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    Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo
    Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo
    Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo

    By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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    About this ebook

    Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. The children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them little if anything. Le Fanu was eager to learn and used his father's library to educate himself about the world. He was a creative child and by fifteen had taken to writing poetry. Accepted into Trinity College, Dublin to study law he also benefited from the system used in Ireland that he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures, but could study at home and take examinations at the university as and when necessary. This enabled him to also write and by 1838 Le Fanu's first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine. Many of the short stories he wrote at the time were to form the basis for his future novels. Indeed, throughout his career Le Fanu would constantly revise, cannabilise, embellish and re-publish his earlier works to use in his later efforts. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide. One of the themes running through them is a sad nostalgia for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand in mute salute and testament to this history. On 18 December 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. The union would produce four children. Le Fanu was now stretching his talents across the length of a novel and his first was The Cock and Anchor published in 1845. A succession of works followed and his reputation grew as well as his income. Unfortunately, a decade after his marriage it became an increasing source of difficultly. Susanna was prone to suffer from a range of neurotic symptoms including great anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before. In April 1858 she suffered an "hysterical attack" and died in circumstances that are still unclear. The anguish, profound guilt as well as overwhelming loss were channeled into Le Fanu’s work. Working only by the light of two candles he would write through the night and burnish his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism. His work challenged the focus on the external source of horror and instead he wrote about it from the perspective of the inward psychological potential to strike fear in the hearts of men. A series of books now came forth: Wylder's Hand (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), The Tenants of Malory (1867), The Green Tea (1869), The Haunted Baronet (1870), Mr. Justice Harbottle (1872), The Room in the Dragon Volant (1872) and In a Glass Darkly. (1872). But his life was drawing to a close. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateJun 1, 2016
    ISBN9781785438196
    Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo

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      Book preview

      Spalatro - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

      Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

      Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots

      The children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them little if anything. Le Fanu was eager to learn and used his father's library to educate himself about the world. He was a creative child and by fifteen had taken to writing poetry.

      Accepted into Trinity College, Dublin to study law he also benefited from the system used in Ireland that he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures, but could study at home and take examinations at the university as and when necessary.

      This enabled him to also write and by 1838 Le Fanu's first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine. Many of the short stories he wrote at the time were to form the basis for his future novels.  Indeed, throughout his career Le Fanu would constantly revise, cannabilise, embellish and re-publish his earlier works to use in his later efforts.

      Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide. One of the themes running through them is a sad nostalgia for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand in mute salute and testament to this history.

      On 18 December 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. The union would produce four children.  Le Fanu was now stretching his talents across the length of a novel and his first was The Cock and Anchor published in 1845.

      A succession of works followed and his reputation grew as well as his income.  Unfortunately, a decade after his marriage it became an increasing source of difficultly. Susanna was prone to suffer from a range of neurotic symptoms including great anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before.

      In April 1858 she suffered an hysterical attack and died in circumstances that are still unclear. The anguish, profound guilt as well as overwhelming loss were channeled into Le Fanu’s work.  Working only by the light of two candles he would write through the night and burnish his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism. His work challenged the focus on the external source of horror and instead he wrote about it from the perspective of the inward psychological potential to strike fear in the hearts of men.

      A series of books now came forth: Wylder's Hand (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), The Tenants of Malory (1867), The Green Tea (1869), The Haunted Baronet (1870), Mr. Justice Harbottle (1872), The Room in the Dragon Volant (1872) and In a Glass Darkly. (1872).

      But his life was drawing to a close.  Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58.

      Index of Contents

      Part One

      Part Two

      Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – A Short Biography

      Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – A Concise Bibliography

      Part One

      The Spalatro, surnamed Barbone, of whom we speak, was not the illustrious bandit of Napoleon’s early time, who assumed, or acquired, that name, but the celebrated original, who first bore it two centuries since. This man was nobly born, lost his parents early, squandered his fortune, and then took to the road professionally. He speedily became one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, of Italian robbers of any age. His followers were so numerous, so well armed, and so hardy, that none of the states cared unnecessarily to meddle with him, but contented themselves with acting to the best of their ability upon the defensive; it is even said that Venice allowed this desperado a secret stipend upon the condition that her territories should be exempted from his depredations; however this may be, it is certain that he made himself so universally dreaded, that but for his singular rashness, he might have lived in as much security, and died in as much splendour, as ever did an absolute prince. He was, however, foolish enough to visit the city of St. Mark during the carnival, and happening to quarrel with a party of young fellows, he killed three of them, but being overpowered by numbers, was taken, and after a protracted examination before the state inquisition, was executed between the pillars in the piazetta, beside the Doge’s palace.

      In the hall of the grand council, in the ducal palace, whither, upon the suppression of the republic, the famous library of St. Mark was transferred, the reader, should he happen to visit it, will find at the right of the great entrance, a series of huge tomes, in which are bound up a heterogenous mass of manuscripts of all kinds — poems, chronicles, and church music. Among them he will discover a voluminous collection, in the hand-writing of one who calls himself Fra Giacomo, the humblest of the servants of God, and of the republic, and messenger of peace to the victims of justice. He appears for many years to have acted as confessor to the state prisoners of Venice, and jotted down, in his own hand, abundant notes of the secrets of which he thus became possessed.

      On this day, writes brother Giacomo, I visited, for the fourth time, the renowned and unhappy Spalatro. He is the boldest criminal I ever spoke with; there is not in him the fear of death or the fear of God. He will neither pray, nor confess, nor have any of the rites of the church. Yesterday as I talked with him in the prison, he fell suddenly upon the floor in a fit of epilepsy, to which it seems he has been long subject. When he was somewhat recovered I began to argue with him on his hardened state of wickedness, and asked him if he never thought how he should fare in the other world, were death to come in one of these fearful seizures; to which he answered readily and coolly, that he knew well how he should fare, and had no need to inquire; thereupon I talked to him long and seriously, and he listened and answered with more respect than heretofore: he told me that he believed in the existence of God, and in that of the devil, but that he thought little about the Christian religion, having no interest in it. He went on with much excitement, and among other strange things he said — "Were I to tell you why I believe in the great spirits I have named,

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