. and Mrs. Hilary, and Miss O’Carroll: they are all gone. There is nobody left but Mr. Asterias and his son, and they are going tonight.”
“Then I have lost them both.”
“Won’t you come to dinner?”
“No.”
“Shall I bring your dinner here?”
“Yes.”
“What will you have?”
“A pint of port and a pistol.”14
“A pistol!”
“And a pint of port. I will make my exit like Werther. Go. Stay. Did Miss O’Carroll say anything?”
“No.”
“Did Miss Toobad say anything?”
“The strange lady? No.”
“Did either of them cry?”
“No.”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing.”
“What did Mr. Toobad say?”
“He said, fifty times over, the devil was come among us.”
“And they are gone?”
“Yes; and the dinner is getting cold. There is a time for everything under the sun. You may as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards.”
“True, Raven. There is something in that. I will take your advice: therefore, bring me—”
“The port and the pistol?”
“No; the boiled fowl and Madeira.”
Scythrop had dined, and was sipping his Madeira alone, immersed in melancholy musing, when Mr. Glowry entered, followed by Raven, who, having placed an additional glass and set a chair for Mr. Glowry, withdrew. Mr. Glowry sat down opposite Scythrop. After a pause, during which each filled and drank in silence, Mr. Glowry said, “So, sir, you have played your cards well. I proposed Miss Toobad to you: you refused her. Mr. Toobad proposed you to her: she refused you. You fell in love with Marionetta, and were going to poison yourself, because, from pure fatherly regard to your temporal interests, I withheld my consent. When, at length, I offered you my consent, you told me I was too precipitate. And, after all, I find you and Miss Toobad living together in the same tower, and behaving in every respect like two plighted lovers. Now, sir, if there be any rational solution of all this absurdity, I shall be very much obliged to you for a small glimmering of information.”
“The solution, sir, is of little moment; but I will leave it in writing for your satisfaction. The crisis of my fate is come: the world is a stage, and my direction is exit.”
“Do not talk so, sir;—do not talk so, Scythrop. What would you have?”
“I would have my love.”
“And pray, sir, who is your love?”
“Celinda—Marionetta—either—both.”
“Both! That may do very well in a German tragedy; and the Great Mogul might have found it very feasible in his lodgings at Kensington; but it will not do in Lincolnshire. Will you have Miss Toobad?”
“Yes.”
“And renounce Marionetta?”
“No.”
“But you must renounce one.”
“I cannot.”
“And you cannot have both. What is to be done?”
“I must shoot myself.”
“Don’t talk so, Scythrop. Be rational, my dear Scythrop. Consider, and make a cool, calm choice, and I will exert myself in your behalf.”
“Why should I choose, sir? Both have renounced me: I have no hope of either.”
“Tell me which you will have, and I will plead your cause irresistibly.”
“Well, sir—I will have—no, sir, I cannot renounce either. I cannot choose either. I am doomed to be the victim of eternal disappointments; and I have no resource but a pistol.”
“Scythrop—Scythrop;—if one of them should come to you—what then?”
“That, sir, might alter the case: but that cannot be.”
“It can be, Scythrop; it will be: I promise you it will be. Have but a little patience—but a week’s patience; and it shall be.”
“A week, sir, is an age: but, to oblige you, as a last act of filial duty, I will live another week. It is now Thursday evening, twenty-five minutes past seven. At this hour and minute, on Thursday next, love and fate shall smile on me, or I will drink my last pint of port in this world.”
Mr. Glowry ordered his travelling chariot, and departed from the abbey.
XVThe day after Mr. Glowry’s departure was one of incessant rain, and Scythrop repented of the promise he had given. The next day was one of bright sunshine: he sat on the terrace, read a tragedy of Sophocles, and was not sorry, when Raven announced dinner, to find himself alive. On the third evening, the wind blew, and the rain beat, and the owl flapped against his windows; and he put a new flint in his pistol. On the fourth day, the sun shone again; and he locked the pistol up in a drawer, where he left it undisturbed, till the morning of the eventful Thursday, when he ascended the turret with a telescope, and spied anxiously along the road that crossed the fens from Claydyke: but nothing appeared on it. He watched in this manner from ten a.m.
Comments (0)