The Devil and the Victorians: Supernatural Evil in Nineteenth-Century English Culture 1000348032, 9781000348033

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The Devil and the Victorians

In recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the significance of the supernatural in a Victorian context. Studies of nineteenth-century spiritualism, occultism, magic, and folklore have highlighted that Victorian England was ridden with spectres and learned magicians. Despite this growing body of scholarship, little historiographical work has addressed the Devil. This book demonstrates the significance of the Devil in a Victorian context, emphasising his pervasiveness and diversity. Drawing on a rich array of primary material, including theological and folkloric works, fiction, newspapers and periodicals, and broadsides and other ephemera, it uses the diabolic to explore the Victorians’ complex and ambivalent relationship with the supernatural. Both the Devil and hell were theologically contested during the nineteenth century, with an increasing number of both clergymen and laypeople being discomfited by the thought of eternal hellfire. Nevertheless, the Devil continued to play a role in the majority of English denominations, as well as in folklore, spiritualism, occultism, popular culture, literature, and theatre. The Devil and the Victorians will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century English cultural and religious history, as well as the darker side of the supernatural. Sarah Bartels is a cultural and religious historian specialising in the history of the supernatural in nineteenth-century England. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2019.

Routledge Studies in Modern British History

Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815 Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards Roger Morriss Credit and Power The Paradox at the Heart of the British National Debt Simon Sherratt The Casino and Society in Britain Seamus Murphy Great Britain, the Dominions and the Transformation of the British Empire, 1907–1931 The Road to the Statute of Westminster Jaroslav Valkoun The Discourse of Repatriation in Britain, 1845–2016 A Political and Social History Daniel Renshaw The Devil and the Victorians Supernatural Evil in Nineteenth-Century English Culture Sarah Bartels Lord Dufferin, Ireland and the British Empire, c. 1820–1900 Rule by the Best? Annie Tindley

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The Devil and the Victorians Supernatural Evil in NineteenthCentury English Culture

Sarah Bartels

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Sarah Bartels to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bartels, Sarah, 1991– author. Title: The devil and the Victorians : supernatural evil in nineteenth-century English culture / Sarah Bartels. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in modern British history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020041763 (print) | LCCN 2020041764 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367444204 (hbk) | ISBN 9781003009597 (ebk) | ISBN 9781000348026 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000348033 (mobi) | ISBN 9781000348040 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Devil. | Demonology—Great Britain— History—19th century. | Great Britain—Church history— 19th century. | Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901. Classification: LCC BR759 .B265 2021 (print) | LCC BR759 (ebook) | DDC 133.4/22094209034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041763 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041764 ISBN: 978-0-367-44420-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00959-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To Christian Bartels (1956–2007)

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

1

The Theological Devil

28

2

The Folkloric Devil

75

3

The Occult Devil

119

4

The Popular Devil

159

5

The Literary and Theatrical Devil

190

Conclusion

224

Index

231

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my PhD advisors Emeritus Professor Philip Almond, Dr Geoff Ginn, and Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar for all of their work, advice, and support. I would also like to thank Professor Owen Davies and Dr Karl Bell, who assessed my thesis, as well as the University of Queensland staff who helped me to manage my candidature, especially Judy King. Parts of Chapter 2 have previously appeared in the journal Folklore as the article ‘“A Terrific Ogre”: The Role of the Devil in Victorian Popular Belief’ 128, no. 3 (2017), 271–291. I am grateful to Taylor & Francis for permission to reprint. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support.

Introduction

In the early days of February, 1855, the inhabitants of a large swathe of Devon woke to find the snow covered in strange tracks resembling the imprints of a cloven hoof. These tracks were reported at over thirty locations, covering a radius of between forty and a hundred miles. They were often found in incongruous places, suggesting that whatever had made them had walked over rooftops, leapt over high walls, and passed through small gaps in hedgerows. Speculating on their unusual shape and the fact that they appeared to indicate a physically impossible journey, some of the locals began to wonder if Devon had been visited by the Devil. Even observers, who were not inclined to suspect the Devil of capering through the snowy countryside, struggled to explain the incident, suggesting a range of possible culprits from badgers to an escaped kangaroo.1 The case of the ‘Devil’s Hoofmarks’ has lingered in popular memory, becoming a classic of the ‘unsolved mystery’ genre, with the modern sceptical consensus being that the tracks were probably made by a variety of different creatures but mistakenly classified as one phenomenon.2 The ‘real’ cause of the incident is less significant than the fact that, for at least some nineteenth-century observers, not only were symbolically suggestive things like hoofmarks still strongly linked with the diabolic, but that it was not entirely implausible that the Devil might be active in the world. This mysterious incident is explicable when situated against the background of an active diabolic current in Victorian culture. This book is an examination of the ways in which the Devil was active in the culture of Victorian England. It also provides an explanation and analysis of what exactly the term ‘Devil’ meant in a Victorian English context. The Victorian Devil’s mutability and pervasiveness offer an opportunity to explore the complicated ways in which belief, doubt, and imaginative endeavour intersected in Victorian culture. The Victorian Devil was uniquely situated, hovering between meaning and meaninglessness and between acute seriousness and light-hearted humour and not infrequently managing to inhabit all of those states simultaneously for the same individual or community. The Devil was a regular feature of Victorian life, appearing in a constant stream of supernatural beliefs, both orthodox and heterodox,

2 Introduction colloquial expressions, and an array of entertainments, including novels, ghost stories, poetry, plays, broadsides, chapbooks, and the Punch and Judy show. While it was unusual for him to manifest bodily, he was, in a sense, always present as a figure of anything from ardent belief to honest doubt in the religious life of an individual or community or as a source of entertainment and fun in texts like humorous ballads and plays.3 The Victorian Devil was a powerful, widely recognised concept whose ability to convey an extensive range of ideas allowed him to transcend social divides.

The Victorian Devil This Victorian Devil’s amorphousness raises obvious questions of coherence. How could a single figure have so many faces, while retaining any sort of internal unity? Did he retain internal unity at all? Is it possible that, by the Victorian era, it is nonsensical to speak of the Devil as a single figure? Perhaps, in the face of theological innovation and debate, the worryingly glorious Satan of Milton, the horned buffoon of the Punch and Judy show, and the esoteric definitions of Victorian spiritualists and occultists, he had simply fragmented into hollow meaninglessness. The Devil’s identity was often bound together by the thinnest of threads. For the Victorians themselves, he lacked an entirely unified meaning, with individuals not only reacting to him in widely differing ways but generally being well aware of his contradictions. This awareness stemmed from nothing more complicated than having heard a sermon which mentioned the Devil, while also having heard or read a diabolic folktale, watched a Punch and Judy show, or seen a humorous image of a figure with horns and tail. How this contradiction was or was not resolved is more complex. There was a small subset of Victorians who thought that it was unwise to treat the Devil lightly. Such concerns only made sense in the context of a traditionalist view of the Christian universe, in which the Devil was not only real but powerful and dangerous. In this context, it was more than reasonable to think that laughing at a being, who could tempt you down a road which led to an eternity of torment, was not the best idea, especially if it led those who did so to stop taking the Devil as seriously as they otherwise would have done. The prevalence of diabolic humour and entertainment suggests that this view was not dominant. Such individuals had some basis for their concerns, as it was not uncommon for the less devout to view the Devil’s humorous incarnations as undermining any effort to position him as a serious religious issue. Despite the Devil’s widespread cultural presence, a review of Wall’s book declared that he had been reduced to a joke or a stock image, with ‘jovial fiends’ appearing on ashtrays, paperweights, and in the sort of inconsequential illustrated books, which adorned drawing-room tables.4 While this statement indicates that by the end of the nineteenth century

Introduction  3 the Devil was not always taken very seriously, it also suggests that he was still both present and common, even if the forms he took were not necessarily elevated. Educated Victorians were conscious that their relationship with the Devil contrasted with that of previous generations, often viewing themselves as the inheritors of a demon-haunted world at the tail-end of a process of fumigation, with one mid-century writer commenting that It was no extraordinary thing, some two hundred years ago, for the Evil Spirit to have direct…intercourse with mankind…Indeed, anything unusual…was sure to be referred to demoniacal influence… As for devils haunting houses, they were as common as rats and mice…5 The fact that some educated Victorians treated the diabolic dismissively does not mean that it was absent from Victorian culture, with even the fact that the anonymous writer felt the need to discuss it indicating that the subject had not achieved total irrelevance. Even a ‘jovial’ fiend was still a fiend and a quiet existence in the background of everyday life was still a kind of haunting, especially when, on occasion, the Devil burst forth in more insistent or unsettling ways. There is also no particular reason to treat the Devil’s secular, humorous, or prosaic forms as less significant than his terrifying or religious ones, with the Devil of the comic broadside having as much potential to shed light on Victorian culture as a rarefied debate about the existence of hell or a genuine terror of the powers of darkness. It would be an error to interpret the Devil’s shifting role in Victorian culture as a straightforward tale of decline or secularisation. While it did become more common to doubt the Devil’s existence during the nineteenth century, any ability to construct a coherent model of decline is complicated by the amount and variety of Victorian contexts in which the Devil remained relevant. Framing the Victorian Devil primarily in terms of decline also, at least implicitly, suggests secularisation. A nineteenth-century individual’s views about the Devil said relatively little about their views about religion and the supernatural in general. The Victorian Devil does not provide uncomplicated evidence for the secularising influence of modernity or a wider Victorian ‘crisis of faith’, as many (possibly most) individuals who abhorred the traditional dogmas of hell and a personal Devil maintained religious and supernatural beliefs. While the term ‘decline’ suggests something totalising and precipitous, what the Devil endured was more of an uneven shift from ‘extremely important’ to simply ‘important’. The Victorian Devil can be interpreted as much as evidence for the presence of the supernatural in modernity as for secularisation. A narrative of decline also risks failing to take the Victorian era on its own terms, instead treating it as simply

4 Introduction a transitional stage between a pre-modern ‘religious’ past and a modern (or postmodern) ‘secular’ present. It is more productive to focus on the complex ways in which the Victorian Devil adapted and persisted in Victorian culture, acknowledging when he was beleaguered and when his importance lessened in a particular arena but treating those aspects of his nineteenth-century history as part but not the whole of his story. The story of the Victorian Devil was as much one of persistence as decline or transformation and it was this persistence which bound the disparate threads of his identity together. The various aspects of his character could ultimately be traced back to his role as a traditional Christian figure, with the Devil deriving both coherence and much of his staying power from his long presence in English culture. By the nineteenth century, there was already a history of treating the Devil as a single figure despite the fact that his appearances in literature, entertainment, folklore, and the disparate theologies of different sects varied widely. The Devil’s many faces and characteristics were never entirely detached from his traditional Christian identity, as defined by his role in the Bible and Christian theology. While the traditional religious Devil was never an entirely coherent figure, he had certain relatively coherent qualities. He was the enemy of God, who bore considerable responsibility for the world’s ills but would eventually be vanquished, meaning that he was both powerful and, ultimately, powerless. This apparent paradox accounted for the fact that it was possible to portray him as both intelligent and frightening and the dim-witted butt of the joke. The Devil also had a well-established stock appearance, which included a tail, horns, and cloven hooves. By the Victorian era, this image was supplemented by a more appealing, humanlike, even quasi-heroic image, rooted in the work of writers such as John Milton and the Romantics. While these images initially seem contradictory, the idea that the Devil was once a glorious angel was as much a piece of traditional Christian knowledge as the idea that he was now evil and grotesque. His role in humour and entertainment was also less incongruous than it first appeared. The fact that a concept had a religious origin did not necessarily mean that it had to be treated as ‘sacred’ in every context, and a failure to do so did not indicate that it had become entirely detached from its religious roots. The use of the Devil in a light-hearted context had a long history in English culture, with a variety of medieval dramas and ‘merry tales’, including diabolically themed humour.6 It was permissible to make fun of the Devil because, compared to God, his influence was paltry. During the medieval era, a belief that Satan’s power was ‘strictly limited’ was common even among ‘highly religious individuals’ and it is likely that this belief persisted into the eighteenth century.7 A complex interplay between images of the Devil as a genuine threat and images of the Devil as a potential source of entertainment were not unique to the Victorian era or to modernity.

Introduction  5 Much of the Devil’s ability to amuse derived from the incongruity of making light of such a serious subject. Even for those individuals who did not believe in his literal reality, evil was not, in most cases, inherently amusing. When Punch defeated the Devil in the Punch and Judy show, much of the humour derived from the sheer ridiculousness of a human sinner managing to best the Prince of Darkness. The amusing nature of this scene did not necessarily deprive the Devil of power (literal or cultural) any more than Punch’s defeat of the hangman discredited capital punishment. It is unlikely that there was a straightforward link between diabolic humour and entertainment and nineteenth-century doubts about the existence of the Devil, especially as comic portrayals of the diabolic far predated the Victorian era. Humour can also serve numerous functions and could be used to deflect from a real fear of the Devil’s power or to highlight the wickedness of human institutions through diabolic symbolism as easily as it could be used to convey a lack of belief. The diversity of the Devil’s appearances in Victorian culture not only indicates that the use of traditional religious tropes could be flexible during the nineteenth century but also offers powerful support for their continuing relevance. The Victorians generally interacted with the concept of the Devil in a fluid way. It was common for individuals to take the Devil seriously as a theological issue at church or chapel, laugh at him in a pantomime, and almost sympathise with him in Paradise Lost without substantial difficulty. Even those who were not inclined to accept the Devil’s existence were familiar with him and able to conceptualise and engage with him in multiple versions. His ‘real’ religious, spiritual, or folkloric forms might be earnestly believed in, uncertainly believed in, neither fully accepted nor rejected, or entirely rejected. These forms intersected relatively comfortably with his fictional, humorous, or entertaining variants. Each of his forms was leant coherence by his role in traditional Christian doctrine, which could be accepted or rejected but rarely ignored. Despite his variability, the Devil was a standard component of Victorian culture for the majority of the population. His defining features were his religious role, his mutability, and the fact that the Victorians were comfortable referring to a seemingly disparate array of beings by a single name.

The Modern Diabolic The Devil’s role in modernity, including nineteenth-century England, remains under-researched. One reason is that, with the exception of his role in unusually intriguing topics such as early modern witchcraft, he has not generally been a very popular subject for historians. As Nathan Johnstone notes, ‘[t]here are remarkably few historical studies of the Devil (given his importance to western culture), and they have tended to be informed by the perception of continuities in belief which span vast

6 Introduction periods of western history’.8 Ideas about the status of the supernatural in pre-modernity versus modernity have also had a significant impact on the historiography of the Devil. The body of literature on the modern Devil contrasts fairly sharply with that on the early modern Devil. There have been multiple notable works on the Devil in an early modern English context, including Darren Oldridge’s The Devil in Early Modern England (2000), Nathan Johnstone’s The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (2009), and Charlotte-Rose Millar’s Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England (2017).9 Oldridge and Johnstone’s books are both wide-ranging examinations of the Devil in early modern English society, with a focus on the influence of Protestantism on the development of early modern diabolic ideas.10 While Millar deals with similar material, her topic is more circumscribed, with Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions being dedicated to the examination of the sixty-six extant witchcraft pamphlets from the period between 1563 (the passing of the 1563 Witchcraft Act) and 1735 (the end of the witch trials in England). Her work highlights the ‘crucial role that the Devil played in popular depictions of English witchcraft’.11 Millar’s book also seeks to demonstrate that the Devil was considered ‘a crucial component of a witch’s ability to perform harmful magic’. This detail is important as, prior to the 1990s, it was common for English witchcraft historiography (including the work of prominent twentieth-century historians such as Keith Thomas, Alan Macfarlane, and Barbara Rosen) to assert that, in contrast to mainland Europe, early modern English witchcraft was ‘predominantly non-diabolic and malefic’.12As these three books demonstrate, the early modern English Devil was culturally prevalent enough to support an entire book and diverse enough to reward close analysis. Furthermore, as Millar’s work indicates, gaps in the historiography of the English Devil and debates about his cultural importance are not limited to the historiography of the modern era. Like the nineteenth century, the early modern period had the potential to be volatile for the Devil. The early modern English Devil needs to be understood against the backdrop of the turmoil of the interdenominational conflict caused by the Reformation and the chaos and carnage of the English Civil War.13 This tumultuous background encouraged early modern Protestants to view religion as ‘a kind of warfare’ against the forces of evil.14 Oldridge notes that early modern English Protestantism placed an especially heavy emphasis on the power of the Devil, elevating ‘the struggle against him to the centrepiece of religious life’.15 Johnstone expresses a similar opinion, observing that the Devil ‘underwent a subtle process of cultural change in the hands of the Protestant reforming clergy’.16 This change took the form of a ‘realignment of emphasis rather than an open attack upon tradition’, with English Protestants stressing the Devil’s ability to lead individuals into temptation. While the Devil had always been credited with this power, the degree of emphasis on

Introduction  7 individual temptation was more unusual, with Protestant theologians treating ‘internal temptation’ as ‘the most important and dangerous aspect of his agency’. Every individual was personally responsible for combatting temptation, with Protestant clergymen aiding their congregants in their lonely spiritual battles.17 The sense of diabolic threat was further heightened by Protestant reformers’ repudiation of the previously common idea that the Devil’s influence could be thwarted by ‘Catholic objects’ such as relics and amulets.18 Work on the early modern Devil can help to illustrate that creative redefinition of the Devil’s role and form was not unique to the Victorian era or to the modern period. The eighteenth-century Devil is markedly under-researched in comparison to his immediate predecessor, as the attraction for historians has tended to pale once they pass the end of the witch trials. His comparatively high importance during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has probably also been a factor, as they were something of a golden age for the demonic, meaning that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can look lacklustre in comparison.19 This paucity of research means that it is difficult to authoritatively summarise the Devil’s role in eighteenth- century English culture. While some historians do discuss the eighteenth-century Devil, their work often does not focus on an English context. In addition, they largely agree that the eighteenthcentury Devil was defined primarily by his declining importance. Robert Muchembled, author of A History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to the Present (2000), states that while ‘[t]he devil was not suddenly banished from the Western imagination in the mid-seventeenth century…a real intellectual rupture is visible at this point…Satan lost his importance, slowly and almost imperceptibly’. This loss of status was precipitated by a fragmentation of his identity due to the conclusion of the religious turmoil of the Reformation (which had provided an animating force) and the emergence of the new ideas associated with the Enlightenment. 20 Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of a seminal fourvolume history of the Devil (1977, 1981, 1984, 1986), which includes a study of the modern period, identifies the Devil as the ‘most vulnerable part of theology’, stating that prior to ‘1700 the traditional Christian view was still accepted by many of the educated, but by 1800 most had abandoned it or modified it out of recognition’. 21 He is dismissive of the Devil’s role in eighteenth-century English religion, arguing that his relevance faded due to the growth and influence of latitudinarianism and Deism, although he does acknowledge that the diabolic had a higher status for followers of Pietism (a movement focusing on the individual’s emotional and spiritual relationship with God) and Methodism. 22 Philip C. Almond’s more recent publication The Devil: A New Biography (2014) concurs with this view, arguing that, during the seventeenth century, it was ‘impossible not to believe in the Devil’ but that, ‘[b]y the middle of the eighteenth century, intellectual conditions had changed

8 Introduction sufficiently for at least some among the ‘literate’ elite…to contemplate the non-existence of the Devil’. 23 This shift was spurred on by numerous factors, including the demise of traditional witch beliefs and the development of rationalist scientific and philosophical ideas which clashed with traditional religious beliefs. 24 Almond observes that the educated began to view the Devil as less and less necessary to the functioning of the natural world. He moved from ‘a viable intellectual space’ to ‘the domain of credulity and superstition’, leading to his marginalisation in both natural philosophy and ‘respectable theology’.25 As the Devil’s religious role lessened, his literary role expanded, with the eighteenth century producing the first part of Goethe’s Faust (1790) and the ‘sympathetic’ Devil of Romantic literature. While this development could be viewed as evidence that the Devil remained relevant in some form, Russell saw this literary expansion as yet another symptom of decline, with the Devil shifting from a ‘theological person’, who was taken seriously, to an unthreatening and implausible ‘literary personage’. 26 Even his role in ‘superstition’ may have been undermined, with Almond highlighting that Daniel Defoe, in his History of the Devil (1726), confidently denied that the Devil played a role in witchcraft, conjuration, or astrology. 27 The eighteenth-century Devil has been examined in pieces. Some work on the early modern Devil (including Millar’s Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England) addresses aspects, although not the totality, of the Devil’s early eighteenth-century role.28 He also makes appearances in the literary historiography of the latter part of the century, especially in regard to what has been termed ‘Romantic Satanism’ (the positive or ambiguous use of diabolic themes by Romantic writers). Peter A. Schock’s Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley and Byron (2003) is an especially important example. 29 There are also a number of studies addressing the role of John Milton’s writing, especially Paradise Lost (1667), on eighteenth-century English culture, including Dustin Griffin’s Regaining Paradise: Milton and the Eighteenth Century (1986) and Jonathan Shears’ The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost: Reading Against the Grain (2009).30 The Devil has also made intermittent appearances in the historiography of eighteenth- century English religion. For instance, John Kent’s Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2002) includes information on the Devil’s role in the emergent Wesleyan movement and Lionel Laborie’s Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century England (2015) contains some information on the experiential dimension of the Devil’s role in eighteenth-century religion.31 Some works which address the supernatural in a modern British context, such as Karl Bell’s The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914 (2012), also mention the eighteenth-century Devil, although

Introduction  9 he is rarely a primary focus.32 Even Evelyn Lord’s The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies (2008), one of the few works specifically focusing on the eighteenth-century British demonic, only covers a small segment of the Devil’s eighteenth-century personality.33 While he is not an entirely unexplored subject, the historiography of the eighteenth-century Devil is haphazard and markedly incomplete. As this lack of research indicates, whether or not the Devil has generally been seen as incompatible with modernity (and much of the extant historiographical work on the Devil suggests so), he has, at least, had limited attraction for historians of English modernity.

The Devil and the Victorian Supernatural The historiography of the modern Devil has also often been largely silent on the Devil’s role in Victorian English culture. This neglect is related to the broader issue of the lack of research into the modern diabolic. Russell asserts that by the late-eighteenth century, the theological Devil was already falling victim to the increasingly ‘nominal’ nature of Christian belief among the social elite and a growing tendency for the rebellious and radical to interpret his transgressive individualism positively.34 By the nineteenth century, the Devil had been battered from so many directions that he had become largely disconnected from his theological roots and reduced to an amorphous symbol which could signify almost anything and was better studied through literature than theology or philosophy.35 Muchembled expresses a similar opinion, arguing that Western culture discarded the theological Devil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, turning to psychology to provide its models of and explanations for human evil.36 While there have been some scattered signs that this perception is shifting (with Pax Ferneld and Jesper Aa. Petersen’s edited volume The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity (2013) being a prominent example), works specifically focusing on the Devil’s role in modernity remain scarce. While also under-researched, the nineteenth-century Devil has actually been less neglected than his eighteenth-century counterpart, with this disparity likely stemming from the fact that the Victorian supernatural has recently become a fashionable topic. Like that of his predecessor, the historiography of the nineteenth-century Devil is as defined by what has been ignored as what has been addressed. His role in Victorian culture has often not been outright dismissed so much as left largely or entirely unexplored. There are some notable exceptions. David L. Pike’s Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, 1800–2001 (2007) devotes substantial time to analysing the significance of the Devil in the literature and theatre of nineteenth-century London and Paris, demonstrating that the Devil continued to have a meaningful role in Victorian popular culture.37 More recently, Per Faxneld’s Satanic

10 Introduction Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Women in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2017) has examined the role of Lucifer as a symbol of female rebellion against a misogynistic society, charting and analysing his appearances in nineteenth-century feminist and quasi-feminist literature, art, and esotericism. While Faxneld’s book ranges across Europe and North America, he does make detours into a British context, although his investigation is limited to areas in which the diabolic intersected significantly with issues of gender.38 Both Pike and Faxneld have broken new ground by examining the Devil’s appearances in nineteenth-century ‘popular’ or ‘lowbrow’ literature, with Faxneld making a point of examining both ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ sources in order to demonstrate the breadth of the Devil’s cultural role.39 While these works do illuminate aspects of the nineteenth-century English Devil and offer compelling hints as to his significance within Victorian culture, they ultimately leave much of his role unexplored. Various aspects of the Victorian Devil are also highlighted (albeit in a piecemeal fashion) in an array of works in which he happens to intersect with another topic. An obvious example is provided by the field of religious history, with the Devil rating a mention in a variety of works on Victorian religion.40 Victorian ideas about the Devil’s home are also treated at length in Geoffrey Rowell’s Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (1974), which analyses the fraught status of hell in nineteenth-century theology, and Michael Wheeler’s Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology (1990), which examines the influence of the Victorians’ shifting views of the afterlife on their literary output.41 Neither Rowell nor Wheeler was particularly interested in hell’s overlord and marginalised his role in nineteenth- century theology and culture.42 The Devil’s place in Victorian religious historiography is complicated by the fact that any study of a Victorian religious topic, especially one as supposedly pre-modern as the Devil, must grapple with the vexed issue of the Victorian ‘crisis of faith’. This term refers to the common claim that the various intellectual and theological developments of the nineteenth century, including increasing doubts about the historical accuracy of the Bible, new biological and geological discoveries which seemed to contradict traditional interpretations of the scriptures, and concerns about the apparent amorality of nature, precipitated widespread philosophical, emotional, and spiritual turmoil.43 While older scholarly views have tended to frame science and religion as existing in a state of inevitable tension, historians have, within the last few decades, increasingly called into question the supposed absoluteness of this battle, emphasising the continuing significance of religious ideas in Victorian culture and highlighting the not infrequent instances in which science and religion failed to reach an appropriate state of antagonism.44 Nevertheless, it is

Introduction  11 clear that, at least in some circles, spiritual doubt did proliferate during the Victorian era and that many members of the population were concerned about the future of religion.45 This controversy has contributed to an artificial impression that, by the nineteenth century, the Devil was too old-fashioned to be particularly important. The Devil has enjoyed a slightly more significant place in the growing body of work investigating the role of the supernatural, including spiritualism, occultism, mesmerism, witchcraft, and supernatural fiction, in modern Britain.46 It is really only since the 1990s that historians have begun to reverse a long-standing reluctance to address supernatural topics in a modern British context, with the field having previously been heavily influenced by the early twentieth-century sociologist Max Weber’s theory that the advancing rationality of modernity would inevitably disenchant society.47 The influence of this viewpoint has been compounded by the fact that many educated Victorians, viewing the Devil as old-fashioned and irrational, would, at least in regard to diabolic beliefs, have found it persuasive. While many of these works are uninterested or largely uninterested in the Devil, it is not uncommon for him to rate a mention when he happens to appear in a debate about spiritualism or feature in a belief about magic. These mentions are significant but they offer only tantalising hints about the Devil’s cultural role. This rather haphazard corpus of literature is of significant importance for the study of any aspect of the Victorian supernatural as it establishes that the uncanny continued to play a vital role in nineteenth-century English culture. It makes it clear that the Victorians engaged with the supernatural in numerous ways, enjoying a range of magical entertainments from pantomimes to fairy tales and grappling with such ‘real’ supernatural entities and phenomena as telepathy, portentous dreams, ghosts, and magic.48 While supernatural beliefs and practices were common, they were also controversial and often, especially in the case of lower-class varieties, associated with ignorance and superstition.49 Controversy or even decline is not, however, synonymous with irrelevance. In the case of the Victorian Devil, it indicates the potential for tradition and innovation to coexist, with older ideas about evil being both rigorously challenged and passionately defended as well as constantly remodelled and repurposed. The Victorian Devil can play a significant role in demonstrating the vitality and diversity of the supernatural in Victorian culture. This body of historiography has highlighted many previously obscure sources, taken substantial steps towards creating a clearer outline of the ‘Victorian supernatural’, and, most significantly, rendered an image of Victorian Britain as a largely disenchanted society untenable. The Victorian supernatural was not a mere survival of an earlier, more religious era, an incongruous or rebellious response to an overwhelming ‘crisis of faith’, or a series of fads and oddities, but was rather an organic,

12 Introduction even ‘central’ part of Victorian culture.50 As it is now well-established that there were prominent and varied supernatural currents in Victorian society, the challenge becomes how best to map and interpret them, especially as there are many areas which require further investigation. As Karl Bell has pointed out, most work on the Victorian supernatural has focused on its more ‘elite’ manifestations, with scholars confining themselves to ‘topics that can be intellectually justified…on the grounds of their rich cross fertilization of literary, scientific, psychological, philosophical, and gendered discourses’ such as the more respectable sorts of supernaturally themed fiction and the activities of middle- and upperclass spiritualists and occultists.51 The Devil, who is unfashionable and often has lower-class associations, does not fit into this category. A small number of scholars have branched out, examining popular or lower-class supernatural ideas.52 Owen Davies has probably done more than any other historian to put modern English popular belief on the scholarly map, producing pioneering work on witchcraft, magic, and ghosts. 53 Bell has expanded on Davies’ research, shifting the focus from the rural periphery to the urban centre, publishing books on the famous Victorian bogeyman Spring-Heeled Jack and magic in modern urban England.54 Despite its gaps, the historiography of the Victorian supernatural makes a compelling case not only for the importance of the mystical and uncanny in Victorian culture but also for its ability to bridge demographic divides. An examination of the Devil’s role in nineteenth-century England can help fill an important gap in the historiography of the Victorian supernatural, as he not only made regular appearances in Victorian culture, but was relevant to almost every segment of Victorian society. Victorian England’s reputation as an incongruous site for an investigation of the diabolic also offers an opportunity to demonstrate that a supernatural concept could continue to play a significant role even in a seemingly ‘improbable’ environment.

The Sources The strikingly odd case of the Devil’s Hoofmarks highlights some of the key methodological issues involved in the study of the Victorian Devil. When attempting to understand the ways in which Victorian individuals and communities conceptualised and engaged with the Devil, it is common to run up against evidentiary gaps, with only a minor amount of evidence existing for a specific incident or topic or the surviving accounts offering only a limited, usually middle- or upper-class, perspective. While the seriousness of this issue varies from topic to topic, theorising about the role of the Devil in a given situation often involves a process of assembly and a degree of speculation. This book argues for the utility of a broad and unrestrictive approach to the source material, collecting diabolic references, sometimes lengthy, sometimes fleeting and easy to

Introduction  13 overlook, from a wide variety of contemporary sources, including newspaper and periodical articles, biographies and autobiographies, fiction and poetry, books on relevant topics such as religion, folklore, spiritualism, and occultism, and ephemera such as broadsides. While the surviving information is still often middle- and upper-class in origin, it does contain many firsthand descriptions of people’s feelings about and sometimes even encounters with the supernatural. Despite the inevitable gaps, the available primary source material is vast and demonstrates that the Devil appeared in both ‘popular’ and ‘elite’ sources and in sources with a variety of different purposes and tones, from the serious to the frivolous. It also, most crucially, demonstrates that references to the Devil were common in a Victorian context. Analysis of the surviving primary source material is complicated by the complex relationship between literary texts and the oral record during the Victorian era. The nineteenth century was an era of growing literacy. During the mid-eighteenth century, it is likely that roughly half the population could not write at all but, by 1914, ninety-nine per cent of couples were capable of signing a marriage register. 55 Examining marriage registers is an imprecise way of determining literacy rates, as being able to sign a document does not necessarily indicate that an individual could read or write to any great degree and, as it was common to teach reading and writing separately, some individuals could read but not write. Nevertheless, it is clear that literacy gradually, if unevenly, increased from the early eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. 56 Victorian society was compelled to grapple with the uncertain effects of the substantial expansion of its literate population. David Vincent notes that ‘[t]he spread of literacy raised… major questions about how the common people thought about their world, and how they performed in it’. 57 It is understandable that many Victorians saw themselves as living through the momentous, possibly catastrophic, displacement of one form of communication by another. Folklorists were especially concerned, taking it upon themselves to record the archaic beliefs and customs which they believed were disappearing due to this breakdown in the ‘channels of oral transmission’. This shift supposedly also caused the decline of supernatural beliefs, which were viewed as deeply intertwined with traditional modes of living. 58 Despite some middle-class individuals mourning the demise of oral tradition (even if they did not generally endorse its content), the knowledge transmitted through literacy was often held up as a beacon against the ignorance of the common people and as a victory of rationalism over unbridled imagination and progress over moribund tradition. Oral tradition was, therefore, defined as inherently backward-looking (and, by implication, lower-class) and literacy as inherently progressive. 59 Nineteenthcentury views about the distinction between oral culture and literacy and between superstition and rationalism profoundly affected the ways

14 Introduction in which supernatural ideas were recorded and discussed during the Victorian era. The oral and written records did not exist in opposition to each other, having been interrelated since well before the Victorian era. During the seventeenth century, ‘even…the most backward parishes’ had a small number of individuals capable of signing their own names, indicating that the boundaries between the worlds of the educated and the uneducated had long been permeable.60 Literacy also did not necessarily deprive supernatural beliefs of their means of transmission. As Davies notes, the written word was used to articulate and transmit magical ideas, with supernaturally themed cheap publications such as broadsides and chapbooks persisting into the nineteenth century.61 Literacy and orality could also function symbiotically within a community, with literate members reading texts to those who were incapable of doing so themselves.62 In many cases, whether a supernatural idea was accessed via an oral or literary source may have been largely irrelevant to its content and function.63 It is also possible that, even when a supernatural idea did decline in tandem with the spread of literacy, rather than being responsible, popular literature ‘merely reflected’ its ‘declining relevancy’. It was the entirety of the environment in which a person lived which determined whether or not a piece of lore was relevant to them, not simply what they read or did not read.64 Folklore collections also continued to attest to the existence of a significant corpus of oral lore, meaning that the issue of decline can be overstated.65 It is often impossible to determine ‘the balance between genuine belief and knowing playfulness’ in the way individuals and communities interacted with popular supernatural ideas.66 The Victorian supernatural needs to be understood in the context of a complex, shifting, and sometimes unknowable interplay between the written and oral records. The difficulties posed by the complicated relationship between written texts and oral culture are clearly demonstrated by an examination of the challenges of analysing nineteenth-century broadsides and the publications of the Victorian folklore movement. These texts pose related but distinct problems. The ephemeral nature of broadsides makes it difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain how representative a particular document was of the full corpus of cheap reading material available at the time. For example, the study of modern broadsides is limited by the preferences of nineteenth-century collectors, who were more interested in ballads and songs than advertising material and preferred the older ‘black letter’ Gothic typeface to the more modern ‘white letter’ Roman typeface.67 Nineteenth-century broadsides have also often been accumulated haphazardly, with little or no information recorded regarding the details of their use. Conversely, the context and usage of folklore publications tend to be clearer but whether they provide accurate information about the

Introduction  15 oral lore they claim to preserve is often less certain, especially as they also generally include little information regarding context and provenance. Victorian folkloristics was circumscribed by the fact that Victorian folklorists were primarily middle- and upper-class individuals, who focused on the rural lower classes, as they believed them to be more enmeshed in older ‘primitive’ ways of thinking than urban-dwellers or those of higher social status.68 While it is impossible to entirely rectify these problems, they can be eased by using a diversity of material and making sure to contextualise a source as much as possible. While it is necessary to be aware of the limitations of the source material, a diabolic topic, which initially seems impenetrable, can also be approached from several different angles. As with many diabolic topics, the evidence for the Devil’s Hoofmarks is patchy, with the tale being passed down through a haphazard assortment of contemporary newspaper articles, largely containing second-hand information, and a collection of papers collated by the Rev. H. Ellacombe, vicar of the East Devon village of Clyst St George.69 While Ellacombe’s papers do contain firsthand evidence, it is all from the perspective of middle- or upper-class men, with no firsthand accounts surviving from other demographics.70 Furthermore, even the limited firsthand information available has often been interpreted through the lens of a modern interest in the mysterious, ‘unsolved’ nature of past supernatural incidents and assumptions about the irrationality or oddness of diabolic beliefs. These issues can be mitigated in several ways. Firstly, the fact that the newspaper articles are second-hand can be a disadvantage but hardly renders them useless. The appearance of a topic or event in contemporary newspapers or periodicals indicates that it was of interest to the publication’s compilers and readers. Apart from the obvious fact that every appearance of anything about the Devil in any type of Victorian publication is another piece of evidence that he was culturally relevant, second-hand accounts provide pointers as to the ways in which individuals in a specific time and place were interacting with and conceptualising the diabolic. Furthermore, as Davies has pointed out, Victorian newspaper editors were always on the lookout for ways to increase their readership and profits, with the inclusion of supernatural content being one strategy for attracting attention and entertaining their readership.71 The numerousness of contemporary news articles on the Devil’s Hoofmarks indicates that a purported appearance of the Devil could, at least as a novelty, attract widespread interest.72 Second-hand accounts can serve as a sort of barometer of the Victorian supernatural, signposting when and how it was relevant. The surviving evidence also offers broad hints regarding how different segments of the local population felt about the Devil. For instance, it highlights the role class distinctions played in diabolic beliefs, indicating that educated upper- and middle-class members of the community were

16 Introduction less inclined to believe that the Devil might manifest bodily. It also offers compelling evidence that belief in the Devil’s agency was widespread, with a local clergyman responding to the speculation regarding the Devil’s Hoofmarks by preaching a sermon in which, in an attempt to silence the voice of local superstition, he insisted that the marks must have been caused by an escaped kangaroo.73 This incident indicates that at least some of the middle- and upper-class population considered popular ‘superstition’ about the Devil to be so undesirable that it was worth taking active steps to discourage it. There are also more indirect ways of approaching events like the Devil’s Hoofmarks. Turning to the folkloric record, it is clear that stories of the Devil leaving footprints in the British countryside were not unknown. For instance, suggestively shaped marks in the sandstone near the village of Pendleton, Lancashire were referred to as the Devil’s Footprints and traditionally attributed to the Devil striding across the moors on his way to obliterate Clitheroe Castle.74 It was also not completely unheard of for the Devil to make personal appearances. On one occasion, he manifested in the shape of a black dog at a Palm Sunday gathering in Wiltshire.75 The question, therefore, becomes less about whether a particular example of the diabolic was an anomaly and more about how to interpret the variable pattern of the Devil’s appearances, both literal and non-literal. While elements of the cases in question may always remain obscure, the surviving evidence can, in concert with contemporary sources and modern analysis, be used to provide a detailed backdrop against which to analyse specific diabolic issues and help reconstruct and situate particular encounters with the diabolic. At this point, it is useful to turn to the secondary literature on the supernatural in a modern British context. While sometimes there is an extant body of research on a specific incident or topic, the literature is, in many cases, minimal or non-existent. The story of the Devil’s Hoofmarks has attracted little scholarly attention, being of more interest to sceptical debunkers and compilers of unsolved mysteries.76 The most comprehensive study is Mike Dash’s lengthy article on the topic, published in a 1994 edition of Fortean Studies, although its value lies less in any insight into nineteenth-century society and more in the fact that it includes an extensive compilation of source material and offers a comprehensive overview of the various theories posited to explain the footprints.77 As with the primary material, however, it is possible to approach the problem less directly. For instance, Davies’ work on magical belief in modern Britain helps shed light on the frequently negative attitudes of middle- and upper-class individuals towards lower-class supernatural beliefs and on efforts to combat them through education and religious pressure.78 Similar information can be gleaned from David Vincent’s work on the links between literacy and educated attempts

Introduction  17 to tackle ‘superstition’.79 This research helps to situate the efforts of a local clergyman to dissuade his parishioners from ‘superstitious’ diabolic belief against a larger backdrop of ideological tension regarding the supernatural and, while the exact interplay between orality and literacy among the congregation remains obscure, it provides enough information to trace a broad outline of competing ideological pressures within the community. The case of the Devil’s Hoofmarks is not entirely inexplicable, when situated against the wider body of primary evidence regarding the Devil’s role in a Victorian context and extant research into the Victorian supernatural. It is also necessary to pay close attention to the specific context of a particular diabolic manifestation, as the Victorian Devil varied widely depending on his environment and meant vastly different things to different individuals.

The Many Faces of the Victorian Devil This book uses a thematic chapter structure to highlight the Victorian Devil’s key shapes and to demonstrate the breadth of his cultural role. His forms were so variable and frequently so distinct from each other that it is not incongruous to speak of a theological Devil, a folkloric Devil, or a literary Devil as semi-autonomous beings, although the Devil’s variability meant that there was significant interrelation between his different forms, as well as significant mutability within them. For instance, differing religious denominations and factions often had equally strong but highly divergent views about the nature of the diabolic. The use of a thematic chapter structure provides an opportunity to both contrast and trace the intersections and tensions between the various facets of the Victorian Devil’s character. While the central focus will be overwhelmingly on the Devil, what exactly is meant by ‘the Devil’ will vary throughout the book, encompassing his forms as a literal fallen angel, an amorphous evil force, and a symbol of spiritual and human evil. Additionally, this book will sometimes mention and offer some analysis of other evil spirits, including those which were associates of the Devil (most commonly demons or the spirits of the damned) and those which were posited as substitutes for him (such as the various evil spirits discussed by Victorian occultists). The Devil was not generally conceptualised as existing in isolation. His rulership over and interactions with other spirits was traditionally one of his defining attributes and served as an essential part of his Victorian character. In addition, as traditional views of the diabolic were called into question, the familiar figures of the Devil and his minions were sometimes replaced by more exotic spiritual dangers. The Victorian Devil was not a solitary cultural force but was characterised by relationships, both literal and figurative, with other spirits.

18 Introduction

Chapter Structure The first chapter examines the Devil’s role in the Christian denominations of the Victorian period, outlining the similarities and differences between his roles in Anglicanism, Catholicism, and the major varieties of Non-Conformity. This chapter situates the Devil within nineteenth-century theological debates regarding the existence of hell and eternal punishment, demonstrating that despite his relative neglect in the relevant historiography, he played a noteworthy role in these controversies. It also tackles the vexed issue of the Devil’s nineteenth-century decline, acknowledging the prevalence of doubt regarding his existence, while also demonstrating that he continued to play an important role in Victorian belief and practice. Finally, it includes a brief study of the use of the Devil by secularists for rhetorical purposes, arguing that even for those who aggressively rejected his existence, he could continue to play a part in debates about what to believe. The second chapter turns to the Devil’s role in more heterodox beliefs and practices, building on the growing corpus of work investigating folklore and popular belief in modern England. It offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the ‘folkloric Devil’, examining his exploits, appearance, personality, and social role, as well as the part the diabolic played in classic folkloric topics, such as witchcraft and magic, landscape legends, and the supernatural meanings attributed to animals and plants. It notes the diversity of his role in nineteenth-century folklore, highlighting the fact that he could serve as a terrifying supernatural threat capable of causing serious misfortune or as a source of harmless fun in folktales, folk drama, and children’s games. It also acknowledges and outlines the challenges posed by the fact that the majority of the surviving source material was produced by middle- and upper-class antiquarians and folklorists, who tended to only write about the rural lower classes and whose methods are now considered ideologically flawed and imprecise. The third chapter investigates the Devil’s role in Victorian spiritualism and occultism, demonstrating that concepts of and concerns about supernatural evil played a significant part in Victorian society’s occult currents. This chapter investigates religious concerns that mesmerism and spiritualism might be demonic in nature, as well as the ways in which supporters responded to these allegations. It sheds light on the neglected topic of spiritualist encounters with malicious or troublesome entities and the various approaches of occultists, such as Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, the Theosophical Society, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, to conceptualising and managing the darker side of the supernatural. This chapter also demonstrates that, despite claims of spiritual innovation, Victorian spiritualists and occultists struggled to disassociate themselves from traditional ideas about

Introduction  19 spiritual evil, continuing to express concern about evil spirits, even if those spirits often took unfamiliar forms. The fourth chapter investigates the Devil’s part in Victorian popular culture, demonstrating that belief was not always central to his role in the Victorian imagination. This chapter examines the Devil’s appearances in popular texts and entertainments, including broadsides, cheap fiction, and the Punch and Judy show. It explores the ways in which diabolic tropes permeated everyday life through their use in colloquial language, with individuals using diabolic references to express negative emotions. This chapter also investigates the way in which the Devil’s role in Victorian popular culture blurred the boundaries between belief and entertainment, highlighting the use of ‘real’ supernatural experiences and beings, such as the semi-diabolic bogeyman Spring-heeled Jack, to provide amusement. The Devil’s appearances in Victorian popular culture highlight the diversity of his cultural role, as well as the frequency with which he was used for frivolous purposes. Finally, the fifth chapter investigates the Devil’s role in the literature and theatre of the Victorian period, including ghost stories, supernaturally themed novels, poetry, and stage productions. It examines the ways in which the Victorians were influenced by their inheritance of significant diabolic works such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Faust. Focusing heavily on the Faust legend, it demonstrates the profound influence this tale had on the literary and theatrical culture of the period, to the point that it largely eclipsed alternate diabolic narratives. In tandem with the previous chapter, it highlights that it was not uncommon for the Victorians to use the Devil in ways which largely eschewed serious theological or philosophical content or, at least, placed the emphasis on entertainment. While a limited subset of diabolically themed Victorian literature has attracted scholarly attention, this chapter demonstrates that the Victorians produced and engaged with a wide variety of diabolic texts, with the Devil playing a noteworthy role in their literary and theatrical culture.80 The Victorian Devil left an extensive trail across the landscape of both orthodox and heterodox beliefs and ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, with his prevalence providing a forceful indication of his viability and relevance as a subject in his own right. He was not irrelevant because he did not have the qualities which define irrelevance, namely absence and silence. He continued to intrude disconcertingly on modernity, frightening people in church and amusing them on the stage. Far from being old-fashioned or incongruous he was, despite his theological struggles, at home in Victorian culture – a citizen rather than an intruder or a remnant of a past ideology. The inhabitants of Devon might have been shocked to find that they had been visited by the Devil but many of them were still prepared to think that he was alive and well enough to stop by.

20 Introduction

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p. Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p.; Nickell, Real Life X-Files, 10–16. Harte, “Black Dog Studies,” 10. Anon., “God’s Ape,” 420–421. Anon., “Tom in Spirits,” 525. Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England, 21–22. Ibid., 22–23. Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England, 8. Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England; Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England; Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England. Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England; Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England. Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England, 1–2, 7. Ibid., 2–3, 7–10. Ibid., 3. Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England, 10. Ibid., 7. Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England, 1–2. Ibid., 1–4. Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England, 3. Almond, The Devil, 168. Muchembled, A History of the Devil, 148. Russell, Mephistopheles, 128. Ibid., 130–132. Almond, The Devil, 196. Russell, Mephistopheles, 128–167. Almond, The Devil, 202–206. Russell, Mephistopheles, 158–159. Almond, The Devil, 219. Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England. Schock, Romantic Satanism. Griffin, Regaining Paradise; Shears, The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost. Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans, 76, 97, 110–111, 129–131, 138; Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, 59, 85, 123–124, 139–140. Bell, The Magical Imagination, 187, 216. Lord, The Hell-Fire Clubs. Faxneld and Petersen, introduction, 9; Russell, Mephistopheles, 168. Russell, Mephistopheles, 169–213. Muchembled, A History of the Devil, 4. Pike Metropolis on the Styx, 65–157. Faxneld, Satanic Feminism. Faxneld, Satanic Feminism; Pike, Metropolis on the Styx. E.g. James Obelkevich’s Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825– 1875 (1976) was significant for its early discussion of the role of folklore, including diabolic belief, in nineteenth-century rural religion and Pamela J. Walker’s Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain (2001) acknowledged the profound significance of diabolic beliefs for the early Salvation Army. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians; Wheeler, Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology.

Introduction  21 42 Ibid. 43 Brett, Faith and Doubt; Budd, Varieties of Unbelief; Chadwick, The Secularization of the English Mind in the Nineteenth Century; Cockshut, The Unbelievers; Eisen, introduction, 1–38; Jay, Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain; Larsen, Crisis of Doubt, 1–17; Marsh, Word Crimes, Mullen, Organized Freethought; Royle, Radicals, Secularists, and Republicans; Royle, Victorian Infidels; Schlossberg, Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England; Symondson, The Victorian Crisis of Faith; Willey, More Nineteenth-Century Studies; Wilson, God’s Funeral; Wolff, Gains and Losses. 44 E. g. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain; Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society; Gill, The Myth of the Empty Church; Gill, The Empty Church Revisited; Helmstadter and Lightman, Victorian Faith in Crisis; Larsen, Crisis of Doubt; Sanders, Genres of Doubt; Williams, Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark; Woodhead, Reinventing Christianity. 45 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 11–12. 46 E.g. Barrow, Independent Spirits; Basham, The Trial of Woman; Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack; Bell, The Magical Imagination; Brown, Burdett, and Thurschwell, The Victorian Supernatural; Buse and Stott, Ghosts; Butler, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic; Byrne, Modern Spiritualism and the Church of England; Davies, Murder, Magic, Madness; Davies, A People Bewitched; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture; Dixon, Divine Feminine; Faxneld, Satanic Feminism; Gauld, A History of Hypnotism; Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn; Grimes, The Late Victorian Gothic; Hay, A History of the Modern British Ghost Story; Kontou, Spiritualism and Women’s Writing From the Fin de Siècle to the Neo-Victorian; Kontou, Women and the Victorian Occult; Kontou and Willburn, The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult; Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy; Makala, Women’s Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain; McCann, Popular Literature, Authorship and the Occult in Late Victorian Britain; McCorristine, Spectres of the Self; Natale, Supernatural Entertainments; Oppenheim, The Other World; Owen, The Darkened Room; Owen, The Place of Enchantment; Richardson, Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century; Smajić, GhostSeers, Detectives, and Spiritualists; Smith, The Ghost Story; Pick, Svengali’s Web; Smith and Haas, The Haunted Mind; Thurschwell, Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking; Winter, Mesmerized; Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings; Wynne, Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage. 47 Bell, The Magical Imagination, 13; Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 129–156. 48 Brown, Burdett, and Thurschwell, introduction, 1. 49 Ibid., 7–9. 50 Brown, Burdett, and Thurschwell, introduction, 2; Kontou and Willburn, introduction, 1. 51 Bell, The Magical Imagination, 3. 52 E.g. Barrow, Independent Spirits; Bell, The Magical Imagination; Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack; Bushaway, “‘Tacit, Unsuspected, But Still Implicit Faith’,” 71–97; Davies, The Haunted; Davies, Murder, Magic, and Madness; Davies, A People Bewitched; Davies, Cunning-Folk; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture; Obelkevitch, Religion and Rural Society; William, Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark. 53 Davies, The Haunted; Davies, Murder, Magic, and Madness; Davies, A People Bewitched; Davies, Cunning-Folk; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture.

22 Introduction 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80

Bell, The Magical Imagination; Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 1. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 122–123. Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 2–3. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 156–157. Ibid., 12. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 120–121. Ibid., 123. Bell, The Magical Imagination, 107. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 165–166. Ibid. Bell, The Magical Imagination, 107. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 125. Davies, “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft,” 598–599; Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, 2; Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863. Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p.; Nickell, Real Life X-Files, 10–16. Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 161. Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p. Ibid. Barrowclough and Hallam, “The Devil’s Footprints and Other Folklore,” 93–95. Powell, “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts,” 74. E.g. Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures, 129–131; Fort, The Book of the Damned, 293–298; Gould, Oddities, 9–22; Household, The Devil’s Footprints; May, Pseudoscience and Science Fiction, 24–25; Nickel, Real Life X-Files, 131. Dash, “The Devil’s Hoofmarks,” n. p. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 44–60, 76–78. Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 156–195. E.g. the life and work of Marie Corelli author of the popular Faustian novel The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is examined at length in Annette R. Federico’s Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture (2000). The influence of relevant earlier authors on the Victorians has also been examined in works such as Erik Irving Gray’s Milton and the Victorians (2009) and Alison Millbank’s Dante and the Victorians (1998).

References Almond, Philip C. The Devil: A New Biography. Ithaca, NY and New York: Cornell University Press, 2014. Anon. “God’s Ape.” The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 98, no. 2553 (1904), 420–422. ——— “Tom in Spirits.” All the Year Round 3, no. 72 (1860), 525–528. Barrow, Logie. Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850– 1910. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. Barrowclough, David A. and John Hallam. “The Devil’s Footprints and Other Folklore: Local Legend and Archaeological Evidence in Lancashire.” Folklore 119, no. 1 (2008), 93–102.

Introduction  23 Basham, Diana. The Trial of Woman: Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Literature and Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan Professional and Academic Ltd, 1992. Bell, Karl. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012. ———. The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Brett, R. L. Faith and Doubt: Religion and Secularization in Literature from Wordsworth to Larkin. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997. Brown, Callum G. The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000. Abingdon: Routledge, 2001. Brown, Nicola, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell, ed. Introduction to The Victorian Supernatural, edited by Nicola Brown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell, 1–19. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. The Victorian Supernatural. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Budd, Susan. Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society, 1850–1960. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1977. Buse, Peter and Andrew Stott, ed. Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1999. Bushaway, Bob. “Tacit, Unsuspected, But Still Implicit Faith’: Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-Century Rural England.” In New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Volume 6: Witchcraft in the Modern World, edited by Brian P. Levack, 71–97. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Butler, Alison. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Byrne, Georgina. Modern Spiritualism and the Church of England, 1850–1939. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010. Chadwick, Owen. The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Cockshut, A. O. J. The Unbelievers: English Agnostic Thought, 1840–1890. London: Collins, 1964. Cox, Jeffrey. The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870–1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Davies, Owen. Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003. ———. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007. ———. Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005. ———. A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth-Century Somerset. New York: F+W media, 1999. ———. “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination of London.” Journal of Social History 30, no. 3 (1997), 597–617. ———. Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999.

24 Introduction Dash, Mike. “The Devil’s Hoofmarks: Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855.” Fortean Studies 1 (1994), n. p. https://www.mikedash. com/research. Dixon, Joy. Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England. Baltimore, MD and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001. Eberhart, George M. Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2002. Eisen, Sydney. Introduction to Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief, edited by Richard J. Helmstadter and Bernard Lightman, 1–38. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Faxneld, Per. Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Women in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Faxneld, Per and Jesper Aa. Petersen, ed. The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919. Gauld, Alan. A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Gill, Robin. The ‘Empty’ Church Revisited. London and New York: Routledge, [2003] 2017. ——— The Myth of the Empty Church. London: SPCK, 1993. Gomme, G. Laurence. Ethnology in Folklore. London: Kegan Paul Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1892. Gould, Rupert T. Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1928. Greer, Mary K. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester: Park Street Press, 1995. Griffin, Dustin. Regaining Paradise: Milton and the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Grimes, Hillary. The Late Victorian Gothic: Mental Science, the Uncanny, and Scenes of Writing. Abingdon: Routledge, [2011] 2016. Harte, Jeremy. “Black Dog Studies.” In Explore Phantom Black Dogs, edited by Bob Trubshaw, 5–20. Avebury: Explore Books, 2005. Hay, Simon. A History of the Modern British Ghost Story. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Helmstadter, Richard J. and Bernard Lightman, ed. Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Household, Geoffrey. The Devil’s Footprints: The Great Devon Mystery of 1855. Exeter: Devon Books, 1985. Jay, Elizabeth. Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain. London: Macmillan, 1986. Johnstone, Nathan. The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kent, John. Wesley and Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Kontou, Tatiana. Spiritualism and Women’s Writing: From the Fin de Siècle to the Neo-Victorian. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ———. Women and the Victorian Occult. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.

Introduction  25 Kontou, Tatiana and Sarah Willburn, ed. The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Kontou, Tatiana and Sarah Willburn. Introduction to The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, 1–16. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Laborie, Lionel. Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Larsen, Timothy. Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Lord, Evelyn. The Hellfire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Luckhurst, Roger. The Invention of Telepathy, 1870–1901. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Makala, Melissa Edmundson. Women’s Ghost Literature in NineteenthCentury Britain. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013. March, Joss. Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. May, Andrew. Pseudoscience and Science Fiction. Basel: Springer, 2017. McCann, Andrew. Popular Literature, Authorship, and the Occult in LateVictorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. McCorristine, Shane. Spectres of the Self: Thinking About Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Merton, Ambrose. “Folk-Lore.” Athenæum 982 (1846), 862–863. Millar, Charlotte-Rose. Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Muchembled, Robert. A History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Polity Press. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Mullen, Shirley A. Organized Freethought: The Religion of Unbelief in Victorian England. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Natale, Simone. Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. Nickell, Joe. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Obelkevitch, James. Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–75. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Oldridge, Darren. The Devil in Early Modern England. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2000. Oppenheim, Janet. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, [1989] 2004. ———. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

26 Introduction Pick, Daniel. Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Pike, David L. Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, 1800–2001. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Powell, John U. “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts.” Folklore 12, no. 1 (1901), 71–83. Richardson, Elsa. Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century: Prophecy, Imagination and Nationhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Rowell, Geoffrey. Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Royle, Edward. Radicals, Secularists, and Republicans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866–1915. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. ———. Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement, 1791–1866. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974. Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Sanders, Elizabeth M. Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2017. Schlossberg, Herbert. Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England. Oxford and New York: Routledge, [2009] 2017. Schock, Peter A. Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley, and Byron. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Shears, Jonathan. The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost. Oxford: Routledge, [2009] 2017. Smajić, Srdjan. Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists: Theories of Vision in Victorian Literature and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Smith, Andrew. The Ghost Story, 1840–1920: A Cultural History. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010. Smith, Elton E. and Robert Haas, ed. The Haunted Mind: The Supernatural in Victorian Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999. Symondson, Anthony, ed. The Victorian Crisis of Faith: Six Lectures. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1970. Thurschwell, Pamela. Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking, 1880– 1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Walker, Pamela J. Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons and London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1930. ———. “Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 129–156. Oxford: Routledge, 1991. Wheeler, Michael. Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Willey, Basil. More Nineteenth-Century Studies: A Group of Honest Doubters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1956] 1980.

Introduction  27 Williams, S. C. Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark, c. 1880– 1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Wilson, A. N. God’s Funeral. London: Abacus Books, [1999] 2000. Winter, Alison. Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Wolff, Robert Lee. Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977. Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Woodhead, Linda, ed. Reinventing Christianity: Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Wynne, Catherine. Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

1

The Theological Devil

In 1897, the Westminster Review published an article reflecting on the ways in which English religious life had changed during the nineteenth century. The author, noting the influence of intellectual movements such as biblical criticism and evolutionary theory, wondered, what it meant for ‘the great organised Churches’, if: The authenticity and infallibility of the Old Testament are not only denied by sceptics but are abandoned by many scholars in the English Church; the evolution theory has demolished the old notions concerning the creation of the world and the fall of man; [and] the moral feeling of educated people has revolted at the barbarous doctrine of eternal punishment.1 The tumultuous and often iconoclastic landscape of nineteenth-century theological debate seemed to give ample reason for doubting the continued significance of hell and its overlord. By the late nineteenth century, William Gladstone could lament that hell had been ‘relegated…to the far-off corners of the Christian mind…to sleep in deep shadow, as a thing needless in our enlightened and progressive age’ and, by 1909, one commentator could state that religious bodies had developed a ‘prevailing cloudiness about ultimate things’.2 Commenting on the great emotive power of traditional religion, he stated that ‘the whole apparatus of worship seems…unreal to those who have never seen the shaking of the solid ground beneath their feet, or the wonder and terror of its elemental fires’. ‘The fleeing from the city of Destruction, the crying out against the “burden” of sin, the vision of the flames of hell flaring close to the Celestial City’ were all ‘alien to the present’.3 Despite these concerns, both hell and the Devil retained considerable significance during the Victorian era, with the very uncertainty of their status ensuring that they retained the topicality bestowed on controversial subjects. This chapter will illuminate the significant role the Devil and hell played in Victorian England’s various religious denominations, encompassing the Church of England, the major (and a few minor) Nonconformist denominations, and the Roman Catholic Church. It will also

The Theological Devil  29 examine the symbolic role the Devil played in secularist rhetoric, demonstrating that, even for his most ardent opponents, he was not completely irrelevant. While it would be overstating the case to place the Devil at the centre of the Victorian religious universe, to ignore or marginalise him would be to obscure a significant component of Victorian belief, practice, doctrine, and experience. The Devil played a substantial role in English religion, although his position and that of hell were often heavily contested. The Victorian Devil was an active component of a pluralistic religious environment in which belief and doubt, tradition and innovation competed and intermingled but failed to overwhelm each other. By the late nineteenth century, hell and the Devil had become the site of a crisis of evidence. The Devil hovered on the boundary between meaning and meaningless, as while he still had a deep, symbolic resonance in the western imagination, it also became common to take him less literally.4 The theological significance of hell also gradually faded over the course of the century and by the 1860s an emphasis on hell and judgement had given way to a focus on the wonders of heaven. 5 This shift extended far beyond the borders of hell, with the Devil being only one casualty of a widening acceptance of biblical criticism, which called into question the veracity and authority of the scriptures.6 Nevertheless, when a Victorian individual expressed the view that the Devil was imaginary or irrelevant, they were stating their own ideological position, rather than an expressing a truth which was obvious to the entire population. Throughout the period, numerous diabolic beliefs competed and overlapped, with traditional ideas coexisting and clashing with innovative attempts to remodel the spiritual universe or, more rarely, reject it entirely. Diabolic beliefs shifted gradually and, when the entire period and population are taken into account, remarkably unevenly. The changing cultural role of the Devil and hell does not provide particularly compelling evidence for a wider phenomenon of secularisation. It was extremely common for individuals who rejected the doctrines of a personal Devil and/or a fiery hell to continue to hold (generally Christian) religious or spiritual beliefs. Individuals who doubted the existence of a personal Devil also did not necessarily reject all concepts of spiritual evil, with the Devil often being redefined as a more ‘modern’ and acceptable amorphous evil force or symbol for immorality. These alternative Devils were not simply watered-down versions of his more ‘real’ and significant traditional form, often playing an important role in the beliefs and practices of their adherents. A significant subset of the Victorian population also continued to view the traditional Devil as real and important. Belief was as important to the story of the Victorian Devil as doubt. Hell and eternal punishment provided a reassuringly objective measure of good and evil and the threat of a supernatural punishment for moral deviants was too powerful a tool of social control to be quietly abandoned.

30  The Theological Devil The potential collapse of this theological structure prompted one writer to wonder what would ‘be left to hinder the bursting forth…of millions of…wolves, before whom the salt of the earth will be trodden underfoot’.7 James H. Rigg, in his Modern Anglican Theology, stated that, without eternal punishment, ‘all the demons of hell…may…sing merry songs’.8 By the late nineteenth century, the theological state of hell and the Devil was, at best, uncertain. In 1892, Gladstone noted that ‘[o] n the subject of…eternal punishment…every quack…tries his hand. Yet they do not know – and who does know? what eternity is’. The inherent limitations of the human intellect did not prevent a seemingly endless stream of thinkers from attempting to discover the truth about good, evil, and the afterlife by either devising or endorsing modified versions of hell and the Devil or, conversely, by defending or refining traditional versions.9 The amount of literature produced on the subject of hell provides a powerful indication of its continuing relevance for nineteenth-century Christians. The existence of hell’s defenders also demonstrates that visions of the demise of the demonic were sometimes exaggerated and that the reality of controversy did not mean that traditional views ceased to play a significant role. Nevertheless, the concept of eternal punishment was especially controversial, with discomfort regarding the horrors of hell often playing a role in individual loss of faith.10 It was also often disturbing to believers, with Geoffrey Rowell stating in Hell and the Victorians that ‘[o]f all the articles of accepted Christian orthodoxy that troubled the consciences of Victorian churchmen, none caused more anxiety than the everlasting punishment of the wicked’.11 The decline of hell and the Devil was influenced by numerous factors, including theological innovation, changing attitudes towards crime (especially an increasing focus on reform), and evolutionary ideas, which began to sit uncomfortably with the idea of a static afterlife.12 Taking a critical view of hell and the Devil did not necessarily presage a loss of faith, with some innovators viewing it as a welcome development, indicating that theology was becoming more rational and ethical. One early twentieth-century commentator noted approvingly that there was now ‘room for much freedom of interpretation in the Church’s Eschatological teachings’.13 Conversely, believing in the traditional model did not necessarily indicate that an individual was comfortable with the thought of hell, with Rigg admitting that eternal punishment was such ‘a deep and awful mystery’ that there were ‘few, if any, earnest Christians…who have not felt this, even to agony’. He did not believe that this ‘agony’ disproved traditional doctrine, stating that humanity was ‘surrounded by melancholy mysteries’.14 Despite significant theological destabilisation, a supernatural worldview, including a belief in some sort of afterlife, remained standard throughout the nineteenth century, even if it became more common to view the afterlife in vague terms.15 Victorian views of hell and the Devil do not provide

The Theological Devil  31 anything like a straightforward ‘loss of faith’ narrative, instead highlighting the diversity and complexity of Victorian religion. Nineteenth-century theological views of hell and the Devil demonstrated significant adaptability, with Victorian theologians offering two primary alternatives to eternal punishment, namely conditionalism and universalism. Both of these theological models were intended as correctives to the worrying vision of a spiritual universe, which for many Victorians had come to seem vindictive or even evil. Conditionalism argued that the immortality of the soul was conditional on correct Christian belief, which generally meant that the souls of the wicked would be annihilated at some point following death. This theory was especially significant during the mid-nineteenth century, with the 1860s seeing the publication of multiple noteworthy conditionalist works, including Henry Dunn’s The Destiny of the Human Race, Henry Constable’s The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, and J. B. Heard’s The Tripartite Nature of Man.16 These works expressed deep unease with the idea of a God who would sentence a substantial subset of his own creation to eternal suffering, with Heard wondering why, if ‘[t]he Lord Jesus came “to destroy the works of the devil”…will an incalculably vast majority of all who have ever lived and breathed on earth be given to the great enemy for ever?’ Dunn noted that, accepting the traditional view, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that ‘the plans and purposes of God’ had ‘with limited exceptions, been effectually thwarted by Satan’. Dunn, having wrestled with this problem, concluded, on the grounds that the relevant passages of the Bible were obscure, that the traditional model of the afterlife was simply wrong, positing an alternate evolutionary model in which less spiritually developed individuals were able to advance after death and a person could only be ‘abandoned to Satan’ if they had, of their own volition, given ‘themselves up to his power and service’.17 Heard also argued that evil, along with its personification the Devil, would eventually be annihilated. Like Dunn, he believed that the scriptures were unclear regarding the immortality of both the damned and ‘the devil and his angels’.18 Conditionalist views were indicative of the fact that even individuals who sought to remodel the spiritual universe did not necessarily exclude the Devil. They also demonstrated that, for some individuals, it was of paramount importance that the spiritual universe was in harmony with their own moral impulses, with this consideration being more important than tradition. Theorising about the afterlife and the nature of good and evil was often closely intertwined with an individual’s own idiosyncratic interests. In the 1860s, William Ker, vicar of Tipton, Staffordshire, preached a series of sermons which combined conditionalism with the speculation about the last days popular at the time. Ker argued that hell or hades, which was as pleasant or unpleasant as an individual’s personal godliness dictated, was the abode of all human souls until they were reunited

32  The Theological Devil with their bodies during the final resurrection. While his beliefs were theologically unconventional, Ker, in line with other conditionalists, did not see himself as a biblical revisionist, arguing that there was no scriptural evidence for either the immortality of Satan or the damned. He saw a belief in a powerful, immortal Satan as tantamount to Manicheism.19 A critical view of orthodox ideas about hell and the Devil did not necessarily mean an embrace of absolute heterodoxy or a complete rejection of the importance of supernatural evil. Ker expressed the traditional belief that hell existed in the sight of heaven, with one of his objections to eternal punishment being that the smoke given off by the pit would be a perpetual irritant to the blessed. 20 Constable also demonstrated a lingering respect for the Devil’s power, arguing that, although he would eventually be annihilated, it was possible that as ‘the prime mover in earth’s falling away’, he might survive for longer than either his demonic minions or the damned. 21 Conditionalism also did not necessarily mean a total rejection of the concept of posthumous suffering, with Constable arguing that, prior to annihilation, every guilty soul would experience a degree of punishment commensurate with their misdeeds. 22 Uncertainty regarding the meaning of the scriptures could, rather than damaging faith, provide space for theological speculation. Universalism, which was a more radical alternative, argued that all souls would eventually achieve salvation. The work of the Anglican theologians F. D. Maurice and Frederic William Farrar was especially influential in advancing the universalist cause. 23 In a letter to Alfred Tennyson, Maurice argued that ‘a Theology which does not correspond to the deepest…feelings of human beings cannot be a true Theology’. Acceptance of this viewpoint rendered the concept of eternal punishment untenable, as, if evil was eternal, ‘what could prevent the doctrine, that an immense majority of our fellow-beings are in an utterly hopeless condition, from being regarded as the characteristic doctrine of CHRISTIAN Divinity?’24 Like conditionalists, universalists argued that the Bible did not provide sufficient information to substantiate the traditional view of hell, with Farrar stating that the Old Testament was almost entirely unhelpful and the New Testament provided only ‘fearful metaphors’. In light of the vagueness of biblical references to hell, there was ‘no warrant for building up vast and terrific doctrines which run counter to many plain passages of Scripture; and to its representation of God’s mercy; and to the moral sense of mankind’. 25 While they often stressed the importance of human intuitions about morality, universalists were generally attempting to reinterpret rather than overturn scriptural authority, with the aim of rescuing Christianity from false doctrines. Despite their unconventional views, universalists took evil seriously. Maurice was so convinced that malign spiritual forces permeated the world that he observed that it was difficult to have faith in God’s ability to deliver humanity from evil, ‘when evil is above, beneath, within,

The Theological Devil  33 when it faces you in the world, and scares you in the closet, when you hear it saying in your heart, and saying in every one [sic] else, ‘Our name is Legion’’. 26 Farrar emphasised the significance of sin, stating that repentance was not ‘an easy thing’ and ‘the longer it is delayed the less easy does it become, and the more terrible are the consequences – both here and hereafter’. 27 As this statement indicates, universalism, in common with conditionalism, did not necessarily rule out the possibility of posthumous punishment. It simply denied the eternity of punishment and, in opposition to conditionalism, also the annihilation of the soul. Farrar described hell in figurative terms, stating that it was ‘not a burning prison, but a polluted heart’, as: So long as we are evil, and impure, and unloving, so long where we are is hell…and when all the world dissolves, and every creature is purified…then “all places shall be hell that are not heaven.” How long…we…may harden ourselves, even beyond the grave, against the constraining love of God, we know not…28 The embrace of a softened version of the afterlife and the consequences of sin also did not preclude significant spiritual struggle. Maurice admitted that ‘I have to fight with the devil, sometimes very close combats indeed’. He was so overcome by a sense of his own sinfulness that he stated that ‘the devil is always at work with me to persuade me to renounce God, and that I yield to him very often’.29 As Maurice’s anguished statement indicates, concerns about supernatural evil were not incompatible with theological innovation. By the nineteenth century, the Devil’s form, meaning, and even existence were a matter of interpretation. Nevertheless, hell and the Devil remained relevant enough to be worth contesting and, in many cases, worth finding a place for in a spiritual universe which was being constantly redefined.

Denominations The Devil appeared in the beliefs and practices of the Church of England, a variety of Nonconformist denominations (with this chapter examining the Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Salvation Army, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarians, and Swedenborgians), and the Roman Catholic Church. While Victorian England was home to a plethora of denominations, their size and power varied. It is necessary to contextualise this chapter’s discussion by providing a broad-brush description of the strength and distribution of the relevant sects.30 As the established church, the Church of England was the largest denomination and the only one found across the entirety of the country, with about a quarter of the population attending Anglican worship during the mid-nineteenth century.31 Its power was not absolute and it was notably weak in many

34  The Theological Devil parts of the north and west.32 It could be powerful in both urban and rural areas, with its influence in a particular region being determined by a number of complex factors. In the mid-nineteenth century, Anglicanism was more likely to have the balance of power in parishes which were in the ‘southern and south midland counties’ or ‘lowland areas’, were nucleated, or had ‘concentrated landownership’ or ‘low demographic growth’. Nonconformity tended to be powerful in ‘upland settlements’, ‘industrial areas’, areas ‘which were “open” in settlement’, areas which had ‘scattered landownership’, and ‘areas of reclaimed or marginal agricultural land’. Nonconformity was possibly more likely to be successful in areas where Anglicanism was weak, although this pattern was not absolute.33 Despite its weakness in some areas, Anglicanism still enjoyed a central role in Victorian religious culture. This centrality was not uncontested. Nonconformity and Roman Catholicism often grew in urban areas, partially fuelled by immigration from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.34 In addition, ‘old dissenting’ denominations (older Nonconformist sects, including Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers, and Presbyterians) were frequently aided by the eighteenth-century Evangelical revival.35 Nonconformity often thrived in the nineteenth century, with Congregationalists and Baptists growing significantly in the earlier part of the century and keeping pace with population growth until the 1880s.36 The Religious Census of 1851 revealed that the Congregationalists and Baptists were the strongest old dissenters in terms of both geographical reach and attendance, while the Presbyterians were the weakest in terms of geographical reach and the Quakers in terms of attendance.37 Overall, Congregationalism tended to be middle-class and stronger in urban areas.38 Historians are divided about how well England’s Baptists adapted to nineteenth-century urbanisation, but it appears that they had a variable rural/urban divide, with success in a particular urban area being most closely related to whether it was located in an area of broader Baptist strength. 39 They were ‘less securely middle class’ than the Congregationalists, with many members being lower-middle or upper-working class.40 Like the Congregationalists, the Unitarians, who were a denomination of middling strength (the census of 1851 recorded about 50,000 Unitarians, compared to 165,000 Congregationalists and 490,000 Methodists), frequently drew their membership from the urban middle class. They were stronger in large cities like London, Liverpool, and Manchester.41 The Quakers were both smaller (only having about 15,345 members in 1847) and more geographically limited, appearing in less than half of English and Welsh districts.42 Overall, they were most likely to be found in the north and were largely absent from some parts of the Midlands and southern England. Like Unitarianism, Quakerism was notably urban in character.43 While dominant in Scotland, Presbyterianism only had a small number of congregations. Considering the faith’s Scottish character, it

The Theological Devil  35 is not surprising that there were more Presbyterians in Northumberland than any other region.44 The strength and distribution of old dissenting denominations varied widely and was influenced by numerous factors. Areas in which old dissent was weak sometimes provided opportunities for newer Nonconformist denominations.45 The most significant new dissenting denominations were the Wesleyan Methodist Original Connexion and the Primitive Methodists, although other Methodist sects were also influential.46 Methodism often exploited ‘the erosion of old structures and the weaknesses of the established denominations’, enjoying ‘spectacular’ growth in England between 1780 and 1830.47 The Wesleyan Methodist Original Connexion was the strongest Nonconformist denomination, being present across the majority of England, although it had a notably small presence in London. The Wesleyans’ lack of success in London was reflective of the fact that they were often weaker in areas with ‘high and rapidly expanding populations’.48 They were also sometimes stronger in areas where Anglicanism was weak, with their success in rural areas possibly reflecting patterns of rural anticlericalism, although their cultural strength also reflected flexibility and mobility.49 The Primitive Methodists, who were the second most prominent Methodist denomination, were present across most of England. While their success often overlapped geographically with the Wesleyans, their membership was more markedly lower-class, with many members being miners, fishermen, or agricultural labourers.50 As this fact indicates, the membership of a denomination could be significantly influenced by regional and class differences. The effect of local considerations on Methodist allegiances is also demonstrated by the Wesleyan Methodist Association and the Wesleyan Reformers, which were smaller and strongly localised in scope. They were both absent from much of England but prominent in specific regions, including, in the case of the former, parts of Cornwall and, in the case of the latter, north Norfolk and Derbyshire. Methodist geography was influenced by numerous schisms, with local patterns of allegiance often reflecting an area’s particular history of interpersonal and theological conflicts.51 While Methodists were easily the most prominent new dissenters, smaller sects such as the Swedenborgians also played a role in England’s religious culture. The Swedenborgians were not widely distributed, being strongest in and near Lancashire, where they had first become established in England in the late eighteenth century.52 The Swedenborgians provide further evidence for the importance of taking regional differences into account and offer an important reminder that it is necessary to pay attention to even ‘marginal’ denominations in order to achieve a rounded image of Victorian religious culture. Roman Catholicism also played a notable role. England’s Catholic community was bolstered by Irish immigration, especially in response

36  The Theological Devil to the Irish Famine. With the exception of London, it was much stronger in the north than the south, being absent or weak in many areas of southern England, due to a harsher application of earlier anti-Catholic measures.53 English Catholicism consisted of an interplay between established Catholic communities which had survived the Reformation (often rural and only present in ‘limited areas’) and numerous Irish Catholic immigrants, who largely settled in urban areas. During the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church maintained a largely urban, working-class, and, frequently, Irish base, adapting relatively well to increasingly urbanised conditions.54 In fact, England’s Roman Catholics suggest that an urban environment could sometimes be congenial for Victorian religious communities.

The Church of England Despite the controversial status of hell and the splintered nature of the English religious landscape, the Devil’s continued presence in Christian belief and practice meant that he maintained widespread relevance, although he could be anything from a central to a marginal concern. Within larger denominations, the role of hell and the Devil could be especially diverse, as was the case in the Church of England. As England’s established church, the Church of England was a central feature of religious life. Its adherents were united by their dedication to the Book of Common Prayer, which provided a defined liturgical framework, including services, prayers, and psalms. Despite this shared foundation, Anglicanism was characterised by internal division, being split into three main factions – the High Church, the Low Church, and the Broad Church. Members of the High Church party were often referred to as ‘ritualists’, due to their belief that it would be beneficial to introduce ‘a more Catholic ceremonial’ into the Church’s worship. This position attracted much opprobrium from critics, who worried that there was a thin line between a ritualist and a Roman Catholic. 55 The Low Church party was highly influenced by the broader Evangelical movement, which also included many Nonconforming (Non-Anglican) Protestants. Members emphasised classic Evangelical concerns, including the significance of the atonement effected by Christ’s death and the importance of personal faith.56 The Broad Church was the hardest of the three to define, as it was less a coherent group than a loose collection of individuals, who were in some way critical of both the High and Low Church parties. They were often viewed as ‘theological radicals’, due, in part, to their association with the notorious collection of critical theology Essays and Reviews (1860). This perception was largely unfair, as they were united not by radicalism but by a conviction that the Church of England should be an ideologically ‘broad church’ in which members were allowed to freely express conflicting opinions.57 Relations between factions were

The Theological Devil  37 often fraught, with the Rev. Charles Maurice Davies noting that ‘the differences which fence off certain Nonconformist communities from the Establishment are…often smaller than those which separate sections of the Establishment itself’.58 Naturally, this internal rancour provided plenty of scope for the various factions to use diabolic rhetoric to literally demonise one another. As well as coping with internal division, the Church of England also endured significant change and upheaval during the nineteenth century, moving from being the central English denomination to competing in a pluralistic Christian marketplace.59 Modern historians have often emphasised conflict and change in narratives about nineteenth-century Anglicanism. Francis Knight opens her study The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society (1995) by noting that the nineteenth century was period of ‘rapid…and enduring’ change for the Church.60 It is certainly true that the Church experienced widespread change during the nineteenth century, with views about hell and supernatural evil being among those aspects which altered considerably. It also, as Knight additionally noted, ‘remained distinctly the same institution’.61 In a sense, the Devil’s role in nineteenth-century Anglicanism paralleled the changing fortunes of the Church itself, enduring significant upheaval over the course of the century but also persisting in more traditional forms, being neither a straightforward story of continuity or of change but a complex mix of both. Nineteenth-century Anglican spirituality was heavily concerned with the ‘four last things’, namely death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Supported by a robust Evangelicalism, which took a highly traditional view of the hereafter, hell was prominent in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Following this period, the concept of a literal lake of fire gradually faded in significance.62 It did not go quietly, with debates about eternal punishment and the nature of evil exacerbating internal divisions within the Church. The sheer passion these disagreements could inspire is demonstrated by an incident in which the Anglican priest and committed universalist Basil Wilberforce responded to a High Church manual’s description of ‘after-death conditions of a more than uncomfortable character’ by placing the book in the fireplace.63 The intensity of division within the Church regarding hell and the Devil was demonstrated even more strikingly by an acrimonious disagreement, which took place during the mid-1870s between the Rev. Flavel Smith Cook of Christ’s Church, Clifton, and a parishioner named Henry Jenkins. It began when Cook refused to administer the sacrament to Jenkins on the grounds that he did not believe in the Devil or eternal punishment.64 While Cook acknowledged that a certain degree of theological disagreement was acceptable, he considered Jenkins’ views to be ‘perversions…which no faithful minister will sanction’. Jenkins refused to back down, as he was convinced that his views stemmed from

38  The Theological Devil something more important than tradition, namely ‘what is imprinted in every man’s breast by his Maker…the knowledge of right and wrong’. With neither party willing to give ground, the case passed to the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who decided that it was serious enough to warrant further action. The ecclesiastical Court of Arches upheld Cook’s decision, declaring Jenkins ‘an evil liver’ and ‘a “depraver” of the Book of Common Prayer’. Upon appeal, however, the case was decided in Jenkins’ favour.65 Cook, unwilling to compromise his beliefs, resigned.66 The case of Jenkins versus Cook attracted significant attention and some members of the clergy viewed it as setting a troubling precedent. The High Churchman George Anthony Denison declared Jenkins’ views to be ‘a deadly assault’ upon ‘our Lord Himself’.67 As the incident combined topicality with sensationalism, it also attracted interest from the public, with the appeal being attended by a crowd of curious spectators.68 Despite its inherent pettiness, it cast a stark light on the difficulty of maintaining a cohesive religious community, even within a single congregation, when members disagreed on basic points of doctrine. It also highlighted the fact that debates about the nature and meaning of hell and the Devil were of interest to the laity as well as the clergy. In addition, some responses to the case hinted at something more disquieting, namely that not everyone took these debates seriously, with one article stating dryly that the case was …an admirable opportunity of settling whether there is a Devil, and of seeing what he is like…We must find out…how he gains his living, and how he spends his time down below. It would also be well to make him edit new editions of the ‘Inferno,’ the ‘Paradise Lost,’ and ‘Faust.’69 This mockery was, however, partially aimed at the intensity and public nature of the dispute rather than the Devil. Perhaps, the greatest controversy was prompted by the Athanasian Creed, which was intended to be recited on feast days in place of the Apostles’ Creed. This seemingly routine matter was complicated by the Creed’s so-called ‘damnatory clauses’, which stated with uncomfortable bluntness that: ‘Whosover will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith/ Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly…And they that have done evil into everlasting fire’.70 In the charged atmosphere of nineteenth-century Anglican theology, these clauses were sufficiently controversial to prompt enquiries by bishops and serve as ‘the subject of innumerate letters of attack and defence in public journals’.71 It was so common to question the validity of the Athanasian Creed that one writer described doing so as a ‘branch of industry’.72 This controversy was exacerbated by the fact that, as the Creed had not been consistently

The Theological Devil  39 enforced before being revived by the ritualist movement, it was strongly associated with the High Church.73 Differing opinions about the Devil and hell often reflected other divisions within the Church. The Devil played a significant role in Evangelical theology, which granted him a ‘subordinate sovereignty’ over the world.74 The preacher Henry Melvill summed up the Evangelical view, stating that the earth was the scene of ‘an unwearied conflict’ between the forces of good and evil, which would eventually result ‘in the complete discomfiture of Satan and his associates’, although it would also cause ‘partial disaster to man’.75 The battle against sin waged in every soul was a microcosm of this greater battle.76 Another key component of the Evangelical worldview was the idea that faith and scripture trumped reason and individual opinion, with the leading Evangelical Anglican Lord Shaftesbury stating in response to the popularity of biblical criticism that ‘Satan reigns in the intellect: God in the heart’.77 The insignificance of individual opinion did not mean that an individual’s personal choices were unimportant. While Evangelicals emphasised the basic ‘depravity’ of human nature, they also placed a high premium on right behaviour, although, without faith, works alone were not enough to save someone from the fires of hell.78 Even the Low Church could not stave off internal disagreement regarding eternal punishment. One article published in 1852 warned preachers to remember that they were ‘a preacher of the Gospel of the grace of God…not…a preacher of…ruin’ and, by the latter part of the century, belief in hell had begun to decline among Evangelical clergymen.79 The Devil also played an important role in High Church thought, which generally endorsed the existence of eternal punishment. The High Churchman John Keble stated that it was untenable to proclaim a belief in ‘a happy Eternity’ without also acknowledging the reality of its opposite.80 Edward Bouverie Pusey, who was a prominent member of the faction, viewed hell as essential to Christianity. He was disgusted by Farrar’s rejection of a traditional afterlife, stating that it was selfevident that the inhabitants of hell deserved their fate.81 Like the Low Church, the High Church placed considerable emphasis on an individual’s personal responsibility for resisting temptation, with Walter Farquhar Hook stating that: These four things are certain from Scripture – that God designs that we should be tempted; that He does not tempt us Himself; that He… permits the devil to tempt us; but that He limits the powers of the devil, and only permits him and his subordinate devils to tempt us up to a certain point. He stressed the importance of spiritual vigilance, stating that there was no excuse to ‘through wilfulness or carelessness’ invite temptation by

40  The Theological Devil associating with immoral people or reading profane books.82 Pusey expressed a similar opinion, declaring that: We are…influenced by everything around us…each touch slight, as impressed by an invisible spiritual hand, but, in itself, not the less, rather the more lasting, since what we are yielding ourselves to is… the finger of God or the touch of Satan.83 As Timothy Larsen emphasises in his work on Victorian attitudes to the Bible, while the High Church was certainly distinct from the Low Church in many of its idea and practices, it was not without a comparable reverence for the significance of the scriptures.84 The Low and High Church factions were largely in agreement regarding not only many key aspects of the Devil’s role and character but also on what was the best source of information for that character. While there were significant similarities between High and Low Church opinions of the Devil, there were also crucial differences, with the High Church placing a greater emphasis on the use of ritual as a defence against supernatural evil. As one writer put it, the Devil was so cunning that he could even tempt an individual through their virtues, enticing them to use the valid belief ‘that the Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation’ as a reason for despising ‘the assistance which the Church may afford him, through her formularies, in the interpretation of Scripture’.85 For instance, while churchmen of all factions viewed baptism as a source of individual spiritual regeneration and an important aspect of defence against the Devil, there was substantial disagreement regarding its exact meaning. Low Churchmen conceptualised baptism as a birth ‘into a new life of Church membership with new duties, responsibilities, and privileges’ and even as ‘a great spiritual change, a passing from…the power of Satan unto God’ but doubted that this ‘change’ was entirely achieved by an ‘outward rite’. The most important consideration was that the child went on to lead a godly life. The High Church, however, conceptualised the baptismal rite as having significant power, conferring ‘new birth’.86 Like the Low Church, the High Church suffered from internal dissension regarding the meaning and nature of evil, with the theologian Henry Parry Liddon noting that many individuals preferred to focus on ‘the bright side of religion’ and were unwilling to tackle the ‘unpleasant’ subject of the Devil. He objected strongly to the implication that it was unimportant whether or not someone believed in a literal Devil, as, in his opinion, it made ‘all the difference in the world to a man whether he supposes himself to be dealing with an abstract idea…or with a living will’. To dilute the Devil was to dilute the scriptures and came close to implying that the Bible was ‘a mere reflex of…human passion instead of a Revelation of the Will of God’.87 Anglicans who defended traditional

The Theological Devil  41 views of hell and the Devil were concerned both by the potential loss of a traditional form of Christian belief and by the possibility of genuine threats from the spiritual world. While there was certainly disagreement within the Low and High Church factions, the Broad Church’s position on the Devil was defined by uncertainty. Its greatest contribution to the theology of eternal punishment and supernatural evil was the publication of Essays and Reviews, which had such a profound effect that the Westminster Review declared that the ‘latest phase of religion…has developed its creed’.88 Essays and Reviews embraced controversial biblical criticism, prompting numerous articles and pamphlets in response.89 This reaction was unsurprising, as, at the time of its publication, the Low Church and a substantial proportion of Nonconformists viewed biblical criticism as potentially diabolical.90 Essays and Reviews has attracted substantial attention from historians, being identified in the twentieth century as a source of religious crisis.91 This view was in line with the concerns of some contemporary observers, with one article noting that, if the book’s conclusions were accepted, ‘the whole scheme of salvation has to be entirely rearranged…Divine rewards and punishments…are all…repudiated as immoral delusions’.92 Ultimately, this fear was overblow, with the intensity of the controversy prompted by Essays and Reviews being the product of a battle over biblical hermeneutics, grounded in conflicts between church factions.93 The new ‘creed’ promulgated and represented by Essays and Reviews did not seem to have room for a powerful, personal Devil. Frederick Temple, who contributed an essay entitled ‘The Education of the World’, stated that: The early Christians could recognise, more readily than we, the greatness…of the Example set before them; but…we know better than they the precise outlines of the truth…They had not the same clearness of understanding as we; the same recognition that it is… not the devil who rules the world…94 Another essay, authored by Henry Bristow Wilson, noted approvingly that the Church allowed its members to ‘accept literally, or allegorically…the story of a serpent tempter…the reality of demoniacal possession, the personality of Satan, and the miraculous particulars of many events’.95 Such attitudes were not restricted to the pages of Essays and Reviews, with Farrar, who was associated with the Broad Church party, arguing that the Bible should not always be taken literally and that it was impossible to understand the scriptures without situating them within their historical context. He cited, as an example of a piece of scripture hard for a modern reader to view uncritically, St. Jude and St. Peter’s allusions to ‘strange Jewish myths, as to the Fall of the Angels’.96 While

42  The Theological Devil the controversy prompted by Essays and Reviews was a dispute within a religion rather than a battle over religion itself, it was reflective of the fact that, by the mid-nineteenth century, some Anglicans viewed many of the Devil’s traditional activities as especially implausible. Despite the embattled state of the Devil and hell, many nineteenthcentury Anglicans continued to see the Devil as ‘essential to…human redemption’. One clergyman described the Christian universe as ‘an arch…where every stone was a key one’, with the removal of even a single component creating ‘confusion’. The Devil was especially crucial, as his removal risked inducing ‘moral scepticism’ and came dangerously close to implying that God might also be optional.97 The Rev. J. Van Horn, in his 1884 sermon ‘Is the Devil Yet Alive? If So, Where Does he Live?’, declared that ‘[t]he Devil is “the father of lies”. The report that he does not exist is a lie, and therefore the Devil is the father of the report’. While he acknowledged the validity of intellectual engagement with the scriptures, he cautioned against overzealous biblical criticism, which attempted: …to prove that the demon of holy writ is but a…metaphor, placing in high relief, deafness, madness, palsy, &c. On the principle that it is a metaphor, how incomparably more eloquent than Demosthenes or Cicero was he, who at one time had within him a legion of metaphors struggling for utterance. How the swine herds of Gadara must have been overwhelmed by the moving eloquence of their herds as they rushed with tender pathos into the sea.98 Even the Broad Church priest Charles Kingsley was of a similar opinion, emphasising that evil spirits were ‘real persons’ and expressing his belief that they were themselves responsible for the ‘new-fangled disbelief in evil spirits’.99 These statements were reflective of the fact that, if a personal Devil existed, he was not only a theological necessity but also a dangerous foe. Many lay Anglicans concurred with this position, worrying about and taking precautions against the power of the Devil. Belief in the Devil’s power was reflected in the fact that he featured in a range of popular beliefs, unsanctioned by orthodox theology. These ideas, which will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter, were simply one small part of what David Vincent has described as a ‘complex, pluralistic structure of observations and practices’, which blurred the boundaries between religion and magic, conceptualising the material aspects of religion as saturated with power.100 The Devil of heterodox diabolic belief was disconcertingly active, necessitating vigilance in guarding body and soul. For instance, a Yorkshire blacksmith attempted to prevent his infant son from being the first child baptised in a new church, as he was worried that it might result in him dying and being carried off by the Devil.101

The Theological Devil  43 It was also not uncommon for Anglican clergymen to describe their work as a battle with the forces of darkness, with one clergyman declaring that: ‘We go forth in the strength of the Lord God…assured that… the weapons of our warfare are mighty…to the pulling down of the strongholds of…Satan’.102 The Devil’s influence was especially dangerous during already fraught situations. It was common to view spiritual and material conditions as interrelated, with poverty often conflated with the demonic. The Rev. J. F. D. Stephens, curate of St. George’s, Brandon Hill, stated that ‘[t]hose whose lives are passed in wretchedness and misery…will often tell you that they believe there is no such thing as hell…they say, “[t]his life is hell…”’ As the influence of the Devil permeated the world, it was easier to imagine the Devil’s kingdom than God’s kingdom.103 Moments of particular suffering also left an individual vulnerable to the Devil’s influence. It was common for the deathbed to be viewed, especially in Evangelical circles, as a site of spiritual peril or conflict. The process of dying was often a period of ‘the blackest desolation’, during which ‘the appalling sense of sin, the fear of death, the assault of Satan, or pain of body…conspire sometimes to bring on that partial, if not entire, darkening of GOD’s grace’. This experience was only a heightened version of the ordinary, if unpleasant, spiritual desolation, which occurred occasionally throughout a Christian’s life.104 Between the early nineteenth century and the 1870s, thousands of didactic deathbed scenes appeared in tracts and journals, emphasising that the deathbed was the last chance to avoid hell.105 The Devil’s role in the process of dying gradually lessened in importance, with mentions of ‘spiritual battle’ in deathbed accounts declining by over fifty per cent between 1830 and 1880 (from eleven per cent to five per cent).106 As the late-nineteenth-century emphasis on a more peaceful death demonstrates, the fact that the Devil remained a significant part of the Anglican spiritual universe did not mean that his role was static.107 Satan also maintained his traditional, if slightly contradictory, role as a safe-guarder of cultural morality, with Anglicans being tasked with combatting the world, the flesh, and the Devil. If they did not do their utmost to resist, ‘wicked company’, their ‘own corrupt inclinations’, and ‘Satan and all his wicked angels’, this lethal trio would lead them down ‘the broad road that leads to damnation’.108 In 1856, the Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown, known for his ‘labours in aid of the working classes’, gave a lecture, in which he stated, in reference to race-day betting, that ‘Hell might be raked from end to end…for viler devils than those who… make their way to offer…the sacrifices of villany [sic] upon the altar of the prince of darkness’.109 An article published in The Lancashire Gazette in 1870 declared that Satan would meet those who ‘habitually resort to theatres, dancing saloons, beer-shops, race-courses’, or other places ‘where God is openly forgotten’.110 The Devil did not restrict his influence to the working classes. Early nineteenth-century Evangelicals

44  The Theological Devil often considered worldly activities like novel-reading to be highly dubious. Even Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, one of the Victorian era’s most beloved authors of religious novels, eventually gave up writing fiction, concerned that the Devil was using her talents ‘to mislead’.111 Towards the end of the century, however, many clergymen and philanthropists, recognising the potential usefulness of fun, began to do ‘God’s work with the Devil’s tools’, employing ‘cards, smoking, dramatic performances and entertainments’ as enticements. This innovation prompted negative reactions from traditionalists, with one clergyman stating that the clubs arranged to facilitate such activities ‘almost always bring discredit on the Church, which becomes identified with an institution which… is mainly given over to billiards, drinking, and gambling’.112 Using the Devil’s tools was a risky enterprise, which could bring a person too close to both vice and spiritual darkness. The Devil’s role in morality was contested terrain, with some clergymen arguing that too great a focus on the Devil might have a deleterious effect on morality. The Broad Churchman Alfred William Momerie noted that it was possible for an individual to ‘act religiously from irreligious motives’, as, if an individual believed in God and attended church ‘merely to escape…hell’, there was no reason to suppose that, if ‘Satan were the strongest power’, they would not ‘be equally ready to do as much for him’.113 Momerie’s view challenged the assumptions of traditionalists, who viewed morality and the Devil as intertwined, but was not particularly aberrant. It was fairly common for clergymen to view a lessening belief in the Devil as either inconsequential or beneficial. Despite believing in the Devil, Kingsley welcomed his decline, arguing that too great a focus on the diabolic risked understating the power of God. It was acceptable to believe in the Devil but not to centre him in the Christian story, with Kingsley declaring that ‘the world works by God’s laws and not the devil’s; and it inclines towards good, and not towards evil’. Attributing too much power to the Devil also risked understating the importance of personal responsibility, as for ‘[e]very wrong step that we take knowingly, we give a handle to some evil spirit to lead us seven steps further wrong’.114 While this position did not seek to eliminate the Devil, it sidelined him in order to highlight other aspects of the Christian universe. The Rev. Hugh Reginald Haweis went even further, arguing that the cause of temptation was irrelevant, as whether a person was tempted ‘by fiends without or by lusts within’, the ‘struggle’ was ‘the same’.115 Frederick W. Robertson expressed a similar opinion, stating that ‘[o]ur salvation does not depend upon our having right notions about the devil, but right feelings about God’.116 As to the thorny question of the Devil’s existence, Robertson hedged his bets, expressing a cautious belief but acknowledging that he did not think it was ‘a matter of clear revelation’.117 Even Kingsley, whose belief was firmer, conceded that the scriptural evidence was unclear.118

The Theological Devil  45 In the face of such theological vagueness, the Devil and his minions risked descending into irrelevancy, with the Rev. Charles Maurice Davies claiming that the statement that ‘theology could not get on without its Devil’ was possibly meant ‘satirically’.119 By the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the Devil’s status in the Anglican Church had declined so severely that even Maurice, who viewed the Devil as essential to a coherent understanding of sin, admitted that ‘I shrink with instinctive cowardice from saying, “I maintain this dogma”’.120 While the Devil was not irrelevant, his position was precarious and controversial, with even Anglicans who accepted his existence often doubting his importance. He did not have to be entirely rejected to be shunted to the borderlands of Christian belief, with the Church of England providing an archetypical example of the Devil’s often ambiguous role in Victorian theology. It also highlighted that his decentring was far from complete, with the continuing reality of the Devil’s presence in Anglican belief, practice, and debate demonstrating that he remained a live theological issue.

The Nonconformists The Devil also played a lively, if widely varying, role in England’s dissenting denominations. This fragmentation was unrelated to his significance, as fragmentation was a defining feature of Nonconformity. As Dale A. Johnson points out, it is necessary to examine different Nonconformist groups as separate entities rather than as a Nonconformist block, as there were meaningful differences in terms of both organisation and doctrine between even closely related denominations.121 The Devil was especially prominent in Evangelical forms of Nonconformity in which belief in the existence of hell and the Devil were components of a wider faith in biblical infallibility.122 While this chapter will not attempt the monumental task of completing a comprehensive survey of the Devil’s role in every Nonconformist denomination, it will analyse his role in the most significant sects and comment on minor denominations, which used diabolic ideas in unusual or creative ways. This survey will reveal the significant, if controversial, role that the Devil played in nineteenth-century Nonconformity, as well as highlighting the diverse ways in which Victorian Christians conceptualised and interacted with the darker side of the spiritual universe. Like the Anglican Devil, the Nonconformist Devil was constantly contested and reinvented but rarely absent. As mentioned earlier, England’s major dissenting denominations can be loosely divided into ‘old dissent’, which included denominations of some antiquity, such as the Congregationalists (or Independents), the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Unitarians, and ‘new dissent’, which largely consisted of younger denominations, which had arisen out of Evangelical Anglicanism or Wesleyan Methodism.123 The Devil served

46  The Theological Devil an important function in the majority of these denominations, either as a conventional part of their theology or, in the case of those that rejected belief in a personal Devil, as a symbol against which they could define their own notions of good and evil. Even denominations which generally endorsed the existence of the Devil were often riven by disagreements regarding supernatural evil and eternal punishment. The Baptist Caroline Colman, wife of the mustard manufacturer Jeremiah John Colman, declared that eternal punishment was ‘opposed to the character of God as a loving Father’.124 By 1874, the minister Robert William Dale could tell the Congregational Union that eternal punishment had ‘been silently relegated…to that province of the intellect which is the home of beliefs which we have not rejected, but we are willing to forget’.125 By the end of the century, Nonconformist views of hell and the Devil were more diverse and uncertain than they had been at the beginning and the enthusiasm of Evangelical belief in eternal punishment had begun to set adherents apart from the rest of society.126 Doubts about eternal punishment gained especially significant ground among the Congregationalists, who favoured largely autonomous congregations and embraced a diversity of theological viewpoints.127 Early nineteenth-century Congregationalists viewed hell in largely traditional terms. Members, who were raised during the 1820s and 1830s, noted that warnings about hellfire were a standard part of their education and in 1846 Richard Winter Hamilton, minister of Leeds’ Belgrave Chapel, delivered a lecture in which he stated that not only did hell exist, but that, without hell, redemption was trivial.128 Even at this stage, there were rumblings of discontent. The influential early Victorian minister Thomas Binney endured significant criticism for his refusal to include hellfire in his teachings, although, unlike many later critics, he did not offer a clear alternative.129 In 1846, the Congregationalist minister and conditionalist Edward White presented a more extensive and coherent refutation of eternal punishment in his book Life in Christ.130 While dubious about traditional views of hell, White did not seek to soften the Devil, stating that the ‘history of man…is inextricably interwoven in the Scripture with another history of superhuman enemies of God’.131 While he acknowledged that belief in evil spirits was declining, he did not see anything morally damaging in a belief in supernatural evil, as it was only ‘a temporary hindrance to the welfare of the universe’, with evil spirits existing only to glorify God through their eventual defeat.132 Despite his rather traditional view of the Devil, White’s arguments proved so controversial that he eventually left Congregationalism to be rebaptised in Bristol’s Broadmead Baptist chapel.133 White was not the only Congregationalist clergyman to leave the denomination over a dispute about eternal punishment. The minister and author George Macdonald was forced out of his position as pastor of the Trinity Congregational church at Arundel

The Theological Devil  47 due to his doubts regarding the damnation of the heathen. Macdonald later turned to writing novels, pointedly giving the father of the hero of his novel David Elginbrod the epitaph: ‘Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod, / Have mercy on my soul, O God!/ As I would do, if I were God/ And you were Martin Elginbrod’.134 White’s ideas also lingered, having a strong influence on Robert William Dale, who in 1874 publicly announced his belief in conditionalism. Dale drew significant inspiration from evolutionary ideas, envisioning the universe as unfinished and even God, who was ‘hindered…by we know not what hostile powers’, as having unrealised ambitions.135 Dale’s theology was emblematic of the creative way in which nineteenth-century theologians could incorporate new ideas into their religious thought. A subset of Congregationalists went even further and embraced universalism, with the liberal Congregationalist James Baldwin Brown arguing that the doctrine of eternal punishment was so objectionable that it risked encouraging ‘open infidelity’.136 Brown was also critical of conditionalist theology, stating that ‘it was still a miserable doctrine’. In his opinion, true theology consisted of ideas, which were compatible with ‘the radiance’ of God’s love. He did not underestimate the Devil but hoped that ‘the destruction’ of his ‘work…in the Universe’ would be accomplished ‘not by…omnipotent will, but by…omnipotent love’.137 While Congregationalists continued to exhibit a diversity of viewpoints, conditionalist and universalist arguments had a significant impact on Congregationalist attitudes and, by 1909, Congregationalist ministers could be described as ‘faintly’ trusting in ‘the larger hope’ of a more compassionate afterlife.138 The Baptists, who were the second largest old dissenting denomination after the Congregationalists, also took the Devil extremely seriously. Established in the early modern period, they had, by the end of the seventeenth century, split into the Particular Baptists, who supported predestination, and the General Baptists, who opposed it. By the mid-nineteenth century, they had subdivided even further, although by that point the Particular Baptists had somewhat relaxed their Calvinistic severity. Thankfully for the cause of predestinarian theology, an offshoot known as the Strict Baptists had taken up the torch.139 Internal divisions notwithstanding, Baptists were generally associated with an ‘austere’ interpretation of ‘sin and its consequences’, which viewed hell as playing ‘as great a part as Heaven’ in the Christian story, and distrusted ‘pleasure’ as ‘a wile of the Devil’. Baptists continued to treat the Devil with the utmost seriousness well past the point when his significance had ‘begun to fade’ for many other denominations. They believed that every individual was locked in an ‘eternal contest’ between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘flesh’, in which no quarter should be given to sin or the Devil or, as one list of Baptist aims put it: ‘We make no compromise with the Devil, but strike hard and strike quick’. As questioning the Bible was tantamount

48  The Theological Devil to compromising with the Devil, many Baptists were concerned about the popularity of biblical criticism, which was causing even clergymen to place ‘Satan’s note of interrogation…after nearly every book of the Bible’.140 Participating in such intellectual games was asking for trouble, with the Baptist pastor Archibald Brown noting that ‘there is not a demon that has any question about the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ’.141 Handled properly, the periods of temptation and spiritual despair, which were an ordinary aspect of religious life, could be used as tools for spiritual growth and renewal, with one Baptist writing in the 1840s that ‘[i]n the life of the individual, God permits Satan frequently to seduce so far as to lead him into sin, which, by its greatness, drives him afresh to the cross, and to begin his spiritual life anew’.142 Conflict with the Devil also provided a formidable demonstration of Christ’s power, with Brown expressing his ‘longing for the day when we shall have demon-possessed men and women found more frequently in our sanctuaries…The glory of the sanctuary lies in the devil’s own coming into it’. The practical value of supernatural evil lay in the ‘radical’ nature of its cure, as Christ did ‘not say – “Now, look here, Mr Devil, if you turn respectable…I will allow you to stop in the man”.…That is modern theology’.143 Brown’s rhetoric is indicative of the fact that attempts to soften or marginalise the Devil were only one side of the story. The fact that this sort of rhetoric struck a chord with a significant number of Victorians is demonstrated by the fact that the most popular Nonconformist preacher of the Victorian era was the fiery Particular Baptist orator Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who described sin and its consequences in graphic terms. In one sermon, he stated that: When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone…but at the day of judgement thy body will join thy soul…thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire…thy body will lie, asbestos-like…every nerve a string on which the Devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of hell’s unutterable lament!144 In Spurgeon’s opinion, the nature of God made eternal punishment a necessity, as ‘a holy God cannot endure sin: he cannot have fellowship with…those who are rendered unclean by it’.145 Even Maurice, who abhorred Spurgeon’s rhetoric, acknowledged that his popularity largely stemmed from fire and brimstone and would probably evaporate if he ‘should waken up to the perception of a God of absolute love’.146 Spurgeon demonstrates the intense commitment with which some Victorians attempted to preserve traditional doctrines about the Devil. As Andrew Bradstock and Sue Morgan note, Spurgeon saw his defence of traditional ideas as independent thought and spiritual strength, staunchly adhering to his own viewpoint even as it became increasingly marginalised within his own denomination.147 Neither Spurgeon’s rhetoric nor Maurice’s

The Theological Devil  49 response was more indicative of the character of the Victorian Devil, who could be simultaneously central to one religious faction or individual and marginal to another. Despite hell’s significant role in Baptist theology and rhetoric, a significant subset of Baptists questioned the doctrine of eternal punishment. One of the earliest proponents of conditionalism was the Baptist minister Henry Hamlet Dobney, who argued that just because ‘the devil shall be tormented for ever, it does not…follow that quite another race of intelligences…must therefore exist as long as he does, and endure the same torment’.148 He also, however, strongly rejected the universalist idea that hell might serve as a place of spiritual purification, stating that ‘if six thousand years of punishment…have not availed…to soften…the devil…there can be no ground for believing that another six thousand would’.149 Others were more hopeful, with Andrew Jukes, who presided over a Baptist church in Hull, adopting a universalist position and arguing for the possibility of posthumous spiritual evolution.150 Jukes was aware that his ideas were radical and potentially inflammatory, as they implied that the Devil might be able to achieve salvation, although he believed that there was no reason ‘God would be dishonoured by such a conclusion of the great mystery’.151 The minister Samuel Cox also embraced a universalist position, expressing joy that ‘[f]ew of the more thoughtful and cultivated preachers of the Gospel now hold the dogma of everlasting torment’. Regarding the Devil, Cox stated that he was ‘very cunning, but God is very wise’.152 Other Baptists opposed to eternal punishment included the Rev. John Howard Hinton, who argued that there were ‘many reasons for supposing’ that hell was meant for ‘a salutary rather than a destructive process’, William Leask, minister of a Dalton chapel, who edited a journal largely devoted to conditionalism, and Walter Lenwood, pastor of Suffolk’s Lowestoft Baptist church, who later became a Congregationalist.153 Scepticism about eternal punishment did not necessarily translate into scepticism about the Devil. Hinton stated, with more than a hint of Baptist austerity, that individuals who pursued ‘the phantoms of pleasure or ambition’ were ‘in a degrading bondage’ to the Devil.154 Quaker ideas regarding hell and the Devil were more complicated. Dating back to the English Civil War, the Quakers were a well-established, although not large, denomination. They were defined by a distrust of organised priesthoods and a strong focus on an individualistic spirituality, based on the idea that every person was able to access the ‘Inner Light’ of God working within their soul. They differentiated themselves from other denominations through unusual dress and speech, a rejection of frivolities such as art and music, a strong interest in philanthropy, and, until the mid-nineteenth century, a rejection of inter-denominational marriage.155 Victorian Quakerism was significantly influenced by Evangelicalism, with the work of the minister Joseph John Gurney gifting it

50  The Theological Devil with ‘a complete system of evangelical theology’. This Evangelical influence, which was pervasive enough that the majority of mid-Victorian Quakers were Evangelicals, led many members to becoming preoccupied with the fallen nature of the human race and the hell awaiting the unrepentant.156 The London-based minister Henry Hipsley was stern regarding the spiritual dangers posed by drinking, card games, dancing, and novels, harshly condemning the tendency of young Quakers to take eternal punishment lightly. A Quaker named Josiah Forster issued a similar warning, cautioning young members to beware ‘the temptations… of the Devil’. Such advice was not always well-received, with one young member, who was sceptical of hellfire, objecting strongly to Hipsley’s focus on damnation, stating in reference to his meetings that ‘[i]t was not Quakerism that we listened to’. One woman, born into a Quaker family in the 1870s, described her aunt and uncle as ‘of the prevalent type of the time, a mixture of old-fashioned Quakerism…and then modern evangelicalism’ and expressed her opinion that their faith was a ‘primitive and dreadful…religion of fear’ in which hell was oppressive and ‘ever-present’.157 A significant subset of Quakers were in agreement, with many abhorring the Evangelicalism that had infected their faith and decentred the doctrine of ‘the Inward Light’, which had, by offering an individual ‘spiritual guide’, traditionally allowed for a degree of ‘moral freedom’.158 Towards the end of the century, liberal Quakers, who combined traditional beliefs with liberal theology and social progressivism, became the dominant force in the denomination. Hell began to be regarded with less approval, with the liberal Quaker William Tallack criticising the ‘painful prominence given to “hell”’. Liberal Quakerism did not deny the reality of evil but deemphasised it, focusing instead on the human propensity for goodness and its ability to lead to virtuous action and, therefore, salvation.159 This attitude was almost the polar opposite to that of England’s Methodists, who gave the Devil an especially prominent role in their theology. Methodism was one of England’s newer denominations, having emerged in the early eighteenth century. It was doctrinally similar to the Church of England, although it embraced a more enthusiastic form of worship. By the Victorian era, it had split into numerous theologically similar sub-groups, including the Wesleyan Methodists, the Wesleyan Methodist New Connexion, the Wesleyan Methodist Association, the Primitive Methodists, the Independent Methodists, the Bible Christians, and the Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, with the most prominent being the Wesleyan Methodists and the Primitive Methodists. The Wesleyan Methodists were one of the most significant English denominations, as the Wesleyan Methodist Original Connexion was the strongest Nonconformist denomination.160 The Wesleyan-Methodist universe was dominated by a binary opposition between good and evil, represented by God and the Devil, with Wesleyan spiritual life being characterised

The Theological Devil  51 by an intense pressure to live a godly life, offset by a sense of spiritual ‘exaltation’. Wesleyans strongly emphasised the experience of conversion, which was often conceptualised as overcoming, with God’s aid, the power of the Devil. One minister, who had not had the privilege of a Wesleyan upbringing, described himself as ‘caught…in the grip of the Devil, and only saved by the wonderful power of God’.161 Conversion experiences were equally important in other Methodist denominations, with a Primitive Methodist writing in the 1830s describing the conversion of ‘a fine, strong, robust young man, who appeared very active in the service of Satan’ but, after being exposed to ‘a flood of red-hot truths’, ‘came out manfully for Christ’.162 A conversion experience, combined with a strong personal relationship with God, ensured that an individual did not have to fight the Devil alone and could face death knowing they were an ‘heir to heaven rather than to be cast away in the…fury of Divine wrath’.163 Like Spurgeon’s sermons, Methodism provides a striking example of the fact that many Victorians continued to fear the power of an active Devil. Scepticism about hell or the Devil was, to put it mildly, not encouraged. Doubting the reality of eternal punishment implied a disregard for the significance of the Bible, as ‘[t]he very same terms are used in Scripture to describe the continuance of future happiness and misery’.164 Following the publication of Maurice’s universalist work Theological Essays, Wesleyans were cautioned to avoid ‘this new, complex and deadly heresy’, which threatened to undermine morality and the social order.165 Other Methodist denominations were of a similar mind, with one minister, whose congregation was a member of a small group called the United Methodist Free Churches, declaring that it was essential to ‘faithfully and fearlessly’ inform ‘the unsaved that they are depraved sinners, that the wrath of God has gone out against them, [and] that hell awaits them if they remain impenitent’.166 As well as emphasising the continuing relevance of the Devil, Methodist views highlight that hell remained prominent for a subset of the Victorian population. While an acceptance of traditional models of hell and supernatural evil was standard, Methodist ideas about the Devil did not lack imagination or diversity. They could be idiosyncratic, with orthodox theology combining with folkloric ideas to produce regional or individual variants. Compatibility with existing folk belief may have been a factor in Methodism’s success, as it was especially popular in fishing and mining villages, where a dependence on hazardous occupations inspired a strong concern about and sense of connection to the supernatural world.167 It is also possible that, as Owen Davies has suggested, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist clergymen may have sometimes won approval by being more accepting of popular supernatural beliefs than their Anglican counterparts.168 In the 1850s, a Methodist clergyman based in Cornwall noted that his congregants often dreamt of Jesus or the Devil, who he

52  The Theological Devil described as ‘real persons to the Cornish mind’. Local conversion or spiritual experiences were often accompanied by visions of supernatural entities, with one convert coming face to face with a crowd of hideous devils. On another occasion, a churchwarden, who had just heard a particularly inspiring sermon, was lying in bed when he saw ‘some black figures of imps and devils walking along the mantelpiece with a ladder’, which they used to try and remove a small picture of the crucifixion from his wall. They were incapable of having any significant impact on this godly artefact, retreating in ‘rage and disappointment’.169 Such visions appear to have been relatively common, at least in a rural context, with the writer Augustus Jessop stressing the important role visionary experiences played in popular belief. He stated that: …under religious excitement this dreaming is pretty sure to take the form of visions of angels or evil spirits, and the waking vision or the nightmare becomes hopelessly confounded with what the dreamer has heard, felt, imagined, or remembered. While visionary experiences could be frightening, they could also be desirable, as they had social as well as spiritual meaning, with Jessop claiming that an individual ‘who can boast of an ecstasy becomes… a personage’.170 For some Methodists who had not been so blessed, such experiences were a source of both longing and anxiety, with one writer admitting that he was baffled and awed by: …those who, on various occasions, had to fight the devil, not in the spirit, but in proper person…Such an air of the supernatural was sometimes thrown around these realities, that… I can remember my anxiety…for a chance of doing battle with some of the fiends, on terra-firma; however, I never had an opportunity! He did have regular contact with a friend whose mundane occupation as a ‘pig-jobber’ was offset by ‘his frequent adventures with the “arch enemy”’.171 Tales of dramatic religious experiences were also disseminated via print, with a pamphlet authored by the Wesleyan minister Robert Young describing the experiences of a young woman who had seen visions of heaven and hell. This pamphlet was popular enough to be reprinted multiple times.172 Some aspects of the Methodist supernatural did decline over the course of the century. By the 1830s, Wesleyan preachers had already become less reliant on fire and brimstone and, by the mid-nineteenth century, Wesleyan publications had become ‘sober’.173 These observations do, however, sometimes contrast with other sources, including Jessop’s account of rural religious belief, suggesting that the diabolic beliefs and experiences of Victorian Methodists were diverse. Victorian Methodism was neither so demon-haunted that the

The Theological Devil  53 Devil was always central nor so ‘sober’ that it excluded more colourful diabolic ideas. Methodist views of hell did gradually became more nuanced. The Methodist New Connexion minister William Cooke claimed that those who died ‘in infancy’ would enjoy ‘eternal happiness’ and expressed some doubt regarding the damnation of the heathen.174 Another example of scepticism, which might have been considered mild in another denomination, was provided by the work of Joseph Agar Beet, who one writer credited with introducing questions regarding eternal punishment to ‘the great Wesleyan body’.175 While Beet was prepared to take such questions seriously, he refused to accept that either the wicked or the devils themselves might one day be granted everlasting bliss. His ideas were considered sufficiently worrying, however, that, in 1904, he was forced to resign his academic chair due to pressure from the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. This incident provided a powerful demonstration of Methodist conservatism on the issue of eternal punishment, as such censoriousness was rare by the beginning of the twentieth century.176 Any attempt to officially redefine the position of hell or the Devil was treated as completely unacceptable, with supporters of the ‘larger hope’ suffering expulsion from the ministry.177 The Devil also remained alive and well in Methodism’s offshoot the Salvation Army, which was founded in 1865 by the Methodist preacher William Booth and his wife Catherine, who believed in the principles of Methodism but were frustrated by its organisational rules.178 The Salvation Army’s doctrines can be summed up as [u]tter ruin through the fall, Salvation alone from first to last, through the atonement of Christ by the Holy Spirit; [and] the Great Day of Judgement, with its reward of Heaven for ever for the righteous, and Hell for ever for the wicked.179 It was largely a working-class religion, which, like Methodism, had a strong appeal for individuals who viewed the spiritual world as an active place to be negotiated using a practical mixture of orthodox and heterodox ideas.180 Members envisioned themselves as ‘soldiers of Christ’ waging a war with ‘sin and “the Devil”’, with the Devil often being symbolised by the unconverted ‘roughs of the various towns in which the forces of Salvation pitch their camp’.181 The Army mounted a spiritual assault on England’s working-class areas, winning converts by combining quasi-military discipline with street preaching, raucous music, and shameless self-publicity. Their activities were not always welcome, with one anonymous commentator stating that: Sunday is made hideous every week in many towns and villages by battles between the Salvation Army and their secular opponents…

54  The Theological Devil Both sides are pleased; the roughs gratify their ruffianly instincts, the members of the Salvation army [sic] rejoice in the luxury of martyrdom. The only ones who were not pleased were ‘the somewhat large proportion of citizens who neither care to “get properly saved”…nor yet rejoice in persecuting evangelists whose scheme of operation and whose language are certainly displeasing to a cultivated taste’.182 The writer was far from alone in their opinion of the Army’s rhetoric, with the organisation attributing the opposition it faced to the agency of the Devil. Their music was known for being, as a secularist critic put it, ‘familiar, irreverent, and blasphemous’. This familiarity extended even to the Devil, with one song including the lines: ‘The devil and me, we can’t agree, / I hate him, and he hates me’.183 The Salvation Army often set hymns to popular music, which Charles Booth described as ‘robbing the devil of his choice tunes’.184 Sensationalism was a standard weapon in their armoury, with one evangelist diving off a platform and making swimming motions to represent the sea of God’s love and ripping up his songbook to demonstrate the Devil’s persecution of sinners.185 Diabolic rhetoric served a useful purpose, with one mission worker stating that ‘[o]ur number will increase for we have the devil on the spot and people will run to see the Devil when they won’t stop to hear the truth’.186 As Pamela J. Walker has noted, the Salvation Army’s success was aided by combining ‘popular leisure activities’ with ‘an older Nonconformist radicalism’.187 Despite their use of religious entertainment, the Salvation Army viewed secular leisure activities, such as smoking and drinking, as diabolic.188 Their tactics and rhetoric were an idiosyncratic way of demonstrating that they took the Devil seriously. In 1881, Booth denied that he took ‘the devil’s name in vain’, declaring that he was not afraid of him and that it was preferable to ‘stamp on the devil…and to trample him under their feet… (cries of “Amen”, and “Hallelujah”)’ than it was to circle around the issue.189 Booth viewed doubting the existence or power of the Devil as both doctrinally incorrect and naïve, stating that: To the dwellers in decent homes…there is something…quaint in the language they hear read from the Bible…which…refers to the Devil as an actual personality, and to the struggle against sin…as if it were a…death wrestle with the legions of Hell. To our little sisters who dwell…in quarters where sin and uncleanness are universal, all these Biblical sayings are as real as the quotations of yesterday’s price of Consols…190 This pragmatic attitude situated the cosmic battle between good and evil within the realities of poverty and social dysfunction.191

The Theological Devil  55 While eternal punishment and the Devil often caused serious controversy among Nonconformists, there were several denominations, including the Unitarians and the Swedenborgians, for whom it was quite ordinary to denounce the Devil, hellfire, or both.192 The Unitarians were old dissenters known for their numerous eccentricities, which included rejecting the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, believing that the Bible was not inerrant, and repudiating hell and the Devil.193 The Unitarians’ rejection of the Devil was so adamant that Maurice described him as one of their ‘most deeply rooted aversions’, stating that, from a Unitarian perspective, he was ‘the least tenable figment of orthodox theology’.194 This attitude was powerfully demonstrated by the response of the Unitarian John Page Hopps to the visiting American Evangelist Dwight L. Moody, whose work he described as ‘a piece of fireworks’. Hopps took particular exception to Moody’s use of lurid imagery to inspire terror, describing with genuine disgust a sermon in which he: …pictured good “beautiful girls” in Hell – not because they were wicked, but because…they…could not agree with Mr. Moody…He pictured those girls as given over by Satan in Hell to the lusts of his devils… Hopps was deeply troubled by the implications of Moody’s popularity, concluding that it must indicate that the British were, in terms of their religious ideas, ‘only at the barbaric stage, and that a mighty revolution must be accomplished before the country…can be considered either rational or humane’. Belief in eternal punishment could be classified as ‘barbaric’ because it dissolved the bonds of human affection, leading Hopps to wonder how anyone could ‘bear…heaven, while their loved ones were enduring the torments of hell’. Hopps was unimpressed by Moody’s use of biblical texts, declaring that God also revealed ‘Himself in the human heart, in the human conscience, in the human intellect… and all of these revolt against Mr. Moody’s barbaric Theology’.195 Unitarianism’s scepticism regarding hell sometimes attracted opprobrium from more orthodox denominations. The writer Joseph Cottle, who viewed ‘the salutary checks founded on Satan and hell’ as essential to maintaining social order and morality, accused the Unitarians of destroying ‘hell with a Trope’.196 In 1839, the perceived dangerousness of Unitarian ideas was the driving force behind the ‘Liverpool Controversy’, in which thirteen Anglican clergymen mounted an aggressive mission to Liverpool’s Unitarians. The group took particular exception to Unitarianism’s doubts regarding the existence of the Devil, which they viewed as itself a subtle ‘device of Satan’.197 For some individuals who had reservations about hell, it appears that (at least in the early nineteenth century when scepticism was rarer) Unitarianism may have provided a safe haven.198

56  The Theological Devil Doubt about hell and the Devil did not always protect Unitarians from spiritual turmoil, with Maurice noting that young members endured ‘spiritual conflicts’.199 It is likely that spiritual travails were as common among Unitarians as among other denominations, with the prominent Unitarian James Martineau acknowledging that ‘every serious soul’ was afflicted by a ‘Sense of Sin’ and that Unitarianism’s ‘great weakness’ was ‘its insensibility to this abiding sorrow’. This ‘weakness’ did not mean that it was necessary or desirable to posit the existence of evil spirits, with the New Testament’s references to the Devil being best understood ‘as expressing the writers’ sincere adoption of current ideas’. While the non-existence of the Devil left the origin of evil obscure, it was better to simply accept that it was a mystery. 200 As the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter noted, the Unitarian model of the universe meant that adherents were forced to reckon with the fact that ‘sin’ must be God’s work. While other Christians could ‘think of the world and the conditions under which we live and work as lying under the blight of God’s avenging justice, or, indeed, as handed over to the malign power of the devil’, Unitarian beliefs left an individual engaging in spiritual battle with an enemy, which was part of God’s mysterious purpose.201 Unitarians were also divided about the ultimate consequences of sin, with some members favouring conditionalism and others universalism. 202 The Unitarians also provide a good example of the permeability of denominational boundaries, as aided by the fact that its congregations tended to be theologically variable and largely autonomous, there was a degree of overlap between mid-nineteenth-century Unitarians, General Baptists (who, unusually for Baptists, rejected hell), Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. 203 A Unitarian influence is very evident in English Presbyterianism. As a largely Scottish denomination, Presbyterianism had only a small foothold in England, where it was chiefly associated with immigrants from Scotland or Ulster. Despite their small numbers, the English Presbyterians were divided into three denominations, namely the Church of Scotland, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in England. They were, in terms of their views about posthumous punishment, distinguished by a belief in predestination, although they were otherwise unremarkable. They had, however, already suffered from the potential corrosiveness of disputes about the hereafter, as, in the early eighteenth century, a conflict between a Calvinistic faction and an Arminian faction had led to a split in which many of the former became independent and many of the latter moved towards Unitarianism.204 Presbyterianism was also affected by the theological debates of the nineteenth century, with Henry Solly, minister of the English Presbyterian chapel in Lancaster, declaring that Christ had not overcome a mere ‘metaphorical kingdom of evil’. He emphasised the perils of temptation, although he was uncertain whether Christ had battled ‘personal evil spirits’ or simply ‘sin in the soul of man’. 205 In line

The Theological Devil  57 with his Unitarian background, he argued that ‘divine punishment’ was ‘remedial’ rather than punitive.206 This uncertain mix of theological ideas was common across multiple denominations. The small denomination known as the Swedenborgians or the New Church, whose doctrines were based on the works of the eighteenthcentury Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, also repudiated traditional views of supernatural evil. 207 Their beliefs, derived from Swedenborg’s ideas about the hidden meaning of the scriptures, combined pantheistic and theosophical concepts. 208 They had distinct ideas about the Devil, asserting that there was no such thing as a fallen angel, with ‘all the inhabitants of heaven and of hell’ being ‘derived from the human race’ and the word Devil being simply a term for ‘all hell, taken collectively’. 209 They also, however, took a hard line on the fate of the damned, to the point that one writer suggested that their numbers may have been partially kept down due to their ‘unfortunate doctrine of the eternally fixed state of the wicked’.210 Whether or not this supposition was accurate, it indicates that the position a denomination took on hell was significant enough that it could play a key role in individual religious allegiance.

The Roman Catholic Church For an institution as traditional as the Catholic Church, however, the Devil was an essential doctrinal ingredient, so much so that the Church continued to officially endorse his existence until the 1960s. 211 The Catholic Devil was a scriptural being, defined in highly traditional terms as ‘a prince with evil angels subject to him’, who, despite his abilities having been greatly weakened by Christ’s sacrifice, had ‘terrible power over the world…so much so that he is called the ruler…of this world’. Human beings were fated to be ‘the constant objects of the hateful machinations of the citizens of Hell’, until such time as the Devil and his minions suffered a final defeat and were cast forever into ‘the lake of fire and brimstone’.212 Concerns about the Devil’s power were intertwined with Catholic ritual, with baptism involving the renunciation of ‘Satan, all his works and all his pomps’, confirmation giving an individual ‘a sacramental grace, which abides in the soul’, and the ‘more solemn blessings’ (those which included ‘exorcisms, incensation and anointing with the holy oils’) being guided by the principle that as matter was ‘constantly abused by the spirits of evil’, it was the duty of the Church to save ‘persons and things from the power of the devil’. 213 It was also not unheard of for Catholics to view the trappings of their religion as imbued with special powers, which could be used to counter the Devil’s influence. In the 1880s, two lower-middle-class Catholics from Bootle in Lancashire expressed the belief that their priest could exert power over the Devil.214 Despite the Devil’s prominence, Victorian Catholics generally only came into indirect contact with him, with a sense of distance being implied by

58  The Theological Devil the fact that, while the Church continued to acknowledge the possibility of demonic possession, by the Victorian era, it was ‘infrequent’. 215 The Catholic Church viewed the existence of hell as validated by scriptural evidence, with a nineteenth-century Catholic dictionary stating that hell was a stark reality and heaven was ‘a reward which is in no way due to human nature’.216 The existence of the intermediate state of purgatory did create some leeway by asserting that it was possible for certain individuals, who had been spiritually negligent, to suffer ‘to a degree’ rather than enduring the full torments of hell. The potential of purgatory to offer hope was, however, tempered by the fact that, while it did purify its inhabitants, they also often ‘lost…degrees of grace and of glory in Heaven which can never be regained’. 217 Any potential for hope was also offset by the sheer vividness of Catholic depictions of hell. An extreme example is provided by the work of the mission preacher Father (John) Furniss, well-known for his series of ‘Books for Children and Young Persons’, including the notorious The Sight of Hell. 218 Furniss described hell in excruciating detail, depicting the Devil as a ‘great monster’ with a face that was ‘the most deformed… frightful thing that ever was’. He was blunt regarding the consequences of sin, declaring: Little child, if you go to Hell, there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute…The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered from head to foot with sores…How then will your body be, after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping?219 Furniss’ writing was so lurid that he was singled out for particularly harsh criticism by Protestant observers, with the Anglican universalist Frederic William Farrar describing his writings as ‘ghastly tracts’ and one article declaring that his real surname must be ‘Furnace’. 220 Farrar’s comments were indicative of both the depth of theological division regarding hell and the way in which such disagreements could be used in disputes between denominations. The Catholic writer Thomas Edward Bridgett was offended by these criticisms, pointing out that Furniss’s work dealt with a variety of subjects, many of which demonstrated ‘piety and…tenderness’, and that he had ‘consecrated the last fifteen years of his life almost exclusively to the care of children’. Representations of Furniss as an ‘ogre’ were, in his opinion, thinly disguised anti-Catholicism. He also objected on theological grounds, stating that not only was it beneficial to be aware of the ‘the tortures of hell’ but that this view was hardly restricted to Catholicism. While he was aware that the thought of hellfire could cause distress, he viewed opposition as a reflection of a ‘shallow’ inability to reckon

The Theological Devil  59 with the entirety of God’s character.221 It is likely that Bridgett’s suspicions were not entirely unfounded. Prejudice was a constant problem for nineteenth-century English Catholics, whose beliefs and practices many Protestants associated with tyranny, treason, and superstition and who were forced to deal with a constant flood of sensationalist and insulting depictions in popular literature and, between 1840 and 1870, periodic anti-Catholic rioting. 222 Far from being critical of hell, however, much anti-Catholic rhetoric associated Catholicism with the diabolic, with mid-century Baptists denouncing it as ‘Satan’s mighty engine’ and an 1863 issue of The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine declaring that the Catholic Church was the ‘synagogue of Satan’. 223 While Furniss was an extreme example, he was far from the only Catholic writer to dwell on the torments of hell. 224 Even sophisticated Catholic theologians, such as William Frederick Faber or John Henry Newman, were willing to illustrate the graveness of sin with stark visions of hell. Faber declared that the damned ‘shall be in the hands of devils, quailing under the cruel manipulation of those hideous…formless, gigantic spirits’. 225 Newman was similarly unequivocal, stating that even ‘an apparently small sin’ could have horrifying consequences for the sinner. He stressed the importance of spiritual vigilance, pointing out that it was the Devil’s ‘very art to lead men to be at ease with him’. 226 Doubt was perilous, with the theologian Henry Nutcombe Oxenham noting that there was a ‘close and almost inseparable connection between a denial of eternal punishment and a denial of the existence and agency of the fallen angels’, stating that ‘[t]hose who would dissolve the Evil Spirit into an evil principle or influence…cannot possibly appreciate the revealed reality of sin’. 227 Belief in the Devil was essential to both the spiritual life of the individual and the maintenance of Catholic theology. English Catholicism did not manage to evade controversy or change. The Church experienced a period of significant upheaval during the nineteenth century, absorbing a wave of Irish immigrants and a substantial number of converts from High Church Anglicanism. 228 The denomination’s demographic changes had a transformative effect on the landscape of English Catholic devotion, creating new tensions. For instance, Irish Catholic worship tended to be more boisterous than the ‘quiet devotion’ of the established Catholic population, with preaching targeted at lapsed Irish Catholics often emphasising lurid visions of hell. Catholic engagement with the idea of hell also shifted in other significant ways. At the beginning of the century, the most popular Catholic devotional work had been Bishop Challoner’s Garden of the Soul (1750), which treated hell in mild terms, mentioning but not dwelling on the suffering of the damned. From the mid-nineteenth century, English Catholic eschatology began to be greatly influenced by the writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori, who described the torments of hell in graphic detail. Purgatory also

60  The Theological Devil gradually became more prominent, with related devotions increasing in popularity in the latter part of the century. 229 Catholicism was also affected by wider controversies concerning supernatural evil and eternal punishment, with the Catholic writers William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold stating that the issues raised by the topic of hell had never ‘been felt more keenly’.230 Richard Simpson, a contributor to the liberal Catholic periodical the Rambler, attempted to soften the doctrine of eternal punishment, emphasising that hell was made up of several different states and arguing that ‘natural virtue’ would be taken into account in the hereafter. Simpson, who, as a convert, was aware that many disaffected Protestants were disgusted by harsh visions of hell, argued that Catholicism could potentially gain converts by endorsing a softened version. 231 While Simpson was an early example, from the late nineteenth century, ‘modernist’ views, which combined biblical criticism, a questioning of ecclesiastical authority, and often ‘a sort of progressive liberalism’, began to have a significant influence on English Catholic thought, prompting controversy about eternal punishment. 232 While purgatory was far from a pleasant prospect, it was common for late nineteenth-century thinkers, spearheaded by educated Anglican converts to Catholicism, to use its existence as an indirect antidote to concerns about the more horrific and enduring torments of hell. 233 By the 1880s, England’s Jesuits were highly concerned by the potential consequences of a declining belief in eternal punishment. The Jesuit Henry Coleridge stated that it was far better for a person: …to have quailed in terror before some picture of Purgatory…than to have persuaded ourselves that these sufferings…are light and short, and that it can be no such very terrible thing to fall into the hands of…God on the day of His judgment.’234 Even the Jesuits suffered dissent in their ranks, however, with the Jesuit George Tyrrell publishing an article entitled ‘A Perverted Doctrine’ in an 1899 issue of the Weekly Register, in which he criticised traditional ideas about eternal punishment. When Tyrrell’s article came to the attention of the Provincial of the Jesuits, it prompted a bitter controversy and, in 1907, he was deprived of the sacraments and eventually denied a Catholic burial.235 The evolutionary biologist St. George Jackson Mivart was also excommunicated for his disagreement with Church teachings regarding hell. 236 It seems likely that many lay Catholics were not necessarily impressed by visions of hell, with one working-class lapsed Catholic describing a Dominican preacher’s attempts to terrify a congregation with ‘a lurid picture of the torments of the damned’. While this ‘picture’ did have some effect, the congregation’s ‘fervent resolution’ to ‘renounce the Devil and his works’ generally failed to keep them ‘away from the public house a whole fortnight’. 237

The Theological Devil  61

The Secularists The Devil, always amorphous and paradoxical, also proved useful to those who were sceptical of religion or wished to use its familiar tropes to facilitate social reform. While the Devil was an unpleasant but vital aspect of traditional doctrine, his symbolic potency and ambiguity meant that he could just as easily be used to attack as to maintain an established ideology or institution. In the early 1830s, the freethinker Robert Taylor, known as the ‘devil’s chaplain’, delivered a series of popular lectures at London’s Rotunda theatre in which he preached from ‘the Devil’s pulpit’, performing mock ceremonies, praying backwards, and comparing God to the Devil.238 By the Victorian period, there was a significant history of both religious and irreligious reformers and social critics using supernatural tropes to add colour and drama to their arguments. As knowledge of the scriptures was common, biblical references were able to serve as a lingua franca, bridging the divides between different ideologies.239 An article published in The London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer in 1837 noted, with tongue firmly in cheek, that the ‘Tories say the devil is a Whig, the Whigs maintain he is a Tory, and the Radicals do not trouble themselves about his…politics’. The last assertion was dubious, as both supporters and opponents of universal suffrage were fond of claiming that their adversaries were in league with the Devil.240 The Devil could also be used to support anti-religious arguments. The grimmer side of Christianity provided particular ammunition for sceptics, with secularists generally considering the most unacceptable Christian doctrines to be the atonement, hell, the damnation of unbelievers, and eternal punishment. 241 The writer Edmund Gosse, who was born into an intensely devout family but later came to reject hell, noted that the doctrine allowed his father to be ‘so tender-hearted that he could not bear to witness the pain or distress of any person’ yet also to be ‘quite acquiescent in believing that God would punish human beings, in millions, for ever for a purely intellectual error’. 242 The prominent secularist George Holyoake, who was raised as a Methodist and taught ‘to dread…an avenging God’ and fear the Devil, was intensely proud of having ‘thought’ his ‘way to atheism’. 243 His fellow atheist Charles Bradlaugh declared that: Even if I were a theist I should refuse to see in God a being omniscient and omnipotent, who puts us into this world…leaves us to struggle through it unequally pitted against an almost omnipotent…Devil; and who, if we fail, finally drops us out of this world into Hell-fire…244 The Devil and his realm became a potent emblem of alleged Christian depravity and of the need to develop a form of morality devoid of religious threats.

62  The Theological Devil As the use of diabolic symbolism by secularists demonstrates, the Victorian diabolic was conceptualised and negotiated in a pluralistic religious environment in which widely diverging ideas about the Devil’s identity and significance coexisted. Nevertheless, it was common for the Victorians to treat the diabolic as a meaningful concern, whether as a real spiritual threat or as a theological problem. The idea of a personal Devil was increasingly viewed by some segments of the population as grotesque, and superstitious. Hell was an especially divisive issue, with an increasingly large subset of both the clergy and laity coming to believe that the doctrine of eternal punishment was incompatible with the actions of a loving God. The Devil’s role in the essential dichotomy of good versus evil was still often regarded as a theological necessity, even by thinkers who doubted the existence of eternal punishment. It is possible that the Devil was sometimes considered less disturbing than eternal hellfire, as he was only the tool used to direct guilty souls towards their doom and, therefore, only an adjunct to the main issue. His existence was less damaging to the nature of God, as the problem was not really the existence of evil, but rather what its consequences were and how it would ultimately be dealt with. He was also, however, capable of inspiring fear in his own right, as he was sometimes disconcertingly active, tempting and tormenting those who failed to guard against his influence. A rejection of a fiery hell or a personal Devil indicated little about an individual’s other religious views. It is likely that the majority of those who opposed traditional views of eternal punishment and the diabolic continued to hold (generally Christian) religious or spiritual beliefs. Theological debates questioning traditional views about hell and the Devil were not intended to weaken Christian doctrine, but rather to strengthen and reinvigorate it by interpreting it in a more compassionate and modern way. Individuals and groups who sought to remodel the spiritual world generally had a vision of a better society or better form of Christianity, which could be effected through the elimination or redefinition of hell and the Devil. He even retained some significance for non-believers, who continued to make use of his symbolic value. He was able to retain a non-trivial degree of cultural relevance, even as he slipped away from the centre of the Christian universe. The story of the nineteenth-century Devil is as much one of adaptation and negotiation as decline.

Notes 1 Lloyd, “The Nicene Creed in a Novelette,” 11. 2 Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, 206; Masterman, The Condition of England, 75, 81. 3 Masterman, The Condition of England, 75, 81. 4 Muchembled, A History of the Devil, 187. 5 Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, 57–60.

The Theological Devil  63 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Russell, Mephistopheles, 170–172. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 83. Rigg, Modern Anglican Theology, 196. Lathbury, Correspondence on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 2, 120–121. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 147–149. Ibid., vii. Riso, The Narrative of the Good Death, 13. Woods, Archdeacon Wilberforce, 151. Rigg, Modern Anglican Theology, 196. Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, x; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 213. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 195. Dunn, The Destiny of the Human Race, 5, 63–70, 183, 206, 316. Heard, The Tripartite Nature of Man, 258–259. Ker, The Popular Ideas of Immortality, 99–107, 159–161, 184–187; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 184. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 195. Constable, Hades, 38; Constable, The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, 35–39. Ibid. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 76–89, 139–152. Maurice, Theological Essays, v, xx; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 61. Farrar, The Bible, 230–233. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age, 126–127. Farrar, Eternal Hope, 151–154. Ibid., 124–126. Maurice, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, 260, 267–268, 556. Hempton, The Religion of the People, 52. Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society, 23; Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 54, 71. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 58, 64. Ibid., 5, 186–188. Ibid., 83. Ibid., 93. Bebbington, Victorian Nonconformity, 18–19. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 94–95. Parsons, “From Dissenters to Free Churchmen,” 76. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 107–108. Parsons, “From Dissenters to Free Churchmen,” 78. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 115; Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England, 4. Ibid., 108; Ibid., 4. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 109, 111, 113. Ibid., 95, 97. Ibid., 120, 121. Ibid., 122. Hempton, Religion of the People, 2, 9. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 123–126. Ibid., 129–131. Ibid., 135, 137, 141–144. Ibid., 144–149, 132. Ibid., 162. Ibid., 175.

64  The Theological Devil 54 Ibid., 180–183. 55 Yates, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1–4. 56 Shea and Whitla, “From Clerical Culture to Secularized Anglicanism,” 7; Wolff, “Anglicanism,” 6–12. 57 Wolff, “Anglicanism,” 12–15. 58 Davies, Orthodox London, 3–4, 252. 59 Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, 1–2. 60 Ibid., 1. 61 Ibid., 2–3. 62 Ibid., 42–48, 54. 63 Woods, Archdeacon Wilberforce, 151–152. 64 Anon., “Political and Social”; Anon., “The Clifton Sacrament Case”. 65 Anon., “The Clifton Sacrament Case”; Anon., “The Clifton Sacrament Case: The Judgement”. 66 Anon., “The Clifton Sacrament Case: Secession of the Respondent from the Church of England”. 67 Denison, The Letters of George Anthony Denison, 186–189. 68 Anon., “The Clifton Sacrament Case: The Judgement”. Popular entertainment is discussed in Chapter 4. 69 Anon., “Political and Social”. 70 Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, 57. 71 Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, 57; Stanley, “The Athanasian Creed,” 133, 150–152. 72 Stephen, “The Broad Church,” 322. 73 Stanley, “The Athanasian Creed,” 151–152. 74 Anon., “Weekly Evangelistic Lecture: The Temptation. V.”. 75 Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows, 32. 76 Bradbury, “Evangelistic Lecture: The Temptation. 1.”. 77 Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, Vol. 3, 19–20. 78 Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows, 17. 79 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 6. 80 Keble, Outlines of Instructions, 265–266. 81 Pusey, What Is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment, vi, 4, 6, 25, 30. 82 Hook, Discourses Bearing on the Controversies of the Day, 276–281. 83 Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age, 78. 84 Larsen, A People of One Book, 11–41. 85 Hook, Discourses Bearing on the Controversies of the Day, 284–285. 86 Balleine, A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England, 147–148. 87 Liddon, Passiontide Sermons, 83–99. 88 Harrison, “Neo-Christianity,” 293. 89 Shea and Whitla, “From Clerical Culture to Secularized Anglicanism,” 7–8; Webb, “The Limits of Religious Liberty,” 126–132. 90 Ibid. 91 Shea and Whitla, “From Clerical Culture to Secularized Anglicanism,” 3–7. 92 Harrison, “Neo-Christianity,” 296. 93 Shea and Whitla, “From Clerical Culture to Secularized Anglicanism,” 3–10. 94 Temple, “The Education of the World,” 25. 95 Wilson, “Séances Historiques de Genève,” 176–177. 96 Farrar, The Bible, 258–259.

The Theological Devil  65 97 Anon., “Dean Goulburn on the Devil”; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 6. 98 Anon., “Is the Devil Yet Alive?” 99 Kingsley, Twenty-Five Village Sermons, 91–94. 100 Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 176–177. 101 Payn, “On Kirk-Grims,” 189. 102 Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 68. 103 Anon., “The Pulpit,” July 15, 1895. 104 Nugee, The Words from the Cross as Applied to Our Own Death-Beds, 63. 105 Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 21. Riso, The Narrative of the Good Death, 201–202. 106 107 Ibid. 108 Belcher, Robert Brett, 328. 109 Anon., “A Few Thoughts about Palmer.” 110 Anon., “Weekly Evangelistic Lecture: The Temptation. II.”. 111 Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England, 57. 112 Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 39–40. 113 Momerie, Agnosticism, 277–278. 114 Kingsley, Twenty-Five Village Sermons, 74, 86–87. Anon., “Something about “The Devil””. 115 116 Brooke, Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, Vol. 2, 64. 117 Ibid. 118 Kingsley, Twenty-Five Village Sermons, 91–94. Davies, Mystic London, 145. 119 Maurice, Theological Essays, 47–49. 120 Johnson, The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 4–5. 121 Englander, “The Word and the World,” 29–30. 122 123 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 93–172. Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 47. 124 Englander, “The Word and the World,” 29–30. 125 Englander, “The Word and the World,” 30; Johnson, The Changing Shape 126 of English Nonconformity, 127. 127 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 95–102. 128 Hamilton, The Revealed Doctrine of Rewards and Punishments, 503; Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 48, 51. 129 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 51. 130 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 145. 131 White, Life in Christ, 134–135. 132 Ibid., 139–146. 133 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 52. 134 Ibid., 52, 54. 135 Hopkins, Nonconformity’s Romantic Generation, 76–77. 136 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 145; Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 47. 137 Brown, The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love, vi, 3–4, 134. 138 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 145; Masterman, The Condition of England, 75. 139 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 102–104. 140 Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 123–124, 186, 189. 141 Anon., “The Pulpit,” March 14, 1896. 142 F. C., “State of the Denomination,” 538.

66  The Theological Devil 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190

Anon., “The Pulpit,” March 14, 1896. Farrar, Mercy and Judgement, 104. Hopkins, Nonconformity’s Romantic Generation, 144. Maurice, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Vol. 2, 346–347. Bradstock, Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture, 211–212. Dobney, On the Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishments, 231; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 182. Dobney, On the Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishments, 59–75. Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 55. Jukes, The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things, 129–133. Cox, Salvator Mundi, vii, ix, 302. Hinton, The Theological Works of the Rev. John Howard Hinton, Vol. 3, 310; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 195; Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 55. Hinton, The Theological Works of the Rev. Howard Hinton, Vol. 5, 201–202. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 108–109, 113–114. Kennedy, “Heresy Hunting among Victorian Quakers,” 227 – 228; Larsen, A People of One Book, 170. Kennedy, British Quakerism, 48, 99–100. Kennedy, “Heresy Hunting among Victorian Quakers,” 227–253. Kennedy, British Quakerism, 5, 7–9, 128, 162. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 121–133, 136, 142–144, 150–154. Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 136–137. Key, “R. Key on Primitive Methodism in Eastern England during the 1830s,” 252. Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 222. Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 48. Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 83. Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 216. Hempton, The Religion of the People, 44. Davies, Murder, Magic, Madness, 44. Haslam, From Death into Life, 87–88, 226–229. Jessop, “Superstition in Arcady,” 741–742. Thomson, The Autobiography of an Artisan, 63–64. Davies, The Haunted, 87. Davies, Murder, Magic, Madness, 45. Cook, The Province of Reason on Subjects of Divine Revelation, 192. Smith, My Life-Work, 98–99. Beet, The Last Things, 212, 212, n. 1. Wellings, “British Methodism and Evangelicalism,” 163. Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 1, 8. Booth, Life and Labour, Vol. 1, 125. Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 1–2, 182. Anon., “The Salvation War Cry”; Booth, Life and Labour: Third Series, Vol. 7, 324. Anon., “The Salvation War Cry”. March, Word Crimes, 164. John Wolffe, “‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” 94. Diamond, Victorian Sensation, 117. Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 221. Ibid., 2. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, 185. Anon., “Bridgwater”. Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out, 158–159.

The Theological Devil  67 191 Eason, Women in God’s Army, 19. 192 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 48–49. 193 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 114–115; Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 48–49. 194 Maurice, Theological Essays, 47; White, Life in Christ, 139. 195 Hopps, Mr. Moody’s Late Sermon on Hell, 1–7. 196 Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 43. 197 Thom, Martineau, and Giles, Unitarianism Defended, v. 198 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 51. 199 Maurice, Theological Essays, 51–52. 200 Drummond and Upton, The Life and Letters of James Martineau, Vol. 1, 103, 204. 201 Carpenter and Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 98–99. 202 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 51. 203 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 114–115; Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 48–49. 204 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 95–98. 205 Solly, The Doctrine of Atonement by the Son of God, 141–145, 232–233. 206 Solly, “These Eighty Years,” Vol. 2, 13–14. 207 Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity, 4. 208 Anon., “The Religious Heresies of the Working Classes,” 88; Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 160, 162. 209 Swedenborg, Heaven and Its Wonders, 156. 210 Anon., “The Religious Heresies of the Working Classes,” 88. 211 Russell, Mephistopheles, 169. 212 Addis and Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 260–261; Coleridge, The Prisoners of the King, 55–56. 213 Addis and Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 62–63, 90. 214 Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England, 161. 215 Addis and Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 291. 216 Ibid., 62, 395–400. 217 Coleridge, The Prisoners of the King, viii–ix, 174. 218 Anon., “A Sunday-School Book”; Farrar, Mercy and Judgement, 106; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 172. Furniss, The Sight of Hell, 11–14. 219 Anon., “A Sunday-School Book”; Farrar, Mercy and Judgement, 106–107. 220 221 Bridgett, Blunders and Forgeries, 114–156. 222 Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, 15–22. Anon., “Demonolatry,” 560–562; Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in 223 Mid-Victorian England, 164. 224 Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 171. 225 Faber, Spiritual Conferences, 394. 226 Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 1, 306; Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 4, 42. 227 Oxenham, Catholic Eschatology and Universalism, 133, 136–138. 228 Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 153; Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 173– 174, 183. 229 Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 153–156. 230 Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 399. 231 Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England, 31–33. 232 Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, 333–344. 233 Muller, Gerald Manly Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism, 94; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 154.

68  The Theological Devil 234 Muller, Gerald Manly Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism, 95. 235 Norton, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, 340–342. 236 Allitt, Catholic Converts, 8. 237 McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City, 99, n. 174, n. 180. 238 Lockley, Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England, 172–174. 239 Vernon, Politics and the People, 203, 318. 240 Anon., “Universal Suffrage”. 241 Budd, “The Loss of Faith,” 118–121. 242 Watts, The Dissenters, Vol. 3, 46. 243 Davies, Heterodox London, 399–401; Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 342. 244 Bradlaugh, Theological Essays, cix–cxv.

References Addis, William E. and Thomas Arnold. A Catholic Dictionary, Containing Some Account of the Doctrine, Discipline, Rites, Ceremonies, Councils, and Religious Orders of the Catholic Church. London: Kegan Paul Trench, & Co., 1884. Allitt, Patrick. Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. Altholz, Josef L. The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The “Rambler” and Its Contributors, 1848–1864. London: Burns and Oates, 1962. http:// www.victorianweb.org/religion/altholz/2.html. Anon. “Bridgwater.” The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, June 9, 1881. ———. “The Clifton Sacrament Case.” The Bristol Mercury, January 22, 1876. ———. “The Clifton Sacrament Case: The Judgement: Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Whitehall, Wednesday.” The Bristol Mercury, February 19, 1876. ———. “The Clifton Sacrament Case: Secession of the Respondent from the Church of England.” The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, February 21, 1876. ———. “Dean Goulburn on the Devil.” Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, February 1, 1874. ———. “Demonolatry; or, Devil-Worship.” The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine 3 (1863), 560–562. ———. “A Few Thoughts about Palmer, by the Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown.” Liverpool Mercury, July 5, 1856. ———. “Is the Devil Yet Alive? If So, Where Does He Live?” Cheshire Observer, September 6, 1884. ———. “Political and Social.” The Examiner, December 5, 1874. ———. “The Pulpit.” The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, March 14, 1896. ———. “The Pulpit.” The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, July 15, 1895. ———. “The Religious Heresies of the Working Classes.” Westminster Review 21, no. 1 (1862), 60–97. ———. “The Salvation War Cry.” The Saturday Review, October 8, 1881. ———. “Something About “The Devil”.” The Preston Guardian, February 26, 1876.

The Theological Devil  69 ———. “A Sunday-School Book.” The Lancashire Gazette, March 23, 1872. ———. “Universal Suffrage.” The London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer, January 1, 1837. ———. “Weekly Evangelistic Lecture: The Temptation. II.” The Lancashire Gazette, March 19, 1870. ———. “Weekly Evangelistic Lecture: The Temptation. V.” The Lancashire Gazette, April 9, 1870. Balleine, George Reginald. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911. Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. London and New York: Routledge, [1989] 2005. Beet, Joseph Agar. The Last Things, 3rd ed. New York: Eaton and Mains and Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1898. Belcher, Thomas Waugh. Robert Brett (Of Stoke Newington), His Life and Work. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1889. Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People, Vol. I. London: n. p., 1889. ———. Life and Labour of the People in London: Third Series: Religious Influences, Vol. 7: Summary. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1902. Booth, William. In Darkest England and the Way Out. New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1890. Bradlaugh, Charles. Theological Essays. London: n. p., 1895. http://gutenberg. org/ebooks/39266.mobile. Bradstock, Andrew. “‘A Man of God Is a Manly Man’: Spurgeon, Luther, and ‘Holy Boldness’.” In Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture, edited by Andrew Bradstock, Sean Gill, Anne Hogan, and Sue Morgan, 209–225. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000. Bridgett, Thomas Edward. Blunders and Forgeries: Historical Essays, 2nd ed. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co. Ltd, 1891. Brooke, Stopford A., ed. Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, Vol. II, 3rd ed. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1866. Brown, James Baldwin. The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love, 2nd ed. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875. Budd, Susan. “The Loss of Faith: Reasons for Unbelief among Members of the Secular Movement in England, 1850–1950.” Past & Present 36 (1967), 106–125. Carpenter, J. Estlin and P. H. Wicksteed. Studies in Theology. London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1903. Coleridge, Henry James. The Prisoners of the King: Thoughts on the Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory. London: Burns and Oates, 1882. Constable, Henry. The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment. New Haven, CT: Charles C. Chatfield & Co., 1872. ———. Hades; or the Intermediate State of Man. London: Elliot Stock, 1873. Cook, William. The Province of Reason on Subjects of Divine Revelation. London: Rev. John Bakewell, Methodist New Connexion Book Room, 1844. Cox, Samuel. Salvator Mundi: or, Is Christ the Saviour of All Men? New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1878. Davies, Charles Maurice. Heterodox London: or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis, Vol. I. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874.

70  The Theological Devil ———. Mystic London; or, Phases of Occult Life in the British Metropolis. New York: John W. Lovell, Company, 1884. ———. Orthodox London: or, Phases of Religious Life in the Church of England, 2nd ed. London: Tinsely Brothers, 1874. Davies, Owen. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007. ———. Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005. Denison, Louisa Evelyn, ed. The Letters of George Anthony Denison, 1845– 1896: Archdeacon of Taunton. London: John Murray, 1902. Diamond, Michael. Victorian Sensation, or the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Anthem Press, 2003. Dobney, Henry Hamlet. On the Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishments: An Argument in Two Parts, 3rd ed. New York: An Association of Gentlemen, 1850. Drummond, James and C. B. Upton. The Life and Letters of James Martineau, Vol. I. London: James Nisbet & Co., Limited, 1902. Dunn, Henry. The Destiny of the Human Race: A Scriptural Inquiry. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., n. d. Eason, Andrew Mark. Women in God’s Army: Gender and Equality in the Early Salvation Army. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003. Englander, David. “The Word and the World: Evangelicalism in the Victorian City.” In Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol. II: Controversies, edited by Gerald Parsons, 14–38. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Faber, Frederick William. Spiritual Conferences. London: Thomas Richardson, 1859. ———. The Bible: Its Meaning and Supremacy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897. ———. Mercy and Judgement: Last Words on Christian Eschatology with Reference to Dr. Pusey’s “What Is of Faith?” London: Macmillan and Co., 1882. F. C. “State of the Denomination.” In The Baptist Record, and Biblical Repository, Vol. IV, 537–538. London: Aylott and Jones, 1847. Furniss, John. The Sight of Hell. Dublin: James Duffy and Co., Ltd., 1874. Gladstone, William Ewart. Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. Hamilton, Richard Winter. The Revealed Doctrine of Rewards and Punishments. London: Jackson and Walford, 1847. Harrison, Frederic. “Neo-Christianity.” Westminster Review 18, no. 2 (1860), 293–332. Haslam, William. From Death into Life. London: printed by author, n. d. Heard, John Bickford. The Tripartite Nature of Man: Spirit, Soul, and Body: Applied to Illustrate and Explain the Doctrines of Original Sin, the New Birth, the Disembodied State, and the Spiritual Body, 3rd ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870. Heimann, Mary. Catholic Devotion in Victorian England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Hempton, David. The Religion of the People: Methodism and Popular Religion, c. 1750–1900. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

The Theological Devil  71 Hinton, John Howard. The Theological Works of the Rev. John Howard Hinton, M. A. in Six Volumes, Vol. III: Systematic and Controversial Divinity. London: Houlston & Wright, 1864. ———. The Theological Works of the Rev. Howard Hinton, M. A., In Six Volumes, Vol. V: Lectures. London: Houlston & Wright, 1865. Hodder, Edwin. The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, K.G., Vol. III. London, Paris, New York, and Melbourne: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1886. Hook, Walter Farquhar. Discourses Bearing on the Controversies of the Day. London: John Murray, 1853. Hopkins, Mark. Nonconformity’s Romantic Generation: Evangelical and Liberal Theologies in Victorian England. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004. Hopps, John Page. Mr. Moody’s Late Sermon on Hell: A Lecture. Glasgow: T. Bennett, n. d. Inglis, Kenneth. Churches and the Working Classes. London: Routledge, [1963] 2013. Jalland, Pat. Death in the Victorian Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Jessop, Augustus. “Superstition in Arcady.” Nineteenth Century 12, no. 69 (1882), 733–755. Johnson, Dale A. The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825–1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Jukes, Andrew. The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things: With Some Preliminary Remarks on the Nature and Inspiration of Holy Scripture: A Letter to a Friend. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869. Keble, John. Outlines of Instructions or Meditations for the Church’s Seasons. Oxford and London: James Parker and Co., 1880. Kennedy, Thomas C. “Heresy Hunting Among Victorian Quakers: The Manchester Difficulty, 1861 – 73.” Victorian Studies 34, no. 2 (1991), 227–253. ———. British Quakerism, 1860–1920: The Transformation of a Religious Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Ker, William. The Popular Ideas of Immortality, Everlasting Punishment, and the State of Separate Souls, Brought to the Test of Scripture: A Series of Discourses Delivered in the Parish Church of Tipton, Staffordshire, in 1863–4, and Affectionately Dedicated to the Members of his Congregation, 2nd ed. Dudley: W. H. Laxton and London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1870. Key, R. “R. Key on Primitive Methodism in Eastern England during the 1830s.” In Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol. III: Sources, edited by James R. Moore, 248–252. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Kingsley, Charles. Twenty-Five Village Sermons. London: John W. Parker, 1849. Knight, Frances. The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Landow, George P. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought. Abingdon: Routledge, [1980] 2014. Larsen, Timothy. A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Lathbury, Daniel C., ed. Correspondence on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. II. London: John Murray, 1910.

72  The Theological Devil Liddon, Henry Parry. Passiontide Sermons. London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891. Lloyd, Walter. “The Nicene Creed in a Novelette.” Westminster Review 147, no. 1 (1897), 11–16. Lockley, Philip. Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. March, Joss. Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in NineteenthCentury England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Masterman, Charles Frederick Gurney. The Condition of England. London: Methuen & Co., 1909. Maurice, Frederick, ed. The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, Vol. II. London: Macmillan and Co., 1884. ———. Theological Essays, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1853. McLeod, Hugh. Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City. Abingdon: Routledge, [1974] 2016. Momerie, Alfred William. Agnosticism: Sermons Preached in St Peter’s, Cranley Gardens, 1883–4, 4th ed. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1891. Muchembled, Robert. A History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Polity Press. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Muller, Jill. Gerald Manly Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism: A Heart in Hiding. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Newman, John Henry. Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. I. London: Rivingtons, 1879. ———. Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. IV. London: Rivingtons, 1882. Norman, Edward. The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Nugee, George. The Words from the Cross as Applied to Our Own DeathBeds: Being a Series of Lent Lectures, Delivered at S. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, mdcccliii. London: Joseph Masters, 1856. Oxenham, Henry Nutcombe. Catholic Eschatology and Universalism: An Essay on the Doctrine of Future Retribution. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1876. Parsons, Gerald. “From Dissenters to Free Churchmen: The Transitions of Victorian Nonconformity.” In Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol. 1: Traditions, edited by Gerald Parsons, 67–116. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Payn, James. “On Kirk-Grims.” The Cornhill Magazine 8, no. 44 (1887), 189–199. Paz, Denis G. Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Pusey, Edward Bouverie. What Is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? In Reply to Dr. Farrar’s Challenge in His ‘Eternal Hope,’ 1879. Oxford: James Parker & Co. and London: Rivingtons, 1880. Reardon, Bernard. M. G. Religious Thought in the Victorian Age: A Survey from Coleridge to Gore, 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Rigg, James H. Modern Anglican Theology: Chapters on Coleridge, Hare, Maurice, Kingsley, and Jowett, 2nd ed. London: Alexander Heylin, 1859.

The Theological Devil  73 Riso, Mary. The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Rix, Robert. William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007. Rowell, Geoffrey. Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Shea, Victor and William Whitla. “From Clerical Culture to Secularized Anglicanism: Positioning Essays and Reviews in Victorian Social Transformation.” In Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and Its Readings, edited by Victor Shea and William Whitla, 3–10. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia, 2000. Smith, Samuel. My Life-Work. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902. Snell, Keith D. and Paul S. Ell. Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Solly, Henry. The Doctrine of Atonement by the Son of God. London: E. T. Whitefield and Lancaster: John Richardson, 1861. ———. “These Eighty Years”: Or, The Story of an Unfinished Life, Vol. II. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., Limited, 1893. Stanley, Arthur P. “The Athanasian Creed.” The Contemporary Review 15 (1870), 133–166. Stephen, Leslie. “The Broad Church.” Fraser’s Magazine 1, no. 3 (1870), 311–325. Swedenborg, Emanuel. Heaven and Its Wonders, the World of Spirits, and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen, trans. Samuel Noble. New York: American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1857. Temple, Frederick. “The Education of the World.” In Essays and Reviews, edited by John William Parker, 1–49. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860. Thom, John Hamilton, James Martineau, and Henry Giles. Unitarianism Defended. Liverpool: Willmer and Smith and London: John Green, 1839. Thomson, Christopher. The Autobiography of an Artisan. London: J. Chapman, 1847. Vernon, James. Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Walker, Pamela J. Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain. California: University of California Press, 2001. Watts, Michael R. The Dissenters, Vol. III: The Crisis and Conscience of Non-Conformity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Watts, Ruth. Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England, 1760–1860. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Webb, R. K. “The Limits of Religious Liberty: Theology and Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England.” In Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Richard Helmstadter, 120–149. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

74  The Theological Devil Wellings, Martin. “British Methodism and Evangelicalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies, edited by William J. Abraham and James E. Kirby, 155–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. White, Edward. Life in Christ: A Study of the Scripture Doctrine on the Nature of Man, the Object of the Divine Incarnation, and the Conditions of Human Immortality, 2nd ed. London: Elliot Stock, 1876. Wilson, Henry Bristow. “Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church.” In Essays and Reviews, edited by John William Parker, 145–206. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860. Wolff, John. “Anglicanism.” In Nineteenth-Century English Religious Traditions: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by D. G. Paz, 1–32. Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1995. ———. “‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height: Hymns and Church Music.” In Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol. V: Culture and Empire, edited by John Wolffe, 59–99. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Woods, Clinton Edgar. Archdeacon Wilberforce: His Ideals and Teaching. London: Elliot Stock, 1917. Yates, Nigel. Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830–1910. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

2

The Folkloric Devil

In 1899, the antiquarian William Axon, alluding to the Devil’s frequent use in humorous narratives, observed that although: The devil occupies a conspicuous place in folk-lore…he is not the fallen angel, dark, gloomy, and majestic whom Milton drew….The devil of folk-lore is malignant but stupid…more like Pan…than he is like the Adversary who tempted Job.1 Similarly, others noted that the contrast between the folkloric Devil and the Devil of religious doctrine represented a marked and potentially awkward conflict of ideas. Charlotte Latham, folklore collector and wife of the rector of Fittleworth, blundered straight into such a clash of perspectives while teaching a Sunday school class made up largely of tradesmen’s children. With mingled amusement and discomfort, she recalled that: …on my asking them if they knew what was meant by their “ghostly enemy,” one and all replied, “Yes, a spirit that comes back from the grave;”…On my explaining the true meaning of the term…a fresh torrent of superstitious narrative burst forth. One boy knew a man who had seen the devil, and another told a fearful story of a poor sinner who saw little devils dancing round his bed “when he was a dying,”…2 At first, the apparent contradiction between the Devil of theology and the Devil of folklore can seem as baffling as it did to Axon and Latham. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by the diversity of his theological role, it was possible for the Devil to possess a level of internal unity, even as different sectors of the community disagreed about his form, nature, and even existence. Both Latham and the tradesmen’s children had no trouble conceptualising the Devil as the evil enemy of God or, once certain terminological misunderstandings were cleared up, discussing him. It was their beliefs about the meaning of the diabolic which set them apart. Nineteenthcentury diabolic folklore highlights the fraught nature of the divide between ‘legitimate’ forms of supernatural belief and ‘superstition’, as well

76  The Folkloric Devil as the real and perceived divisions between the supernatural beliefs of different classes. For some members of nineteenth-century English society (especially the educated middle and upper classes), folklore was simply superstition, incompatible with social and intellectual progress. For other members of the Victorian population, it was a source of essential knowledge. Unlike Latham, the children were speaking from a perspective which drew no clear distinction between orthodox and heterodox beliefs. This worldview, described by Bob Bushaway as a ‘holistic structure’, provided a blueprint for navigating the complicated and potentially dangerous relationship between the natural and supernatural worlds.3 For Latham, the Devil was primarily a spiritual danger. For the tradesmen’s children, the Devil was potentially a much more physical threat, meaning that they required different strategies for negotiating his power. Much folk belief, Devil lore included, was practical in nature, being concerned with averting or fighting misfortune. Sometimes, diabolic folklore was concerned with prevention and might take the form of simple, habitual actions, such as always keeping a ‘small coin’ in any container used to hold money to ensure that the Devil did not bring poverty upon the owner.4 In other cases, it was considered and decisive and might involve consulting a local practitioner of white magic, some of whom were said to be powerful enough to put ‘Satan himself, to rest’.5 Folk culture also had a lighter side and tales of encounters with the supernatural were often treated as entertainment. Flora Thompson in Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), her semi-autobiographical work set in the late nineteenth-century countryside, described how children were eager to hear ‘with curdling blood and creeping spine’ the story of ‘the turnpike ghost, which…had been seen in the form of a lighted lantern’ or the ‘huge black dog with eyes of fire’ encountered by a man from a neighbouring village.6 A similarly nonchalant attitude mixed with the scepticism of a critical adult can be seen in the statement of a man, who, when told stories of the Devil appearing on Cookworthy Moor, replied that ‘I’ve been out on the moor all hours of the day and night; had there been e’er a devil, I must a seen un’.7 Any study of nineteenth-century diabolic folklore has to grapple with the fact that the majority of surviving primary source material consists of the work of middle- and upper-class folklorists. Victorian folklorists generally viewed folklore as an archaic form of thought, inextricably bound up with traditional modes of living.8 Folklorists were motivated by a desire to record apparently pre-modern beliefs before they were obliterated by the progressive nature of modernisation.9 They overwhelmingly focused on the rural lower classes, who they characterised as less contaminated by education and urbanisation.10 Any study of diabolic folklore in a Victorian context is, therefore, complicated by important gaps in the source material, which can be mitigated but not eliminated by

The Folkloric Devil  77 measures such as supplementing nineteenth-century folkloristics with alternate sources such as newspaper articles and interrogating the works of middle- and upper-class writers for implicit clues regarding their own views about the diabolic. Like many nineteenth-century theological statements about the Devil, educated Victorian views about diabolic folklore were ideological assertions about society, progress, and the supernatural – part aspiration, part belief, and part reflection of individual interests and anxieties. The folkloric Devil was variable but not incoherent, with his diverse forms bound together by a foundation of traditional Christian knowledge. To some extent, he was an outgrowth of the Devil’s orthodox theological role. While the forms he took could seem exotic or ridiculous to those who scorned the idea of a Devil active in the material world, his folkloric role did not generally contradict his religious one in substance. His religious role rendered his maliciousness, whether material or spiritual, serious or petty, explicable. He was malicious because he was in conflict with God and with God’s creation, with this fact tying his seemingly disparate actions and forms together. It was the reason that he tormented a soul in hell, the reason he might afflict an unwary individual with misfortune, and the reason that he was the perfect character to include in a frightening story. Like the theological Devil, the folkloric Devil demonstrates the persistence of diabolic tropes in Victorian culture, as well as their active adaptation and use in everyday life.

The Folklore Movement The richest vein of source material for nineteenth-century English folk belief is represented by the voluminous writings of the folklore movement. A general interest in ‘popular antiquities’ had existed in England since the seventeenth century but in 1813 it was lent a new impetus by the publication of a revised edition of John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, a massive and disorganised agglomeration of information on ‘vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions’.11 Other works published during the early nineteenth century also tended to be disorganised and to embed snippets of tradition within literary narratives.12 Anna Eliza Bray’s Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire on the Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, published in 1838, was a minor turning point. Bray’s work incorporated folk custom into the long-established genre of the county survey and discussed customs and beliefs directly rather than turning them into fanciful anecdotes.13 The early nineteenth-century interest in ‘popular antiquities’ was often closely related to Romantic ideas about the bucolic English countryside.14 Over the course of the century, the topic gradually and imperfectly transformed from an antiquarian and Romantic hobby into an academic pursuit. In 1846, the antiquarian W. J. Thoms, desiring a

78  The Folkloric Devil more scholarly and precise term for ‘popular antiquities’, published a letter in the literary magazine the Athenæum in which he coined the word ‘Folk-Lore’.15 During the mid- and late nineteenth century, mythology and folklore became topics of keen interest and intense academic debate, with several schools of thought emerging. The school of comparative or linguistic mythology originated in the work of Max Müller – an expatriate German philologist turned Oxford professor. Müller was deeply interested in Sanskrit as he believed that it was the nearest surviving descendant of the Indo-European parent language spoken by the ancient Aryans. He dedicated much of his time to speculating about the relationships between words in archaic Sanskrit and comparing them to terms from other Indo-European languages.16 Müller believed that language and religion were inextricably linked, theorising that religion had originated in a primeval age when language was not yet advanced enough to convey abstract concepts.17 The first gods emerged when attempts to discuss metaphorical ideas about the sun, the sky, and the dawn degenerated into personification. Every myth and legend derived from this original solar mythology.18 Müller’s publication of an influential article in the 1856 edition of Oxford Essays ensured that the school of comparative mythology was to reign triumphant for over a decade, although as the century progressed it was to find itself increasingly challenged. The rising discipline of ethnology argued that the best way to study folklore was to examine the beliefs of ‘primitive’ peoples, whose current ideas were supposedly comparable to those of early Europeans.19 The pioneering ethnologist Andrew Lang believed that these early people were like contemporary ‘savages…who worship anything’ and have a ‘servile attitude towards nature’. All supernatural ideas had emerged from the concept of ‘spirit’, with early people gradually investing the world around them with spiritual significance and power.20 In 1873, Lang published an article in the Fortnightly Review, which savagely attacked Müller’s theories and took particular issue with the idea that fairy tales were simply ‘detritus of the higher mythology’, arguing that they actually preserved myths in an ‘older and more savage’ and, therefore, more authentic form. 21 Like many areas of Victorian intellectual endeavour, the folklore movement was strongly influenced by evolutionary ideas, although this influence only became marked after its ethnological turn. During the latter half of the century, the study of folklore moved increasingly closer to anthropology in both ideology and methodology. By 1884, an article in The Folk-Lore Journal defined the ‘science of folk-lore’ as ‘Anthropology dealing with the psychological phenomena of uncivilised man’. 22 Both anthropology and the study of folklore were greatly influenced by the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor’s 1871 work Primitive Culture. Tylor advocated an evolutionary model of human cultural development, arguing that societies began in a state of savagery and progressed

The Folkloric Devil  79 through barbarism before arriving at civilisation. He was greatly interested in the idea of ‘survivals’, arguing that there were strong parallels between European folklore and the beliefs and customs of ‘savage’ societies, which suggested that European folklore was the surviving remnants of an earlier stage of intellectual and cultural development. 23 For Tylor, folklore was raw data, which could be used to reconstruct the origins of human culture. 24 Evolutionary models presented an especial temptation for theorists, as they provided the satisfaction of working within an intellectual framework which placed European (especially British) civilisation at the apex of human development. 25 British civilisation did not necessarily include the entire British population, with only those who embraced rationality and modernity being considered entirely civilised. This somewhat imprecise divide was often determined by considerations of class and geography, with the lower classes, especially those from rural areas, often being excluded. It would, however, be a misconception to suggest that folklorists necessarily saw the development of human culture as a straightforward process. As the case of the English ‘peasant’ demonstrates, there could be multiple levels of development within a single society and even within a specific individual, who might possess a mixture of civilised and uncivilised ideas. Hartland was conscious of this complexity, arguing that the term ‘uncivilised’ was preferable to ‘primitive’, with the former giving the evolutionary model considerable flexibility as it conveyed ‘no notion of time-relation’. The term ‘uncivilised’ could be applied to any person or society, which combined a ‘limited stock of knowledge’ with a dependence on ‘imagination and emotions’, allowing the ‘South Sea Islander, Negro, or Primitive Aryan, whether Hindu ascetic, mediæval monk, or even the English rustic of to-day’ to be comfortably grouped together. 26 There was some tension between this notion and the theory of survivals. Associating the figure of the ‘uncivilised’ man with a particular mindset risked neglecting other considerations such as racial boundaries. In the folklorist George Laurence Gomme’s opinion, the ‘notion of time-relation’ was paramount, as its neglect risked creating a false sense of equivalency between ‘savages’ and those whose mindsets retained traces of an earlier state of savagery. If European folk beliefs were not viewed as survivals of an earlier period when ‘a people of savage or barbaric culture occupied the country now occupied by their descendants’, it suggested that ‘civilised people consciously borrow from savages and barbaric peoples, or constantly revert to a savage…type of mental and social condition’. 27 To admit that either of these things was the case would negate one of the chief functions of the evolutionary model, which was to maintain conceptual boundaries between different types of societies and worldviews. The folkloric enterprise, which had already been lent considerable academic capital by the intensity of the scholarly debates surrounding

80  The Folkloric Devil it, achieved a significant milestone in 1878 with the foundation of the Folk-Lore Society, which described its mission as ‘the preservation and publication of Popular Traditions, Legendary Ballads, Local Proverbial Sayings, Superstitions and Old Customs (British and foreign), and all subjects relating to them’. 28 The Society and its journal served as both an organising force and an important forum for debate. While theoretical debates provided the movement with an academic grounding, the most significant driving force behind the study of folklore in nineteenth-century England was the issue of preservation. Folklorists of all stripes largely agreed that folklore was a survival of an earlier stage of human development. In fact, its ‘essential characteristic’ was that it consisted of ‘beliefs, customs, and traditions which are far behind civilisation in their intrinsic value’. 29 This idea was closely linked to the conviction that these remnants were threatened with annihilation by the encroachment of modernity. Thoms stressed the need to act quickly, asserting that anyone who had studied folk belief ‘must have arrived at two conclusions: the first, how much…is now entirely lost – the second, how much may yet be rescued’.30 Folklore collecting was undertaken by an assortment of interested parties or what Richard Dorson, the most prolific historian of the English folklore movement, somewhat dismissively referred to as ‘the typical Victorian clergyman, or his wife’, although he conceded that doctors, squires, and their wives were also possibilities.31 Folklore collectors had varying levels of investment in the debates of the day and tended to be distinct from theorists, who generally did no fieldwork at all.32 It was the folklore collectors who produced publications detailing Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1879) or the Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham (1886). 33 Such collections tended to focus primarily on custom and to include every piece of lore a writer could scavenge from a particular district. For both theorists and collectors, writing about the ‘superstitious’ beliefs of others was a decisive way of separating their own beliefs from those of groups they regarded as socially or racially inferior.34 A review of John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson’s collection of Lancashire Folklore described folk beliefs as the province of ‘a simple and – in most cases – honest peasantry’.35 This separation could also be a source of more complex emotions than a sense of superiority. Contact with the beliefs of the lower classes could inspire feelings of longing for a simpler age and a purer form of faith. Richard Blakeborough, in his Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire (1898), commented on the contrast between folklore and the uncertainty of modern theology, observing that, although folk beliefs …may be rooted in the rankest superstition…after a moment’s consideration, one is forcibly reminded that it is equally deeply rooted

The Folkloric Devil  81 in the old belief, which embraces in its faith a devil, a fiery hell, Jonah, whale, and everything. As things go nowadays, theorists are not leaving us much to believe or be superstitious about.36 Blakeborough was referring to the fact that, by the Victorian era, the Devil and hell had, as discussed in the previous chapter, become objects of considerable theological controversy, with even many devout Christians doubting their existence. His attitude was closely linked to what Nicola Brown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell describe as ‘wishful make-belief’ – a phenomenon which often stemmed from a fascination with the supernatural, coupled with a wistful longing for an imagined past.37 The Devil became involved in the era’s fascination with mythological speculation. Harland and Wilkinson, in their Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c. (1873), compared Devil stories to Norse myths, drawing a connection between the Devil and Thor on the grounds that both were described as fond of throwing boulders.38 It was taken as a truism that the Devil and his angels were the devolved remains of past gods. As John Nicholson argued in Folk Lore of East Yorkshire (1890), ‘when the gods of…the hardy Norsemen, were dethroned from their seat of honour…they were not deprived of power. They became devils…and ghosts’. 39 This theory of degeneration allowed almost any narrative or belief to be interpreted as a survival of whatever a folklorist found most interesting. Charles Hardwick went back to the Aryans and attempted to discover the ‘eastern origin and mystical significance’ of the folklore of ‘Lancashire and the North of England’. He was of the opinion that a tale in which the Devil disrupted the building of a church in the form of a cat made considerably more sense, when viewed in light of the fact that ‘the cat…was an Aryan personification of storm and tempest’.40 The differing ways in which folklorists and members of the lower classes approached diabolic narratives reveal both deep divisions and striking similarities. In 1860, the antiquarian Thomas Wright read a paper before the British Archaeological Association, in which he told the story of the Wrekin, a hill in Shropshire said to have been created when either a giant or the Devil threw down a spadeful of earth. Wright used the version with the giant but the variants were very similar, with the antagonist intending to destroy a town but meeting a cobbler who tricks him into thinking that it is too far away to be worth the effort.41 Wright argued that the story ‘affords another illustration of the manner in which the crafty god Thor became degraded in the popular imagination’.42 Charlotte Burne, who recounted several versions of the story in her voluminous Shropshire Folk-Lore (1883), recalled discussing the topic with ‘an elderly lady’, who informed her that ‘they generally call it the devil nowadays, but the older people say it was a giant’. Burne comments

82  The Folkloric Devil that ‘the mediaeval conception of the devil, — the hardworking, easilycheated fiend who appears in popular stories…is well-known to have been directly derived from the giants of older mythology’, identifying the story as a pagan survival filtered through medieval demonology and the substitution of the Devil for the giant as a natural shift between two related elements.43 Both Wright and Burne viewed the tale as an intellectual problem, charting its development across a long hypothetical timeline. For the ‘elderly lady’, the story was a living tradition and she traced its development across the course of her lifetime. While she recognised the story as a minor representation of the gulf between the old and the young, it was unlikely that she saw it as a reason to speculate about the distant past. It is also fairly unlikely that she took the humorous story of the Wrekin, with its dull-witted Devil, as seriously as either Wright or Burne. The differing versions recounted by Wright, Burne, and the old woman do, however, demonstrate that folklorists were as much storytellers as their lower-class informants despite the fact that they generally couched their stories in a scholarly guise and, presentations to learned societies aside, told them in print rather than orally. Mythological speculation was a form of storytelling, with folklorists building upon the existing folklore of the oral tradition to create their own written tales. Devil lore provided an excellent source of subject matter. Folklorists, who did not tend to be squeamish, were often positively enthusiastic when discussing diabolic topics. Harland and Wilkinson noted that ‘the agency of the Devil is a frequent ingredient in the composition of our local legends and gleefully and inaccurately asserted that pacts with the Devil were ‘always signed with the blood of his victims’.44 For folklorists, the subject of the Devil provided an opportunity to revel in grotesquery, while puzzling over intellectual problems. The material left by Victorian folklorists and antiquarians is both a boon and a problem for modern scholars, as it provides a wealth of data but is limited by the effects of nineteenth-century methods and ideologies. Firstly, for reasons of both practicality and pride, Victorian folklore collecting tended to have a strong regional focus, resulting in a fragmented picture of English folklore.45 The precise amount of damage done by this fragmentation is unclear, as while some topics (including calendar customs) do demonstrate significant regional variation, others (such as song and narrative) appear to be fairly uniform.46 The available information is rendered even more piecemeal by the fact that it was compiled over a period of decades, with little attention paid to continuity and change.47 The widespread conviction that folklore represented the remnants of an earlier stage of human development on the verge of annihilation also led folklorists to focus overwhelmingly on the rural lower classes, who were viewed as closer to their primitive roots.48 In the case of the Devil, folklorists may also have been influenced by anxieties about the nature and existence of supernatural evil and eternal punishment.49

The Folkloric Devil  83 The fact that Victorian folklorists were primarily interested in a fairly specific subset of English society creates analytical issues, as it implies rigid and oversimplified distinctions between classes and regions. There was, in reality, no absolute divide between the experiences and beliefs of folklorists and those of the people they studied. For instance, when recording a common belief that an infant should cry during its baptism to signal the Devil’s departure, Latham noted that ‘the hold which this…superstition has, even upon educated people, is extraordinary’. 50 She also provided evidence for the exchange of supernatural ideas across class barriers, remarking on the influence of ‘superstitious nurses’ on the children entrusted to their care.51 The divide between rural and urban areas was equally permeable, with one writer complaining that ‘our best known local herbalist…gets his stock-in-trade from Covent Garden by rail!’.52 It would also, however, be incorrect to imply that there were no substantive differences between the supernatural ideas of different social classes and regions. For example, there was a distinction between rural ghosts, which might appear as animals, and urban ghosts, which were almost always human.53 In terms of class, Latham was keen to disavow the influence of her ‘superstitious’ nurse, subscribing to a self-image of educated rationality.54 Despite its shortcomings, Victorian folklore writing represents a treasure-trove of potentially useful data, with intensive research yielding much otherwise obscure information about the Devil. While some aspects of the folkloric Devil’s personality remain obscure, especially in relation to the significance of heterodox diabolic beliefs among the middle and upper classes and the role of the Devil in the urban imagination, it is possible to identify and analyse a variety of his manifestations. The nineteenth-century folkloric Devil was not just a specific figure but also a series of themes, which included but also transcended a narrow focus on the rural lower classes. The next section will trace the Devil’s multifaceted character, highlighting the fact that he could serve widely varying functions depending on the situation.

The Nature of the Folkloric Devil Even if the folklorists of the Victorian era had left behind a less ambiguous set of data, the exact character of the folkloric Devil would still be far from clear-cut. He had a twofold nature. On the one hand, he was a terrifying and malevolent fallen angel but, on the other, he was what the folklorist Edwin Sidney Hartland described as ‘a terrific ogre’ but ‘not the entirely Evil One of theologians’.55 In the latter form, he was often a humorous or, at least, semi-humorous figure. He was a trickster, malevolent and powerful but not the inevitable winner of every confrontation. Giving the Devil a humorous slant could hamper his potential to be frightening, as he was not at his most intimidating when he was

84  The Folkloric Devil considered a patron of fiddlers and card-players.56 There were also a multitude of stories in which he was outwitted. The folkloric Devil was: …oftener the dupe of humanity than the slayer of souls. This is evident…in the story of the tailor who made a wager with the devil that he would beat him at a sewing match. He succeeded by giving the Evil One a needle with a thread in it so long that for every stitch the demon had to fly all round the room…57 It is likely that such stories were taken less than seriously and told mostly for their entertainment value, though they probably also served as a reassuring counter to the common belief that the Devil was an active presence. He might restrict his harassment of a person to petty annoyances, such as putting out the hearth fire, but not everyone was so lucky.58 Between the Shropshire villages of Acton Burnell and Cardington, there was a remnant of a Roman road known as the Devil’s Causeway and it was said that anyone who crossed it at midnight risked meeting the Devil. If they were morally upright, he would pass by them ‘like a flash of light’ but, if they were not, he would meet them ‘in the shape of a black man, with cow’s horns and hoofs, riding on a white horse’ and leave them ‘half-dead’.59 In this case and others like it, the Devil appeared as a punisher of evil-doers, who, as Owen Davies has pointed out, rather incongruously played a role in safeguarding community morality.60 The Devil was not always so choosy about his victims. In one case, ‘a man of ill-repute’ suffered a fatal accident, which was widely believed to have been due to the intervention of the Devil. This incident left the man’s cottage vacant and a new, presumably innocent, tenant took up residence. He was eventually forced to flee, as the Devil came every night and dragged his wooden leg around the bedroom. The cottage was pulled down afterwards, as it acquired such an evil reputation nobody would live there.61 Such direct encounters were not particularly common and the folkloric Devil was probably at his most terrifying when he was viewed as ‘a diffuse force of ill-luck’, which could cause a multitude of serious misfortunes, ranging from illness to crop failure.62 In this guise, he served as a scapegoat for the inexplicable and devastating problems, which could impact the precarious existence of the labourer. He also provided a person, who was attempting to combat ill-luck, with a target to aim at. Prevention was the best cure and a variety of everyday charms, including horseshoes, horse-brasses, and crossed scythes, served to stave off his influence.63 It was, however, never certain that a person could best the Devil. While pulling down the cottage might have vanquished him, his power was only broken on his own terms after he had caused a great deal of fear and inconvenience. It was better to avoid his attention – often by studiously avoiding the use of his proper name. As the folklorist Mabel Peacock noted in the

The Folkloric Devil  85 1890s, ‘the idea that to…speak of a thing, or event, causes it to appear, or to happen, is very common’.64 The people of Lincolnshire were said to ‘never call the Devil openly by that familiar designation’ but to ‘speak of him in an under-tone, as either “Samuel”, “Old Lad”, or “Bargus”’.65 This custom can be compared to the use of cautious and euphemistic names such as ‘the Fair Folk’, when referring to the fairies.66 The biblical Devil was already a being of many names. He was Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub. He also had a multitude of colourful popular names. Some, such as ‘Goodman’ or ‘Old Gentleman’, were respectful and cautious.67 A few, including ‘Old Horny’ or ‘the black man’, were descriptive.68 Others, such as ‘bad-man’, ‘Bogey’, ‘Mirschy’ (mischief), ‘Sin’, ‘Bogey’, and ‘Vengeance’, were less tactful.69 By far, the most common were those which had an air of flippancy and familiarity. Many were prefaced by the word ‘old’ and included ‘Old Boy’, ‘Old Driver’, ‘the old fellow’, ‘Old Harry’, ‘the Old Lad’, ‘the old man’, ‘Old Nick’, ‘the Old One’, and ‘Old Scratch’.70 ‘Old’ did not usually refer to age but rather to the word’s secondary meaning of ‘cunning’, ‘clever’, or ‘experienced’.71 Numerous other names, such as ‘Deuce’, ‘Dickens’, ‘Gooseberry’, ‘Nathaniel’, ‘Samuel’, ‘Scrat’, ‘Tantarabobus’, and ‘Toot’, also fit into this category.72 ‘Old Boy’, which was more commonly used as a nickname for a father or boss, was especially emblematic of the strange mix of offhandness, respect, and fear with which the Devil was often treated.73 Diabolic names varied regionally and some were more common than others. For example, ‘Old Nick’ was extremely common, while ‘Tantarabobus’ seems to have been restricted to Somerset.74 The employment of familiar names for the Devil had two dimensions. Sometimes, they were used humorously, albeit usually with a negative connotation. In West Somerset, a man who was drunk and disorderly might be described as playing ‘the very old gooseberry’ and when the birds disturbed the wheat, they were ‘playing the deuce’ with it.75 Such light-heartedness often concealed an undercurrent of concern. There was nothing particularly funny about social disruption or crop damage. There was also nothing particularly funny about the Devil and avoiding the issue or mixing it with humour could be an important psychological mechanism for defusing the very real terror he could inspire. The Devil’s appearance was as inconsistent as his name and personality, although there were generally a number of common features. The antiquarian Frederic Thomas Elworthy provided an archetypical description. The popular imagination from the dark ages onwards, has pictured the devil…as a naked figure, half man and half goat, with a long tail, and always black… The stories are endless wherein he shows himself in various disguises; but in nearly all cases where he appears in clothing, the horns, tail, or cloven foot are made to disclose themselves.76

86  The Folkloric Devil This portrait is sound, although subject to considerable variation. An insulting drawing from the 1870s depicts ‘a parson, with the horns and hoofs and bat’s-wings of the Devil’.77 The goat was also never as extensively associated with the Devil in England as it was on the European mainland.78 There was a proverb from Lancashire, which described an unpleasant woman as ‘nasty as a devil unknobbed’, meaning that she was as ‘dangerously spiteful as a devil who has either never had any knobs fastened on his horns, or else has succeeded in getting rid of them’. The folklorist who recorded this saying regarded it as emblematic of ‘the bovine character of the popular “devil”’.79 In addition, while it was common to describe the Devil as black, Burne was informed by one old man that, although black might be the generally accepted colour, ‘Jack R. says he’s red; and he knows, for he’s seen him a many times…since he took that false oath’.80 As this case demonstrates, the way that a person imagined the Devil could be greatly affected by personal idiosyncrasy. The Devil was also well-known as a shape shifter, taking whatever guise he found convenient. He might, as Elworthy mentioned, take a human form, albeit generally an imperfect one.81 On other occasions, he appeared as a grotesque bogey. A Wiltshire man walking home one night apparently saw ‘sum’at as had eyes as big as a tea-saucer’.82 Often, he took the shape of an animal. He could theoretically appear as almost any creature, although the people of the Border insisted that he could not become a lamb, a chicken, or a pigeon and those of Devon barred him from the lamb and the dove.83 In practice, he was especially fond of appearing as a black dog.84 The Devil was only one of a vast array of supernatural beings a person might encounter and the boundaries which separated one type from another were porous, with different beings sharing many common traits and featuring in similar stories.85 The need for strict categorisation was a scholarly rather than a popular predilection.86 It is possible to draw close parallels between Devil lore and the lore regarding fairies, ghosts, and other assorted bogies. In Lancashire, it was often believed that baptism drove the Devil out of a child but, if a child died unbaptised, it did not go to hell but rather became a fairy.87 In a Shropshire tale, a lady’s ghost avenged a grave robbery by walking at night in the shape of a colt. One night, it met the thief, who fell on his knees, crying: ‘Abide, Satan! abide! I am a righteous man and a psalm-singer!’.88 Not only did the subject of this story confuse a ghost and the Devil, but the motif of a man meeting something that so terrifies him that he desperately yells that he is ‘a righteous man and a psalm-singer’ occurs in multiple versions, with the object of terror varying considerably.89 Despite his similarity to other folkloric beings, the Devil still had his own distinct characteristics. By the nineteenth century, the English did not, for example, usually consider fairies and demons to be interchangeable entities but rather different

The Folkloric Devil  87 beings whose interests sometimes overlapped.90 In addition, despite such overlap, particular entities still tended to have their own peculiar tendencies. For instance, tales about the Devil interrupting the construction of a building were extremely common and, while there was the odd story in which the fairies were the culprits, it was very much the exception.91 Encountering the contradictory figure of the folkloric Devil sometimes compelled folklorists to look more closely at educated ideas regarding his nature. For Anna Eliza Bray, the popular Devil was a being stripped of literary artifice and she found the way he contrasted with the semiheroic Devil of early nineteenth-century Romantic poetry highly amusing. She claimed that ‘my tales represent the devil in no very sentimental view, but rather tend to show him unmasked’.92 Examining the folkloric Devil could also provide folklorists with an opportunity to freely discuss religious aspects of the supernatural without having to engage with difficult theological questions such as whether they were real. Elworthy, when discussing his interest in the Devil, wrote that ‘least of all do we desire to enter into the modern controversy of his personal existence’.93 The contradictory nature and obscure origins of many ideas about the folkloric Devil also provided yet another opportunity for mythological speculation. The unclear etymologies of the names ‘Old Nick’ and ‘Old Scratch’ led one writer to speculate that the former was derived from ‘Nicor’, the name of a ‘Saxon water-sprite’, and the latter from ‘Skrat’, the name of ‘a shaggy woodland spirit’ of Scandinavian mythology.94 Sometimes, folklorists found that their own attitudes towards the Devil were not entirely different from those of the lower classes. They were often amused by the cautious treatment of the Devil’s name. One book included a description of ‘an infallible charm to get power over the Devil, I mean “Samuel”’.95 Nevertheless, middle- and upper-class commentators, although not entirely unwilling to call the Devil by his proper name, also commonly used euphemisms. Their euphemisms often mimicked polite forms of address, giving the Devil titles such as ‘his Satanic majesty’ or ‘him of the cloven foot’.96 On other occasions, they used flippant names, referring to the Devil as ‘the evil spirit’ or ‘demon’.97 The subtly humorous names used by folklorists often contrasted sharply with the menacing terms, such as ‘the enemy of souls’, favoured by religious writers, although, as Latham’s use of the term ‘ghostly enemy’ demonstrates, there was some overlap.98 Folklorists, unlike some religious writers, do not seem to have been influenced by fear but rather by literary convention or a sense of fun. It is also possible that folklorists had a tendency to view the folkloric Devil, who was vaguely ridiculous and redolent of superstition, as distinct from the more serious Devil of Christian doctrine. This dissonance was made possible by the fact that the folkloric Devil had no single personality, shape, or name but rather took on whatever form or identity most suited those who were describing

88  The Folkloric Devil him, whether that was a horned man on a white horse, a force of ill-luck, or the degenerated memory of a ‘Saxon water-sprite’.

The Landscape The Devil’s multifaceted nature was also reflected in the way he interacted with the physical environment. An article, which appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine in 1899, noted that, based on the amount of English places that had some type of diabolical association, the Devil was ‘one of the largest of landlords’.99 Such landmarks were so common that a considerable proportion of the population would have lived in close proximity to at least one. Diabolical places could be grouped into several overlapping categories. As a general rule, they were ‘gloomy, terrible, or otherwise extraordinary’, although they might also exhibit ‘some suggestive…likeness’, have earned a reputation as one of the Devil’s ‘accustomed haunts’, or boast a story, attributing their creation to the Devil.100 As Jacqueline Simpson has argued, landscape legends, in the form of traditional stories attached to local landmarks, provided a ‘dramatic’ and locally relevant form of entertainment.101 The English landscape was scattered with landmarks, which were associated with and often bore names referencing the Devil or hell. Examples of the first category included the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Hampshire, which was situated in ‘a wild and dreary tract’, and the Devil’s Parrock (Paddock) in Wiltshire, which had a reputation for terrifying horses.102 Other locations, such as Cornwall’s Cairn Kenidzhek, had a more complex web of diabolical associations. This ‘rugged’ cairn was reputed to be one of the Devil’s favourite spots, providing a hunting ground for lost souls and on one occasion the setting for a wrestling match between two demons.103 A name which referenced the Devil could also serve as an implicit warning. A ‘dangerous spot’ in the bay off Cromer in Norfolk was known as the Devil’s Throat, while the Devil’s Seat located in Great Yarmouth Church caused bad luck.104 Places with a ‘suggestive…likeness’ (meaning they resembled the Devil) were less common, although he had left footprints in certain locations, such as at the Devil’s Rocks in Shropshire.105 Apart from Cairn Kenidzhek, the Devil’s ‘accustomed haunts’ included Cheney Lane on Headington Hill near Oxford and the Devil’s Churchyard, ‘a lonely dip between low hills’ near Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire.106 These locations were not only attractive to the Devil. The former was also haunted by a man who carried his head under his arm and the latter was a veritable magnet for supernatural activity. In addition to Satan himself: …you are supposed to see men without heads there…and dogs, and unknown horrors. A man who works on the roads told me that once he and a friend were…scared by…a noise like bagpipes…107

The Folkloric Devil  89 Stories in which the Devil altered the landscape are especially significant, as they depicted the Devil as a creative being, who interacted with the physical environment in a decisive way. In this sense, he took his place among a variety of folkloric, religious, and historical figures, including giants and saints, King Arthur, Sir Francis Drake, and Oliver Cromwell.108 Invoking the efforts of a towering figure was a way of accounting for some local oddity, which lacked an obvious explanation. In Yorkshire, two large stones located near a lake known as the Semerwater had supposedly landed there after the Devil and a giant pitched them at each other from opposing hills.109 It was especially common to attribute any peculiarity in the design or placement of a local church to the Devil. In Devonshire, the church on Brent Tor had started life at the bottom of the hill but, as the Devil came every night and removed the building materials, it was forced to migrate to a less accessible location at the top.110 The opposite occurred at Worfield in Shropshire, where the Devil was concerned that, if the church was built on top of a hill, it would be so conspicuous that it would lure the locals to worship.111 As these examples demonstrate, Satan was always eager to trespass in God’s domain. He lurked on the boundaries of sacred space, highlighting the precariousness of human existence, both physical and spiritual. In Cornwall and Devon, there was a belief that the Devil would carry off the first body buried in a new cemetery.112 A new churchyard was especially vulnerable, as it was still in the process of transitioning from profane to sacred. Another example of the Devil’s ability to trespass on or perilously close to sacred ground is provided by the fact that St. Briavel’s Churchyard in Gloucestershire had a section reserved for ‘suicides and such like’, which was supposed to belong to the Devil.113 It was common for the north side of a churchyard to be reserved for suicides and the unbaptised, although it was not necessarily assigned to the Devil.114 The ability of the physical environment to help or hinder the Devil was not restricted to religious locations. Burne noted that his power was strongest ‘in narrow and difficult ways’ such as the ‘village stile’. It was, however, possible to repel his power by turning an item of clothing inside out.115 Many stories about the Devil’s influence on the landscape were humorous and it is likely that they were not believed in any literal sense. It was common for tales to describe him engaging in activities which would have been completely mundane if not for their scale. For instance, the Devil’s Apron (a sizable stone located in Durham’s Castle Dene) was dropped by the Devil when his apron string broke.116 His name was also attached to places such as the Devil’s Cheese-Ring at Lynton in Devonshire, the Devil’s Spoon near Petersfield in Hampshire, and the Devil’s Bellows near Charmouth in Dorset.117 It is possible that many landscape stories may have been preserved because they served a useful explanatory or descriptive function but

90  The Folkloric Devil did not demand a strong element of belief. Landscape features were not only repositories of or focuses for supernatural ideas and traditions, but they were also everyday objects. No matter how unusual the shape of a stone or the placement of a church, encountering the same mystery every day could induce the sort of apathy evident in the antiquarian C. Atkinson’s comments regarding Barn Hall in Essex. According to local tradition, during the building of Barn Hall, the Devil came every night and undid the work of the builders. When he was tired of this game, he picked up a beam and threw it to a site he found more congenial. This beam, which had the Devil’s fingerprints burnt into the surface and remained black no matter how many times it was whitewashed, could still be seen in the cellar. Despite the dramatic nature of the legend, Atkinson, who had grown up near the Hall, stated that he ‘never went down to the cellar to see, so little did we who lived there think about it’.118 As many landscape legends were etiological, they described events which had happened at some unspecified point in the past. They were divorced from the present and there is little to suggest people believed that the Devil was still disrupting church construction. Stories of the Devil haunting particular areas did have more contemporary resonance. Karl Bell has recently highlighted the role isolation played in the lives of many rural labourers, who, due to the nature of their occupation, were forced to walk alone across substantial tracts of the countryside at night. This unsettling environment provided ‘a large black canvas onto which the imagination could imprint supernatural entities’.119 England’s landscape was one huge ‘canvas’ onto which its inhabitants projected their preoccupations and concerns.

Flora and Fauna The Devil did not restrict himself to influencing the scenery. He had thoroughly infiltrated the natural world. Creatures which bore his name included the ‘Devil’s Cow’ (a large black beetle or slug), the ‘Devil Screech’, ‘Scare-Devil’, or ‘Devil-screamer’ (the swift), ‘the devil’s coachhorses’ or ‘the devil’s footmen’ (large black beetles), ‘the Devil’s darningneedle’ (the dragonfly), ‘the Devil’s pig’ (the wood louse), and ‘the Devil’s finger-ring’ (the caterpillar of the ‘great tiger moth’).120 Such creatures tended to have some real or reputed negative quality. The swift had a long, squeaking cry and one folklorist noted that its ‘black colour, and impetuous flight’ gave it ‘an uncanny appearance’. The Devil’s coachhorse presaged bad luck and it was said that, if a person picked up the Devil’s finger-ring, it would curl around their finger and drink their blood.121 Many creatures with perfectly innocuous names also had diabolic associations. The yellow-hammer, which had a breast ‘mottled with red, as if blood-sprinkled’, was even more untrustworthy, being so hated in

The Folkloric Devil  91 the north of England that boys destroyed its nests while reciting a traditional rhyme. A version from Stamfordham in Northumberland went: Half a paddock, half a toad, Half a drop of de’il’s blood. Horrid yellow yowling!’122 A variant from north Durham added the detail that the bird drank a drop of the Devil’s blood ‘every Monday morning’.123 The yellow-hammer was not, however, the most ill-omened bird. This honour belonged to the magpie. According to a popular rhyme, the number of magpies a person saw determined their future luck, with one version stating: One for sorrow, Two for luck; Three for a wedding, Four for death; Five for silver, Six for gold; Seven for a secret, Not to be told; Eight for heaven, Nine for [hell], And ten for the d[evi]l’s own sell!124 There were numerous methods for countering magpie-induced bad luck. In west Shropshire, a person might lick their forefinger and make the sign of the cross on their shoe, take off their hat and say a prayer, or, as recommended in the village of Pulverbatch, spit three times and say: Devil, devil, I defy thee! Magpie, magpie, I go by thee! The magpie’s ability to bring ill-luck was often presumed to be the result of its close relationship with the Devil.125 Like the yellow-hammer, the magpie was sometimes said to have a drop of the Devil’s blood on its tongue.126 The magpie was, however, simply an earthly creature touched by the supernatural. Black dogs were entirely unnatural. Hartland, a pioneer in the study and classification of ‘spectre-dogs’, divided them into three categories: 1. Black dogs, which are really fiends that have assumed the form of dogs. 2. The spirits of evil persons, who, as part of their punishment,

92  The Folkloric Devil have been transformed into the appearance of dogs. 3. Evil spirits, that, to mimic the sports of men, or to hunt their souls, have assumed the form and habits of hounds. Their favourite activities included appearing in lonely places to affright the traveller and serving as death omens. As they were of no earthly breed, they varied greatly in appearance and might resemble ‘a hound, a setter, a terrier, or a shepherd-dog’, although they were generally ‘large, shaggy, and black, with long ears and tail’.127 While they were not necessarily devils, they often had diabolic features. Shuck, who haunted Norfolk, was often seen dragging a chain. In 1894, a man claimed to have driven a cart straight through him, at which point the air filled with ‘waving flame, and a hideous sulphurous stench loaded the atmosphere’.128 A black dog spotted by a Somerset woman in 1847 also vanished in flames.129 A schoolmaster from Tring in Hertfordshire saw ‘a flame of fire as large as a man’s hat’ transform into an ‘immense black dog…as big as a Newfoundland…with eyes like balls of fire, and…long teeth’. He thought that it ‘looked more like a fiend than a dog’, an impression unlikely to have been eased by the fact that, a few minutes later, it ‘disappeared’.130 Even when a black dog was identified as the spectre of a wicked human being, it often had diabolic features. At Martinhoe in Devon, the spirit of Sir Robert Chichester appeared as a black dog seated in a flaming car.131 On a few occasions, the Devil took the role of a huntsman in charge of a pack of phantom hounds, with examples including Cornwall’s ‘the Devil and his Dandy-dogs’ and Devon’s ‘Gabriel Hounds’. Phantom hunts seem to have been more attractive to folklorists than anyone else, as, unlike other varieties of black dog, very few people claim to have encountered them.132 The Devil also held territory in the plant kingdom. He was referenced in numerous regionally variable plant names, attached to ominous or dangerous flora.133 In many cases, mentioning the Devil served as a concise warning. The flowers of the poisonous hemlock were known as badman-oatmeal.134 In Northamptonshire, it was believed that the catkins of the black poplar (known locally as the Devil’s Fingers) brought bad luck to anyone who picked them.135 Other plants were more unpleasant than dangerous. The Devil’s Darning Needles (shepherd’s needle or Venus’ comb) had long awns and the term Devil’s Milk referred to the ‘white milky sap of many plants, called so because of its bitter taste’.136 There were also plants distinguished by the Devil’s interest in them. In Cornwall, it was believed that picking Devil’s Bit Scabious could summon the Devil to a person’s bedside or make him appear in their dreams.137 A similar effect could be achieved by pinning an ivy leaf to each corner of the pillow.138 It was also believed that burning elder wood could call up the Devil, leading to a widespread aversion to its use as kindling.139 In addition, the Devil was often associated with

The Folkloric Devil  93 nut-gathering, especially when done on the Sabbath.140 Bray recorded the story of a local youth, who went nutting on a Sunday, pleasing the Devil so much that he helped pull down the branches. The boy fled in terror but died shortly afterwards, providing a solemn warning to those who would profane the Sabbath.141 Latham noted that mothers used a similar story to stop children from going into the woods and spoiling their good clothes.142 The nut-tree also, as David Atkinson points out, had strong associations with fertility and nut-gathering, which tended to take place in secluded parts of the woods, would have provided significant opportunities for flirtation.143 A version of the story obtained from a Sussex clergyman in the 1880s asserted that the offender was female and the Devil took the form of her sweetheart.144 The Devil also had a strong influence over blackberries and parsley. It was widely believed that it was inadvisable to eat blackberries after either Michaelmas Day (29th September) or Old Michaelmas Day (10th or 11th October), as the Devil spat on or threw his club over them on this date.145 Michaelmas’ inauspicious reputation probably derived from the fact that it celebrated Lucifer’s banishment from heaven.146 The Devil was also responsible for the difficulty of growing parsley from seed, as it has to go ‘nine times to the Devil’ before it would sprout.147 While it might have been tempting to circumvent this struggle by transplanting some, doing so would result in a death in the family.148 It was, after all, never prudent to meddle in the Devil’s domain. Only God might be depended on to display equivalent or greater power, as suggested by the fact that it was possible to avoid the Devil’s influence by planting parsley on a Good Friday.149

Magic While many forms of folklore could be dismissed as harmless or amusing curiosities, others, especially magical beliefs, were considered emblematic of ignorance and the dangers of superstition.150 An article on the history of ‘Witchcraft in Lancashire’ (1894) declared that ‘[s]tanding on the enlightened threshold of the twentieth century… it is wellnigh impossible to realise that the human intellect ever lent itself to so monstrous…a superstition as a belief in witchcraft’.151 White magic was treated with scarcely less suspicion and derision, with an article on ‘Unlawful Cures’ (1864) stating that: …one can scarcely credit that…there could have existed men of science…who believed that there were supernatural means of curing disease, did we not even to the present day find imbeciles who verily dread the malpractices of the devil and his vicarious agents.152 Folklorists often shared or were, at least, influenced by such views. Robert Hunt’s description of the magical beliefs of the inhabitants of

94  The Folkloric Devil Wendron in Cornwall made much of their isolation, noting that until recently they ‘were quite uneducated;—hence the readiness with which they associate ancient superstitions with comparatively modern individuals’.153 The widespread existence of magical beliefs and practices was, however, a reality that anyone who sought to catalogue and understand English folklore was forced to grapple with. In 1905, Margaret Eyre took on the challenge, dividing magic into three categories: black, white, and domestic. While anyone could practise domestic magic, as it consisted simply of ‘ordinary helpful charms, where the power lies in the charm’, black and white magic were powerful gifts or specialist skills. Eyre cautioned that the latter was not ‘to be confused…with the evil workings of the devil’s servants’.154 Even in maleficent witchcraft, the Devil was ‘only a minor theme’.155 By the nineteenth century, many of the central ideas of diabolic witchcraft, including the Sabbath and the sexual relationship between witches and the Devil, were rare or non-existent in an English context.156 The Devil was not completely absent and did continue to play a sporadic role in magical beliefs throughout the century. In 1857, a Norfolk woman described the relationship between witches and the Devil to a magistrate in the following terms: …as we pray, for grace and wisdom and strength….so these people pray to the enemy to give them powers to do these evil things…and he have as much power over these people as the Almighty have over His own.157 Though unusual, this incident was not entirely isolated. A folklorist, who questioned an elderly Hampshire woman regarding a case of suspected witchcraft, was unable to obtain any comment beyond: ‘I says my Belief and the Lord’s Prayer every night before I gets into bed, and then I am not feared either of the old devil or any of his little devils’.158 In 1862, a young man, who had slashed his grandmother across the face with a razor and hit her over the head with a boiling stick, stated in his defence that she was a ‘witch, in daily intercourse with the Devil’.159 Other accounts offer more oblique hints. Bray asserted that ‘the old miners on the moor’ always attached a horseshoe to some part of the mine’s structure as a protection against witchcraft. The reasoning was ‘that the devil always travels in circles, and that he is consequently interrupted when he arrives at either of the heels of the shoe, and obliged to take a retrograde course’.160 A tenuous connection between witches and the Devil also survived in the oral record. Burne recorded two stories about witches who were forced to break spells they had put on local farm animals by blessing them in the name of God. In both tales, the witch initially tried to subvert the process by blessing them in the name of her god, implied to be the Devil.161

The Folkloric Devil  95 The idea that it was possible to make a deal with the Devil in exchange for some kind of power or advantage also survived in an inconsistent form in nineteenth-century popular belief. It was rare for it to involve witchcraft in any straightforward sense. A Sussex boy informed the antiquarian Sabine Baring-Gould that a person could sell their soul to the Devil by writing him a letter and placing it under their pillow. When they awoke the next morning, the Devil would have replaced it with half-a-crown.162 While this example was probably a slightly dubious children’s game or legend, there were individuals who were alleged to have obtained something more potent. Burne mentioned that ‘about a generation ago’, a farmer from Child’s Ercall was supposed to have gained magical powers by prevailing against the Devil in ‘hand-to-hand combats’.163 In the 1870s, the Cornish writer Thomas Quiller Couch provided an account of a man, who had made a pact with the Devil in exchange for supernatural abilities. He was not generally malevolent and mainly used his powers to ease his shaky financial situation.164 One of the most remarkable cases was that of William Dove, a farmer, who in 1856 was arrested for the murder of his wife. While he was awaiting trial, a rumour spread that he was concealing a knife and the subsequent search revealed a letter sewn into his clothing. This letter, written in his own blood, offered the Devil his soul in exchange for victory in court, ‘the enjoyment of life, health, wealth, tobacco here, more food and better, my wishes granted’, and the assurance that he would live until he was sixty. It is likely that, as Davies has suggested, Dove got the idea from the well-known story of Doctor Faustus.165 There was also the mysterious and primarily East Anglian figure known as the ‘toadman’. Toadmen were horsemen or grooms, who were said to possess supernatural power over horses and, in many cases, also additional skills such as the ability to see in the dark or to open locked doors with a touch. They were distinctive in the sense that they derived a large part of their mystique from the fact that their abilities, which were obtained via a complicated ritual, were supposedly diabolical in origin. The first step was to bury ‘a certain sort o’ toad’ in an ant’s nest and then wait until the ants had picked it clean. The bones were saved until St. Mark’s Eve, when they were thrown into running water, while speaking ‘certain words’. One of the bones would flow against the current and, once plucked out, the Devil would appear.166 Toadmen were not necessarily malicious but were also not above using their abilities for revenge or personal gain.167 While they were not as loathed as witches, they were certainly not respectable and were often feared. One informant, who was unnerved by the source of their powers, stated that he ‘shouldn’t like to risk … [his] soul in that way’ and there is some suggestion that they were believed to be prone to madness.168 In rare cases, cunning-folk were also alleged to have obtained their power from the Devil or to have had some relationship with him. A man

96  The Folkloric Devil from the Kennet Valley was said to have declared, as he was dying, that ‘a great many things have been done by scholarship, but as for me I have had dealings with the Devil’.169 In 1885, a clergyman was called to the deathbed of a wise-woman named Mary Atkin, who believed that the Devil was waiting to carry her off. She told him that ‘[t]hou hast fixed him…or a bit, as firm as ivver I fixed anny; bud he’ll hev’ me sartain sewer [certain sure] when thou art gone’ and, apparently, she died crying out that the Devil had her.170 Occasionally, cunning-folk were treated with distrust or even accused of diabolism. A cunning-man named ‘Wise Man’ Wilkinson apparently ‘never went to Church or Chapel’ and one Somerset cunning-man was said to have died of a broken neck, possibly inflicted by the Devil.171 In Staffordshire, a man who had lost some money sought the help of a local figure, who, though not clearly identified, was probably a cunning-man. When he disobeyed the cunningman’s instruction to keep their transaction a secret, he woke to find his room ‘full of little red imps dancing all about’.172 There is also some evidence that there was sometimes considered to be a moral difference between different types of charming. While interviewing a well-known cunning-man from St. Briavel’s in Gloucestershire, Eyre found that he was uncomfortable discussing a specific type of ‘protective charming’. His discomfort with this topic stemmed from the fact that the charm involved burning salt, which was ‘in itself an evil and unlucky thing’. His wife, who was present during the interview, chimed in, claiming that ‘… you can fetch a man wi’ that! If a girl have been wronged by a man… you can fetch him back at midnight…’ The cunning-man broke in indignantly, cautioning that ‘[t]hey as are good at charming mustn’t do the devil’s work, and that’s devil’s work, that is’. Eyre, who was uncertain how to reconcile this attitude with the fact that he clearly did burn salt, wondered if it was ‘a case of fighting evil with evil’.173 It was more common to depict cunning-folk as the opponents of the Devil. The more active forms of resistance to or manipulation of the Devil tended to be professional matters. Domestic magic dealt with the Devil in the most marginal of ways, mentioning him only for the sake of ritual defiance. For instance, a charm for cramp recorded in the early twentieth century declared: The devil is tying a knot in my legMark, Luke and John I beg Crosses three now mark to ease us, For the Father, Holy Ghost, and Jesus.174 Cunning-folk might take more decisive action. During the 1890s, the daughter of a cottager in Blandford, Dorset ‘did lie days…in a sort of trance, and added an unpleasant habit of sometimes waking suddenly and seizing the nearest movable, and pitching it at the first person who

The Folkloric Devil  97 appeared’. As she had recently refused charity to a passing tramp, the obvious conclusion was that she had been bewitched. Her mother consulted a wise-woman, who advised her that, as ‘the devil he went into the swine’, she could break the spell by sticking an ounce of pins into a pig’s heart and burning it.175 A cunning-man, who lived on the east coast of Cornwall, was capable of even more impressive feats. Hunt remarked that: I have known farmers well informed in many other matters…go to the ‘Peller’ [cunning-man] to have the ‘spirits that possessed the calves’ driven out; for they…‘were so wild, they tore down all the wooden fences and gates, and must be possessed with the devil.’ In order to drive out the spirits, a stone wall was built to confine the calves ‘for three times seven days, or until the next moon is as old as the present one’, at which point the Peller would send ‘the spirits to some very remote region’. These precautions were important, as there was always the risk the spirits would migrate from the calves into other animals or even people.176 The belief that cunning-folk could serve as intermediaries between the natural and supernatural worlds was also demonstrated during Dove’s trial. Prior to murdering his wife, Dove had dealings with a cunning-man named Henry Harrison, who stated that Dove claimed to have ‘sold his soul to the Devil’ but believed that as a cunning-man, ‘I had bigger power over the devils than he’. He denied claiming any such power and stated that Dove had held the belief independent of any prompting on his part.177 Similar ideas surfaced during the trial of William Holland, a cunning-man prosecuted at Oldham in 1848. The court heard that one old man was so unnerved by his belief that Holland could control evil spirits that he took refuge in a churchyard when he saw him coming.178 As such ideas demonstrate, while the Devil may not have been central to nineteenth-century magical belief, he did represent a definite, if minor, strand in the popular discourse on the issue.

Entertainment If folklorists found witchcraft a foreign and slightly alarming country, the role played by the Devil in various forms of entertainment, such as stories, songs, games, and folk drama, was less alien. While it was very unlikely that a folklorist would have believed in witchcraft or consulted a cunning-person, they had generally told stories, sung songs, and played games. As will be discussed further in Chapters 4 and 5, it was quite common for the Devil to make appearances in various forms of entertainment, including fiction, music, and plays. Devil lore was often a creative endeavour and folklorists contributed by retelling, adjusting,

98  The Folkloric Devil and describing forms of entertainment they considered traditional or peculiar to the ‘folk’. As the Devil made regular appearances in England’s traditional stories, it was relatively common for folklorists to publish versions of folktales.179 Most of the tales which made their way into nineteenth-century folklore collections were essentially reconstructive or literary projects assembled from a variety of sources, which might be printed or oral, middle, or lower class. They had generally been given a literary polish and, as few details were usually recorded regarding their origins, it can be difficult to place them in context. The sheer complexity of the path a folktale might take on its way to publication is demonstrated by Burne’s version of the origin of the will-o’-the-wisp. This tale claimed that the will-o’-the-wisp was actually the ghost of a blacksmith named Will, forced to wander eternally, as he was so wicked that the Devil was afraid to let him into hell. While this tale was picturesque, Burne cautioned that she had included it ‘with…reserve, inasmuch as I cannot say for certain how far it may be called a popular tradition of Shropshire’. In fact, she had first encountered the story in the antiquarian column of the Shrewsbury Journal but decided to use it, after ‘finding at least one Salopian lady who could recollect having heard…such a story in her youth’.180 The story of the will-o’-the-wisp also showcased the mix of buffoonery and menace, which often characterised the Devil’s role in English folk narratives. In another story from Shropshire, the Devil terrified a group of clergymen who were playing cards on the Sabbath. This story combined the Devil’s role as a punisher of evil-doers, with his rather humanlike penchant for card-playing. It also demonstrated his underlying malice, as, although most of the clergymen escaped, the host was reduced to ‘a great stain of blood, shaped like a human form’.181 On occasions when the protagonist was more virtuous or wily, the Devil rarely emerged the victor. A schoolmaster banished him from Cockerham in Lancashire by asking him to make a rope out of sand, thereby winning a bet that he could find a task even Satan could not perform.182 While folktales featuring the Devil could be sinister and frightening, on the whole, they tended to minimise his power, often featuring him in either his more buffoonish form or in his guise as a punisher of evil-doers. A combination of light-heartedness and danger also characterised the use of Devil lore in children’s games. Many games that mentioned the Devil did so in a frivolous, nonsensical manner, with the diabolic simply adding a little extra colour. In a game from Dorset, an unsuspecting child was asked to choose between ‘a rusty rag, a sunburnt cake, or a blackbird under the bush’. The first referred to a piece of bacon but ‘great merriment’ ensued if the child selected one of others, as they were, respectively, a piece of cow dung and the Devil.183 Alice Bertha Gomme, the author of a monumental work on The Traditional

The Folkloric Devil  99 Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1894, 1898), recorded several games which alluded to the Devil. For instance, a version of the seminonsensical rhyme used in a game known as ‘All the Boys in Our Town’ included the verse: Up came the doctor, up came the cat, Up came the devil with a white straw hat. Down went the doctor, down went the cat, Down went the devil with a white straw hat.184 During a game known as ‘Jenny Jones’, one child would pretend to be dead, while the others recited a stock rhyme and sprinkled her with dust. In some versions, the rhyme ended with a declaration of: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. / If God won’t have you, the devil must’.185 The use of Devil lore by children and adolescents was not always so benign. According to a ‘schoolboy belief’, it was possible to raise the Devil by means of a certain ritual. William Henderson, author of Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, claimed to have attempted this feat as a child. The first step was to obtain ‘a black cat’. In Henderson’s case, he and his friends then: …assembled on a dark winter night in the cathedral churchyard, and grouped ourselves within a circle, marked on the grass. We… meant instantly to present… [the Devil] with poor pussy as an offering. The senior of the party read the Lord’s Prayer backwards, and repeated some cabalistic verses; but the adjuration was not responded to…186 The antiquarian Joseph Hunter described a similar ritual, claiming that it was known in grammar schools throughout England.187 Despite their obvious links to ritual magic, such activities are best categorised as games rather than sorcery. Their purpose was not to literally summon the Devil but to challenge the social and religious values of the adult world by invoking his association with subversion. The use of ritual elements helped create a psychological barrier, separating the ‘real’ world from the world of the game.188 This barrier was, of course, permeable and it is likely that, for some participants, unease lingered beyond the completion of the game. This fear also served a function, however, as such games not only challenged cultural norms, but also tested the courage of participants. It was also fairly common for young people to use a place, with a particularly menacing reputation, as the site for a feat of daring. Children in Norwich challenged each other to pass through ‘Devil’s Alley’ at night.189 A woman from Oxford told a folklorist that as a child, she was taken to a spot opposite St. Margaret’s church, where it was said that the Devil could be heard rattling his chains. This journey

100  The Folkloric Devil was undertaken at night, in the company of other, possibly older, children who helpfully informed her that they had heard the Devil themselves.190 In this case, the children were participating in a practice now referred to as ‘legend-tripping’, in which young people make a pilgrimage to a site that is considered to have ominous or supernatural associations. Like adolescent attempts to summon the Devil, ‘legend-tripping’ provided a thrilling but safe adventure and probably served as a rite of passage.191 The Devil also played a notable, if minor, role in England’s folk music. Like folktales, the songs included in Victorian collections were often of uncertain provenance and given, at least, a coat of varnish before they made it into print. They were selected according to the tastes and priorities of the folklorist and did not provide a comprehensive overview of lower-class musical preferences. The preface to the 1905 edition of Sabine Baring-Gould, H. Fleetwood Sheppard, and F. W. Bussell’s Songs of the West mentioned that they had replaced twenty-two of the songs included in the first edition, either because the new inclusions were ‘better’ or because the old ones ‘though sung by the people, did not seem to us to have been productions of the folk-muse’.192 The fact that the authors drew a strict distinction between songs that were ‘sung by the people’ and those that were authentic ‘productions of the folk muse’ is indicative of the tendency of nineteenth-century folklorists to divorce songs from their context. Music was intimately bound up with the life of the community and there was little practical distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ songs, as both were entertaining and relevant to everyday life.193 Many songs, which mentioned the Devil, were simplistic, lacking sufficient gravitas or connection to the ‘folk muse’ to be considered worthy of inclusion in a folksong collection. In 1898, Fletcher Moss published a book about the ‘old customs and tales’ of his neighbours in the general Manchester area, which included several song fragments. One song included in Moss’ collection depicted the Devil as both humanised and undignified, asking: Did you ever see the devil, With his wooden spade and shovel, Digging ‘taties by the bushel, With his tail cocked up?194 This song is well-attested. Hunt incorporated a similar verse into a retelling of a Cornish folktale, declaring: Here’s to the devil, With his wooden pick and shovel, Digging tin by the bushel, With his tail cock’d up!195

The Folkloric Devil  101 The reference to ‘tin’, alluding to Cornwall’s mining industry, placed the song firmly within a local context.196 Songs often mentioned the Devil simply for the purposes of humour but he might also be invoked as an expression of contempt. The Devil was sometimes mentioned during rough music performances, which, as a traditional form of public shaming, existed solely to express contempt. In 1889, Jack Nelson of Hedon, Yorkshire beat his wife so severely that the community responded by tying an effigy of him to a ‘stang’ (a long pole or ladder) and parading it around the village. When the accompanying crowd reached his home, they struck up a musical performance, with ‘harsh’ voices and ‘instruments more famed for sound than music’. The lyrics, which consisted primarily of insults and threats, included a statement that: …if this good man dizzant mend his manners, The skin of his hide sal gan ti the tanner’s; An if the tanner dizzant tan it well, He sal ride upon a gate spell; An if the spell sud happen to crack, He sal ride upon the devil’s back; An if the devil sud happen ti run, We’ll shut him wiv a wahld-goose gun…197 A similar rhyme was recorded from Somerset.198 The Devil rarely made his way into folksong collections and he is almost absent from Francis James Child’s monumental collection of English and Scottish popular ballads. There are a few exceptions, with the most significant being ‘The Farmer’s Curst Wife’. This humorous song, which related how the Devil once carried off the ‘bad wife’ of a farmer but found her so unruly that he brought her back, was known throughout England and appeared in print multiple times.199 It was often given a whistling chorus in accordance with the tradition of incorporating whistling or ‘a rude nonsense-refrain’ into songs about the Devil, as a protective gesture. 200 The song was, however, more concerned with ‘correct’ gender roles and the chaos wrought by assertive women than it was with any danger the Devil might pose. 201 The Child Ballads also included ‘The False Knight Upon the Road’ and ‘Riddles Wisely Expounded’, which both depicted contests of wit between a mortal and the Devil.202 In ‘Riddles Wisely Expounded’, a maiden thwarted the Devil’s attempt to carry her off by correctly answering a series of riddles. 203 This song reversed the focus of ‘The Devil’s Curst Wife’ by focusing on the dangers faced rather than posed by women. The maiden was a more passive figure than the farmer’s wife and her quick wit did not pose the same threat to the social order as the wife’s unrestrained violence. In addition, while the Devil represented an external threat, social disorder could be more

102  The Folkloric Devil frightening, as it emerged from within the community and could not be banished by anything as simple as correctly answering some riddles. The Devil also had a role in the mumming play. In 1863, W. Barnes provided a description of this custom, as it existed in Dorset, stating that mummers were: …a set of youths who go about at Christmas decked with painted paper and tinsel, and act in the houses of those who like to receive them a little drama, mostly, though not always, representing a fight between St. George and a Mohammadan leader; and commemorative therefore of the Holy Wars. 204 This description is both characteristic and inadequate, as while it provides a concise outline of a common type of mumming, the practice was highly variable. Mumming plays were generally performed at Christmas or New Year’s, although All Soul’s and Easter were also common choices.205 They can be divided into several primary but interrelated types, indigenous to specific regions. The first and most widespread was what has often been termed the ‘Hero-Combat’, in which a fatal contest between two champions culminated in the fallen hero’s resurrection by a quack doctor. There was also the ‘Wooing Ceremony’, in which a rejected suitor joined the army, and the ‘Sword Dance’, which featured a dance with swords.206 The ‘Hero-Combat’ and ‘Sword Dance’ were found in the north-east of England, while the ‘Wooing Ceremony’ was native to the East Midland counties of Leicestershire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire.207 The ‘Wooing Ceremony’ is sometimes subsumed into a larger category of ‘Plough Plays’, named for the fact that they were generally performed on or around Plough Monday. 208 The ‘Hero-Combat’ received the vast majority of Victorian scholarly attention, as it was not only the most common but, from the perspective of a nineteenth-century folklorist, contained the most interesting symbolism. Burne summed up a common view, when she stated that the mumming play was ‘nominally the legend of St. George, but really the world-old drama of the Seasons, of strife, and death, and renewed life’. 209 The ‘Hero Combat’ was the most likely to feature diabolical characters. Harland and Wilkinson provided a list of the dramatis personae as they appeared in Lancashire, specifically ‘the fool’, St. George, Slasher, the Doctor, the Prince of Paradine, the King of Egypt, Hector, Beelzebub, and Devil Doubt. 210 The cast of characters varied widely, with Chamber’s Book of Days listing them as Old Father Christmas, the Doctor, St. George, Turkish Knight, and Beelzebub, while a Worcestershire correspondent to Notes and Queries gave them as Little Devil-Doubt, Turkish Knight, Old Father Christmas, Valiant Soldier, the Noble Captain, Doctor, King George, Beelzebub, and Bold Bonaparte. 211

The Folkloric Devil  103 Beelzebub and Devil Doubt were not only common, but distinctive, as they were almost always separated from the other characters by the fact that they did not participate in the action of the play. Their purpose was to perform a humorous concluding act, during which the audience was encouraged to provide monetary remuneration. While this function might be served by a number of characters, Beelzebub was the most common, with Devil Doubt also being fairly widespread.212 Despite their names, their devilishness tended to be tangential to their role in the play. Folklorists considered them to be somewhat anomalous, with T. Fairman Ordish speculating that they were remnants of ‘some mediaeval miracle-play’. 213 Mumming was not an entirely respectable activity and frequently included some degree of intimidation and aggression. 214 Beelzebub and Devil Doubt served, with their nonsensical antics and casual references to the diabolic, as an embodiment of mumming’s more anarchic elements. The Devil’s role as an entertainer was marked by this duality, with humour either masking or defusing a lurking sense of danger.

Meeting the Devil The folkloric Devil is, perhaps, best defined as a lurking sense of danger. While, in 1882, Augustus Jessop noted that he had never met a rural ‘man or woman… who did not believe in the devil and his angels’, Jeremy Harte is also correct in his observation that, during the nineteenth century, ‘people saw much less of the Devil’ than their ancestors had. 215 The Devil of the Victorian era was, to an extent, depersonalised, tending to exercise his greatest influence as a nebulous, malignant force. Tales of humans meeting the Devil were often comical and, to make a broad generalisation, he often became less threatening as his materiality increased. While rare, it was not unheard of for the inhabitants of Victorian England to encounter the Devil directly. Actual reports were generally simple and stark, bereft of the contests of wit and interludes of buffoonery found in less serious narratives. It is likely that some stories, although given as true accounts, simply attached themselves to dubious characters as particularly grave markers of disapprobation. Latham collected a story regarding ‘a man of notoriously bad character’, who was ‘nightly haunted by evil spirits in the form of rats’. An elderly woman, who claimed that people passing his home at night had heard him cursing his unwanted visitors, was of the opinion that they had been sent to ‘do judgment on him, and would carry him away some night or other’. In the end, he died as the result of a drunken fight. 216 A man from the Kennet Valley, who ‘used to say that there was no Heaven, or Hell, or Devil, but that only your conscience made them’, learnt the error of his ways on his deathbed, when he found his room full of devils. 217 This account is similar to the description of the dying sinner, who saw ‘little devils’ dancing around his bed, provided by a child in Latham’s Sunday

104  The Folkloric Devil School class. 218 The theme of the sinner punished by diabolic forces also features in Bray’s description of an incident, which allegedly ‘occurred a few years since, near Roborough Bock’. A group of men were working at the South Devon Wharf late on a Saturday night: …when suddenly they saw issue from the rock a large ball of fire, which…rolled on towards them, and in its approach assumed a variety of forms; sometimes that of a human figure, then of a church with arched windows, pillars…The men were…terrified, and calling to their recollection that the Sunday had commenced, they fully believed they saw, and were pursued by the devil… Bray stated that this interpretation ‘continues to be their firm conviction’, suggesting that she may have heard the story firsthand or that it was a rumour circulating in the community.219 The fact that the children in Latham’s Sunday school class mentioned several men, who ‘had seen’ or were ‘always seeing’ the Devil, indicates that belief in the possibility of diabolic manifestations may have been fairly common. 220 While it is possible that these anecdotes would not have earned such fervent belief from the adult members of the community, the ‘elderly woman’ who informed Latham about the rat-shaped spirits suggests that such beliefs were not restricted to the young. This supposition is supported by a small assortment of surviving accounts, which are either firsthand or appear to be closely based on firsthand reports. In 1913, Angeline Parker recorded that ‘an old labourer at Holton’ replied to her friend’s admission that ‘he did not believe in a personal devil’ by claiming to have ‘sin’ ‘im’.221 Other accounts are more vivid. For instance, in Wiltshire, ‘the devil appeared in the form of a dog one Palm Sunday when there was the annual gathering on Longbridge Deverill Cow-down’.222 Further evidence is provided by the story of the man, who was driven out of his cottage by the Devil, and the account of Jack R. from Shropshire, who insisted that the Devil was red. 223 The fact that black dogs sporting demonic features were spotted with reasonable regularity is also suggestive, as a spectre which drags a chain or vanishes in flames is only explicable against the background of traditional Christian doctrine.224 While meeting the Devil in person was uncommon, he was prevalent, even ubiquitous, in other areas of the Victorian folkloric record. He was a highly adaptable trope, shifting easily from one shape to another, with his appearances in folklore encompassing everything from magical beliefs to children’s games. While the Devil’s changeability made him an all-purpose stimulant for the imagination, his religious role gave his numerous forms an underlying coherence. The Devil’s longstanding association with humour and entertainment also had a significant influence on nineteenth-century diabolic folklore, allowing his dangerous

The Folkloric Devil  105 and amusing forms to coexist with relative ease. His different guises often complemented rather than contradicted each other, with humour serving to soften the fear he could inspire. His more frightening aspects were also what made many supernatural narratives entertaining, adding an enjoyable shiver to a scary story. The coexistence of amusing diabolic folktales and serious accounts of suffering caused by diabolic power emphasises the potentially thin line between entertainment and fear. The role of diabolic folklore in Victorian culture was frequently contradictory. It was also frequently contested, highlighting ideological and religious divisions. While for some members of the English population the Devil posed a practical threat, for others this viewpoint was absurd and possibly pernicious. For many educated (especially middle- and upper- class) individuals, diabolic folklore was merely superstition. Like all superstitions, it was not just incorrect, but representative of an archaic form of thought. According to this viewpoint, those who were aware that diabolic folklore was outdated were more modern than those who, due to perceived deficiencies in education or mindset, were either unaware of this fact or did not agree. This perspective heavily influenced Victorian folklorists, who perceived diabolic folklore as fascinating and instructive but rarely meaningful or true. Nevertheless, whether diabolic folklore was a repository of useful information or a source of dangerous misinformation was a matter of opinion. The role of diabolic folklore in Victorian culture is indicative of the complicated role of the supernatural in modernity, which consisted of a complex patchwork of tradition and innovation, decline and persistence. It was the diversity of the English diabolic which allowed some Victorian commentators to dismiss diabolic folklore as an outmoded relic, even as it maintained a notable presence in English culture.

Acknowledgements Parts of this chapter have previously appeared in the journal Folklore as the article ‘“A Terrific Ogre”: The Role of the Devil in Victorian Popular Belief’ 128, no. 3 (2017): 271–291. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com).

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Axon, Echoes of Old Lancashire, 212–213. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868,” 19–20. Bushaway, “Tacit, Unsuspected, But Still Implicit Faith’,” 71–97. Street, “The Devil and a Halfpenny,” 17. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 319–320. Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 55–57. Hawker, Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, 260. Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, v, 2.

106  The Folkloric Devil 9 Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863. 10 Davies, “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft,” 598–599; Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, 2; Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863. 11 Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities; Dorson, The British Folklorists, 1–43. 12 E.g. Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, Vol. 1–2. 13 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 1–3; Dorson, foreword, xii–xiii. 14 Dorson, The British Folklorists, 91–159. 15 Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863. 16 Carroll, “Some Third Thoughts on Max Müller and Solar Mythology,” 264–274. 17 Carroll, “Some Third Thoughts on Max Müller and Solar Mythology,” 264–274; Dorson, The British Folklorists, 160–175. 18 Dorson, The British Folklorists, 160–175; Müller, India, 198. 19 Briggs, “The Folklore Society and Its Beginnings,” 6. 20 Lang, “Mythology and Fairy Tales,” 631. 21 Ibid., 618–631. 22 Hartland, et al., “Folk-Lore Terminology,” 340, 345–348. 23 Bronner, “The Early Movements of Anthropology and Their Folkloristic Relationships,” 57–58. 24 Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 163. 25 Bronner, “The Early Movements of Anthropology and Their Folkloristic Relationships,” 57. 26 Hartland, “Folk-Lore Terminology,” 340–341. 27 Gomme, “Ethnological Data in Folklore,” 133. 28 Anon., “The Folk-Lore Society. Rules,” viii. 29 Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, v, 2. 30 Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863. 31 Dorson, The British Folklorists, 319; Dorson, foreword, xvi. 32 Dorson, The British Folklorists, 316. 33 Brockie, Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England. 34 Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 157. 35 Anon., review of Lancashire Folk-Lore, 721. 36 Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 120–121. 37 Brown, Burdett, and Thurschwell, introduction, 1. 38 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., vii. 39 Nicholson, Folk Lore of East Yorkshire, ix. 40 Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, 164. 41 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 2–4; Wright, “On the Local Legends of Shropshire,” 54–55. 42 Wright, “On the Local Legends of Shropshire,” 55. 43 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 1–4. 44 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., vi. 45 Simpson and Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Davies, “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft,” 598–599; Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, 2; Merton, “Folk-Lore,” 862–863.

The Folkloric Devil  107 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72

73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 1. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 11–12. Ibid., 19–20. Rye, A History of Norfolk, 287–288. Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, 55. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 19–20. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, 42. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, 9. Axon, Echoes of Old Lancashire, 212–213. Elworthy, The Evil Eye, 430. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 8. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 178. Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 107. Simpson, The Folklore of Sussex, 68. Ibid. Peacock, “The Staffordshire Horn-Dance,” 71. Gutch and Peacock, County Folklore, Vol. 5, 65. Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, 127. Elworthy, Horns and Honour, 105; Farmer, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 1, 78; Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 3, 179. Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 81, 105, 113; Farmer, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 1, 78. Atkinson, A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect, 147; Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 479, 800; Farmer, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 1, 274; Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 6, 212. Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 283; Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 16, 34, 79, 172; Elworthy, An Outline of the Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset, 99; Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 534; Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 225, 314; Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 5, 35, 96–97, 100–101; Gomme, Folk-Lore Relics of Early Village Life, 146; Gutch and Peacock, County Folklore, Vol. 5, 65. Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 534; Farmer, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 5, 93. Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 295, 737; Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 78; Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 270; Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 7, 159; Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 2, 128; Gutch and Peacock, County Folklore, Vol. 5, 5, 65; Ware, Passing English, 180. Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 313–314. Anon., Sinks of London Laid Open, 99, 117; Boswell, “Foot Prints of the Devil in Our Own Country,” 555–556; Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 283; Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 78; Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 5, 35, 100; Ware, Passing English, 180. Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 295. Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 97. Gates, The Vanished Country Folk, 262, 331. Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, 79. Evans, Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, 282. Burne, “The Collection of English Folk-Lore,” 324. Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 97, 107–108. Powell, “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts,” 72.

108  The Folkloric Devil 83 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 277–278. 84 Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, 79. 85 Briggs, “The English Fairies,” 272–273. 86 Harte, Explore Fairy Traditions, 6–7. 87 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., 220–221. 88 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 105–106. 89 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 282–283; Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, Part A, Vol. 2, 36, 261–262; Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 106, n. 1; Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 3, 598. 90 Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, 55, 90. 91 Briggs, The Vanishing People, 129–130. 92 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 282. 93 Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 144. 94 Boswell, “Footprints of the Devil in Our Own Country,” 555–556. 95 Gutch and Peacock, County Folklore, Vol. 5, 65. 96 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 281, 283; Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 2, 19, 20, 116, 157, 394; Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., 16. 97 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 32, 277; Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., 16. 98 Blackmore, The London by Moonlight Mission, 295; Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 19. 99 Anon., “The Devil’s Own,” 370. 100 Boswell, “Footprints of the Devil in Our Own Country,” 559. 101 Simpson, “God’s Visible Judgements,” 54. 102 Jesse, Scenes and Tales of Country Life, 182; Powell, “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts,” 78. 103 Hunt, Popular Romances, 216–219. 104 Anon., “The Devil’s Own,” 376; Boswell, “Foot Prints of the Devil in Our Own Country,” 560. Leather, “The Devil’s Rocks,” 372. 105 Manning, “Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore,” 73; Partridge, “Cotswold 106 Place-Lore and Customs,” 338–339. 107 Ibid. 108 Allies, The British, Roman, and Saxon Antiquities and Folk-Lore of Worcestershire, 144; Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 1, 173; Briggs, “Possible Mythological Motifs in English Folktales,” 268; Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 10–11; Hunt, Popular Romances, 43, 186; Read, “Hampshire Folklore,” 312; Simpson, The Folklore of the Welsh Border, 20–21. 109 Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 2, 7–8. 110 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 1, 251–253. 111 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 8–9. 112 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 121. Eyre, “Folk-Lore of the Wye Valley,” 174–175. 113 114 Burne, “The “Devil’s Door” in Wroxhall Abbey Church,” 459.

The Folkloric Devil  109 115 116 117 118 119 120

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

146 147 148

Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 2, 271. Brockie, Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham, 174. Boswell, “Foot Prints of the Devil in Our Own Country,” 560. Atkinson, “Supernatural Changes in Site,” 279–280; Hartland, “Supernatural Change of Site,” 177–178. Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, 147. Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 369; Elworthy, The West Somerset Word-Book, 192, 646; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 83; Morris, Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 297; Wright, Rustic Speech and Folklore, 204. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, 204. Brockie, Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham, 129; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 123. Brockie, Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham, 129. Denham, A Collection of Proverbs and Popular Sayings, 35. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 18. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, 204. Hartland, English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, 234–235. Westwood, “Friend or Foe?,” 69. Harte, “The Black Dog in England,” 110. Hartland, English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, 237. Harte, “The Devil on Dartmoor,” 88. Hartland, English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, 242–244. See Britten, A Dictionary of English Plant-Names, xviii, 22, 37, 138, 148–150, 172, 191, 341, 353, 363, 529. Ibid., 22. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, 204. Britten, A Dictionary of English Plant Names, 148–149, 529. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, 163; Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, 203–204. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, 163. Burne, “Staffordshire Folk and Their Lore,” 380; Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 2, 252; Heanley, “Burning Elder Wood,” 235–236. Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 285; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 96; Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 14. Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 285. Simpson, The Folklore of Sussex, 65. Atkinson, The English Traditional Ballad, 67; Simpson, The Folklore of Sussex, 65. Simpson, The Folklore of Sussex, 65. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, 54; Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., 238; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 96; Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 14; Vickery, Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die, 8–9. Vickery, Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die, 9. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 2, 248; Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 2, 63; Vickery, Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die, 5–6. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 2, 248–249; Parker, “Oxfordshire Village Folklore, II,” 326.

110  The Folkloric Devil 149 Vickery, Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die, 5. 150 Fashionable occultism was treated as distinct from ‘plebeian’ notions of witchcraft. Occultism is discussed in Chapter 3. 151 Baron, “Witchcraft in Lancashire”. 152 Anon., “Unlawful Cures,” 562. 153 Hunt, Popular Romances, 219. 154 Eyre, “Folk-Lore of the Wye Valley,” 167. 155 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 178. 156 Bell, The Magical Imagination, 54; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 178; Obelkevitch, Religion and Rural Society, 278. 157 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 179–180. 158 Read, “Hampshire Folklore,” 313–314. 159 Davies, “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft,” 601–602. 160 Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 3, 255. 161 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 151–153. 162 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 278. 163 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 154–155. 164 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 152. 165 Davies, Murder, Magic, Madness; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 152. 166 Roper, “On Witchcraft Superstition in Norfolk,” 794. 167 Porter, The Folklore of East Anglia, 31–32; Roper, “On Witchcraft Superstition in Norfolk,” 794; Pattison, “Adult Education and Folklore,” 426. 168 Evans, Horse Power and Magic, 146; Roper, “On Witchcraft Superstition in Norfolk,” 794. 169 Salmon, “Folklore in the Kennet Valley,” 428. 170 Gutch and Peacock, County Folklore, Vol. 5, 73–74. 171 Davies, Cunning-Folk, 63–64. 172 Burne, “Staffordshire Folk and Their Lore,” 369. 173 Eyre, “Folk-Lore of the Wye Valley,” 167–169. 174 Raven, The Folklore of Staffordshire, 52. 175 March, “Dorset Folklore Collected in 1897,” 488. 176 Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-Lore, 139–140, 142; Hunt, Popular Romances, 319–320. 177 Davies, Murder, Magic, Madness, 110. 178 Davies, Cunning-Folk, 63. 179 See Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, Part B, Vol. 1, 43–155. 180 Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 1, 34–35. 181 Ibid., 116. 182 Axon, Folk Song and Folk-Speech of Lancashire, 92–93; Wilkinson, “Lancashire Folk Lore,” 211–212. 183 Udal, “Dorsetshire Children’s Games, Etc.,” 260. 184 Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. 1, 2–6. 185 Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. 1, 260–283; Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. 2, 433–435. 186 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, 32. Bell, The Magical Imagination, 133. 187 188 Ellis, Lucifer Ascending, 142, 153, 172.

The Folkloric Devil  111 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224

Bell, The Magical Imagination, 253. Manning, “Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore (Continued),” 73. Ellis, Lucifer Ascending, 112–141. Baring-Gould, Sheppard, and Bussell, Songs of the West, v. Pickering, Village Song and Culture, 1, 6. Moss, Folklore, 55. Hunt, Popular Romances, 243–245. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, 132. Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 6, 132–133. Elworthy, The Dialect of West Somerset, 674. Sargent and Kittredge, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 605–606; Williams et al., “Songs Collected from Sussex,” 184–185. Gilchrist, Broadwood, and Kidson, “Songs Connected with Customs,” 184–185. Atkinson, The English Traditional Ballad, 84–87, 88–91, 96–98, 102. Sargent and Kittredge, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 4. Sargent and Kittredge, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1–3. Udal, “Christmas Mummers in Dorsetshire,” 90. Millington, “The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays,” 1–2. Helm, The English Mummers’ Play, 1–37. Newall, “The Turkish Knight in English Traditional Drama,” 196. Millington, “The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays,” 2. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Vol. 3, 410. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c., 101. Udal, “Christmas Mummers in Dorsetshire,” 89–90. Millington, “The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays,” 2–3. Ordish, “English Folk-Drama. II,” 159. Pickering, Village Song and Culture, 110. Harte, “Black Dog Studies,” 10; Jessop, “Superstition in Arcady,” 743. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 23. Salmon, “Folklore in the Kennet Valley,” 419. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 19. Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, Vol. 2, 285. Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” 19. Parker, “Oxfordshire Village Folklore,” 84. Powell, “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts,” 74. Burne, “The Collection of English Folk-Lore,” 324; Elworthy, Horns of Honour, 107. Davies, The Haunted, 35; Harte, “Black Dog Studies,” 16–18.

References Allies, Jabez. The British, Roman, and Saxon Antiquities and Folk-Lore of Worcestershire, 2nd ed. London: J. H. Parker and Worcester: J. Grainger, 1852. Anon. “The Devil’s Own.” The English Illustrated Magazine 184 (1899), 370–376. ———. “The Folk-Lore Society. Rules.” The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), viii–ix. ———. Review of Lancashire Folk-Lore, edited by John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson. Athenæum 2066, June 1, 1867.

112  The Folkloric Devil ———. Sinks of London Laid Open. London: J. Duncombe, 1848. ———. “Unlawful Cures.” The Sixpenny Magazine 8, no. 41 (1864), 562–566. Atkinson, David. The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002. Atkinson, John Christopher. A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect: Explanatory, Derivative, and Critical. London: John Russell, 1868. ———. “Supernatural Changes in Site.” Folklore 8, no. 3 (1897), 279–280. Axon, William. Echoes of Old Lancashire. London: William Andrews & Co., 1899. Baring-Gould, Sabine, H. Fleetwood Sheppard, and F. W. Bussell. Songs of the West: Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall Collected from the Mouths of the People. London: Methuen and Co., 1905. Baron, Joseph. “Witchcraft in Lancashire.” The Weekly Standard and Express, June 16, 1894. Bell, Karl. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012. ———. The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Blackmore, John. The London by Moonlight Mission: Being an Account of Midnight Cruises on the Streets of London. London: Robson and Avery, 1860. Blakeborough, Richard. Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire. London: Henry Frowde, 1898. Boswell, R. Bruce. “Foot Prints of the Devil in Our Own Country.” The Pall Mall Magazine 5, no. 24 (1893), 555–564. Brand, John. Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions, Vol. I, ed. Henry Ellis. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1813. Bray, Anna Eliza. Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire on the Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, Vol. 1–3. London: John Murray, 1838. Briggs, Katharine M. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Incorporating the F. J. Norton Collection, Part A: Folk Narratives, Volume 2. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. ———. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Incorporating the F. J. Norton Collection, Part B: Folk Legends, Volume I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1971. ———. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon, 1976. ———. ““The English Fairies.” Folklore 68, no. 1 (1957), 270–287. ———. The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1967. ———. “The Folklore Society and its Beginnings.” In Animals in Folklore, edited by J. R. Porter and W. M. S. Russell, 1–20. Ipswich: D. S. Brewer and Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978. ———. “Possible Mythological Motifs in English Folktales.” Folklore 83, no. 4 (1972), 265–271. ———. The Vanishing People: A Study of Traditional Fairy Beliefs. London: B. T. Batsford, 1978.

The Folkloric Devil  113 Britten, James. A Dictionary of English Plant-Names. London: Trübner & Co., 1886. Brockie, William. Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham. Sunderland: R. Williams, 1886. Bronner, Simon J. “The Early Movements of Anthropology and Their Folkloristic Relationships.” Folklore 95, no. 1 (1984), 57–73. Brown, Nicola, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell. Introduction to The Victorian Supernatural, edited by Nicola Brown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell, 1–19. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Burne, Charlotte. “The Collection of English Folk-Lore.” Folklore 1, no. 3 (1890), 313–330. ———. Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings. London: Trübner & Co., Shrewsbury: Adnitt & Naunton, and Chester: Minshull & Hughes, 1883. ———. Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings, Part II. London: Trübner & Co., Shrewsbury: Adnitt & Naunton, and Chester: Minshull & Meeson, 1885. ———. Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings, Part III. London: Trübner & Co., Shrewsbury: Adnitt & Naunton, and Chester: Minshull & Meeson, 1886. ———. “Staffordshire Folk and Their Lore.” Folklore 7, no. 4 (1896), 366–386. Bushaway, Bob. “Tacit, Unsuspected, But Still Implicit Faith’: Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-Century Rural England.”, In New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Volume 6: Witchcraft in the Modern World, edited by Brian P. Levack, 71–97. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Carroll, Michael P. “Some Third Thoughts on Max Müller and Solar Mythology.” European Journal of Sociology 26, no. 2 (1985), 264–274. Courtney, Margaret Ann. Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore. Penzance: Beare and Son, 1890. Davies, Owen. Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003. ———. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007. ———. Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005. ———. “Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination of London.” Journal of Social History 30, no. 3 (1997), 597–617. ———. Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. Denham, Michael Aislabie. A Collection of Proverbs and Popular Sayings Relating to the Seasons, the Weather, and Agricultural Pursuits. London: The Percy Society, 1846. Dorson, Richard M. The British Folklorists: A History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968. ———. Foreword to Folktales of England, edited by Katharine M. Briggs and Ruth L. Tongue, i–xii. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1965. Ellis, Bill. Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

114  The Folkloric Devil Elworthy, Frederic Thomas. The Dialect of West Somerset: A Paper Read before the Philological Society, January 15th, 1875. London: Trübner & Co., 1875. ———. The Evil Eye: An Account of this Ancient and Widespread Superstition. London: John Murray, 1895. ———. Horns of Honour: And Other Studies in the By-Ways of Archæology. London: John Murray, 1900. ———. An Outline of the Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset. London: Trübner & Co., 1877. ———. The West Somerset Word-Book: A Glossary of Dialectical and Archaic Words and Phrases Used in West Somerset and East Devon. London: Trübner & Co., 1886. Evans, Arthur Benoni. Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs. Edited by Sebastian Evans. London: Trübner & Co., 1881. Evans, George Ewart. Horse Power and Magic. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. Farmer, John, ed. Slang and its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. I – A – Byz. London: printed by author, 1890. Farmer, John S., and W. E. Henley. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. III – Fla. – Hyps. London: printed by author, 1893. ———. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. V – N to Razzle-Dazzle. London: printed by author, 1902. ———. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. VI. – Rea to Stozzle. London: printed by author, 1903. ———. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. VII. – Stra to Z. London: printed by author, 1904. Gates. R. L. The Vanished Country Folk and Other Studies in Arcady. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd, 1914. Gilchrist, A. G., Lucy E. Broadwood, and Frank Kidson. “Songs Connected with Customs.” Journal of the Folk-Song Society 5, no. 9 (1915), 204–220. Gomme, Alice Bertha. The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with Tunes, Singing-Rhymes, and Methods of Playing According to the Variations Extant and Recorded in Different Parts of the Kingdom, Vol. I: Accroshay – Nuts in May. London: David Nutt, 1894. ———. The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with Tunes, Singing-Rhymes, and Methods of Playing According to the Variations Extant and Recorded in Different Parts of the Kingdom, Vol. II: Oats and Beans – Would You Know, Together with a Memoir on the Study of Children’s Games. London: David Nutt, 1898.

The Folkloric Devil  115 Gomme, G. Laurence. “Ethnological Data in Folklore: A Criticism of the President’s Address in January, 1898.” Folklore 10, no. 2 (1899), 129–143. ———. Ethnology in Folklore. London: Kegan Paul Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1892. ———. Folk-Lore Relics of Early Village Life. London: Elliot Stock, 1883. Gutch, Eliza, ed. County Folklore, Volume II: Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning the North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty. London: David Nutt, 1899. ———. County Folklore, Vol. VI, Printed Extracts No. VIII: Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning the East Riding of Yorkshire. London: David Nutt, 1912. Gutch, Eliza, and Mabel Peacock, ed. County Folklore, Vol. V, Printed Extracts No. VII: Examples of Printed Folklore Concerning Lincolnshire. London: David Nutt, 1908. Hardwick, Charles. Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, (Chiefly Lancashire and the North of England) Their Affinity to Others in WidelyDistributed Localities; Their Eastern Origin and Mystical Significance. Manchester: A. Ireland & Co. and London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1872. Harland, John and T. T. Wilkinson, ed. Lancashire Folk-Lore: Illustrative of the Superstitious Beliefs and Practises, Local Customs and Usages of the People of the County Palatine. London: Frederick Warne and Co. and New York: Scribner and Co., 1867. ———. Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1873. Harte, Jeremy. “The Black Dog in England: A Bibliography.” In Explore Phantom Black Dogs, edited by Bob Trubshaw, 98–128. Avebury: Explore Books, 2005. ———. “Black Dog Studies.” In Explore Phantom Black Dogs, edited by Bob Trubshaw, 5–20. Avebury: Explore Books, 2005. ———. “The Devil on Dartmoor.” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 1, no. 1 (2008), 83–94. ———. Explore Fairy Traditions. Wymeswold: Explore Books, 2004. Hartland, Edwin Sidney. English Fairy and Other Folk Tales. London and Felling-on-Tyne: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1890. ———. The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd. and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891. ———. “Supernatural Change of Site.” Folklore 8, no. 2 (1897), 177–178. Hartland, E. Sidney, C. Staniland Wake, Henry B. Wheatley, and G. L. Gomme. “Folk-Lore Terminology.” The Folk-Lore Journal 2, no. 11 (1884), 340–348. Hawker, Robert Stephen. Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. Edited by C. E. Byles. London and New York: John Lane, 1903. Heanley, R. M. “Burning Elder Wood.” Folklore 22, no. 2 (1911), 235–236. Helm, Alex. The English Mummer’s Play. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer and Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980. Henderson, William. Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders: A New Edition with Many Additional Notes. London: W. Satchell, Peyton and Co., 1879.

116  The Folkloric Devil Hunt, Robert. Popular Romances of the West of England or the Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall, 3rd ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1881. Jesse, Edward. Scenes and Tales of Country Life: With Recollections of Natural History. London: John Murray, 1844. Jessop, Augustus. “Superstition in Arcady.” Nineteenth Century 12, no. 69 (1882), 733–755. Lang, Andrew. “Mythology and Fairy Tales.” Fortnightly Review 13, no. 77 (1873), 618–631. Latham, Charlotte. “Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868.” The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), 4–67. Leather, E. M. “The Devil’s Rocks, Near Downton Castle, Ludlow, Shropshire.” Folklore 25, no. 3 (1914), 372. Manning, Percy. “Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore (Continued).” Folklore 14, no. 1 (1903), 65–74. March, H. Colley. “Dorset Folklore Collected in in 1897.” Folklore 10, no. 4 (1899), 478–489. Merton, Ambrose. “Folk-Lore.” Athenæum 982 (1846), 862–863. Millington, Peter Thomas. “The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays.” PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 2002. Morris, M. C. F. Yorkshire Folk-Talk, with Characteristics of Those Who Speak It in the North and East Riding. London: Henry Frowde and York: John Sampson, 1892. Moss, Fletcher. Folklore: Old Customs and Tales of My Neighbours. Manchester: printed by author, 1898. Müller, F. Max. India: What Can It Teach Us? A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University of Cambridge. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1883. Newall, Venitia. “The Turkish Knight in English Traditional Drama.” Folklore 92, no. 2 (1981), 196–202. Nicholson, John. Folk Lore of East Yorkshire. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., Hull: A. Brown & Sons, and Driffield: T. Holderness, 1890. Obelkevitch, James. Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–75. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Ordish, T. Fairman. “English Folk-Drama. II.” Folklore 4, no. 2 (1893), 149–175. Parker, Angelina. “Oxfordshire Village Folklore (1840–1900).” Folklore 24, no. 1 (1913), 74–91. ———. “Oxfordshire Village Folklore, II.” Folklore 34, no. 4 (1923), 322–333. Partridge, J. B. “Cotswold Place-Lore and Customs.” Folklore 23, no. 3 (1912), 332–342. Pattinson, G. W. “Adult Education and Folklore.” Folklore 64, no. 3 (1953), 424–426. Peacock, Mabel. “The Staffordshire Horn-Dance.” Folklore 8, no. 1 (1897), 70–71. Pickering, Michael. Village Song and Culture: Study Based on the Blunt Collection of Song from Adderbury, North Oxfordshire. London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1982.

The Folkloric Devil  117 Porter, Enid. The Folklore of East Anglia. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1974. Powell, John U. “Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts.” Folklore 12, no. 1 (1901), 71–83. Raven, Jon. The Folklore of Staffordshire. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978. Read, D. H. Moutray. “Hampshire Folklore.” Folklore 22, no. 3 (1911), 292–329. Roby, John. Traditions of Lancashire, 5th ed., Vol. 1–2. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1872. Roper, Charles. “On Witchcraft Superstition in Norfolk.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 87 (1893), 792–797. Rowell, Geoffrey. Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Rye, Walter. A History of Norfolk. London: Elliot Stock, 1885. Salmon, L. “Folklore in the Kennet Valley.” Folklore 13, no. 4 (1902), 418–429. Sargent, Helen Child and George Lyman Kittredge, ed. English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Edited from the Collection of Francis James Child. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904. Simpson, Jacqueline. The Folklore of Sussex. London: B. T. Batsford, 1973. ———. The Folklore of the Welsh Border. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976. ———. “God’s Visible Judgements: The Christian Dimension of Landscape Legends.” Landscape History 8, no. 1 (1986), 53–58. Simpson, Jacqueline and Steve Roud. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. url: https://www.oxfordreference.com/ view/10.1093/acref/9780198607663.001.0001/acref-9780198607663. Stocking, Jr., George W. Victorian Anthropology. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Street, E. E. “The Devil and a Halfpenny.” Notes and Queries 131 (1882), 17. Thompson, Flora. Lark Rise to Candleford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1945] 2011. Udal, John Symonds. “Christmas Mummers in Dorsetshire.” The Folk-Lore Record 3, no. 1 (1880), 87–116. ———. “Dorsetshire Children’s Games, Etc.” The Folk-Lore Journal 7, no. 3 (1889), 202–264. Vickery, Roy. Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die: British and Irish PlantLore. London: Continuum, 2010. Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Ware, J. Redding. Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase. London: George Routledge & Sons, Limited and New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1909. Westwood, Jennifer. “Friend or Foe? Norfolk Traditions of Shuck.” In Explore Phantom Black Dogs, edited by Bob Trubshaw, 57–76. Avebury: Explore Books, 2005. Wilkinson, T. T. “Lancashire Folk Lore.” Notes and Queries 141 (1870), 211–212.

118  The Folkloric Devil Williams, Ralph Vaughan, Frank Kidson, Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, and J. A. Fuller-Maitland. “Songs Collected from Sussex.” Journal of the English Folk-Song Society 2, no. 8 (1906), 184–209. Wright, Elizabeth Mary. Rustic Speech and Folk-lore. London: Oxford University Press, 1913. Wright, Thomas. “On the Local Legends of Shropshire.” In Collectanea Archæologica: Communications Made to the British Archaeological Association, Vol. I, edited by the Council of the British Archaeological Association, 50–66. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862.

3

The Occult Devil

Like a belief in traditional Christian doctrine or an engagement with folklore, an interest in the occult was not particularly unusual during the nineteenth century. While it is probably spiritualism which looms largest in the contemporary imagination, Victorian society provided a range of spiritual and magical outlets, including mesmerism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and ritual magic. The widespread popularity of supernatural beliefs and practices was highlighted by an article published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1865 which noted that every era had its ‘popular delusions’, with ‘the existing generation of Englishmen’ having been subjected to mesmerism, clairvoyance, table-turning, and table-rapping, with the last growing ‘into a kind of spiritual institution’.1 Although the writer was sceptical about this succession of signs and wonders, their list indicated that the occult was a vibrant current within the Victorian imagination. While mesmerism and spiritualism experienced their heyday during the early to mid-Victorian era, the late-nineteenth century witnessed a ‘mystical revival’ characterised by an intense surge of interest in magic, esotericism, and mysticism. 2 While Victorian spiritualism and occultism have sometimes been conceptualised as a ‘reaction against the scientific and secular trends of modernity’, this view has been increasingly challenged by a recognition of their diversity and complexity.3 Victorian society’s supernatural preoccupations were characterised by a blurring of the boundaries between spirit and matter, science and religion, and tradition and innovation.4 An interest in the occult or supernatural was closely related to the Victorian preoccupation with evolution and self-improvement.5 Victorian society’s various ‘alternate’ spiritual currents sought to redefine, gain additional understanding of, and improve humanity’s or the individual’s place within the material and spiritual universes. They also produced innovative models to account for and manage the darker side of the supernatural and to refute or modify Christian concepts of spiritual evil. The challenge spiritual innovation posed to orthodox religion was not met with universal approbation, with a subset of contemporary observers being so alarmed that they came to believe the innovators were aligned with the forces of darkness. The Devil was easier to reject than

120  The Occult Devil to banish and traditional Christian ideas about evil continued to cast a shadow over even pioneering or unconventional spiritual models. The demonic persisted in Victorian spiritualism and occultism. Sometimes, its presence was literal, with the Devil or demons making the odd direct appearance or featuring in accusations directed at indignant practitioners. Sometimes, it was indirect or symbolic, with concerns about spiritual evil and danger persisting, even when they did not take traditional forms. The role of the Devil and supernatural evil in Victorian spiritualism and occultism demonstrates both the ongoing relevance of concerns about spiritual danger and the Devil’s staying power even in uncongenial circumstances.

Mesmerism Mesmerism (also known as ‘animal magnetism’) was the creation of Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician active in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Attempting to revolutionise medicine, Mesmer posited the existence of a magnetic fluid which permeated the universe and could be used to manipulate the nervous system.6 Becoming established in Britain in the early years of the Victorian era, mesmerism enjoyed considerable popularity between the late 1830s and 1860s. It was often dramatic, with a typical mesmeric séance featuring a mesmerist passing their hands over the subject or asking them to stare at a button, coin, or candle flame until they fell into a trance. The mesmerised individual was unaware of their surroundings but sometimes gained extraordinary powers such as the ability to see the future or perceive what was happening in a faraway place.7 Mesmerism caused significant controversy and was both a way of treating the sick and a form of entertainment.8 It began to decline in the mid- to late nineteenth century, as medicine became increasingly regulated and professionalised.9 It is likely that certain religious observers wished it had declined earlier, with some critics being concerned that the unseen forces manipulated by mesmerists were satanic. While mesmerists were adamant that there was nothing sinister about their work, such accusations were a source of persistent irritation. In the 1840s, George Corfe, a clergyman and surgeon employed at the Middlesex Hospital, responded to over a decade of mesmeric activity at his workplace by publishing a pamphlet in which he stated that the ‘spirits of…mesmerism are true devils…fraternal spirits of uncleanliness’.10 In 1842, Hugh M’Neile, an Anglican cleric known for his fiery oratory, delivered a sermon in Liverpool, denouncing mesmerism as satanic and criticising its proponents for being unable to produce a set of clearly defined laws explaining its functioning. He stated that, despite their naturalistic claims, mesmerists were nothing more than ‘necromancers’ masquerading as ‘philosophers’. In fact, most commentators who conceptualised mesmerism

The Occult Devil  121 in supernatural terms regarded it with opprobrium. This attitude was standard among Evangelical premillenarians, who generally associated mesmerism with diabolic activity.11 Such opinions were not universal, with one clergyman even delivering a lecture to the Church of England Association in which he argued that, as ‘there was nothing miraculous in mesmerism’, there could be no question of diabolic influence. They were, however, common enough to prove irksome and insulting to England’s mesmerists.12 The view that mesmerism was not miraculous was more in line with the opinions of mesmerists themselves, who, despite forays into the spiritual realm, tended to define their work in rationalistic terms.13 In 1845, an article published in The Zoist, a journal dedicated to examining mesmerism and phrenology from a ‘purely naturalistic’ perspective, stated that: One of the most lamentable things…is the…ignorance of an immense mass of the community…much of it going regularly to receive instruction at places of worship…yet believing that the phenomena of the nervous system produced by moving the hand before the face result from imaginary beings called evil spirits.14 Another contributor expressed deep regret that a critical letter printed in the journal had mentioned the Devil, declaring that ‘The Zoist is devoted to natural science, and has always made it a point to abstain from supernatural matters’.15 For mesmerists, it was unthinkable that anything as beneficial as mesmerism could be associated with the Devil, with one writer stating, in reference to a mesmeric cure, that if ‘demoniac agency’ had been involved, ‘the devil must have changed his character’.16 Accusations of diabolism also posed a practical problem, with the prominent physician and mesmerist John Elliotson stating that superstition was so dangerous that the fear it engendered could cause ‘St. Vitus’s dance, epilepsy, insanity, fatuity, [and] palsy’. Elliotson also deeply resented that diabolic beliefs hindered his mesmeric work, citing an incident in which ‘[t]wo ignorant fanatical ladies’ demanded that he stop treating their sister’s asthma because ‘an evangelical divine of the church of England’ had convinced them that ‘I must be in league with the devil’.17 Such views could also have a negative impact on patients, with the writer Harriet Martineau, who turned to mesmerism to treat a painful menstrual condition, being forced to endure an ‘open letter’ by the Evangelical Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna in which she was accused of spiritual risk-taking.18 Mesmerists could occasionally counter this form of criticism with a demonstration of their religious principles. One mesmerist won the support of a woman who had previously believed mesmerism to be ‘satanic’ by compelling a ‘youth’ to kneel and pray ‘a most beautiful…prayer’.19

122  The Occult Devil

Spiritualism In 1853, England found itself on the edge of another spiritual frontier. Following a visit by the American medium Maria B. Hayden, an ‘epidemic’ of spiritualist phenomena broke out, with tables and other objects moving outside of human control.20 The centre of the spiritualist worldview was the idea that the soul was immortal and able to posthumously communicate with the material world. Communication was facilitated by mediums, who might be professionals or private individuals who conducted spiritual experiments in a domestic setting. Spirit contact was often a group activity, with a collection of individuals assembling in order to conduct a séance. Spirits could communicate through rapping sounds, which were associated with letters of the alphabet, Ouija boards, planchettes, or automatic writing. They could also speak directly through a medium, who entered a trance state and conversed as the spirit. 21 Séances often included other impressive phenomena, such as moving furniture, self-playing musical instruments, levitating objects, ghostly lights, scents, breezes, or music, the materialisation of ‘spirit hands’ or bodies, or the production of a mysterious ‘frothy’ substance known as ectoplasm. 22 Spiritualists argued that such phenomena could harmonise science and religion by providing direct evidence for the existence of the supernatural. This project was undercut by the fact that spiritualism never developed a coherent set of doctrines. Spiritualist belief and practice often coexisted with Christianity, attracting Anglicans, Nonconformists, and even Catholics, although some spiritualists repudiated Christianity entirely. This ideological division was further complicated by geographic and class differences, with middle-class Metropolitan spiritualists tending to integrate spiritualist ideas into Christianity, while lower-middle- and working-class spiritualists living in regional areas frequently rejected traditional religion. 23 Spiritualism presents certain challenges for the modern scholar. As Peter Lamont has observed, few individuals are now able to read accounts of spiritualist phenomena without questioning their authenticity. Citing an incident in which the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home allegedly floated around a room, he noted that ‘[f]or most readers, the point at which doubt emerges is that part of the narrative in which the medium begins to float in the air’. 24 Issues of interpretation were more vexed in spiritualism’s Victorian heyday, when reports of spiritualist phenomena were not only fresh but attested to or taken seriously by numerous prominent individuals, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Owen, and John Ruskin. Sceptics were unwilling to concede ground to ghosts, proposing numerous alternate explanations, including the power of the imagination and, in the case of minor phenomena such as table-turning, biological or psychological mechanisms such as ‘unconscious cerebration’ or ‘ideo-motor action’. Most critics simply dismissed the whole

The Occult Devil  123 matter as fraud, with the debates surrounding spiritualism often being more of ‘a crisis of evidence’ than a ‘crisis of faith’.25 This persistent doubt was highly irritating for believers, with one article, published in The Cornhill Magazine in 1860, stating that, as scepticism was ‘one of the safe and cautious characteristics of the English people’, ‘important discoveries’ were always forced to endure ‘derision and antagonism’. 26 Spiritualists often saw themselves as rational and progressive and their opponents as ignoring obvious evidence. Spiritualism also raised the ire of a subset of religious observers, with some being concerned that it might be demonic in nature. Fears of diabolic activity were most acute during the 1850s, although they continued into the latter part of the century. They were fanned by the fact that the majority of Christian denominations were divided on both the precise nature of and the correct response to spiritualism. While the Church of England was officially required to reject it in accordance with its traditional ban on summoning spirits, spiritualist clergymen were allowed to stay within the fold. While Non-Conformists were probably more likely to embrace diabolic explanations than Anglicans, support for spiritualism could be found among clergymen in the majority of Protestant denominations. 27 Accusations of diabolism were a somewhat niche activity, levelled with the greatest ferocity by ‘a little group of evangelical clergyman, some of them already distinguished for their intemperate attacks on Romanist doctrines’.28 Perhaps the most ‘distinguished’ was the Rev. Nathaniel Steadman Godfrey, an Anglican clergyman who in 1853 published two pamphlets entitled Table-Moving Tested, and proved to be the result of Satanic Agency and Table-Turning, the Devil’s Modern Masterpiece. Being the Result of a Course of Experiments. 29 Writing at the height of a table-turning fad so intense that the Westminster Review later described it as an ‘epidemic’, Godfrey reached a state of near panic.30 Despite expecting to be met with ‘ridicule’, he was convinced that he had a duty to warn the public of the foothold that Satan was gaining in their drawing rooms. Godfrey believed that there was a firm boundary between ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ truths, with only the former being ‘the legitimate subject of scientific investigation’. He was contemptuous of those who, when faced with a supernatural subject, turned to reason rather than faith, declaring: Reason! what man calls reason is too often the frantic struggling of a drowning wretch… man blaspheming and shaking his puny fist in defiant rage at the thunder-cloud…is a sane man in comparison of those who…dare to doubt the existence of a God, an hereafter, a heaven, a hell, or a Devil… It was especially perilous to doubt the existence of the Devil, as ‘until we are fully aware of the power of Satan…we cannot understand in

124  The Occult Devil all its fulness the importance of the work of Jesus’. The Devil’s power was so great that, if not ‘for God’s…protection’, he would already have annihilated humankind. Doubting the Devil’s power was inviting catastrophe.31 Godfrey claimed to have proved the illegitimacy of spiritualism through experimentation. While attending a séance at which, under the influence of a spirit, a table turned and lifted its leg ‘in answer to questions’, he had ascertained the spirit’s nature via a series of enquiries. The spirit confirmed that it was evil and admitted to being ‘one of those seducing spirits spoken of by St. Paul’. While it claimed that it could move the table without human aid, when asked to demonstrate this ability, it excused itself on the grounds that it was ‘restrained’ by the Devil. Upon further questioning, it revealed that it was not a fallen angel but rather the ‘lost soul’ of a young sailor named Alfred Brown. Alfred stated that his dwelling place was in hell, which was ‘a literal torment’ of ‘fire and brimstone’ in which he suffered ‘immoral desires without the power of satisfying them’. It is unclear whether his situation was mitigated by the fact that he could leave ‘the abyss’ and ‘wander about’ – an ability apparently enjoyed by both lost souls and fallen angels. A spirit contacted on a later occasion added that, while ‘good angels’ could also ‘wander on the earth’, the souls of pious people were at rest. Godfrey also discovered that it was possible to expel a spirit by ordering it to depart in the name of God or by placing a Testament or letters spelling out the words ‘God’ or ‘Christ’ on the table. The most sensible course of action was, of course, to refrain from spiritualist activities in the first place. Godfrey believed that spiritualism bordered on witchcraft and that séance participants were performing ‘a sort of incantation’ to summon ‘wandering spirits’. He admitted that he was unsure why a spirit could only move a table which someone was touching but suggested that it might be because ‘this is the beginning of Satan’s last struggle, that on the imposition of hands the table is endued with power from the Devil, as the Lord’s servants, on the imposition of hands, were, in the Apostles’ days, endued with power from on high’.32 For Godfrey, such rhetoric was frank but not hyperbolic, as if table-turning was satanic, it indicated that demonic interference in the material world was increasing, which was, according to biblical prophecy, a key sign that the last days were approaching.33 Apocalyptic content, inspired by the millenarian undercurrents well-established in the Non-Conformist Christianity of the period, was relatively common in mid-century sermons which addressed the topic of table-turning.34 The majority of spiritualism’s Protestant critics were, however, more concerned by its doctrinal transgressions.35 It would be an understatement to say that Godfrey’s opinions were not received with universal acclaim. Following an announcement that he intended to give a lecture on the link between table-turning and the coming ‘kingdom of Antichrist’, he received a letter from the bishop of

The Occult Devil  125 London expressing an ‘earnest hope’ that he would refrain from doing so and informing him that the bishop had placed restrictions on his actions within the diocese of London.36 In 1853, his lecture ‘Table-Moving, Spirit Rapping, and Clairvoyance, in connection with the Anti-Christ’, delivered in London’s Hanover Square Rooms, was ‘interrupted’ by ‘loud…laughter’ and when he concluded an audience member stood up and offered an impromptu rebuttal.37 A review of Table-Turning, published in the Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record, admitted that it would be understandable if readers questioned the necessity of reviewing Godfrey’s work. The journal was only willing to bear the embarrassment so that it could inform its readers that table-turning was merely an ‘ignorant delusion’, arguing that Godfrey’s ideas were a much greater threat. In order to accept them, it would be necessary to permit a phenomenon that was easier to explain than ‘many sleights of hand’ to ‘overturn…our…faith in…natural laws’.38 In 1854, a review of a similar pamphlet dismissed the issue as ‘the old, dead, buried, and forgotten table-turning nonsense’.39 Spiritualism also attracted criticism from Catholic sources, which sometimes expressed fears that spiritualism was demonic, although, like Protestants, many Catholics considered such concerns hyperbolic. The Catholic Church was officially opposed to spiritualism, even expelling Home from the Vatican for sorcery.40 Many English Catholics were similarly suspicious, with Cardinal Manning stating that he believed spiritualism served the Devil.41 An article published in an 1892 issue of the Catholic magazine The Month stated that the spirits contacted by spiritualists were clearly demonic, as they often espoused doctrine which contradicted the Bible and the teachings of the Church.42 The Anglican clergyman and spiritualist Charles Maurice Davies claimed to have learnt of the diabolism theory from a former ‘French Roman Catholic priest’ who had become convinced that spiritualism was satanic after observing that ‘the exorcism of the Catholic Church’ disturbed the spirits at a séance. Davies also noted that, when his friend questioned a spirit as to its identity, he was generally informed that it was the Devil. He was not himself persuaded that spiritualism was demonic, arguing that, although such replies were ‘a strange psychological fact’, they only indicated that a spirit was for some reason impersonating the Devil.43 His friend’s opinions were not completely eccentric, with another priest concluding that spiritualism was demonic after he managed to stop the movements of a séance table by placing ‘a locket containing a relic of the blessed St. Francis of Assissi [sic]’ on it.44 There were also Catholics, who simply did not see the point of spiritualism when, as one writer put it, ‘“manifestations” are always occurring in convents and elsewhere’. For the Catholic, there was ample satisfaction in ‘the records of the Church’.45 It was not so much the phenomena as the context that was the problem.

126  The Occult Devil Catholic concerns were just as liable to attract opprobrium as Protestant ones. One disagreement between a Catholic and a spiritualist was even resolved from beyond the grave, with the well-known spiritualist Florence Theobald claiming that a Catholic relative had posthumously changed his mind on the issue.46 Catholic criticism was more commonly met with mockery. An article, published in The London Review in 1867, commenting on an English Catholic’s support of the diabolism theory, made it quite clear what the writer thought of the sort of person who spoke ‘as distinctly and as confidently of the devil as if the fiend was a rated occupier’.47 The Review of Reviews later expressed a similar opinion, stating that the Catholic position on spiritualism indicated that the Church had not ‘made much progress since it imprisoned Galileo’.48 While concerns regarding diabolism were a significant theme in mid-century responses to spiritualism, it would be a mistake to confuse their vehemence with widespread ideological success. Accusations of diabolism were a source of continuous grievance for spiritualists, as while they were generally dismissive of criticism, they were called upon to be dismissive with wearing regularity. In 1875, a correspondent to the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle repudiated an array of critics. They criticised the tendency of clergymen to ‘brand every new discovery by lay individuals savouring of spiritual things with the insignia of cloven feet’, arguing that mediums harked back to a more vital Christian past, when priests had regularly seen spirits. He expressed deep disappointment that ‘in this age of reason… Bible texts should be marshalled against facts’.49 It was common for spiritualists to define themselves as being on the side of reason and progress and their religious opponents as part of a long and unedifying tradition of dismissing any form of innovation as diabolic. As one writer put it: ‘Gunpowder was of the devil, gravitation was of the devil, vaccination was of the devil, gas was of the devil, mesmerism and clairvoyance were of the devil, and now spiritualism is of the devil’.50 Spiritualists were able to dismiss both religious and scientific critics on the grounds that both groups were avoiding having to actually confront the evidence produced by spiritualism, the former by crying fraud and the latter by blaming the Devil. 51 Involving the Devil was especially insulting as spiritualism was so obviously positive that, as one Spiritualist stated, if the Devil was involved, ‘I can only say that…his character has so greatly improved that he might be allowed to preach at Exeter Hall’. 52 No spiritualist counter-argument proved entirely effective and, by the late nineteenth century, spiritualists were thoroughly fed up with the Devil or, as one article put it: ‘We were under the impression that the “devil-theory” had died a natural death long ago, when lo! it is re-dressed for further service’. 53 Ultimately, neither side was prepared to concede, with the antagonism of religious critics posing a continual challenge for spiritualists.

The Occult Devil  127 Spiritualists often doubted the existence of hell and the Devil, with Florence Theobald referring to them as ‘ecclesiastical scarecrows’. 54 Such attitudes were common, with the well-known spiritualist and author Florence Marryat mocking the very idea of ‘pitch-forking devils’.55 Home stated that ‘[w]e may bear with equanimity the retirement of his Satanic Majesty into the background’.56 Christian spiritualists were convinced of the benefits of integrating spiritualism and Christianity.57 Spiritualism had the potential to revitalise and unify Christianity.58 In 1908, a commentator, reflecting on the progress of Christian spiritualism, declared that: There can be little doubt that the brighter and better ideas which are preached…to-day – the disappearance of the devil, the silence regarding eternal punishment…are largely the result of the spiritual facts which are in our midst.59 Accusations of diabolism were not only insulting, but also a denial of the benefits of spiritualism. For spiritualists, the great enemy was not Satan, but materialism and short-sighted religious beliefs, which declared that it was impossible to communicate with the dead.60 Spiritualists were, however, forced to grapple with the fact that not all spirit contact was positive. They responded by constructing various theories to account for bad behaviour on the part of spirits. Although spiritualists generally rejected orthodox demonological ideas, it was more common for them to attempt to explain or to develop strategies to cope with the existence of dubious spirits than to deny their existence entirely.61 They often argued that, as the afterlife was evolutionary in nature, wicked spirits were the souls of wicked people who were at an early stage of their spiritual development. As this idea could be perceived as antagonistic to or, at least, as contradicting traditional Christianity, it required the creation and, to some extent, codification of a ‘doctrinal’ basis for its claims.62 The Anglican clergyman and medium William Stainton Moses argued that the spirits which contacted mediums were generally those ‘nearest to the earth’ and that a soul which was wicked in its ‘earth-life’ would be wicked in its ‘spirit-life’.63 While the spirit of a wicked human being did suffer in the afterlife, their suffering was not caused by ‘fire and brimstone’ but by the realisation of the ‘opportunities’ they had ‘wasted’.64 Such spirits could ‘progress by gradual and laborious undoing of sin and sinful habit’.65 William Thomas Stead echoed this idea, stating ‘that the period of growth…is no more complete at death than it is on leaving school’.66 Heaven was transmuted into ‘a sphere of progressive…growth’ and hell into a state which existed ‘within the soul’.67 Drawing on a variety of disparate influences, including evolutionary ideas, Eastern religion, and philosophical progressivism, spiritualism shifted the emphasis from God to the individual.68

128  The Occult Devil Being able to explain the existence of evil spirits did not explain why they were encountered by specific people. One explanation was that ‘like attracted like’, meaning that, as one commentator put it, ‘[an] evil man surrounds himself with evil influences, and the powers of darkness only can have access to his soul. But a good man has a sphere of heaven around him’. Not all spiritualists were prepared to accept such a large amount of the blame. It was more palatable to view the spirit world as a place containing ‘natural’ perils, with Morell Theobald stating that, while it contained ‘many a wise and discerning spirit’, it was also home to an ‘accumulation of human folly…and this lies nearer to the surface’.69 Moses acknowledged that encounters with dubious spirits were so common that ‘no experienced Spiritualist can fail to have been vexed by them; and few circles escape torment, and…risk of being broken up by their falsehoods and vagaries’. Moses asserted the existence of a class of spirits, who, due to a strong connection with the material world, haunted the ‘border-land’ and took pleasure in communicating with the living. These spirits, who were ‘in a state of desolation’, entertained themselves by ‘posturing as some great man, or in playing a part that they see to be desired’. The living, therefore, coexisted with spirits, which, although not traditional demons, served as a decent substitute, explaining negative experiences with the spirit world and offering a supernatural explanation for the conflicts and psychological quirks of living spiritualists.70 The link between human spirits and demons was made even clearer in a statement published in Stead’s book After Death (1905), which declared that the ‘devil and his angels are no mere metaphysical abstractions. There are evil ones…on this side, as there are on yours’.71 The spiritualist Anna Blackwell also stated that ‘the imperfect spirits are all in a manner devils’.72 Spiritualists did occasionally acknowledge the existence or possible existence of non-human evil spirits. Moses stated that there were ‘agencies other than the departed spirits of our kind’.73 He did not, however, consider ‘spirits below the plane of humanity’ to be particularly important, confirming the general spiritualist inclination to centre humanity both on earth and in the hereafter.74 Evil spirits were, to some extent, simply a practical problem, which spiritualists responded to by taking precautions. S. C. Hall advised newcomers to ‘avoid…mediums who, under the sway…of spirits, low or base, or evil, inculcate principles repugnant to natures that are good’.75 Florence Theobald, who practised automatic writing (an especially risky form of spirit contact in which the spirit controlled the hand of the medium), avoided undue influence from dubious spirits by a combination of prayer and common sense. She did not practise alone or for lengthy periods of time and paid close attention to the mood and script of the communications she received. Thankfully, she only had one really disturbing experience, which she ascribed to overexertion, although she was reticent about the details.76 Blackwell was more candid about the

The Occult Devil  129 struggles endured by her sister, who was also a ‘writing medium’. On one occasion, her sister fought a minor battle with a spirit who attempted ‘to sign himself Satan and Beelzebub’. She was not interested in ‘such outrageous lies’ and, whenever the spirit began to write the word ‘Satan’, she would ‘twist her hand’ to prevent him from continuing. The spirit, rendered powerless, wrote ‘I hate you because I cannot deceive you’.77 Spiritualists were frequently disconcerted by socially unacceptable messages, with the psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers noting that the ‘early stages of automatic writing’ were often troubled by swearing and that, when a writer reached a state of exhaustion, it was common for ‘the word devil’ to ‘be written over and over again with an energy which shocks the unsuspecting writer’.78 Spiritualist encounters with the less salubrious side of the supernatural not only had considerable power to unnerve, but also played a relatively significant role in spiritualist life. Evil spirits could also represent an opportunity for philanthropy, with Emma Hardinge Britten recommending that spiritualists should not attempt to get rid of them, but rather ‘to elevate them’. She also cautioned against ‘always ascribing falsehoods to “lying spirits”, or deceiving mediums’ as ‘[m]any mistakes occur in the communion of which you cannot always be aware’.79 Britten was not the only spiritualist who suspected that the extent of the problem posed by evil spirits had been exaggerated, with another commentator complaining that it was ‘unreasonable to suppose…that the majority of Spirits met with were…malicious’. He called on spiritualists to recognise that the ‘cry of evil Spirits’ was ‘partly a reflection from early theological training’. As ‘the attitude of the sitters’ could also introduce dysfunction into a circle, it was dangerous to attribute too much power to evil spirits. This mind-set risked becoming an excuse for bad behaviour.80 Stead echoed some of these opinions, as, while he cautioned ‘against any tampering’ with evil spirits, he considered the risk of encountering them to be largely irrelevant to the topic of communication with the dead. Stead believed that spirit contact was so beneficial that it was foolish to avoid it, as, while it was sensible to maintain ‘good’ company, refusing to contact deceased loved ones was about as rational as someone cutting off contact with their children because they had moved to the city.81 Spiritualism was based primarily on experience rather than doctrine.82 While positive experiences were a powerful argument in favour of spiritualism, negative incidents could prompt doubts or raise questions about the nature of the spirits a person was in contact with. In some cases, a negative experience could be rationalised and conceptualised in terms which strengthened or confirmed spiritualist ideas. A correspondent to Light related a disturbing incident in which a ‘personating spirit’ masqueraded as his daughter’s recently deceased piano teacher. While he found the experience demoralising, he took comfort from his ability to interpret it within a spiritualist framework, stating

130  The Occult Devil that it confirmed the spiritualist teaching that ‘evil influences’ were ‘ever about us’ and demonstrated that people retained their individuality after death. He even felt a renewed sense of purpose, stating that he did not intend to banish the spirit but rather to invite it back and attempt to improve its character.83 This argument emphasises the crucial differences between traditional Christian and spiritualist views of supernatural evil. For spiritualists, even evil spirits were literally humanised, with demons being exchanged for humans, who due to the evolutionary nature of the spiritualist afterlife were not beyond redemption. Not everyone was so sanguine, with a letter published in Light in 1883 relating an incident in which, following an encounter with a deceitful spirit, four families denounced spiritualism as the work of the Devil.84 Another letter described the various unsettling experiences endured by an individual, who had been experimenting with automatic writing ‘off and on some six months or more’. They were still unsure if their experiences were genuine or the result of ‘“unconscious cerebration”, “expectant attention”, involuntary “action of the muscles”, or any other scientific modes of expressing that one has made a fool of oneself’. They were frustrated by the fact that they almost always produced the same message but, if they objected or questioned ‘the friendliness’ of the spirit, they were ‘subjected to very violent movements of the hand and arm which frequently break the thick point of the pencil and tear the paper’. They turned to a friend, who had always managed with the aid of a spirit named ‘Lizzie’ to write ‘freely and…in a high moral tone’. Lizzie informed them that they were ‘under “hellish influences”’, as their ‘scepticism’ had attracted ‘evil spirits’ and recommended ‘prayer, and purity’. The writer was not entirely satisfied with this response, arguing that scepticism was essential to the investigation of any new phenomenon.85 Ultimately, the relationship between spiritualism and supernatural evil consisted of a series of ambiguities. Spiritualism rejected traditional Christian doctrine yet drew constant inspiration from it, characterised the spirit world as dangerous yet considered it more dangerous to avoid it, and rejected accusations of contact with evil spirits even as it struggled with the problems caused by contact with evil spirits.

Psychical Research While concepts of supernatural evil played a significant part in spiritualist thought, the Devil’s role in psychical research was marginal. Founded in 1882, the Society for Psychical Research investigated ‘that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic’. Such phenomena included ‘any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another’, hypnotism, mesmerism, clairvoyance, apparitions, and spiritualism.86 In 1894, the well-known

The Occult Devil  131 psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers declared that ‘the methods of science should be extended as far as possible over that ill-explored realm’.87 It is significant that he also stated that a ‘devil is not a creature whose existence is independently known to science’ and expressed the opinion that, in most cases, possession could be attributed to ‘mere self-suggestion’. Even if an outside agency was involved, there was no need to entertain the possibility that the Devil existed. He did acknowledge that: The teasing, mystifying “controls” whom we have encountered so often in earlier stages of motor automatisms (deceptive written messages and the like) are perhaps the most puzzling. They suggest…a type of intelligences inferior to human, - animal-like, and perhaps parasitic. While such cases might give a researcher pause, they did not give them licence to become irrational. If they were genuine cases of spirit contact, it was likely that they only indicated the existence of human spirits who had ‘much the same motives’ as living people.88 Myers was unimpressed by the disturbances often experienced during automatic writing, regarding the repetition of words like ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘devil’ as a mild annoyance, which should cease when ignored.89 It is also telling that, in 1902, Frank Podmore, author of Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, stated that ‘belief in the active intervention of angels and devils continued to exert a powerful influence down even to the earlier decades of the eighteenth century’, implicitly denying the Devil and his minions a place in the nineteenth-century spirit world.90 Podmore also criticised a couple he had encountered during the investigation of a poltergeist case, stating that ‘their firm conviction of the devil’s agency in the matter’ indicated that they were not ‘good witnesses’.91 A sense that belief in the power of the Devil was both superstitious and old-fashioned was also conveyed by William Barrett’s account of an incident in which a friend ‘objected to our trying some simple thought-transference experiments with her daughter’ on the grounds that the phenomenon must be caused by electricity or the Devil.92 There was a continual tension between psychical research’s scientific language and methodology and its subject matter, with Podmore stating that: A large amount of evidence for and against the spiritualist theory has been accumulated…but the essential features of the problem remain unchanged. We have still to deal with the same protean figures – vengeful human ghosts…devils released from…mediæval hells… spirits of the damned, spirits on furlough from purgatory…spirits clothed in luminous ether…

132  The Occult Devil While it was necessary to be aware that perceptions of the spirit world shifted to ‘suit the…fashion of the hour’, ‘[t]o dismiss the whole matter as fraud’ would be ‘a blunder’.93 Myers did express a certain selfconsciousness regarding his belief in the potential existence of ‘psychical influences’, seeking to distinguish his views from ‘the animistic superstitions of the savage’ or ‘the mediæval ascription of any specially puzzling circumstance to the agency of the devil’.94 F. C. S. Schiller betrayed a similar anxiety, when he emphasised the relative rationality of a belief in the posthumous survival of the ‘human personality’, stating that it was more probable and more easily testable than the potential agency of ‘gods’ or ‘devils’. He also had good reason to resent devils, noting that traditional Christian ideas regarding the afterlife could impede the psychical researcher, forcing them to contend with a subset of the population who were unimpressed by an afterlife which lacked ‘angels and demons’.95 Psychical research often suffered from being too closely associated with ideas regarded as superstitious. In 1882, a letter to the editor, published in The Spectator, expressed concern that ‘the jargon of science’ was becoming mixed with ‘the blindest credulity’. The writer did conclude, however, that there was no need to worry about the return of witch beliefs, as they were a by-product of an archaic ‘belief in God and Devil’.96 Ultimately, the Devil’s place in psychical research was as ambiguous as his place in spiritualism, reflecting the field’s vexed relationship with the distinction between the superstitious and the supernatural.

Occultism The correspondent to the Spectator was incorrect in their assumption that magic was a thing of the past. Occultism was enjoying a revival, although, like mesmerism and spiritualism, it was not necessarily welcomed with open arms. In 1897, an article published in The Contemporary Review stated, with satisfaction, that: In England the claimants to supernatural knowledge have generally been sheep without a shepherd…when any attempt has been made to combine their scattered forces under one leadership…a schism has invariably followed, in which the windy pretensions of each side… have been exposed by the indignant charlatans on the other…97 Despite its scornful tone, this statement is indicative of the complexity and liveliness of late Victorian occultism, in which myriad ideas and worldviews overlapped and interacted. It had, as the well-known occultist and writer Arthur Edward Waite noted, a tendency to haphazardly combine ideas and throw around dramatic words like ‘transcendental, Hermetic, Rosicrucian, mystical, and esoteric or occult’.98 It was this

The Occult Devil  133 quality which allowed it to either banish or incorporate the diabolic. The Devil was optional but not obligatory. Victorian occultism straddled the line between tradition and innovation, as, while it often encouraged spiritual and theological creativity, it was also part of a long Western tradition. Nineteenth-century English magic and occultism can often be characterised as esotericism, meaning that it was focused on the concept of ‘hidden knowledge’. Many occultists also practised ‘high’ or ‘ceremonial’ magic, an elite form of magical practice which, as it is dependent on texts such as grimoires, necessitates a high level of education.99 Victorian occultism was highly dependent on the idea, although not necessarily the reality, of tradition, combining ideas from a range of sources to create a mixture which was persuasive and workable. It was influenced by the learned magic of the Renaissance era when various occult ideas, including cabala, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and demonic and natural magic, were combined into a system which was to prove highly significant for the future of Western magic.100 The fifteenth-century scholar and magus Marsilio Ficino argued that the universe was governed by ‘sympathetic relationships’ centred on ‘astrological characteristics’, which could, through the use of invocation or incantation, be used to affect the physical world. Ficino’s contemporary the philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola merged his ideas with the Jewish concept of cabala, a form of esotericism which attempted, via metaphors and symbols, to understand the incomprehensible mysteries of ‘God and creation’. Cabala could be ‘speculative’ or ‘practical’, encompassing contemplation, interpretation, and forms of practical magic in which ‘sacred names’ or combinations of Hebrew letters were used to effect material change. Pico believed that it was possible to use cabala to harness the power of spirits.101 This melange of ideas was developed further by other scholars, including Johann Reuchlin and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, with the latter making some use of demonic magic.102 Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and Egyptian magic also had a significant influence on Victorian occultism. The concept of Rosicrucianism originated with the early seventeenth-century publication of the Rosicrucian manifestos, which announced the existence of a secret society called the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross whose members used magic to heal the sick. While it is highly unlikely that any such society ever existed, the idea was to have an enduring appeal and to inspire actual secret societies and occult activity. The legend was gradually embellished, with the Rosicrucians becoming associated with alchemy and freemasonry and acquiring an origin myth which claimed that Rosicrucianism was a form of secret knowledge with a history stretching back to the biblical era. Freemasonry, which was highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was also often viewed as ancient, claiming to have originated during the reign of King Solomon. The longstanding association of ancient Egypt with the occult was also significant, with

134  The Occult Devil both Freemasonry and ancient Egyptian-inspired mystery religions offering examples of ritualistic initiation, hidden wisdom, and mysterious yet authoritative tradition.103 Occultism was present in England throughout the nineteenth century, with a significant milestone being the 1801 publication of Frances Barrett’s The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer, a guide to ceremonial magic which drew heavily on Renaissance-era occultism. The Magus attests to the existence of at least some early nineteenth-century interest in occultism. While it was a mishmash of material, it provided the public with substantive information on topics such as cabbalism and crystallomancy.104 It is also likely that Barrett took on students, lending a small amount of practical organisation to early nineteenth-century magic.105 In addition, Barrett demonstrated that the Devil was at least marginally involved, as, despite his protestations of piety, he did include some necromantic material which was demonic in nature.106 The Magus also incorporated colourful engravings of famous devils, which ‘rang[ed] from grotesque to jovial’.107 The study of occultism prior to the late nineteenth century poses significant methodological difficulties. As it had yet to undergo a process of institutionalisation, it cannot be studied in a unified way, but only examined through the activities of specific individuals. It is possible to identify certain common elements, including the use of crystals and participation in spiritualism. The rise of spiritualism was advantageous to magical practice, as it gave individuals with an unconventional interest in the supernatural a chance to socialise.108 There were also a colourful assortment of occult (often ‘pseudo-Rosicrucian’) societies active in mid- to late nineteenth-century Britain, including the Order of the Swastika, the Society of Eight, the Fratres Lucis, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the Royal Order of Sikha, the Sat B’Hai, and the Hermetic Brothers of Egypt. These societies had a range of occult interests, including cabala, natural magic, mesmerism, alchemy, and astrology.109 The fact that the Devil played a small role in early to mid-nineteenthcentury occultism is also demonstrated by the writings of Frederick Hockley. Hockley, an accountant and one of the most significant occultists of his era, was involved in spiritualism, freemasonry, and several ‘pseudo-Rosicrucian’ groups.110 He preferred spirit contact, achieved through scrying with a mirror or crystal, to complicated magical rites. By the 1860s, he had filled thirty manuscripts with information from his spirit guides. His occult practice was interrelated with Christian ideas. Summoning a spirit guide required three ‘[c]onsecrated calls’ invoking the name of Christ. When Hockley received a message from a spirit, he gave ‘a special discharge’ invoking ‘Christ and his Angels’ and offered ‘prayers of thanks’.111 He was highly concerned about evil spirits. When practising crystallomancy, he requested that God consecrate the ground and asked that Satan not be allowed to put out the lights.

The Occult Devil  135 He also consecrated the instruments so that that they would allow him to ‘overcome all phantasms and oppositions of the Devil’.112 The fact that Hockley’s precautions were not entirely efficacious is indicated by an article, published in the Spiritualist in 1880, in which he recounted an especially frightening experience. One evening, having ‘asked the spirit of the crystal’ for a vision, it provided him with the instructions for a ritual. The spirit advised him to fill a glass container with a neck large enough to place three fingers inside with water. It gave him a name, which he wrote on a piece of paper, using his own blood, and stuck around the bottle. He placed his bleeding fingers inside the bottle, allowing his blood to mix with the water. Hockley was suspicious of these instructions but also ‘foolishly’ believed that he ‘could hear, and see, and know what they said, without allowing them to influence me’. He defended his decision on the grounds that he was seeking ‘knowledge’ rather than ‘power’, although he later concluded that he had made a mistake, as the results were both frightening and largely outside of his control. According to his account, the blood and water: …began to change to a thick, dirty-red liquid, and from this there formed, as the water again became clearer, a spirit more like an animal than even a distorted human figure; it had a tail…and … peculiarly shaped horns. The creature grew larger and larger until it filled the bottle. Hockley attempted to block the top with a book and, when this tactic proved ineffective, performed an exorcism. Finally, he resorted to breaking the bottle. Unfortunately, this action released the spirit and, when a second exorcism also failed, he was forced to ask it what it wanted. The spirit replied that it was willing to give him anything he desired in exchange for ‘obedience’. When Hockley refused, the room became ‘so oppressive as to be almost suffocating. My eyes seemed to burn, I was getting giddy, and appeared to see instead of the one figure a thousand of all shapes and sizes’. Eventually, the spirit departed, leaving behind ‘a circle’ containing ‘a single red spot’ and the message: ‘returns blood which is too white for a sacrifice’.113 While Hockley’s account raises obvious questions of both veracity and motive, these issues are less important than the form in which he chose to publish it. The fact that he used a classic narrative which had clear parallels with the Faust legend and a solid grounding in Christian ideas of good and evil demonstrated that diabolic narratives and religious concepts of supernatural evil had at least some significance in the context of mid-nineteenth-century occultism. It is also likely that the dramatic nature and cultural and religious resonance of his story held the attention of readers, as well as demonstrated, through his refusal of the spirit’s offer, his good intentions and Christian values. The tropes he used were also related to the widespread use of ‘intermediatary

136  The Occult Devil spirits’ in mid-nineteenth-century magic, meaning that his narrative was recognisable and relevant to an occult audience.114 While a level of opaqueness is characteristic of occultism, the late nineteenth-century landscape is clearer. Perhaps, the most influential occult organisation of the period was the Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by the Russian expatriate Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the lawyer Henry Steel Olcott. It was soon mobile, with the Society relocating to India in 1879 and Blavatsky settling in London in 1887.115 In 1877, Blavatsky outlined her ideas in a dense two-volume work entitled Isis Unveiled, followed in 1888 by The Secret Doctrine. Attempting to rescue religion from materialism, she espoused a form of universalism, which argued that there was no need for the world’s religions to exist in a state of ideological conflict. She legitimised her ideas by claiming to have access to the ancient teachings of a brotherhood of advanced Tibetan occultists known as the Mahatmas or the Masters of the Great White Lodge. The Society’s ‘First Object’ and the only piece of doctrine its members were required to endorse was to form ‘a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color’. It also declared its intention ‘to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science’ and ‘to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man’, as well as promulgating a complex form of progressive, ‘immanentist’ spirituality. Theosophy drew inspiration from Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Western Hermetic tradition, although Blavatsky’s emphasis was to gradually shift towards the East.116 The Theosophical Society’s teachings, which incorporated revised versions of reincarnation and karma, characterised the destiny of both human beings and the wider universe as evolutionary in nature. ‘Sparks of the Divine Fire’ progressed through a multitude of different lives before returning to ‘the source’. Theosophy envisioned the divine as ‘an impersonal Absolute’, which manifested at intervals ‘on unseen planes and in countless universes’.117 Theosophy did not espouse Christian demonology. In fact, Blavatsky’s work included anti-Christian elements.118 It did make some use of diabolic ideas and imagery. Traditional ideas regarding supernatural evil served as a convenient symbol of superstition and irrationality, with Blavatsky criticising theologians who ‘people[d] the invisible world with either angels or devils’.119 Theosophy also made positive use of diabolic imagery, even publishing a periodical entitled Lucifer. In this context, ‘Lucifer’ was Miltonic, serving as a dramatic symbol of rebellion who was more of an angel of light than a Devil.120 Commencing its run in 1887, Lucifer, whose title was deliberately attention-grabbing and provocative, was intended to provide the general public with information about Theosophy in preparation for the publication of The Secret Doctrine.121 Blavatsky also used positive diabolic symbolism in The Secret Doctrine itself, emphasising Lucifer’s association with light

The Occult Devil  137 and stating that he was ‘higher and older than Jehovah’.122 In 1897, an article published in the spiritualist magazine Borderland noted its ‘regret’ that Lucifer had been replaced by the Theosophical Review, stating that it ‘was a bold…title when it was first adopted, but after eleven years the public has ceased to associate Lucifer with Beelzebub’. The writer did note the potency and inherent rebelliousness of diabolic symbolism, declaring that a ‘new religion…ought not to be too speedy in adopting a tall hat and dress coat’. Annie Besant, a prominent Theosophist and future president of the Theosophical Society, also expressed regret, stating that ‘Lucifer has become to me a living personality, and the name dear as the name of a friend’.123 She also felt a personal identification with the figure of Lucifer, noting that as a young woman she was ‘accustomed to freedom, indifferent to home details…and proud as Lucifer’.124 This opinion was apparently shared by Blavatsky, who, upon first meeting Besant, declared that she was as ‘proud as Lucifer himself’.125 Pride was, in this instance, envisaged as a largely positive quality, which indicated self-possession, determination, and non-conformity. Besant’s identification with Lucifer symbolised both rejection of the Christian God and acceptance of a ‘role as light-bearer to humanity’. It also subverted the misogyny and dismissiveness of her critics, who often referred to her as a witch, by instead associating her with a powerful male supernatural figure.126 The subversion of religious symbols and ideas was central to Theosophy, which made a show of overturning conventional wisdom. Blavatsky often repurposed established concepts and symbols, noting that ‘the… ignorant and…designing Church Fathers’ had taken: …advantage of the metaphor and allegory found in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one…the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the Voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel…127 She herself took advantage of a grab-bag of religious ideas, freely mixing Christian concepts of spiritual evil with those from alternate worldviews. For instance, she equated the ‘Fallen Spirits’, a term with clear Christian overtones, with the Asuras, ‘the enemies of the gods’ of Hindu mythology.128 Blavatsky was conscious of the need to overcome both religious and rationalistic criticism of occult ideas, stating that ‘in the first decades of our century Hermetic Philosophy was regarded by both Churchmen and men of Science from…opposite points of view. The former called it…devilish; the latter denied…its authenticity’.129 The use of Lucifer as a positive symbol turned religious criticism back on itself and implied, given his status as a light-bearer, that rationalists were forming their views in the darkness of ignorance. It was also a declaration of Theosophy’s radical break with Christian notions of good and evil,

138  The Occult Devil with Blavatsky stating that ‘[e]soteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently…The cause for both is found… in the necessity of…contrasts’.130 Blavatsky was characteristically not entirely consistent on this point, stating in Isis Unveiled that all occultists ‘believe in good and evil’.131 She was, however, consistent in her assertion that ‘orthodox Christian conceptions about the “fallen” angels or Satan’ were ‘absurd’.132 In accordance with this proclamation, an article published in the periodical The Theosophist in 1880 stated, in reference to the Devil, that ‘few readers of this journal will he frightened by this…‘bogey’’.133 Hell and the Devil were a handy way to highlight the deficiencies of Christianity, including its attachment to outmoded and erroneous notions about the spiritual world.134 As Theosophy was dedicated to progress, there could be nothing more absurd than the notion of ‘eternal torment’, which was a state of permanent stasis.135 It was also ridiculous to deny evil, which was necessary ‘for progress’, a significant and useful place in the cosmos.136 This belief indicates that, while the Devil was not always considered credible or relevant, spiritual evil remained enduringly relevant. The Devil’s role, therefore, persisted in some form even when he did not. Theosophy did affirm the existence of wicked or malicious spirits. It envisioned the spirit world as enormously complex and interrelated with the material world, with every human being existing on the mental and astral, as well as physical planes.137 As the astral plane and the everyday world were not entirely separate, it was possible for an individual to come into contact with ‘spooks, elementaries and elementals’ or the ‘cast-off lower principles of former men and women’. 138 In addition, as reincarnation dictated by karma served as a mechanism of progress, an individual needed to reach a higher stage of spiritual development before they could progress to the next stage of their evolution.139 This process was far from straightforward, with the prominent Theosophist Alfred Percy Sinnett noting that the ‘variety of states after death is greater… than the variety of human lives upon this earth’.140 Blavatsky also acknowledged the complexity of the spiritual world and admitted that it was not without its perils, stating that ‘[a]mong the numberless hosts of spirits…some are far worse and inferior to the lowest savage’. In fact, due to the ‘close proximity of our respective abodes’, it was the lower spirits which ‘command the readiest communication with our earth’.141 These ‘conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious entities’ were not devils.142 Many were, in line with spiritualist claims, human spirits. Blavatsky did diverge strongly from spiritualist ideas in her assertion that cases of full materialisation were probably caused by ‘elementary goblins’. These ‘nature-spirits’ or ‘cosmic elementaries’ were ‘apish and impish’ and, although Christians referred to them as ‘devils’, they were ‘simply creatures of ethereal matter…neither good nor bad’.143 There was some ambiguity regarding the precise nature of elementary spirits,

The Occult Devil  139 with Sinnett stating that it was possible for an elementary to be created when a selfish and unspiritual individual died ‘in the full flush of earthly passions’. Such spirits were tempted by ‘the opportunity’, a medium provided for the ‘gratification’ of ‘earthly passions’, becoming, if a spiritualist was not careful, ‘demons of thirst and gluttony, provoking their victims to crime’.144 While Christianity was never Theosophy’s primary area of interest, this attitude was not characteristic of all late nineteenth-century occultism. The work of the occultists Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland promoted Gnosticism and sought symbolic meaning in biblical narratives.145 Kingsford, who was both a doctor and a Christian mystic, was keenly interested in social reform, especially the campaign against vivisection. She was prone to spiritual experiences, reporting both visions and spirit contact. While these incidents may have been linked to the large amount of laudanum she consumed to treat a pulmonary condition, it is significant that she considered them to be normal parts of her existence. Kingsford and Maitland used her experiences, which they saw as divine, to (re-)construct an ancient theological system, which, although characterised as a form of ‘esoteric Christianity’, incorporated elements of pantheism, Gnosticism, dualism, evolutionism, and Hermeticism. Like Theosophy, it was intended to serve as a ‘universal religion’ which harmonised science and spirituality.146 Kingsford’s commitment to social causes was strongly related to her ideas about the nature of spiritual good and evil. She claimed to feel more affection for animals than children, characterising them as innocents who represented ‘Christ-like’ purity and goodness. Anyone who harmed an animal was on the side of the Devil.147 Her dedication to the welfare of animals profoundly shaped her contact with the medical world and in 1873 she travelled to Paris with the intention of demonstrating that it was possible to achieve a medical degree without harming other creatures. It was during this stage of her life that she first developed a close association with Maitland and an interest in the occult.148 During the course of her studies, she became acquainted with an occultist, referred to only as ‘Professor O’, who offered to teach her about the field. Their relationship soured when Kingsford began to experience dreams and visions in which male demons attempted to seduce her. She escaped but concluded that the lead demon was Professor O, who had gained occult power over her. Thankfully, Professor O soon experienced a decline in health, which Kingsford interpreted as evidence of a magical victory on her part.149 This incident was especially emblematic of the spiritual lens through which Kingsford interpreted her life. While Kingsford’s spiritual persecution had parallels with harassment by more conventional demons, like the rest of her supernatural experiences, her ‘fiend’ lacked ‘a respectable theological background’.150 She and Maitland set about creating the requisite theology. In 1882, they

140  The Occult Devil published The Perfect Way, or, The Finding of Christ, which argued that religion was rational when properly understood. Unfortunately, contemporary Christianity was deeply flawed.151 Claiming to have access to ancient wisdom, Kingsford and Maitland aimed to reconcile science and religion and create a state of ‘at-one-ment between Mind and Heart’.152 They were, at this point, also deeply involved with Theosophy, even being elected president and vice-president of the British Theosophical Society in 1883.153 Their relationship with Theosophy broke down in the same year, as they became increasingly frustrated with its eastern focus. They initially attempted to reform the Society, publishing a pamphlet proposing that the London Lodge split into two sections, one focused on the eastern teachings of the Mahatmas and the other on esoteric Christianity and the Western Hermetic tradition. This proposal never came to fruition and in 1884 they resigned and founded the Hermetic Society, which aimed to use Western esotericism to examine the human condition and aid individuals in achieving their spiritual potential.154 Kingsford and Maitland, who were on a quest to subvert established religion, were not impressed by traditional ideas regarding the Devil, stating that ‘a personal and, virtually, a divine principle of evil’ was ‘monstrous and impossible’.155 They also, in line with Theosophical thought, emphasised the possibility of spiritual progress, stating that perfection could only be achieved through ‘experience, or suffering’ – an idea which lent evil an immediate ambiguity.156 Their concept of the afterlife was evolutionary, with the soul either moving on ‘to higher conditions’ and ‘attaining its perfection by post mortem evolution’ or being reincarnated in a new body.157 In addition, as far as they were concerned, materialism, which was the ‘opposite’ of ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, ‘morality’, and ‘religion’, was the ultimate enemy, being ‘what darkness is to light, nonentity to existence, the “devil” to God’.158 They did recognise the potency of diabolic symbolism, using the Devil as a way of classifying wickedness, absence, negativity, and ungodliness. The ‘Devil’ was also a human quality as ‘the principle of Not-Being…taking personality in man, becomes to him the Devil. For by divesting him of his divine qualities…it makes him in the image of God’s opposite’. Individuals were called upon to make a decision between matter and spirit and between good and evil.159 Kingsford and Maitland used diabolic concepts in highly ambiguous but creative ways, with their work, along with that of the Theosophical Society, emphasising that the diabolic could provide a raw resource for nineteenth-century occult innovation. They also admitted the existence of evil or dangerous spirits, claiming that the astral sphere, which was ‘immediately contiguous to the Material’, was home to multiple different entities. While there were spirits and divine beings outside of the astral sphere, with ‘the Gods, the Elohim, or divine powers’ proceeding from God and ‘all the hierarchy of heaven’ (including guardian angels) proceeding from them, it was the spirits with

The Occult Devil  141 less connection to the divine which posed the greatest threat to humanity. These spirits were, in descending order of purity, ‘the elemental spirits’, ‘the souls’, ‘the shades’, and ‘the magnetic spirits commonly called astral’. The ‘elemental spirits’ associated with earth, air, water, and fire were present in all matter. While they could be manipulated by an adept, they were ‘often mysterious, terrifying, and dangerous’. Although they were not evil, they combined significant power with a ‘lack of any moral sense’. The shades were of human origin but unintelligent, being ‘mere emanations from the corpse…or phantoms’. The ‘souls’, which were probably the closest thing to demons in Kingford and Maitland’s theology, were the spirits of wicked or ignorant human beings, who were in the process of undergoing a ‘purgatorial’ ordeal. While some were redeemable, they were forced to share space with powerful and malicious ‘devils’. Unlike traditional demons, these spirits were not immortal and ‘after a period corresponding to…the strength of their rebellious wills, they are consumed, and perish for ever’. While it was possible to invoke ‘devils’ through incantation, to do so was both ‘dangerous and wicked’. They sought to possess both humans and animals, hoping to encourage ‘wickedness’ and ‘obtain…the vitality necessary to prolong their own existence’. The ‘astrals’, which were not as straightforwardly wicked, had, like the shades, ‘no real being’. They were nothing more than ‘reflections…of a soul which is passing, or which has passed, through the astral medium’ or of the person who saw or summoned them. This class of spirits was highly dangerous, as they tempted human beings, promising them the realisation of their ‘utmost ambition’ in exchange for offering themselves ‘up entirely’. Once an astral became attached to a person, it functioned as a sort of ‘psychic vampire’, draining their vitality and clouding their judgement. Astral spirits were entirely amoral and so intensely ignorant that they ruined anything with which they came in contact. They were responsible for a variety of evils, including hysteria, the consumption of meat, and the Free Love movement, although the evil resided not in them but in the humans they reflected.160 Kingsford also engaged in practical magic, believing that the human will could influence the physical world.161 Her magical endeavours were closely linked to her ethical beliefs, especially her intense opposition to vivisection. She described the practice as a ‘demon’, viewing it as not only a physical evil but also a spiritual threat, as it was so horrifying that it had the potential to destroy faith in an ‘all-compassionate God’.162 She turned her magical knowledge against several prominent vivisectors, claiming responsibility for the deaths of the French scientists Claude Bernard and Paul Bert, although she admitted that she had failed in her attempt to kill Louis Pasteur.163 He did, however, suffer a brief period of ill health, meaning that the enterprise had not been completely pointless.164 Kingsford described her attack on Bernard in dramatic terms, stating that she had ‘invoked the wrath of God upon him…hurling her

142  The Occult Devil whole spiritual being at him with all her might’. Bernard succumbed to Bright’s disease six weeks later, which, as he had been deliberately inducing the ailment in animals, had a certain symbolic quality. Kingsford did not view her actions as black magic, arguing that the evil of vivisection rendered harm to vivisectionists acceptable.165 Kingsford paid a high price for her magical aggression, becoming ill shortly after her attempt on Pasteur’s life. In 1888, she died of tuberculosis, taking the Hermetic Society with her.166 While they provided intriguing alternatives to conventional religious wisdom, the Theosophical and Hermetic Societies were vastly overshadowed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in terms of magical practice.167 Founded in the late 1880s, the Order cited a history stretching back to ancient Egypt, although its teachings and rituals were of somewhat more recent origin.168 The occultist and freemason William Wynn Westcott claimed that in 1887, he had discovered an ancient manuscript written in cipher, which contained information regarding a Temple of the ‘Golden Dawn’.169 The manuscript’s origins are murky, with one version of the story stating that it was a gift from the Rev. Adolphus F. A. Woodford, who acquired it from France, and another that it had belonged to Hockley. Despite claims of antiquity, it probably dates from between 1870 and 1880. The cipher manuscript was characteristic of late nineteenth-century occultism, containing ‘the standard blend of Renaissance and ceremonial magic’ and Egyptian references, as well as some distinctly nineteenth-century features such as masonic references and the use of the sixteenth-century magus John Dee’s Enochian language.170 Joining forces with the prominent occultist and freemason Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Westcott used it to construct five occult rituals. He also claimed that, during his examination of the manuscript, he had found the address of a German Rosicrucian named Fräulein Sprengel, who had given him permission to establish an English version of an order referred to as Die Goldene Dämmerung (‘the Golden Dawn’). In 1888, Westcott and MacGregor Mathers, along with the lesser-known occultist W. R. Woodman, founded the London-based Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was eventually joined by temples in Weston-super-Mare, Bradford, Edinburgh, and Paris.171 The Golden Dawn was to attract the interest of a range of prominent individuals, including W. B. Yeats, the artist Henry Marriott Paget, the actress Florence Farr, Edith Bland (better known as the children’s author E. Nesbit), and Aleister Crowley.172 The Order was chiefly interested in ‘ritual or ceremonial magic’, deriving its name from the Rosicrucian concept of the dawn of a ‘new spiritually enlightened age’ and the occult ideal of ‘seeking the light’.173 This new dawn was informed by a diverse array of historical influences, including the diaries of John Dee, medieval grimoires, Renaissance-era Neoplatonic and cabalistic texts, ‘Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri’,

The Occult Devil  143 and the Rosicrucian manifestos.174 The Order’s ideas, which were ‘a reworked version of Renaissance Hermeticism’ with a strong emphasis on alchemy, offered adherents the key to knowledge of the universe and the development of a range of talents, including divination, astral travel, and the ability to call upon mighty ‘spiritual forces’.175 Members were keen to distinguish themselves from less active occult practitioners, with prospective initiates being informed that the ‘Chiefs of the Order do not care to accept as Candidates any person accustomed to submit themselves as Mediums to the Experiments of Hypnotism, Mesmerism; or who habitually allow themselves to fall into a complete Passive Condition of Will’.176 Inspired by the structure of freemasonry, the Order had ten grades and was divided into two sections, known as the First and Second Order, with the First being concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and the Second with practical magic. While the rituals of the First Order were based on the cipher manuscript, MacGregor Mathers served as the leader of and composed the rituals for the Second, although only a minority of members were ever instructed in the more advanced forms of magic.177 This internal split was only one manifestation of the founders’ failure to present a united front. Woodman, by far the least active, died in the early 1890s and Westcott and MacGregor Mathers never fully agreed on the Order’s purpose, with the former being more concerned with Rosicrucian knowledge and the latter with practical magic.178 It was MacGregor Mathers who was to become the greatest power within the Order and by 1900 he had managed to almost entirely force out Westcott. The Order had already fallen into disarray by the late 1890s, having endured serious ideological and personal conflicts.179 The beliefs and activities of the Order shed light on the innovative ways in which late nineteenth-century occultists viewed and interacted with supernatural evil. As members progressed from grade to grade, they performed specific rituals and received a series of lectures, intended to provide them with a grounding in occult knowledge. The wisdom of the First Order was contained in texts referred to as the ‘knowledge lectures’, while that of the Second was recorded in mysterious documents known as the ‘Flying Rolls’.180 Both sets of documents contain information regarding spiritual evil and danger. The Golden Dawn claimed that there were numerous types of spirits, although these entities were not necessarily viewed as literally existing, being used in symbolic terms within the Order’s rituals.181 The second knowledge lecture referenced supernatural evil in the form of the qlippoth or ‘evil demons of matter and the shells of the dead’ and supernatural ambiguity in the form of the elementals.182 The third lecture included a short catalogue of spiritual beings, mentioning elementals, astral spirits, planetary spirits, angels, and devils. Elementals, which were spirits ‘associated with the elements’, could be ‘invoked in certain ceremonies’ and might be either ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Astral spirits, which could not be classified as either good or bad,

144  The Occult Devil were ‘false and illusory forms, shells of the dead and phantoms’. Planetary spirits, which were similarly unwilling to parallel Christian demonology, were ‘those forms which belong to their respective planets’. The Order was clear that there was such a thing as absolute spiritual good and evil, with the angels being described as ‘pure spirits’ and the devils clearly labelled as ‘bad’ spirits.183 The spiritual world revealed in Israel Regardie’s early twentieth-century collection of Golden Dawn teachings and rituals was even more complex, with Regardie stating that the universe contained ‘elemental spirits, planetary spirits, Olympic spirits, fays, arch-fays, genii, and many other potencies’.184 The distinction between good and bad spirits was significant, as the Golden Dawn was innovative in that, instead of using ‘intermediary spirits’, practitioners communed with supernatural forces directly. Members practised both invocation (‘bringing the power or aspect of the deity, or spirit, into’ themselves) and evocation, in which, relying on a ‘theory of universal interdependence’ (in which qualities within the magician corresponded to qualities in the wider universe) the magician brought ‘the power or aspect of the deity, or spirit, up out of the corresponding region of him/ herself’.185 The nature of a spirit was central to the nature of a magical action, with the ‘respective operations’ of various types of spirits being ‘illustrated by the results of White and Black Magic’, with ‘the former’ being ‘constructive’ and ‘the latter…destructive’.186 According to Regardie, if a magician was careless or corrupt, they risked ‘bring[ing] into’ themselves ‘terrible forces of evil’.187 While the knowledge lectures, which contained basic occult information, were fairly straightforward, the Flying Rolls were much less orderly. Authored by various members, they included both theoretical material and personal accounts and touched on a wide variety of topics, including astral projection, clairvoyance, and alchemy.188 Their eclectic nature hints at the diversity of ways in which occultists envisioned and interacted with supernatural evil. One document described an incident in which a Scottish lawyer named J. W. Brodie-Innes performed a ritual to banish a ‘vampirising elemental’, which had attached itself to him and his wife, inducing severe exhaustion. Brodie-Innes’ actions were not a straightforward case of good vanquishing evil, with another member noting that it was ‘not always permissible’ to destroy an elemental.189 As this incident illustrates, the line between white and black magic was sometimes ambiguous. Another Flying Roll, which contained information on various types of ‘magical projection’, including the exercise of the will for magical purposes, warned that any magical process which could be used for good could be used for evil. The writer cited a man who functioned as an inadvertent spiritual vampire, draining the energy of others, and a medium whose health was ruined by her spiritual passivity.190 A third document, containing information on divination, warned that if the procedure it outlined was not followed correctly, the

The Occult Devil  145 practitioner risked being troubled by ‘evil and delusive’ elementals.191 As the Golden Dawn’s ideas indicate, the spirit world did not need to contain a literal Devil to be perilous. The rituals of the Golden Dawn also sometimes mentioned spiritual evil or danger. The neophyte ritual required the candidate to not only keep the Order’s secrets, maintain good relations with other members, and study the ‘occult sciences’ but also to overcome the malign force of the ‘Evil Triad’, which was envisioned in pagan and Egyptian terms, consisting of ‘Apophraz, the Stooping Dragon’, ‘Satan-Typhon, the Slayer of Osiris’, and ‘Besz, the brutal power of demoniac force’. This part of the ritual was related to idea that the neophyte should cast out their own ‘evil person’. They were not to rid themselves of it entirely, as, after it had been ‘cast down unto its right place’, it would ‘become a support’ to their occult practice. The candidate also had to promise not to use their ‘occult powers for any evil purposes’. Intended to be intimidating, the ‘Evil Triad’ was only one component of the ritual’s complicated and theatrical symbolism, with the ceremony also including an explicit threat that a candidate, who broke their vows, would become the victim of ‘a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order’ and ‘fall slain or paralysed without visible weapon’.192 The initiatory ritual of the next (Zelator) grade also referenced spiritual evil, using the symbolism of ‘the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’ and mentioning ‘the Qlippoth or Demons’, with ‘the meaning’ of the latter being one of the subjects a candidate was required to master. It also encouraged candidates to define themselves against the ‘Angel Samael’, who was described as ‘the prince of Darkness and Evil’ and associated with the image of a ‘wicked and rebellious man’, who gazed ‘upon the Face of Nature’ and found ‘nought but error and obscurity’.193 The rituals of the next three grades, namely the Theoreticus, Practicus, and Philosophus, also referred to the Qlippoth. In addition, the Practicus ritual mentioned ‘terrible dog-faced demons’, while the Philosophus referenced Lilith, listed the ‘seven Infernal Habitations’, and required the candidate to have mastered ‘the Meaning of the terms Astral, Elemental and Planetary Spirits, Angel and Devil’. These references showcase the eclectic nature of the Golden Dawn’s spiritual and symbolic worlds, with the cabbalistic Qlippoth coexisting semi-comfortably with Egyptian ‘dog-faced demons’.194 The distinction between good and evil always remained somewhat ambiguous. Regardie’s compendium of information on the Golden Dawn, although some of it may not be applicable to a nineteenthcentury context, hinted at the potential usefulness of evil, stating that it was possible for an individual to use their ‘evil persona’ to strengthen their occult power. He also claimed that evil played a vital role in the material world.195 Furthermore, while the activities of the Golden Dawn did not generally involve necromancy or black magic, there was the odd exception. Individual practice was diverse, with members often engaging

146  The Occult Devil in private magical activity. One private ritual, dating from between 1899 and 1900, referred to as the ‘Ritual for the Formation, Building and Consecration of a Body, wherein to Travel, manifest & act in freedom from the Bonds & limitation of matter’ involved the invocation of both good and evil spirits, including some described as hellish. While this ritual was unusual in the context of the Golden Dawn, it was typical in the context of medieval necromancy, with medieval grimoires being relatively easy to access at the British Library.196 MacGregor Mathers’ translation of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage also potentially introduced evil spirits into Golden Dawn practice. This document, which probably dates from the late seventeenth century, contained instructions for a complex magical ritual, which required the magician to spend six months in isolation. The potential rewards were great, with those who successfully completed it gaining the ability to command both good and evil spirits without risking harm to themselves. The highly demanding nature of the ritual ensured that it was rarely practised, with Abramelin magic remaining more ‘complementary than fundamental’ to the Golden Dawn’s activities.197 Former or dissenting members of the Golden Dawn sometimes carried an interest in supernatural evil with them into later life. The well-known occultist Arthur Edward Waite took a strong position against the misuse of ceremonial magic. While Waite was an early member of the Golden Dawn, he quickly became suspicious of its claims, coming to doubt the authenticity of the cipher manuscript.198 Nevertheless, in 1903, he assumed the leadership of the Isis-Urania Temple, altering its activities to reflect his interest in Christian mysticism and founding his own group – the Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C.199 Waite was also the author of The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1898 – originally The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts), which included a study of well-known grimoires. 200 He was disgusted by black magic, stating that ‘there is nothing to suggest one touch of sublimity in diabolism…it is the hunger and thirst of the soul seeking to satisfy its craving in the ashpits of uncleanness, greed, hatred and malice’. 201 In his opinion, all ceremonial magic skirted too close to black magic. He saw himself as participating in ‘the preservation of the Secret Tradition inviolate’, which was quite distinct from ‘monstrous growths’ like ‘Ceremonial Rituals’. 202 Waite’s views reflected the fact that Christian ideas, including fears about the dangers of meddling with the diabolic, continued to have an influence on late nineteenth-century occultism, with tradition and innovation sometimes coming into conflict. Aleister Crowley, the most famous occultist to emerge out of nineteenth- century England’s occult milieu, was in many ways Waite’s opposite. He claimed a long symbolic association with the Devil, stating that in his adolescence a maid had believed him to be the antichrist. In the 1890s, during the course of his studies at Cambridge, he developed

The Occult Devil  147 an increasing interest in occult topics. He was fascinated by supernatural evil and longed for both understanding and power.203 In 1898, he joined the Golden Dawn and in the early twentieth century he travelled the world, visiting countries as diverse as Mexico, India, Japan, and Egypt in search of occult knowledge. Convinced that the Golden Dawn was outdated, he gradually developed a new ‘religious and magical philosophy’ referred to as Thelema. Followers were advised to cultivate an extreme sense of individualism and exhorted to ‘Do What Thou Wilt’, although following this dictum required that a person first identify their ‘True Will’. It was only after the completion of this task (known as ‘the Great Work’) that a practitioner could follow the laws of ‘magick’ or ‘causing Change to occur in conformity with Will’.204 Crowley retained his fascination with the darker side of the supernatural, referring to himself as ‘the wickedest man in the world’ and ‘the Beast 666’. 205 In 1909, he undertook a vision quest in the Algerian desert in which he attempted to cross the ‘Abyss’ (‘an abstract Kabbalistic concept designed to signify… the unbridgeable space between godliness and manifested individuation’). Passing through the Abyss destroyed the individual ego and allowed a practitioner to achieve a state of ‘mystical union’ with the divine. In Crowley’s case, it also resulted in a meeting with and possession by the demon Choronzon, who made his home there.206 Crowley was not a Satanist. In fact, he did not believe in the Devil and can be best categorised as a ‘magical atheist’. 207 His work also contained little which can be characterised as Satanic. He was noteworthy for his strategic use of diabolic symbolism to convey a rejection of conventional morality and to create a mysterious and intimidating image. His language and imagery was shaped more by the ‘literary Satanism’ of writers such as William Blake (discussed further in Chapter 5), which often reframed Satan as ‘positive’ but detached him from a Christian context, than by religious concepts of the demonic. 208 Crowley’s view of the diabolic was emblematic of the uncertain status of the Devil in Victorian occultism, with even his seeming champion refashioning him into a more congenial shape. The Devil played a deeply ambiguous role in Victorian spiritualism and occultism. As he was both integral to and emblematic of the traditional Christian universe, he was immediately on shaky ground with those who sought to overturn it. His situation was not aided by the fact that he lacked the elevating, purifying, and comforting qualities, which made God so appealing. Hell was often considered immoral, as it not only inflicted immense suffering on its inhabitants, but also failed to provide them with any opportunities for self-improvement. The fact that some segments of the English population rejected traditional ideas about the Devil did not mean that he was irrelevant. Removing him from the universe also removed a convenient explanation for suffering and evil and threatened to make negative supernatural experiences inexplicable.

148  The Occult Devil The answer was often to envision the universe as an imperfect but hopeful place, in which the individual was offered the opportunity to improve themselves but not entirely shielded from spiritual peril. This imperfect universe was peopled with ‘alternate’ evil spirits, with demons being replaced or supplemented by elementals, astral spirits, and the souls of wicked human beings. The Devil did retain a potent symbolic value, often being treated as representative of whatever an individual disagreed with or wished to define themselves in opposition to, whether that was mesmerism or scepticism regarding Theosophy. His ambiguous nature also allowed him to be used as a defiant emblem of spiritual rebellion. Ultimately, the near impossibility of banishing the Devil served as an example of and, perhaps, a warning about the difficulties inherent in trying to remake the Christian universe.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26

Anon., “Spiritualism, As Related to Religion and Science,” 22. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 1; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 4. Saler, “Modernity and Enchantment,” 696–697, 704–714. Kontou and Willburn, introduction, The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, 1. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 1. Basham, The Trial of Woman, 85–86. Winter, Mesmerized, 2–3, 5. See Winter, Mesmerized. Ibid., 5–9. Elliotson, “Cure of a True Cancer of the Female Breast with Mesmerism,” 233–234; Winter, Mesmerized, 261–262. Winter, Mesmerized, 260–261. S. I. L. E., “Satanic Agency,” 533–535. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, Vol. 1, 3. S. I. L. E., “Satanic Agency,” 532. Anon., “Explanatory Letter,” 72. Anon., “Phrenological Society,” 36. Elliotson, “An Account of Two Cases of Severe and Obstinate Diseases Perfectly Cured by Mesmerism,” 43, 47. Basham, The Trial of Woman, 60, 82; Winter, Mesmerized, 262. Hayman, “Cure of Tic Douloureux in Two Sittings,” 176. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, Vol. 2, 4–7. Oppenheim, The Other World, 2–3, 7–10. Lamont, “Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence,” 899; Oppenheim, The Other World, 8, 59. For more on spiritualism and science see Ferguson, “Recent Scholarship on Spiritualism and Science,” 19–24, Noakes, “The Sciences of Spiritualism in Victorian Britain,” 25–54, and Noakes, “Spiritualism, Science and the Supernatural in Mid-Victorian Britain,” 23–43. Oppenheim, The Other World, 59, 62, 66–67. Lamont, “Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence,” 897. Ibid., 897–899, 900, 909–910, 917. Anon., “Stranger Than Fiction,” 211.

The Occult Devil  149 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Oppenheim, The Other World, 64, 68–69, 82–84. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, Vol. 2, 12–13. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 32; Godfrey, Table-Turning. Anon., “Spirits and Spirit-Rapping,” 30. Godfrey, Table-Turning, 3, 6–8, 10–14, 18. Ibid., 20–23, 26–32, 38–39, 41, 52–51, 56. Winter, Mesmerized, 264–266. Oppenheim, The Other World, 65; Winter, Mesmerized, 266. Oppenheim, The Other World, 66. Anon., “Our Library Table,” 211. Anon., “The Rev. Mr. Godfrey and Satan at the Hanover Square Rooms,” 429–431. Anon., review of Table-Turning, 223–226. Anon., “Miscellaneous Notices,” 225. Oppenheim, The Other World, 84. Ibid. Anon., “Is Spiritualism of the Devil?,” 356. Davies, Mystic London, 243–248. La Mer, “Attitude of the Christian Churches Towards Spiritualism”. C. C. C., “Contradictions in Spiritualism from a Roman Catholic Point of View”. Theobald, “Unconscious Mediumship”. Anon., “Modern Devil-Worship”. Anon., “Is Spiritualism of the Devil? Yes, By a Catholic,” 259. Anon., “Letters to the Editor”. Jones, The Natural and the Supernatural, 230. Ibid., 196. T. S., “Discussions on Spiritualism,” 11. Anon., “Unfathomed Mysteries”. Owen, The Darkened Room, 92. Marryatt, There Is No Death, 60. Home, Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, 161. Oppenheim, The Other World, 84–85. Oppenheim, The Other World, 85; Owen, The Darkened Room, 92–93. Robertson, Spiritualism, 375. Home, Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, 161. Ibid., 65. Barrow, Independent Spirits, 101. Moses, Spirit Teachings, 12–14. M. A. (Oxon), Higher Aspects of Spiritualism, 105. Moses, Spirit Teachings, 14; Oxon, Higher Aspects of Spiritualism, 64–71. Stead, After Death, 8. Moses, Spirit Teachings, 77; Oppenheim, The Other World, 85, 92–95. Franklin, “The Evolution of Occult Spirituality in Victorian England,” 129. Owen, The Darkened Room, 82. M. A. (Oxon.), “Notes by the Way”. Stead, After Death, 35. London Dialectical Society, Report on Spiritualism, 221. Oxon, Higher Aspects of Spiritualism, 52–54; M. A. (Oxon.), SpiritIdentity, 24. Oxon, Spirit-Identity, 24–26. Hall, The Use of Spiritualism?, 2.

150  The Occult Devil 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

Owen, The Darkened Room, 80–81. London Dialectical Society, Report on Spiritualism, 217–222. Myers, “Automatic Writing – II.,” 44. Hardinge, Rules for the Formation and Conduct of Spirit Circles, 6. Anon., “Evenings with Mr. Morse”. Stead, After Death, 8, 35. Barrow, Independent Spirits, 141. Rus., “Perplexing Experiences”. Inquirer, “A Perplexed Inquirer”. E. D., “A Perplexing Experience”. The Society for Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 1, 3–4. Myers, “The Drift of Psychical Research,” 190. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Vol. 2, 199–201. Myers, review of “Some Peculiarities of the Secondary Personality,” 384. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, Vol. 1, 3. Podmore, “Poltergeists,” 62. Barrett, On the Threshold of a New World of Thought, 90. Podmore, The Newer Spiritualism, 296–297. Myers, “A Defence of Phantasms of the Dead,” 330. Schiller, “On Some Philosophical Assumptions in the Investigation of the Problem of a Future Life,” 57–58. Venables, “The Danger of Psychical Research”. Legge, “The Devil in Modern Occultism,” 695–696. Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 52. Butler, Victorian Occultism, xii–xiii, x. Ibid., 17–18. Ibid., 18–26. Ibid. Ibid., 98. Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, 119. Priddle, “More Cunning than Folk,” 37. Barrett, The Magus; Butler, Victorian Occultism, 102–106. Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, 119; Priddle, “More Cunning Than Folk,” 69. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 107. Ibid., 2, 84–86. 107, 109, 110. Ibid., 107, 109. Hamill, introduction, 11–24. Hockley, “Crystaliomancy,” 105. Hockley, “Raising the Devil,” 129–131. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 122. Dixon, Divine Feminine, 21; Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 182. Dixon, Divine Feminine, 3–5, 46–47, 51–52; Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 1114–1119. Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 34. Ibid., 29. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 26. Wallraven, ““A Mere Instrument” or “Proud as Lucifer”?,” 402. Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 182.

The Occult Devil  151 122 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 99–100. 123 C. C., “The Organ of the Theosophical Society,” 401. 124 Besant, Annie Besant, 81; Wallraven, ““A Mere Instrument” or “Proud as Lucifer”?,” 401. 125 Besant, Annie Besant, 342; Wallraven, ““A Mere Instrument” or “Proud as Lucifer”?,” 402. 126 Wallraven, ““A Mere Instrument” or “Proud as Lucifer”?,” 402. 127 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, 98. 128 Ibid., 230. 129 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3, 36. 130 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, 162. 131 Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1, 30–31. 132 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, 229, n. 440. 133 F. T. S., “Yoga Vida,” 84. 134 E.g. Anon., “The Bible Revision,” 233–234; Anon., ““Lucifer” to the Archbishop of Canterbury,” 241–251; Anon., “New York Buddhists,” 152–153; Crichton, “Stray Thoughts on Christianity,” 269; Anon., “Superstition,” 61–62. 135 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, 237, n. 462. 136 Ibid., 389. 137 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 34. 138 Anon., “Pranks of “Spirits” Among Laymen,” 54; Anon., “Stone-Showers,” 232–233; Anon., “The Witchcraft and Demonology of Pictavia,” 48; Oppenheim, The Other World, 165. 139 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 34. 140 Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism, 164–165. 141 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, 370, n. 749. 142 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, 353. 143 Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1, 59–61, 291–292. 144 Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism, 164–166. 145 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 48. 146 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 113–114. 147 Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 663–664. 148 Ibid., 664. 149 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 121; Maitland, Anna Kingsford, Vol. 1, 170–209. 150 Ibid. 151 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 113–114; Kingsford and Maitland, The Perfect Way. 152 Kingsford and Maitland, The Perfect Way, xii–xiv. 153 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 118. 154 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 118–119; Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 664. 155 Kingsford and Maitland, The Perfect Way, 28. 156 Ibid., 41–43. 157 Ibid., 73–74. Ibid., 40. 158 159 Ibid., 69–70. 160 Kingsford and Maitland, The Perfect Way, 65–95. 161 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 121–122; Hanegraaff, Faivre, van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 665; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 47.

152  The Occult Devil 162 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 115; Kingsford, Pasteur, 28. 163 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 114; Kingsford and Maitland, The Credo of Christendom, n. p.; Maitland, Anna Kingsford, Vol. 2, 39, 47–49. 164 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 121; Maitland, Anna Kingsford, Vol. 2, 277–278. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 115, 121; Maitland, Anna Kingsford, Vol. 2, 165 268–270, 290–291. 166 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 118–119, 120–121; Maitland, Anna Kingsford, Vol. 2, 373–376. 167 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 123. 168 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 52–53. 169 Ibid., 53. 170 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 6, 37, 44–47. 171 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 6; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 52–54. 172 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 3. 173 Ibid., 3, 52. 174 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 60. 175 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 3–4. 176 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 83. 177 Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 544–548; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 4, 56. 178 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 55. 179 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 11–13; Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, and Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 548–549. 180 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 37–38; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 69–77. 181 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 51. 182 Ibid., 38. 183 Torrens, The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn, 142. Torrens states, likely accurately, that he used sources dating from before 1900. (See Butler, Victorian Occultism, 29). 184 Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 136. Regardie’s material is more detailed than the nineteenth-century sources and uses altered symbolism and terminology. (See Butler, Victorian Occultism, 29). Butler, Victorian Occultism, 146, 148. 185 186 Torrens, The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn, 142–143. 187 Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 436. Butler, Victorian Occultism, 39–40; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 188 72–73. 189 Frater Sub Spe, “Flying Roll XXXIV,” 40–42. 190 V. H. Fra. Resurgam, “Flying Roll No. V,” 47–51. 191 G. H. Fra. D. D. C. F., “Flying Roll No. XXX,” 91. 192 Torrens, The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn, 53, 61–62, 66, 79. 193 Ibid., 99, 100. 194 Ibid., 116, 125–128, 134, 153, 166, 180, 186–188. 195 Ibid., 133–134. 196 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 28, 59–60. Ibid., 51–52. 197 198 Butler, Victorian Occultism, 6–7. 199 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 82–83. 200 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 82–83; Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, xliii. 201 Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 49; Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, xliii.

The Occult Devil  153 202 203 204 205 206

Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, 337. Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 189–191. Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 86–90. Dyrendal, “Satan and the Beast,” 369. Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 85–86, 92–97; Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 195–202. 207 Hanegraaff, Faivre, Van den Broek, Brach, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 1036. 208 Dyrendal, “Satan and the Beast,” 369–370.

References Anon. “The Bible Revision.” The Theosophist, 2, no. 11 (1881), 233–234. ———. “The Drift of Psychical Research.” The National Review 24, no. 140 (1894), 190–209. ———. “Evenings with Mr. Morse.” Light, December 24, 1881. ———. “Explanatory Letter from the Rev. Edward Bickersteth.” In The Zoist, Vol. V.: March, 1847, to January, 1848, 71–73. London: Hippolyte Baillière, Paris: J. B. Baillière, and Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1848. ———. “Is Spiritualism of the Devil? Yea, Verily, Says the Catholic Church.” The Review of Reviews, October, 1892, 356. ———. “Is Spiritualism of the Devil? Yes, By a Catholic.” The Review of Reviews 6, no. 33 (1892), 259. ———. “Letters to the Editor.” Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, January 23, 1875. ———. ““Lucifer” to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Greeting!” Lucifer 1, no. 4 (1887), 241–251. ———. “Miscellaneous Notices.” The New Quarterly Review and Digest of Current Literature, British, American, French, and German 3, no. 10 (1854), 225–230. ———. “Modern Devil-Worship.” The London Review, October 12, 1867. ———. “New York Buddhists.” The Theosophist, 2, no. 7 (1881), 152–153. ———. “Our Library Table.” The Athenæum 1373 (1854), 211–213. ———. “Pranks of Spirits among Laymen.” The Theosophist, 2, no. 3 (1880), 54. ———. “Phrenological Society, 17, Edwards Street, Portman Square.” The Zoist 5 (1844), 21–36. ———. “The Rev. Mr. Godfrey and Satan at the Hanover Square Rooms.” In The Zoist, Vol. XI.: March, 1853, to January, 1854, 429–431. London: Hippolyte Baillière, Paris: J. B. Baillière, and Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1854. ———. Review of Table-Turning, the Devil’s Modern Masterpiece, by N. S. Godfrey. Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record 5, no. 9 (1853), 223–227. ———. “Spirits and Spirit-Rapping.” Westminster Review 69, no. 135 (1858), 29–66. ———. “Spiritualism, As Related to Religion and Science.” Fraser’s Magazine 71, no. 421 (1865), 22–42. ———. “Stone-Showers.” The Theosophist, 2, no. 11 (1881), 231–233. ———. “Stranger Than Fiction.” The Cornhill Magazine 2, no. 8 (1860), 211–224.

154  The Occult Devil ———. “Superstition.” The Theosophist, 3, no. 27 (1881), 60–62. ———. “Unfathomed Mysteries.” Light, May 19, 1883. ———. “The Witchcraft and Demonology of Pictavia.” The Theosophist, 3, no. 26 (1881), 46–48. Asprem, Egil. Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Barrett, Francis. The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer; Being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy. London: Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1801. Barrett, William F. On the Threshold of a New World of Thought: An Examination of the Phenomena of Spiritualism. London: Kegan Paul, 1908. Barrow, Logie. Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850– 1910. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. Basham, Diana. The Trial of Woman: Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Literature and Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan Professional and Academic Ltd, 1992. Besant, Annie. Annie Besant: An Autobiography, 2nd ed. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Vol. I. n. p.: Theosophy Trust, 2006. http://www.theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/ Isis_Unviled_Vol_1_V1.3.pdf. ———. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. I: Cosmogenesis. London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1893. ———. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. II: Anthropogenesis. Point Loma: The Aryan Theosophical Press, 1917. ———. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. III. London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1897. Butler, Alison. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. C. C. “The Organ of the Theosophical Society.” In Borderland: A Quarterly Review and Index, 1897, Vol. IV, edited by W. T. Stead, 401–402. London: printed by author, 1897. C. C. C. “Contradictions in Spiritualism from a Roman Catholic Point of View.” Light, December 6, 1884. Crichton, George Heath. “Stray Thoughts on Christianity.” The Theosophist, 2, no. 12 (1881), 268–269. Davies, Charles Maurice. Mystic London; or, Phases of Occult Life in the British Metropolis. New York: John W. Lovell, Company, 1884. Davies, Owen. Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. Dixon, Joy. Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England. Baltimore, MD and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001. Dyrendal, Asbjørn. “Satan and the Beast: The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Modern Satanism.” In Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, edited by Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, 369–394. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. E. D. “A Perplexing Experience.” Light, December 8, 1883.

The Occult Devil  155 Elliotson, John. “An Account of Two Cases of Severe and Obstinate Diseases Perfectly Cured by Mesmerism; Both of Them Exhibiting Remarkable Mesmeric Phenomena.” The Zoist 5 (1844), 42–79. ———. “Cure of a True Cancer of the Female Breast with Mesmerism.” In The Zoist, Vol. VI.: March, 1848, to January, 1849, 213–237. London: Hippolyte Baillière, Paris: J. B. Baillière, and Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1849. F. T. S. “Yoga Vida.” The Theosophist 1, no. 4 (1889), 84–86. Ferguson, Christine. “Recent Scholarship on Spiritualism and Science.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, 19–24. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Franklin, J. Jeffrey. “The Evolution of Occult Spirituality in Victorian England and the Representative Case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, 123–141. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Frater Sub Spe, “Flying Roll XXXIV – An Exorcism.” In Ritual Magic of the Golden Dawn: Works by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Others, edited by Frances King, 40–43. Vermont: Destiny Books, 1997. G. H. Fra. D. D. C. F. “Flying Roll No. XXX: Tattva Cards and Tattvic Clairvoyance and Hierophant rising 0°= 0° signs.” In Ritual Magic of the Golden Dawn: Works by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Others, edited by Francis King, 91–92. Vermont: Destiny Books, 1997. Godfrey, Nathaniel Stedman. Table-Turning, the Devil’s Modern Masterpiece: Being the Result of a Course of Experiments. London: Seeleys, 1853. Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Hall, Samuel Carter. The Use of Spiritualism? Glasgow: Hay Nisbet, 1876. Hamill, John. Introduction to The Rosicrucian Seer: Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley, edited by John Hamill, 11–25. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1986. Hanegraaff, Wouter J., Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek, and Jean-Pierre Brach, ed. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Hardinge, Emma. Rules for the Formation and Conduct of Spirit Circles. Glasgow: James McGeachy, 1868. Hayman, Mr. “Cure of Tic Douloureux in Two Sittings.” In The Zoist, Vol. V.: March, 1847, to January, 1848, 176–178. London: Hippolyte Baillière, Paris: J. B. Baillière, and Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1848. Hockley, Frederick. “Crystaliomancy, or the Art of Invocating Spirits by the Crystal.” In The Rosicrucian Seer: Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley, edited by John Hamill, 102–108. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1986. ———. “Raising the Devil.” In The Rosicrucian Seer: Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley, edited by John Hamill, 129–131. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1986. Home, Daniel Dunglas. Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, 2nd ed. London: Virtue and Co., 1878. Inquirer. “A Perplexed Inquirer.” Light, November 11, 1882.

156  The Occult Devil Jones, John. The Natural and the Supernatural: Or, Man Physical, Apparitional, and Spiritual. London: H. Bailliere, 1861. Kingsford, Anna. Pasteur: His Method and Its Results. Hampstead: North London Anti-Vivisection Society, 1886. Kingsford, Anna Bonus and Edward Maitland. The Credo of Christendom and Other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity, edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. London: John M. Watkins, 1916. http://www.anna-kingsford. com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/05-OAKMI-CREDO/OAKM-I-Credo-06-web.htm. ———. The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ. London: Field & Tuer, Hamilton: Adams & Co., and New York: Scribner & Welford, 1882. Kontou, Tatiana and Sarah Willburn. Introduction to The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, 1–16. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. La Mer, G. “Attitude of the Christian Churches towards Spiritualism.” Light, 29 April, 1882. Lamont, Peter. “Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence.” The Historical Journal 47, no. 4 (2004), 897–920. Legge, F. “The Devil in Modern Occultism.” The Contemporary Review 71 (1897), 694 – 710. London Dialectical Society. Report on Spiritualism, Of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, Together with the Evidence, Oral and Written, and a Selection from the Correspondence. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1871. M. A. (Oxon). Higher Aspects of Spiritualism. London: E. W. Allen & Co., Boston: Colby & Rich, and Chicago: The Religio-Philosophical Publishing House, 1880. ———. “Notes by the Way.” Light, May 22, 1882. ———. Spirit-Identity. London: London Spiritualist Alliance, Limited, 1902. Maitland, Edward. Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary, and Work, Vol. 1–2, 3rd ed., edited by Samuel Hopgood Heart. London: John M. Watkins, 1913. Marryatt, Florence. There Is No Death. New York: National Book Company, 1891. Moses, William Stainton. Spirit Teachings. London: London Spiritualist Alliance, Limited, 1898. Myers, F. W. H. “Automatic Writing – II.” In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 3, edited by The Society for Psychical Research, 1–63. London: National Press Agency, Limited, 1885. ———. “A Defence of Phantasms of the Dead.” In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume VI. (Containing Parts XV – XVII.) 1889– 90, edited by the Society for Psychical Research, 314–357. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Limited, 1890. ———. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Vol. II. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903. ———. The Newer Spiritualism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911. ———. Review of “Some Peculiarities of the Secondary Personality” by G. T. W. Patrick, The Psychological Review 5, no. 6 (1898), 555–578. In Proceedings

The Occult Devil  157 of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XIV (Containing Parts XXXIV– XXXV) 1898–9, edited by the Society for Psychical Research, 382–386. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Limited, 1899. Noakes, Richard. “The Sciences of Spiritualism in Victorian Britain: Possibilities and Problems.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, 25–54. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Oppenheim, Janet. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, [1989] 2004. ———. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, Vol. 1–2. London: Methuen & Co., 1902. ———. “Poltergeists.” In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XII (Containing Parts XXX–XXXI, with Appendix.) 1896–7, edited by the Society for Psychical Research, 45–115. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1897. Priddle, Robert A. Priddle. “More Cunning than Folk: An Analysis of Francis Barrett’s The Magus as Indicative of a Transitional Period of English Magic.” Master’s thesis, University of Ottowa, 2012. Proquest (MR86079). Regardie, Israel. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order, 7th ed., edited by John Michael Greer. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2015. Rus. “Perplexing Experiences.” Light, January 12, 1884. S. I. L. E., “Satanic Agency.” In The Zoist, Vol. III.: March, 1845, to January, 1846, 532–535. London: Hippolyte Baillière and Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1846. Saler, Michael. “Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review.” The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006), 692–716. Schiller, F. C. S. “On Some Philosophical Assumptions in the Investigation of the Problem of a Future Life.” In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume XV. (Containing Parts XXXVI–XL) 1900–1901, edited by the Society of Psychical Research, 53–64. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Limited, 1901. Sinnett, Alfred Percy. Esoteric Buddhism. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company and Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1889. The Society for Psychical Research. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. I (Containing Parts I–IV.) 1882–83. London: Trübner and Co., 1883. Stead, William T. After Death or Letters from Julia: A Personal Narrative. Chicago, IL: The Progressive Thinker Publishing House, 1910. T. S. “Discussions on Spiritualism.” In The British Spiritual Telegraph: Being a Monthly Record of Spiritual Phenomena, Vol. III, 11–12. London: F. Pitman, 1859. Theobald, F. J. “Unconscious Mediumship.” Light, March 17, 1883. Torrens, Robert George. The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1972.

158  The Occult Devil V. H. Fra. Resurgam. “Flying Roll No. V: Some Thoughts on the Imagination.” In Ritual Magic of the Golden Dawn: Works by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Others, edited by Frances King, 47–52. Vermont: Destiny Books, 1997. Venables, Gilbert. “The Danger of Psychical Research.” The Spectator, October 28, 1882. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Book of Ceremonial Magic: The Secret Tradition in Goëtia, Including the Rites and Mysteries Goëtic Theurgy, Sorcery, and Infernal Necromancy. London: n. p., 1913. xliii, http://www.sacred-texts. com/grim/bcm/index.htm. Wallraven, Miriam. ““A Mere Instrument” or “Proud as Lucifer”? SelfPresentations in the Occult Autobiographies by Emma Hardinge Britten (1900) and Annie Besant (1893).” Women’s Writing 15, no. 3 (2008), 390–411. Winter, Alison. Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

4

The Popular Devil

The term ‘popular culture’ is notoriously difficult to define. The simplest definition is the well-used but imprecise term ‘history from below’, indicating a focus on the entertainments, pastimes, and preoccupations of the lower classes.1 Originally, such histories tended to concentrate on the festive aspects of lower-class culture, although the term has gradually loosened to indicate any interest in the ‘social… lives of the poor’. 2 This chapter, which will examine a range of pastimes enjoyed chiefly by the Victorian lower classes, will not attempt to formulate a strict (let alone definitive) definition of popular culture. The Devil was a spirit and a shape-shifter and there is something a little absurd in attempting to hem him in. His versatility allowed him to play a diverse role in English popular culture and he appeared in media as varied as broadsides, penny dreadfuls, and puppet shows. Possessing a unique mixture of recognisability, versatility, gruesomeness, and danger, he had tremendous entertainment potential and became strongly associated with dramatic storytelling and irreverent humour. As with many aspects of popular culture, the Devil’s appearances were not constrained by precise class boundaries and he had no scruples about participating in commercial ventures. He also had little regard for the conceptual boundary between what was and was not ‘real’. There could be a fine line between amusement and terror and figures like the diabolic bogeyman Spring-heeled Jack crossed it at will, existing as both fictional characters and real dangers. Penny dreadfuls and street entertainers were not separate from the world of folk belief; rather, they were intertwined with it. There was (at least in the middle-class imagination) a strong link between popular culture and the Devil. It was common for middle-class commentators to describe the lives and amusements of the poor in heightened, often fantastical or diabolic, terms. One book, authored by a London philanthropist, detailed a visit to the residence of ‘an odd-job labourer’. He was horrified by the ‘ill-cared-for children’, the ‘fearsomelooking men’, and the ‘slatternly-looking women’, declaring that ‘the

160  The Popular Devil whole scene’ was ‘one as Dante might have imagined’. 3 The Salvationist William Booth was even more emphatic, stating that: The man who walks with open eyes…needs no…fantastic images… to teach him horror…it seemed as if God were no longer in His world, but that in His stead reigned a fiend, merciless as Hell…4 An image of the urban poor as given over to the Devil was informed by a vision of the city as diabolic. As Peter Ackroyd has observed, it was a ‘cliché’ for poets to conceptualise the city as ‘a kind of hell’, complete with hideous vices and a smoky odour. 5 Particularly poverty-stricken areas sometimes acquired devilish nicknames. A ‘fœtid cul de sac’ east of London’s Edgware Road was known as ‘Little Hell’ and an infamous London slum was referred to as the Devil’s Acre.6 The use of diabolic language to refer to ‘dubious’ leisure activities was encouraged by Victorian society’s inheritance of the Evangelical suspicion of secular enjoyment.7 An article entitled ‘Christian Work at Epsom Races’, published in an 1873 edition of The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, detailed the ‘heroic effort’ of evangelists ‘to win souls from the very jaws of Satan’.8 In 1897, the Rev. L. Price, concerned about the widespread interest in secular leisure activities, especially football matches, delivered a sermon in Pakefield Church in which he described ‘amusements’ as ‘devices of the devil’.9 Temperance campaigners were particularly fond of this rhetorical strategy. A pro-temperance piece published in The Liverpool Mercury described gin shops as the ‘Devil’s Ragged Schools’ and recommended visiting one ‘if you would be a dead weight on the public, and a cumberer of the ground’.10 It was not necessarily the activity itself which was diabolic but rather its social or religious consequences. As one writer, commenting on the morality of gambling, observed: ‘There is nothing radically bad in a game at billiards…the devil does not lurk in a pack of cards…It is in the combined effect of the general atmosphere of the place’.11 Diabolic language was also often purposefully hyperbolic. Even when a commentator was in earnest, the response was not always what they might have hoped. In 1878, Punch published a cartoon intended to ridicule middle-class philanthropists, which depicted a clergyman rebuking a working-class woman for ‘drinking again’, asking if she knew ‘where all the drinkers go to’. She replied that while she ‘could na say what ithers do…aye gae where…ah’ll get the best cheapest’.12 By the latter part of the century, the idea that recreation was inherently sinful had lost much of its currency.13 Price’s sermon was not well-received, with one newspaper article wondering, with more than a touch of humour, whether the reverend’s congregants ‘prefer[ed] attendance at local football matches to going to prayer meetings’ and concluding that, if so, ‘he must class them with Satan’s flock’.14

The Popular Devil  161 Despite leisure sometimes being conflated with diabolism, the Devil’s role in popular entertainment often did not conflict with his religious role. While drinking or gambling might be associated with the diabolic, it was uncommon for the Devil’s appearance in a joke or story to inspire anxiety in even the most devout. His interrelated appearances in popular culture and folklore demonstrate that it was common for humorous and entertaining portrayals of the diabolic to coexist fairly comfortably with serious ones. These appearances generally drew on and complimented his religious role. He retained a strong association with evil and negativity in almost every context, allowing diabolic references to serve as a powerful way of expressing condemnation or mockery.

The English Language The Devil pervaded English culture to such an extent that evicting him would have been a tall order. His ability to infiltrate numerous everyday situations is nowhere more evident than in the English language itself, which included a wide variety of diabolic words and expressions. While English was, by no means, a static entity and varied widely according to demographic, locality, and era, it was fairly united in a tendency to treat the Devil lightly. As Patrick Scott complained in an 1874 essay on the Devil: This spirit of taking things for granted, and consequent disbelief in an evil power, has been greatly fostered…by the…poetical or ludicrous ways in which the devil has been represented…in proverbs, in valentines, in colloquial expressions… He noted that it was only the Devil who was treated this way, stating that ‘God’s wrath and condemnation are called down by a swearer blasphemously, but not jestingly’.15 The Devil’s dual nature as an unpleasant and frightening, yet also ridiculous, figure made him a useful way of conveying a range of (generally negative) emotions. He provided an evocative way of expressing mockery. A person could communicate their ‘derision’ of ‘one oddlooking, filthy, or deformed’ by saying that they ‘look[ed] as if the Devil had shit’ them ‘flying’.16 The Devil was also used to express discontent, as is evident in expressions like ‘a/the Devil of a thing’, ‘gone to hell’, ‘the creation of the devil’, ‘the Deuce/Devil to pay’, or ‘the Devil’s delight’ (‘a noise or row’).17 Such expressions were sometimes used in humorous or ambiguous ways. The term ‘creation of the devil’ was often used as a joke, with one book commenting that ‘the insinuation that umbrellas are the creation of the devil to tempt otherwise honest men…is an unfailing DRAW’.18 Even describing someone as a devil was not necessarily an insult, with the term ‘little/young devil’ being ‘a half playful, half

162  The Popular Devil sarcastic, address’ used as ‘a term of endearment’.19 The use of the Devil in oaths, such as ‘go to the Devil’, ‘go to hell’, or ‘Deuce take you’, while generally serious, might also contain exaggeration and possibly humour, as evidenced by the fact that one guide to slang claimed that the compete version of ‘go to hell’ was ‘[g]o to hell and help the devil to make your mother into a bitch pie’. 20 Diabolic language also reflected the various qualities, objects, and ideas associated with the Devil, including immorality, fire, and intelligence. Dubious objects or activities were sometimes referred to in diabolic terms, with examples including ‘devil’s (picture) books’ (cards) and ‘to see the devil’ (‘to get tipsy’).21 The Devil was also frequently associated with fiery or destructive things. ‘Devil’s Dust’ was a slang term for gunpowder and the word ‘devil’ could be used to refer to ‘a grilled bone seasoned with mustard and cayenne’, ‘a species of firewood soaked in resin’, or ‘gin seasoned with capsicums’.22 The Devil’s reputed intelligence was reflected in the expression ‘the Devil doubt you’, meaning ‘I am not clever enough to dispute your theory’.23 Conversely, his reputed stupidity and bad luck were referenced in expressions such as ‘the Devil’s luck and my own’ (meaning that a person had ‘no luck whatever’). 24 This expression was ambiguous, as it could also mean ‘uncommon, or inexplicable, good fortune’. 25 The Devil, who was nothing if not capricious, was a fitting representation of the vagaries of the human condition. He signified the incongruous, uncomfortable, or uncanny. The proverb ‘the Devil helps beginners’ was sometimes used as a tongue-in-cheek explanation for a novice’s luck at cards, while the exclamation ‘What/Who/ When/Where/How the Devil’ was an ‘expletive’, which could be used to express ‘wonder’ or ‘vexation’.26 The Devil was sometimes invoked simply for emphasis, as in the use of ‘devilish’ or ‘deuced’ as an intensifier (i.e. ‘He’s a devilish good fellow’). 27 In this form, he satisfied the cultural need, identified by John S. Farmer in the epic, multi-volume work Slang and its Analogues Past and Present (1890–1904), ‘for impressive or graphic intensives, seen in the use of jolly, awfully, terribly, devilish, deuced, damned, ripping, rattling, thumping, stunning, thundering, etc.’. 28

Broadsides The Devil also featured in an array of texts consumed by the lower classes, playing an especially significant role in the broadside. Broadsides served as a prominent source of entertainment and news for the lower classes. 29 Until the mid-nineteenth century, broadsides and chapbooks constituted the majority of lower-class reading material.30 Broadsides were less prominent in the second half of the century and, by the 1880s, the editor of a collection of Modern Street Ballads (1888) could lament that ‘a new generation has arisen, who will not stop in the streets to

The Popular Devil  163 listen to these ballads being sung, but prefer to have their music served up to them “piping hot”, …at the Music Halls’.31 It is difficult to conduct a precise analysis of the significance of a particular topic in broadside history, as a very large percentage of surviving broadsides were preserved by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors, who tended to focus strongly on ballads and songs, omit advertising material, and favour the traditional ‘black letter’ Gothic typeface over the newer ‘white letter’ Roman typeface.32 Furthermore, nineteenth-century broadsides are still an under-researched topic. As Steve Roud has noted, while broadsides have ‘been attracting…scholarly attention in recent years’, the majority of academic work has focused on the late-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries.33 Nineteenth-century broadsides have also not been as thoroughly documented and catalogued as those from previous eras and, due to their dispersal into numerous collections, they are not always easily accessible.34 Nevertheless, it is possible, as Roud suggests, to shed light on ‘later street literature’ through ‘investigation at the micro level’.35 Such an investigation makes it clear that references to supernatural topics, including the Devil, were common, even in broadsides intended for an urban audience.36 Broadsides often played on the humorous possibilities inherent in the Devil’s duplicitous nature, especially his fondness for disguises and shape-shifting. The broadside ‘All Kinds of Devils’ attributed a long list of, often incompatible, qualities to the Devil, stating that he was ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘high’, ‘low’, and so on. Despite the fact that it rather menacingly stated that it would ‘prove’ that ‘the devil is every where [sic] to be found’, apart from a vague statement that he was ‘used to knocking things down’, the only malevolent activity he was depicted engaged in was pulling off doorknockers. In fact, when the Devil wanted ‘to have some fun’, he willingly returned ‘home’.37 ‘The Devil Disguised Himself for Fun’ had a similar theme, being primarily a long list of things that the Devil could be or do. While it was largely and purposely nonsensical, it did note that ‘comical devil’s [sic] will have a long run’, alluding to the prevalence and popularity of comic portrayals of the Devil. It also made it clear that the ‘devil’s a devil in all degrees’, emphasising the fact that readers were comfortable with the Devil’s shifting identity. Despite hinting that the Devil could do anything, it denied him any real power, stating the ‘Devil’s no prince, the devil’s nothing’ and ending with a mocking statement of: ‘Good night, good night, Mephistopheles’.38 Other broadsides had a more developed narrative, often centring on the trope of a mortal overcoming the Devil. Diabolic ballads often presented the Devil as a hapless figure, careening from crisis to crisis. In ‘The Devil and the Washerwomen’, the Devil went out for a walk disguised as ‘a Bond-street swell’ but, getting lost in a fog, fell into a kitchen full of washerwomen, who ‘seized him by the neck and heels, / And pitched him into the tub’. This treatment ruined his disguise but the women continued

164  The Popular Devil scrubbing him, beat him with a ‘whacking copper stick’, and doused him in ‘scalding water’, only allowing him to escape out of a window after he had given them a pint of gin. He was forced to abandon his tail, with the women using it to purchase more gin.39 ‘The Devil and Little Mike’, in which he attempted to abduct a small child but was killed by the boy’s family, also depicted the Devil as ineffective. Mike’s family was not particularly intimidating, as (apart from a father who was absent during the action) it consisted of a small boy named Mike, several sisters, and an old woman (presumably his grandmother). Despite her age, the woman gave the Devil ‘left and right’ and scalded him with boiling water. Mike’s ‘little sister Peg’ broke the Devil’s back with a wooden leg and his sister Sal beat him so badly that he died the following day. This event had sweeping consequences, with the ballad declaring: ‘And now we have nothing to dread, /Let your glasses sparkle bright, / For since the Devil is dead, / We can all do just as we like’.40 In ‘The Devil and Little Mike’, morality was effected by force, being contingent on the existence of the Devil and, presumably, eternal punishment. The existence of any real morality seemed dubious from the beginning of the ballad, as there was no indication that Little Mike deserved to be carried off by the Devil, who was himself so easily overcome that he hardly seemed capable of restricting anyone’s freedom. While ballads like ‘The Devil and the Washerwomen’ and ‘The Devil and Little Mike’ fit comfortably into the folkloric tradition of the Devil’s ineptitude, the latter also suggested that the lower classes were powerful enough to upend society. A sense of subversion was not uncommon in diabolic broadsides, although it was not always envisioned as positive, especially in examples which focused on gendered power relations. While there was, as in ‘The Devil and Little Mike’, humour in having the ‘weaker’ members of society best the Father of Evil, this scenario only remained harmless when it did not encroach on the power of human men. It might be pleasant to imagine throwing off moral strictures but the disruption or inversion of the gendered hierarchy could be nothing but disordered. The fine line between a determined mortal and a shrew was illustrated in ‘The Devil in Search of a Wife’, in which the Devil met a farmer who agreed to give him his ‘scolding wife’. She was not the bargain she appeared, proving so aggressive that she terrorised the Devil, declaring herself ruler of hell in a heightened example of domestic comedy. The ballad’s readers were left with a warning that women ‘rule it everywhere’.41 This warning was not completely serious. The nagging wife and the henpecked husband were stock comic figures, whose very existence revealed the scenario as ludicrous. It is significant that ‘A Queer Thing for a Husband to See’, which described a cuckolded husband whose wife made him do the housework, and some editions of ‘A Week’s Matrimony’, a misogynistic account of a disastrous marriage, recommended that they be sung to the tune of ‘The Devil in Search of a Wife’.42 A suggestive ballad entitled ‘The Devil’s

The Popular Devil  165 in the Girl’, which used a ‘very merry’ tune with the same title as the ballad as a euphemism for sexual activity, also linked the Devil with the topic of male-female relations. One fateful night, a ‘fair maid’ told her sweetheart that he could stay, provided he played ‘The Devil’s in the Girl’. Six months later, her mother noticed her daughter’s dress no longer fit, declaring: ‘O, daughter…the music made you swell./ Why, ’tis never good to play the tune – the devil’s in the girl’. This ballad was didactic as well as humorous, placing the blame squarely on the woman’s shoulders. When she met her beau a year later, he was contemptuous of her request that he marry her but, as she could not move on so easily, she warned other young women that: ‘There is a tune will please you, and ruin you as well/ So maids beware, don’t get too near – the devil’s in the girl’.43 ‘The Devil’s in the Girl’ confirmed gendered power relations and offered a warning to misbehaving women, reinforcing the Devil’s ability to act as a conservative force, even as he humorously subverted social mores. While the theme does not appear to have been particularly common, there were also a small number of broadsides which treated the diabolic as dangerous or, at least, invoked it solemnly. In a ballad version of the well-known story ‘The Babes in the Woods’, in which a wicked uncle left two children to die in the forest, the uncle suffered a horrifying form of divine retribution. It began with insomnia and progressed to his toes falling off, his teeth falling out, and the ghosts of his victims visiting him and tearing out his hair. Once he had ‘dwindled away to a mere bag of bones’, his house burnt down and, as they could find no ‘remnant’ of him and the rubble smelt ‘strongly of brimstone’, his neighbours concluded that he had been carried off by the Devil.44 It was more common, however, for broadsides which treated the Devil seriously to take the form of ‘true’ accounts. ‘Fortune Telling and its Results: A True and Remarkable Account of a most Extraordinary Occurrence that took place in this Neighbourhood’ related the ostensibly true experience of three young girls, who went to visit a fortune-teller (an ‘old hag’ with six black cats) to learn the identities of their future husbands. When ‘the poor deluded females were on the point of leaving’, the meeting was interrupted by the appearance of a ‘figure with head, legs, and a tail of the most enormous size’ and ‘eyes like flames of living fire’. The figure’s mouth emitted ‘dense volumes of smoke, completely filling the house; the smell of sulphur was so great that for hours after the visitation it was found impossible to dispel the suffocating fumes’. This unsettling story concluded with a solemn warning that fortune-telling was ‘silly and superstitious nonsense’, practised by ‘wicked old hags who prey on the thoughtless and ignorant’.45 ‘Fortune Telling and its Results’ is a good example of the interrelation of the written and oral records, with one folklorist recording the story of a young woman who, having been frightened by the Devil while engaging in divination, became a committed Wesleyan.46 A close relationship is also evident in the striking

166  The Popular Devil similarities between ‘The Devil in Search of a Wife’ and the folk song ‘The Farmer’s Curst Wife’, mentioned in Chapter 2.47 ‘Fortune Telling and its Results’ was not entirely serious. While the references to deluded women and perilous amounts of sulphur were ominous, the story was also somewhat comical. The young women were amusingly stupid and the fortune-teller was a caricature, assembled from the traditional imagery of the witch.48 There was not even a trace of humour in a broadside entitled ‘Wonderful, Just, & Terrible Judgement on a Blasphemer’, which detailed the experiences of a farmer, who ‘while in the act of blaspheming, was struck motionless, in which state he remained six weeks’. He experienced a powerful vision of hell, which he perceived as ‘an immense abyss in the earth…filled with an immense number of human forms, all writhing and twisting amidst the horrors of liquid fire’. Sometimes, ‘a troop of young demons could be seen putting some miserable wretch to horrible torture by tossing him about in the flames with forks, or pricking the skin and toe nails from his body’. He passed from hell to ‘a room at home’. An angel appeared, warning him that, having seen what awaited ‘wicked blasphemers’, he ought to mend his ways. He was understandably more religious when he awoke. The broadside also included a poem, supposedly penned by the ‘unhappy sinner’ himself, in which he described visions of God and Satan sitting on their respective thrones. It positioned the reader squarely within a traditional Christian worldview, in which the individual was caught in the crosshairs of a battle between good and evil. While it presented the farmer’s tale as true, its truth or falsity was subordinate to its social purpose, namely discouraging undesirable behaviour.49 The world presented in this broadside contrasted sharply with the one depicted in ballads like ‘The Devil and Little Mike’. Its Devil was neither humorous nor personal, being, for all his dangerous malevolence, a remote figure. 50 Humanity could barely interact with him and certainly not on equal terms. Attempting to fight or bargain would be like trying to avert a natural disaster through sheer willpower. Broadsides like ‘Wonderful, Just, & Terrible Judgement on a Blasphemer’ can be situated within a small group, which had a definite religious or moral purpose. For instance, ‘The Wesleyan Army at War with the Devil’ was a strident and optimistic ballad, which detailed the efforts of the ‘Wesleyan Army’ to overcome the Devil and reform society. Victory was certain, as ‘thousands’ had left ‘the arch enemy’s cause’ and, while the Devil was the ultimate adversary, his power was so limited that he was in dread of the approach of the army, who were ‘ready for action, and mighty in prayer’. Battling the Devil was still a dangerous enterprise and the army needed to maintain vigilance against moral ‘danger’. Every aspect of church activity was presented as part of a well-oiled military machine, allowing Wesleyan chapels to function as

The Popular Devil  167 ‘garrisons’ where the faithful could enjoy ‘a peaceful retreat’ from ‘Satan’s vile children’.51 ‘The Bad Bargain; Or, The World Set Up to Sale’ was less optimistic, offering a stark warning about the temptations of the Devil, who had ‘baits for souls in both hands’. ‘The Wesleyan Army’ and ‘The Bad Bargain’ both recommended constant vigilance but, in the latter, the emphasis was on personal rather than communal struggle, as the only remedy for temptation was to ‘refuse to sin’.52 The theme of temptation was also touched on in the ballad ‘In the Days When I Was Hard Up’, which described the miseries of extreme poverty but entreated the reader to ‘wear’ their ‘ragged coat…like a man’ and follow the example of the narrator, who ‘beat the devil down’ when he tempted him ‘to steal’.53 This ballad, which survives in many different editions, seems to have been widely distributed. It may even have been effective, as, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was quoted by a ‘gutter merchant’ (‘itinerant vendor’), who used it to illustrate the fact that he was an upstanding citizen despite his poverty.54 The Devil also functioned as a marker indicating religious error. He made a small appearance in ‘The Puseyite Parson’, a scaremongering condemnation of High Church parsons. This broadside was especially condemnatory of Brian King, a High Churchman who served an unpopular term as an incumbent of the London parish of St. George’s.55 King was represented as a contemptible figure, with the writer wishing to ‘pack him’ and all other Puseyites ‘to the devil’. The ballad both disempowered and elevated King, presenting him as pathetic but also exaggerating the significance and scope of the conflict, suggesting that there was a danger he might take the Church of England to the Devil with him.56 ‘The Priest in Absolution’, a cartoon condemning the use of the confessional and conflating ritualism with ‘popery’ and diabolism, was especially emphatic.57 The confessional, which had been adopted by a small number of High Church clergymen, was a source of especial concern to Low Church Anglicans, as many worried that priests might corrupt or abuse women by asking them sexually explicit questions.58 The broadside’s title was a reference to the ‘notorious’ High Church confession manual The Priest in Absolution (1866, 1870), especially the second volume, which included passages instructing priests on the correct way to make enquiries ‘respecting violations of the Law of Purity’.59 ‘The Priest in Absolution’ featured several illustrations, with the largest, entitled ‘The Devil Instructing the Society for the Diffusion of Vice’, depicting the Devil preaching from the pulpit to a crowd of tonsured clergymen. The Devil instructed his ‘brethren’ to ‘go forth & sow the seeds of vice & immorality amongst your flock…deprave the minds of the young & innocent: with vile questions & suggestions. Turn chaste women into wantons’.60 This image was humorous but it also emphasised the dangers of religious misbehaviour, implying that it was worse than worldly corruption.

168  The Popular Devil The Devil also occasionally featured in broadsides with a temperance theme. ‘The Temperance Alphabet’ included the line: ‘A Stands for Alcohol, a demon like name, / Invented by devils men’s minds to inflame’.61 A ballad entitled ‘Rail-Road to Hell, from Dissipation to Poverty, and from Poverty to Desperation’ set the scene by warning readers that: ‘If you are determined and wishful to go, / With blind debauchees to the regions of woe, / Then go to the Tap without any delay’. If a person avoided ‘Brandy, Ale, Porter, or Gin’, they could ‘ride into Heaven with joy’. The ‘Rail-Road to Hell’ presented temperance as an essential element in a spiritual battle between good and evil, adding to its fantastical atmosphere by listing the wondrous figures and creatures, such as lions, dragons, warriors, kings, and angels, commemorated in the names of English pubs. Attempts at solemnity or didacticism were, however, undercut by the fact that it then continued: ‘But what’s their design? Why Gin, Rum, and Wine, / Sold here to intoxicate puppies and swine’. The ‘Rail-Road to Hell’ combined an undercurrent of humour, with disquieting hints that hell might exist as much on Earth as in the spiritual realm, encouraging readers to dwell on depressing visuals, such as ‘poor sorry women who pledge their old rags’ to obtain money for drink.62 The same printer also published a ballad entitled ‘The Railway to Heaven’, which, like its companion, aided its commercial viability by affecting a ‘broadly evangelical’ tone without declaring allegiance to any particular denomination.63 The Devil also played a small role in crime broadsides, generally as a shadowy figure serving as an explanation for human evil. Crime broadsides, which were often sold at public executions and generally included a lurid ballad concerning the crime in question and, in many cases, a ‘last lamentation’ supposedly written by the condemned, were so numerous that Ellen O’Brien describes them as ‘the most sustained poetic and aesthetic treatment of crime in the Victorian era’.64 They were a favourite of street sellers, who dealt in ‘murders, seductions, crim.-cons., explosions, alarming accidents…deaths of public characters, duels, and love letters’.65 The Devil served as a tempter in ‘The Life, Trial, Execution, Lamentation, and Letter written by the unfortunate man James Ward, Aged 25, who was hung in front of the Gaol, For the Wilful Murder he committed on the body of his wife, near Edminton’, which included a poem in which Ward claimed that Satan had ‘beguiled’ him.66 Stephen Forward, who murdered his wife, daughter, and three children belonging to his mistress, stated that ‘he with Satan did connive’.67 J. R. Jeffrey, who hung his son, declared: ‘Satan’s doubts they filled my mind, / Which led me to this dreadful crime’.68 The ‘Execution of the Warwickshire Murderer, George Gardener, For shooting his sweetheart, Sarah Kirby’ was especially emphatic with Gardener stating: ‘It was cursed Satan led me astray, / It was Satan tempted me one day, /It was

The Popular Devil  169 Satan prompted my guilty mind, /So slay Sarah Kirby both good and kind’.69 The Devil could not, however, bear all of the blame and the horror inspired by a murderer was often heightened by conflating them with the demonic. Jeffrey’s thoughts leading up to the murder were ‘fiendish’ and J. W. Leigh, who shot his sister-in-law, was not only ‘by Satan led’, but also ‘looked just like a demon’.70 A tendency to sin and a higher than usual susceptibility to temptation played a key role in the creation of a murderer and also served to establish them as a breed apart. Another broadside about Jeffrey traced his actions back to sexual misbehaviour, noting that he and wife had separated and entered into new ‘illicit’ relationships. This situation ‘disturbed’ Jeffrey’s ‘mind’ and opened it up to ‘Satan’s doubts’.71 The murderer was, in some cases, presented as a particularly dire warning against misbehaviour, emphasising the ability of broadside literature to serve as a conservative force, even if its routine transfiguration of extreme social transgression into popular entertainment was also somewhat subversive. The ‘Execution of the Warwickshire Murderer’ urged ‘young men and maidens’ to ‘take a warning by my fate’ and put their faith in their ‘Saviour who reigns above’.72 ‘Henry Wainwright’s History and Confession: An Epic Poem Written in Prison’, concerning Wainwright’s murder of his mistress Harriet Lane, was especially rich in religious symbolism. His transgression of sexual mores was presented in heightened, spiritual terms, with Wainwright declaring: ‘My prospects, conscience, my home, my true and loving bride; /All were swept headlong in Satan’s deep, dark, rolling tide’. The moment of Lane’s death served as a threshold, beyond which Wainwright became a faithless outcast, stating: ‘She died. Then felt I as no words can express;/ Alone! no man my friend. No God to look on me, / No hope of heaven’. His alienation manifested in a dream, in which the spirit of Harriet Lane took him ‘by the hand’ and pulled him into hell. Wainwright’s condition was voluntary, being based on a pathological sense of self-reliance. He was saved when he finally realised that all he has to do was repent and put himself in the hands of God, who could ‘crush the devil’s power’.73 Religious references helped to situate socially disruptive events within a broader cosmic worldview. They explained the inexplicable and, to an extent, eased the brutality of a murder, helping to make the broadside’s extensive descriptions of human evil fascinating rather than terrifying. Gardener was, according to the broadside account, a peeping tom, who, when a maidservant resisted his advances and refused to give him extra beer, shot her ‘in the back of the neck’. In the broadside, he could strike a balance between being a cold-blooded murderer and the sort of person who would write a poem confessing his guilt and begging for forgiveness for twelve stanzas.74 Mentions of the Devil can be situated within a tradition of using the diabolic as a way of identifying and appropriately condemning social and moral deviance. Diabolic language was not confined

170  The Popular Devil to broadsides and seems to have been a fairly common way of accounting for criminal actions, although it may have sometimes been rhetorical rather than literal. An article published in The Times in 1837 stated that a father, who had drowned both of his children, ‘could assign no other reason, except the devil urging him on to do it’.75 A miner, who stole from the Albion Lodge of Odd Fellows, claimed that the Devil tempted him and one judge was so outraged by a man, who had mistreated and killed a horse, that he declared his actions difficult to understand unless ‘the devil had entered into him’.76 The role of hyperbole should not be underestimated. In the mid-nineteenth century, a broadside seller stated that ‘the public looks to us for the last words of all monsters in human form’. It was necessary for broadsides to transform a new and interesting murderer into a ‘fiend’, as the saleability of crime broadsides had as much to do with the appeal of a fictionalised version of the murderer as it did with their real actions. As one patterer noted, ‘there’s so long to wait between the murder and the trial, that unless the fiend in human form keeps writing beautiful love-letters, the excitement can’t be kept up’.77 Broadsides used the tropes of melodrama, juxtaposing idealised versions of good and evil. Gardener may have been ‘a very great blackguard and a sot’ but Kirby was ‘a very good-looking, well-conducted, pious girl’.78 There was, as O’Brien has noted, something more than a little rote in the way ‘moral advice’ was presented in crime broadsides, with morality often being ‘secondary to or dwarfed by the act of murder’.79 There were also a small subset of broadsides which used the Devil as a symbol of human immorality. The ‘Corn Merchant’s Prayer’, ostensibly used by unscrupulous corn-merchants, addressed itself to ‘Fiends, Furies, Harpies, Hellhounds! Demons all, / Who plague Mankind, or blast this earthly Ball’.80 This ballad is comparable, at least in tone, to ‘The Disappointment of the Black Club’, a Norwich ballad in which a group of coal sellers, who had ‘neither conscience nor souls’, met to discuss raising the price of coal. Their plans were disrupted, when the Devil appeared and announced that he intended to carry them away to hell. As Karl Bell has noted, ballad themes varied by area and often reflected local concerns. As Norwich experienced high rates of poverty during the first half of the century, it is significant that, rather than targeting ‘large manufacturers’, ‘The Disappointment of the Black Club’ focused on the ‘small shopkeepers and traders’ its audience would have encountered directly and relied upon for the necessities of life.81 The Devil also made an oblique appearance in the ‘Death of the Russian Emperor’, a ballad celebrating the death of Nicholas I, which declared: ‘Let Britons rejoice, while Russian serfs mourn, / He is gone to a place whence he cannot return’.82 The ‘Death of the Russian Emperor’ is similar to ‘The Disappointment of the Black Club’, in the sense that it reflected contemporary concerns, although it focused on national rather than local or class-based interests.

The Popular Devil  171

Other Cheap Reading Matter While the Devil’s role was particularly marked in the broadside, he appeared in a range of cheap reading matter. In the 1870s, he featured in a pamphlet entitled The Devil: A Satanic Satire, which was unusual in that it claimed to have been written by the Devil himself. It contained various short articles with titles like ‘The Devil on Drink’ or ‘The Devil on Debauchery’ and its general tone is illustrated by Satan’s opening salvo: Once again am I amongst my Christian (?)…disciples…and from their ranks do I pick forth those who are destined to be my apostles upon earth. Me-thought that London had become purer in its morals…but my fears proved groundless… While The Devil was religious in tone, it was more concerned with social than individual morality, insisting that the poor should be treated ‘like people who have souls to be saved’. It also made some concessions to its readers’ desire for entertainment, including the first part of a story entitled ‘The Devil’s Dew; A Zoophytical Horror’.83 The second issue was similar in tone, with the Devil ominously promising to be there every week, ‘pointing out your Follies and your Sins’. It also made an effort to comment on significant news stories and included some jokes (i.e. ‘What is the difference between some people and other people? Some wear white neck-cloths and tell lies, and others tell lies and wear white neckcloths’).84 The Devil seems to have either continued or been reprinted, at least intermittently, for over a decade. In 1873, a correspondent for the Liverpool Mercury encountered a hawker selling it for a penny.85 It was not uncommon to invoke the Devil to emphasise the importance of a political or moral issue. An 1838 pamphlet, entitled The Ghost of John Bull, or the Devil’s Railroad: A Marvellously Strange Narrative, detailed the posthumous adventures of John Bull, who had died from sheer horror at the immorality of his country. He encountered a runaway train carrying a railway director, an unprincipled politician, an assistant Poor Law commissioner, a theatre manager, who only produced bad plays, and an ill-tempered personification of ‘Blunt Humanity’. The Devil appeared and decided that, based on social merit, most of the passengers could leave but the politician and the Poor Law commissioner would have to remain behind in ‘the valley of death’.86 The Devil was unusually serious and its subject was treated far less solemnly when he featured on the cover of a similar publication, entitled Lucifer or the London Lamplighter (1875). He was at his most bestial, sporting horns, wings, a tail, pointed ears, and sharp teeth. His potential to frighten was negated by the fact that he was dancing with a butterfly winged fairy, who an accompanying poem revealed he was courting. He claimed that, as they both had wings, they had a great deal in common

172  The Popular Devil and promised her ‘devilled kidneys’, if she would accompany him to hell. Lucifer, which assured its readers that it had no ‘political bias’, contained a motley assortment of poetry, jokes, anecdotes, and opinion pieces.87 Lucifer was fairly characteristic of the Devil’s role in cheap reading material, presenting him as humorous but only vaguely defined. The casualness with which he was often treated is also evident in the small but whimsical appearances he made in a variety of chapbooks. He was unintimidating in Punch’s Riddles, which asked: ‘If the devil were to lose his tail where would he go in search of a new one?’ Answer: ‘the nearest gin-shop, because there they re-tail the worst of spirits’.88 The Devil was slightly more threatening in The Royal Albert Toast Master: A Collection of Upwards of Two Thousand Toasts, of which he was mentioned in three, namely: ‘All who act fair, and may the devil burn our enemies’, ‘May the devil never pay visits abroad, nor receive company at home’, and ‘May we strive to avoid law as we would the Devil’.89 Any threat was mitigated by the obviously humorous undertone. The Devil was not always portrayed in a humorous manner. For instance, the story of Doctor Faustus was a popular classic, widely distributed in chapbooks.90 Even a genuinely ominous treatment was, however, often simply a different form of entertainment. This facet of the Devil’s personality was demonstrated by his occasional appearances in the cheap, serialised fiction often referred to as penny bloods or penny dreadfuls.91 Serials played a significant role in the reading habits of the Victorian lower classes, having become commercially viable due to improving literacy rates and early nineteenth-century advances in printing and paper manufacturing technology.92 The cheap serial represented a significant break from the chapbook, in the sense that it was not designed to be kept but rather read for a short time and replaced.93 Intended to be habit-forming, it used lurid titles and engravings to grab the attention of prospective customers.94 The plots were also lurid and often included elements of the gothic, with writers attempting to attract and maintain an audience by creating sensational, sometimes supernatural, characters.95 The most significant use of diabolic themes by a penny blood writer is found in the novels of G. W. M. Reynolds. The sheer popularity of his novels means that they played an important role in both the history of the penny blood and the place of the Devil in the English imagination. In 1868, he was described by The Bookseller as ‘the most popular writer in England’.96 He was both prolific and distinctive, producing an extensive body of work, which combined sensationalism, sentimentalism, radical politics, and pornography, and allowed him to take his place alongside the prolific Edward Lloyd as one of the most successful publishers of cheap fiction in early to mid-nineteenth-century England.97 While Reynolds was from an upper-middle-class background, his stories, which included fifty-eight novels, were aimed at and most popular among working- and lower-middle-class readers.98

The Popular Devil  173 Three of his fifty-eight novels included a strong diabolic element. The first, a gothic reworking of the Faust legend entitled Faust: A Romance, was serialised in the London Journal between 1845 and 1846.99 Set in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, it centred on Faust, depicted as a hapless student who was imprisoned and faced execution after falling in love with Theresa, ‘the only daughter and heiress of the Lord of Rosenthal’. He managed to save his life by selling his soul to Satan and the addition of the soul of his first born son ensured that he was able to marry Theresa. His devotion proved short-lived, as he proceeded to fall in love with more than one new woman, although, in one case, his ardour cooled abruptly when he realised that the object of his affections was the murderous Lucrezia Borgia. He attempted to cheat the Devil by switching his son Maximillian with the daughter of a neighbour and raising the girl as his own, although his plan was later complicated when the children grew up and fell in love. Thankfully, his friend Otto managed to climb Mount Ararat and retrieve the only object, which could break Satan’s power over Maximillian, namely a sliver of ‘sacred gopher-wood’ from Noah’s Ark. The lovers married but Faust was carried away to hell.100 Despite the fantastical plot, Reynolds grounded his story in a recognisable historical setting and seemed more concerned with social than supernatural factors. Faust’s sale of his soul was essentially a business deal, gaining him the material advantage of a rich wife, and the ensuing supernatural chaos was comparable to any form of dysfunction caused by excessive greed or ambition.101 Faust was followed by Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1846), which was serialised in and helped to launch the periodical Reynolds’s Miscellany.102 Using keen business acumen, Reynolds included a plethora of sensational and sexual content, including topless, self-flagellating nuns.103 Wagner, which also used a historical setting, detailed the extensive misadventures of the elderly Fernand Wagner, who Faust gifted with youth and wealth. This gift proved to be a double-edged sword, as he was also cursed to endure a monthly transformation into a werewolf. His life was further complicated when he fell in love with the aristocratic, murderous, and stereotypically Italian Nisida. While she returned his passion, Nisida was sometimes distracted by her plans to prevent her brother from marrying a poor but virtuous servant. The story also incorporated banditti, the Spanish Inquisition, and intrigue in Constantinople. Eventually, following a series of mishaps, Wagner and Nisida became stranded on a deserted island, where they enjoyed a prolonged idyll marred only by a vicious anaconda, Wagner’s periodical transformations into a wolf, and the Devil’s attempts to persuade him to sell his soul. While Nisida, who was tiring of the island, was in favour of the deal, Wagner’s better nature eventually won out. Neither survived the story but, as Nisida repented at the last moment, they both made it to heaven.104 Wagner is an unusual novel in that it ‘reverses the conventional values of melodrama’,

174  The Popular Devil presenting a female protagonist who is so aggressive and decisive that she inverts normal standards of gendered behaviour and two characters, who, despite engaging in multiple morally dubious actions, escape retribution.105 It was emblematic of the way in which even the Devil’s association with the policing of morality could be used for pure entertainment, with the morality itself serving as, at best, a secondary consideration. Reynolds’ third diabolic novel, entitled The Necromancer: A Romance, was serialised in Reynold’s Miscellany between 1851 and 1852. Set during the reign of Henry VIII, it chronicled the adventures of the villainous Lord Danvers, who had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for 150 years of ‘life, and power, and riches’, and the beautiful but icy Musidora, who he wooed in the form of Henry VIII. The story opened during a difficult period in Danvers’ life, as his time had almost elapsed and the only way that he could avoid being carried away to hell was to collect the souls of six maidens and exchange them for his own. He had already acquired five and was keen to finalise his project. Over the years, he had also collected an assortment of enemies, with more than one family swearing eternal vengeance against him after his abduction of a female relative. He set his sights on Musidora but she evaded his grasp, although they did have a child, who he later attempted to give to Satan. Danvers struck a balance between being a stock gothic villain and a more complex character. His actions were grandiose and undeniably evil but, towards the end of the story, he also exhibited genuine repentance, admitting that he had loved each of his victims. Seeing his contrition, Musidora urged him to repent but, believing it was too late, he damned himself.106 While Reynold’s novels contained literal manifestations of demonic power, they also equated human wickedness with supernatural evil. His imagery was dramatic, incorporating the heightened language common to the gothic genre, and his use of diabolic tropes was simply a way of providing emphasis and creating an atmosphere of strong emotionality. He was also keen to establish that evil could be material as well as spiritual. Reynolds was an atheist, with strong opinions on an array of controversial topics, including religious misbehaviour and the rights of women and the poor, and his fiction often reflected his views.107 His lack of religious belief allowed him to use spiritual ideas as inconsequential props and to envision the world as potentially a hell in its own right. In one of Wagner’s final scenes, a convert to Islam responded to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition by declaring that it would be better to die ‘than…dwell amongst a race of incarnate fiends, calling themselves Christians’.108 Reynolds frequently ascribed diabolic evil to individuals. He described Nisida as a ‘fiend’ who exhibited ‘demoniac rage’ and, when Satan lost the ability to tempt Wagner directly, she assumed his role, urging her lover to sell his soul.109 Danvers was also often described in diabolic terms. He had a face like ‘a fallen angel’, which, in

The Popular Devil  175 unguarded moments, became ‘inhuman’, ‘unnatural’, and ‘diabolic’.110 Like the Devil, he concealed his horror with a pleasing shape. Reynolds drew on Miltonic tropes, which implied that there was only a thin line between Lucifer’s angelic perfection and Satan’s ugliness. His conflation of human and diabolic evil was enhanced by the fact that his Satan was a relatively human figure. He appeared to Faust in the shape of a man and, apart from ‘an infernal smile of scorn’, there was ‘nothing terrible’ about him.111 He also wore a ‘human shape’ when he manifested to Wagner, conveying his supernatural nature through his extranormal abilities and fear of the cross.112 His appearance was still only a façade, which disguised ‘terrors’ so ‘ineffable’ that they defied description by the ‘human pen’.113 The Devil’s ‘terrors’ were, however, too obscure to be particularly intrusive. Reynolds’ use of exotic historical settings was a common gothic trope, which allowed him to present an active, personalised Devil as an outré historical reference, contrasting the mysterious irrationality of the past with the prosaicness of the present.114

Live Entertainment The Devil also appeared in a variety of live entertainments. He was a traditional character in the Punch and Judy show, which had, by the nineteenth century, become an iconic part of English popular culture.115 It was so well known that an article published in an 1872 edition of All the Year Round stated that every inhabitant of ‘a large town must be tolerably familiar with the shrill squeak and absurd appearance of the performers going through their various parts’.116 The plot centred on Punch and Judy’s marital discord. In the most common storyline, Judy, after some sparring, left Punch to take care of their baby. He performed this task very badly, to put it mildly, becoming fed up and throwing the baby out of the window. When Judy returned, she was so incensed that she began to beat her husband with a stick. He retaliated, beating her to death, flinging her body from the stage, and bursting into celebratory song. After dealing violently with a succession of further characters, he was sentenced to death but escaped when he tricked the hangman into putting his own head in the noose. The Devil appeared to carry him away but proved no match for his quarry, who lifted his body up on a stick before disappearing ‘below with an extra squeaking flourish of victory’.117 In some cases, this feat was preceded by a scene in which Punch deceived the Devil by passing the hangman’s corpse off as his own.118 At the start of the period, the Devil appears to have been fairly central to the plot, with the poet Robert Southey stating that the show included four characters: Punch, Judy, the Doctor/ Constable, and the Devil.119 The potential cast was actually extensive and highly variable, with an article published in Chamber’s Journal in 1882 stating that the original characters were:

176  The Popular Devil Punch, Scaramouch, the Baby…a Courtier…a Servant, a Blind Beggarman, a Constable, a Police Officer, Jack Ketch [the hangman], Sathanas – sometimes called the Rooshan Bear, to spare the sensibilities of the audience – Toby the dog, Hector the horse, Judy, and Pretty Polly…Any public character was also introduced, from Bonaparte, or the candidate at an election, down to Joe Grimaldi. A ghost was also ‘added to the original version, but that awful sheeted Being now sometimes remains in the shades below’. Some shows included ‘a Distinguished Foreigner called in to minister to the vulgar contempt for “foreigners”’ and ‘a certain Jones’, who fought with Punch over the ownership of Toby the dog.120 In 1887, a Punch and Judy man gave the cast as: Punch, Judy, Baby, Beadle, Alligator, Clown, Master, Ghost, Prizefighter, Hangman, and ‘Nigger’.121 Despite this bewildering variety of characters, the drama’s ‘main elements’ were ‘always the same’ – ‘Punch and Judy’, an ‘upright theatre frame’, and a ‘box of limp grotesque puppets’.122 The Devil was only one character among many and certainly not indispensable to the plot. He became especially marginal in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when, as the result of a process of sanitisation, ‘the coarser elements of the original’ were often ‘omitted’.123 The fact that he appeared ‘not as a tempter, but as a Nemesis’ was emblematic of the Punch and Judy show’s rejection of social and moral authority, whether in the form of family ties, legal boundaries, or spiritual justice.124 A commentator writing in 1869 remarked on the casual attitude of passers-by who, stopping on the street to watch a Punch and Judy show, observed with perfect equanimity a succession of ‘brutal’ murders, ‘accompanied by reckless derision on the part of the murderer, an uncouth being, whose form and voice seem to separate him from the rest of mankind’.125 The fact that Punch existed at a remove from the everyday world rendered his monstrosity tolerable, perhaps even admirable.126 Another writer noted that ‘most of us are excessively amused with his unscrupulous fun; we rejoice in all the hard resounding knocks he gives and takes on his wooden head, and everybody applauds his unique triumph’. Punch was ‘studiously rough and ugly’ but also joyous and liberating.127 He was an amoral character, living in a world which was, at best, indifferent to his actions. In the Punch and Judy show, ‘vice’ always triumphed over ‘virtue’.128 The Devil was a conservative force, operating on the side of virtue or, at least, order, attempting to prevent Punch’s misdeeds from going unpunished. Watching Punch vanquish every form of social or moral constraint could serve as a form of vicarious, if extreme, wish-fulfilment.129 A Punch man, interviewed by Henry Mayhew in the mid-nineteenth century, stated that Punch and Judy was ‘one of the most moral plays…for it stops Satan’s career of life, and then we can all do as we likes afterwards’.130 Apart from a skewed view of

The Popular Devil  177 morality, this assertion demonstrated the thin line between chaos and freedom. It was probably tongue-in-cheek, as the showman also stated that Punch was ‘a chap as won’t stand much nonsense from other people, because his morals are true, just, right, and sound; although he does kill his wife and baby, knock down the Beadle, Jack Ketch, and the Grand Signor, and puts an end to the very devil himself’.131 Any possibility of wish-fulfilment was, however, vexed by the show’s ambiguity, as, while it did depict the destruction of social mores, it also presented their destruction in such a grotesque and exaggerated way that it rendered the very idea ridiculous.132 Ultimately, the show owed most of its popularity to its ‘marvellous mixture of comedy and tragedy’.133 The puppets were ‘grotesque’ and the plot was ‘rapid’ and lively, incorporating plenty of ‘impudent jokes and horse-play’.134 In short, it was fun. Punch’s antics were not always regarded with equanimity. An article published in 1882 stated that ‘while the crowd gathers, staring at the upright box…a still greater number fly from the unknown tongue in supreme disdain. – Punch and Judy is…only what common people like’.135 Punch may have been immune to the law and the Devil but he could not vanquish respectability and, by the latter half of the century, he had been largely reduced to performing for children, often at private parties.136 It had also became increasingly difficult to make a living performing Punch and Judy shows and, by 1887, there were only fifteen Punch and Judy men left in London.137 Their marginalisation was partially a consequence of the increasing regulation of popular amusements, which resulted in a general deterioration in the earning potential of street performances.138 By the 1880s, the ‘most profitable’ Punch and Judy shows were taking place in private homes and, by the late 1890s, the show seems to have been largely confined to ‘country fairs, market days, and private gardens’.139 The drive to domesticate Punch and Judy was, as Karl Bell has noted, ‘part of a broader trend towards the sanitisation of violence and the supernatural in later nineteenth-century popular entertainment’.140 The Devil was often replaced by a variety of creative alternatives. Mayhew’s informant revealed that, to spare the sensibilities of the ‘gennelfolks’, he usually called his Devil puppet ‘Spring-heeled Jack’ or the ‘Roosian Bear’. This substitution altered the entire course of the show, as, when the puppet was referred to as the Devil, ‘it ain’t continued long…the figure being too frightful’. Apart from Spring-heeled Jack and the ‘Roosian Bear’, alternatives to the Devil included a ghost and ‘a…crocodile’.141 Sometimes, even these ambiguous substitutions were omitted. In 1895, an article published in The Strand Magazine observed that Punch and Judy shows often concluded ‘with a “nigger” song, or something of that nature’.142 The combat with the Devil had become so superfluous that the writer doubted it was ever included anymore, especially as ‘it was apt to harrow the feelings of the little ones’.143 Even when the Devil did appear in the ‘drawing-room’ Punch and Judy show,

178  The Popular Devil he was often reduced to ‘that terrible bugbear of childhood – Bogey’ and seems to have defeated Punch.144 The Devil also featured in several popular marionette shows, providing supernatural intrigue and an excuse for pyrotechnic effects. One of the most popular supernatural marionette plays was based on The Bottle Imp, a story dating back to 1828. Inspired by the Arabian Nights, it related the tale of the eponymous bottle imp, who was obliged to carry out the wishes of whoever owned his bottle. The catch was that the bottle’s owner had to sell it for a lower price than they had paid for it or they would be carried off by the Devil. The play owed much of its popularity to a liberal use of ‘scenic’ and ‘pyrotechnic’ effects, with the imp, which was generally dressed in green, with wings, horns, and a ‘demon’s face’, providing a further spectacle.145 The Children in the Wood, which was also performed as a marionette show, concluded with angels carrying the children away to heaven, while their uncle was dragged down to hell amidst fireworks and smoke.146 The Devil’s presence in the marionette show signified little beyond an attempt to attract attention. The same motivation frequently accounted for his presence in other forms of cheap entertainment. The Bottle Imp was also performed by a portable theatre company known as Old Wild’s and by ‘strolling actors’ who made sure to include ‘plenty of blue fire’.147 The dialogue employed by the ‘strolling actors’ was too humorous to support a serious moral, with the sorry end of the bottle’s last owner being somewhat softened by the play’s final lines of: ‘For shame, you ugly devil! to treat the old gentleman like that! Won’t I tell your mother!’148 The Devil was also used as a byword for the unusual or daring. There was more than one troupe of street acrobats known as The Demons or Demon Brothers.149 The Devil also featured extensively on a mid-century handbill for a ‘New Exhibition of Fancy Glass Working in Miniature’, which informed potential visitors that they could see ‘many curious, entertaining, and droll subjects’, including ‘Buona-parte, and his satanic Majesty at marbles’ and ‘a fine Brood of young Belzebubs, and the old Ones feeding them with worms’. They could also, however, view ‘the Triumph of Bacchus’ and ‘John and Molly kissing under the Misletoe [sic] Bush’.150 The supernatural (religious and otherwise) mingled freely with the mundane and, as long as they provided a spectacle, their meaning was roughly equivalent. The Devil could also be genuinely threatening or subversive. He sometimes played a part in Guy Fawkes Day celebrations, combining his ability to create a spectacle with his ability to convey public opprobrium or provide knockabout humour. The first recorded case of the Devil being burnt in effigy on the fifth of November dates from 1625. In that instance, his presence communicated disapproval of Charles I’s marriage to a Catholic princess but the general model was versatile enough to

The Popular Devil  179 be adapted to almost any figure or event.151 During an interview with the journalist Henry Mayhew, a mid-century Guy Fawkes Man, who traipsed around on the fifth of November exhibiting a Guy, was at pains to point out that, while ‘the majority of the boys make their’n devils, and as ugly as they can…that wouldn’t do for Christians like as I represent mine to be’. Despite his strict moral standards, one year he exhibited figures of the Russian emperor and his adviser the Devil, who had ‘green tinsel paper cut out like scale armour, and pasted on to his legs’, as well as ‘a devil’s mask’, and ‘a pair of horns’. To complete this wholesome and Christian picture, the Guy Fawkes Man added a banner reading: ‘What shall I do next?’/ ‘Why, blow your brains out!’ Mayhew also encountered ‘a party of costermongers’, who had an ‘image of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias wabbling on their truck’, as they sang: ‘Poke an ingun in his eye - / A squib shove up his nose, sirs;/ Then roast him till he’s done quite brown, / And Nick to old Nick goes, sirs’.152 Sometimes, a child would be dressed up and exhibited as a Guy, with one youth recalling being outfitted as a devil with a paper-apron adorned with tinsel and a horned, red-cheeked ‘devil’s mask’. He recommended the use of a horned mask, as it looked impressive and was likely to frighten people.153 Fear was both expected and desirable. Guy Fawkes Day had long been associated with the more chaotic and violent aspects of folk custom, with celebrations in various parts of the country, including things like rampaging gangs of costumed youths and flaming tar barrels.154 The Devil was a relatively safe way of providing a little disorder.

The Supernatural as Entertainment He was not completely harmless and there were a subset of activities in which he was a more obtrusive presence. In 1844, an article published in Charles Ainsworth’s Magazine observed that [w]ith some persons, truth and reason are weak…[t]o be terrified is, to them, a luxury…The ascending-scale of their pleasure is a wedding, a funeral, a murder, and a ghost.155 An anti-superstition pamphlet, published in 1864, argued that a ‘Love of the Marvellous’ was a universal but primitive human quality, which manifested in nineteenth-century Britain as ‘numberless volumes of phantom literature’ and ‘the fearful shrinking of the timid at the mention of the cloven foot, of Spring-Heeled Jack’.156 As this pamphlet recognised, a love of ‘phantom literature’ could coexist with a genuine fear of encountering the supernatural.157 While it is fundamentally artificial to treat popular belief and the more commercial aspects of popular culture as though they were separate entities, the Devil’s multi-layered personality and wide recognisability rendered him especially ambiguous, capable of being harmless or dangerous, meaningful or meaningless.

180  The Popular Devil The most remarkable intersection of diabolic belief and popular entertainment was the case of Spring-heeled Jack, a bogeyman who made the Devil look straightforward. Spring-heeled Jack was first reported on the fringes of London in 1837 and 1838 but managed to thoroughly infiltrate the English imagination, being spotted throughout the century and inspiring a host of creative works, including plays and penny dreadfuls.158 Initial descriptions, in which he was variously stated to resemble a ghost, a bear, a bull, and a devil, drew on folkloric traditions of shape-shifting entities such as fairies, witches, and demons. He tended to become more humanlike in urban settings, transforming into a tall figure, often dressed in a dark cloak, with claws and ‘fiery eyes’.159 He was said to possess a range of superhuman attributes, including unusual speed and agility and the ability to breathe fire.160 Highly recognisable, he gradually became incorporated into the individual folklore of both rural and urban areas.161 His indeterminacy allowed him to combine various Victorian archetypes, including ghosts, demons, and ‘mystery assailant[s]’, into one figure who could be invoked to serve as an explanatory device in a wide variety of situations.162 In this sense, he resembled the Devil, who also served as a unifying theme which allowed diverse and sometimes contradictory reports and ideas to be integrated into a semi-coherent whole.163 Even at his most demonic, he was, however, unconventional, incorporating elements such as fire-breathing which diverged from typical religious or folkloric concepts of the diabolic.164 Spring-heeled Jack’s demonic elements reflected the fact that the Devil was a very common theme in Victorian popular culture. While it was sometimes unsettling, there is little evidence that diabolically themed popular culture was often considered inappropriate or that it inspired much opposition. Leisure itself was more likely to be considered sinful than a flippant or unorthodox depiction of the Devil. As the basic Christian narrative was almost universal knowledge, the meaningfulness of the Devil’s identity as the father of evil was never seriously threatened by popular portrayals. Entertaining portrayals of the diabolic were also only meaningful because everyone knew they were referencing the theological Devil. The Devil’s humorous and entertaining forms coexisted organically with more serious concerns about supernatural evil. These concerns were diverse, encompassing both devout anxieties about sin and folkloric anxieties about meeting Spring-heeled Jack. Anxiety about the diabolic and the Devil’s entertainment potential were intertwined. Depicting the Devil as a buffoon was largely funny because it portrayed a serious subject in an incongruously light-hearted way. The murky interrelationship of humour and horror was a defining feature of the popular Devil. Springheeled Jack is emblematic of this dichotomy. He was a fitting partner to or, perhaps, distorted reflection of the Devil of English popular culture, retaining the power to shock and frighten, even as he entertained.

The Popular Devil  181

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Griffin, “Popular Culture in Industrializing England,” 619–620. Ibid., 634. Wright, The Great Army of London Poor, 84–85. Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out, 13. Ackroyd, London, 502. Anon., “The Punch and Judy Men,” 369–370; Dennis, Cities in Modernity, 138–140. Erdozain, The Problem of Pleasure, 41–84. Anon., “Christian Work at Epsom Races,” 747. Anon., “Devices of the Devil”. Anon., “The Devil’s Ragged Schools”. Erdozain, The Problem of Pleasure, 168. Anon., “A Spirited Answer”. Erdozain, The Problem of Pleasure, 84, 154–198. Anon., “Devices of the Devil”. Scott, Christianity and a Personal Devil, 133–135. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 275–276; Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 142. Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 2, 272, 274, 276, 278, 323, 327; Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 142; Ware, Passing English, 108. Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 2, 323. Ibid., 272. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 3, 301; Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 225; Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 2, 270; Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, Vol. 3, 301. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 276, 278; Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 3, 63; Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 6, 138; Gates, The Vanished Country Folk, 331; Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 142. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 258, 272. Ware, Passing English, 108. Ibid. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 278. Ibid., 273, 278. Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 2, 271; Ware, Passing English, 107. Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues, Vol. 1, 241. For broadsides, see Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, 203–209. Bell, The Magical Imagination, 101. Ashton, Modern Street Ballads, v. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 125. Roud, introduction, 1. Ibid., 1–2. Ibid., 2. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 125. “All Kinds of Devils,” n. d., Bod13750, BBO. “The Devil Disguised Himself for Fun,” n. d., Bod7826, BBO; “The Devil Disguised Himself for Fun,” 1840 – 1866, Bod15436, BBO. “The Devil and the Washerwomen,” 1860, Bod14064, BBO. “The Devil and Little Mike,” 1819–1844, Bod1999, BBO; “The Devil and Little Mike,” 1840–1866, Bod13007, BBO; “The Devil and Little Mike,”

182  The Popular Devil

41 42

43

44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60

1849–1862, Bod11735, BBO; “The Devil and Little Mike,” 1863–1885, Bod6660, BBO; “The Devil and Little Mike,” 1834–1886, Bod22001, BBO. “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” n. d., Bod10199, BBO; “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” 1819–1844, Bod14037, BBO; “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” 1850–1899, Bod10195, BBO. “A Queer Thing for a Husband to See,” 1840–1866, Bod15605, BBO; “A Week’s Matrimony,” 1813–1838, Bod13517, BBO; A Week’s Matrimony,” 1813–1838, Bod702, BBO; “A Week’s Matrimony,” 1819–1844, Bod13030, BBO. “The Devil’s in the Girl,” n. d., Bod15247, BBO; “The Devil’s in the Girl,” 1819–1844, Bod13510, BBO; “The Devil’s in the Girl,” 1842–1855, Bod2471, BBO; “The Devil’s in the Girl,” 1860–1883, Bod11958, BBO; “The Devil’s in the Girl,” 1858–1885, Bod13405, BBO. Ashton, Modern Street Ballads, 124–127. Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, 28. Gutch, County Folklore, Vol. 6, 75. “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” n. d., Bod10199, BBO; “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” 1819–1844, Bod14037, BBO; “The Devil in Search of a Wife,” 1850–1899, Bod10195, BBO; Sargent and Kittredge, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 605–606; Williams et al., “Songs Collected from Sussex,” 184–185. Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, 28. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 29. “The Wesleyan Army at War with the Devil,” n. d., Bod16366, BBO; “The Wesleyan Army at War with the Devil,” 1840–1866, Bod2680, BBO. “The Bad Bargain,” n. d., Bod8082, BBO. “Days When I Was Hard-Up,” 1850–1855, Bod21798, BBO; “Days When I Was Hard Up,” c. 1850, Bod14009, BBO; “Days When I Was Hard Up,” c. 1855, Bod14010, BBO; “Days When I Was Hard Up,” 1858–1861, Bod10387, BBO; “The Days When I Was Hard-Up,” n. d., Bod21018, BBO; “The Days When I Was Hard-Up,” n. d., Bod21787, BBO; “I Was Hard Up,” n. d., Bod11933, BBO; “In the Days When I Was Hard Up,” n. d., Bod11999, BBO; “In the Days When I Was Hard Up,” n. d., Bod22949, BBO; “In the Days When I Was Hard Up,” 1845 – 1859, Bod7075, BBO; “In the Days When I Was Hard Up,” 1863–1885, Bod5614, BBO; “In the Days When I Was Hard Up!,” 1840–1866, Bod21348, BBO. Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang, 516; Wright, The Great Army of London Poor, 323–324. Janes, Victorian Reformation, 85–88. “The Puseyite Parson,” n. d., Bod20181, BBO. “The Priest in Absolution” (London: Morris & Newman, n.d.), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails. aspx?documentid=18973. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Janes, “The Confessional Unmasked,” 677–690. Anon., “The Priest in Absolution,” 761–762; Davidson and Benham, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Vol. 2, 171–174. “The Priest in Absolution” (London: Morris & Newman, n.d.), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails. aspx?documentid=18973. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

The Popular Devil  183 61 “The Temperance Alphabet,” 1863–1885, Bod10219, BBO. 62 “Rail-Road to Hell,” 1840–1866, Bod3103, BBO; “Rail-Road to Hell,” 1840–1866, Bod12862, BBO; “Rail-Road to Hell,” 1863–1885, Bod10474, BBO. 63 Neuburg, “The Literature of the Streets,” 195, 196. 64 O’Brien, ““The Most Beautiful Murder”,” 16. 65 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1, 222. 66 Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, xi. 67 Ibid., 216. 68 Ibid., 225. 69 Ibid., 201. 70 Ibid., 218, 225. 71 Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, 225. 72 Ibid., 201. 73 “Henry Wainwright’s History and Confession” (London: James Wilson, n. d.), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails. aspx?documentid=18919. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 74 Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, 201. 75 Anon., “Two Children Murdered by their Father at Ripon”. 76 Anon., “Atrocious Cruelty to a Horse”; Anon., “Robbing a Club Money Box at Bedworth”. 77 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1, 224–225. 78 Hindley, Curiosities of Street Literature, 201. 79 O’Brien, ““The Most Beautiful Murder”,” 20. 80 “3 Pieces of Devotion,” 1811–1842, Bod2422, BBO. 81 Bell, The Magical Imagination, 214. 82 “Death of the Russian Emperor,” 1855, Bod14898, BBO. 83 The Devil. A Satanic Satire, no. 1 (London: George Dudley Fleck, 1870), LLL. url: http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails.aspx?documentid=17620. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 84 The Devil. A Satanic Satire, no. 2 (London: George Dudley Fleck, 1871), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails. aspx?documentid=17627. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 85 Anon., “Notes from London”. 86 Odden, “Puffed Papers and Broken Promises,” 135. 87 Lucifer, or the London Lamplighter, no. 1 (London: Morris & Newman, 1875), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails. aspx?documentid=18415. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 88 Punch’s Riddles, Part 5 (London: T. Goode, 1841–1846), LLL. http:// www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails.aspx?documentid=9139. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 89 The Royal Albert Toast Master (London: Ryle & Co., 1846–1859), LLL. http://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/DocumentDetails.aspx?documentid=10145. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 90 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 151. 91 ‘Penny dreadful’ has been used to refer to the ‘criminal, or Gothic pennyissue novels’ of the 1830s and 1840s, their youth-orientated ‘successors’

184  The Popular Devil

92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

published during and after the 1850s, and ‘penny magazines’ or ‘cheaper weekly boys’ papers’ published after the mid-1860s. ‘Penny blood’ has generally being used in reference to the first category in order to distinguish them from later works aimed at a younger audience. (See Springhall, ““A Life Story for the People”?,” 226–227.) Crone, Violent Victorians, 163–172. Ibid., 169–170. Springhall, “‘Disseminating Impure Literature’,” 572. Duane, “Penny Dreadfuls,” 133–134. Humphreys, “G. W. M. Reynolds,” 79. Crone, Violent Victorians, 168–172; Humphreys, “G. W. M. Reynolds,” 79. Humphreys, “G. W. M. Reynolds,” 80, 82–83. James, “Time, Politics and the Symbolic Imagination in Reynolds’s Social Melodrama,” 187. James, “Time, Politics and the Symbolic Imagination in Reynolds’s Social Melodrama,” 187–189; Reynolds, Faust. James, “Time, Politics and the Symbolic Imagination in Reynolds’s Social Melodrama,” 189–190. Crone, Violent Victorians, 177; Humphreys, “G. W. M. Reynolds,” 80–81. Crone, Violent Victorians, 177. Reynolds, Wagner the Werewolf. James, “Time, Politics and the Symbolic Imagination in Reynolds’s Social Melodrama,” 190–191. Reynolds, The Necromancer. Collins, introduction, ix. Reynolds, Wagner the Werewolf, 468. Ibid., 21, 309–322, 331–336. Reynolds, The Necromancer, 11, 41. Reynolds, Faust, 7. Reynolds, Wagner the Werewolf, 175–183. Ibid., 291–292. Springhall, “‘Disseminating Impure Literature’,” 574. Crone, Violent Victorians, 48. Anon., “Punch and the Puppets,” 517. Anon., “Mr Punch,” 76; Crone, Violent Victorians, 54–55. Anon., “Mr Punch,” 77. Leach, The Punch and Judy Show, 63. Anon., “Mr Punch,” 76. Anon., “The Punch and Judy Men of London”. Anon., “Mr Punch,” 76. Ibid. Anon., “A Modern Frankenstein,” 202. Ibid. Anon., “Mr Punch,” 76. Horne, “The Great Fairs and Markets of Europe,” 173–174. Anon., “Punch’s Prototypes,” 305. Anon., “Punch and Judy,” (The Era). Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3, 49. Ibid., 53. Crone, Violent Victorians, 49–50. Anon., “Punch and Judy,” (The Era). Anon., “Mr Punch,” 77. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 77.

The Popular Devil  185 137 Anon., “The Punch and Judy Men of London”; Bowie, “The Story of Punch and Judy,” 23. 138 Crone, Violent Victorians, 60–67. 139 Anon., “Punch and Judy,” (The Era); Bowie, “The Story of Punch and Judy,” 24. Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, 204. 140 141 Anon., “The Punch and Judy Men of London”; Anon., “Punch and Judy” (The Saturday Review); Leach, The Punch and Judy Show, 81–82, 162. 142 Story, “Punch and Judy,” 462. 143 Ibid., 471. 144 Leach, The Punch and Judy Show, 82. 145 McCormick, McCormick, and Phillips, The Victorian Marionette Theatre, 116. 146 Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre, 247. 147 Hanop, Victorian Portable Theatres, 102–104; Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3, 140–141. 148 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3, 140–141. 149 Ibid., 96–97, 135. 150 “Fancy Glass Exhibition in Miniature,” c. 1850–1860, VPC. 151 Sharpe, Remember, Remember, 89. 152 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3, 66–67. 153 Ibid., 70. 154 Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, 398–401. 155 Ollier, “A Few Passages of Dreams, Night-Noises, and Phantoms, Part III.,” 362. 156 Carr, Modern Spiritualism an Imposture, 1. 157 Ibid. 158 Bell, The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack, 113–115, 203; Clarke, “Unmasking Spring-heeled Jack,” 30; Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre, 337. Bell, The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack, 1, 54–55. 159 160 Ibid., 1. 161 Clarke, “Unmasking Spring-Heeled Jack,” 29. Ibid., 31. 162 Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, 70. 163 164 Ibid., 59–60.

References Archives Broadside Ballads Online (BBO). Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University. http:// ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. London Low Life: Street Culture, Social Reform, and the Victorian Underworld (LLL). Adam Matthew, The Lilly Library, Indiana University. http://www. londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/. Victorian Popular Culture (VPC). Adam Matthew. http://www.victorianpopularculture.amdigital.co.uk/. Published Anon. “Atrocious Cruelty to a Horse.” Birmingham Daily Post, December 6, 1859.

186  The Popular Devil ———. “Christian Work at Epsom Races.” The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine 19 (1873), 747. ———. “Devices of the Devil.” The Hampshire Advertiser, October 13, 1897. ———. “The Devil’s Ragged Schools.” Liverpool Mercury, October 5, 1847. ———. “A Modern Frankenstein.” All the Year Round 1, no. 9 (1869), 200–204. ———. “Mr Punch, or the Drama at the Street Corner.” Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts 19, no. 945 (1882), 75–77. ———. “Notes from London.” The Liverpool Mercury, May 17, 1873. ———. “The Priest in Absolution.” The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 43, no. 1130 (1877), 761–762. ———. “Punch and Judy.” The Era, January 8, 1898. ———. “Punch and Judy.” The Saturday Review, May 19, 1900. ———. “The Punch and Judy Men.” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 19, no. 222 (1852), 369–370. ———. “The Punch and Judy Men of London: An Interview with One of Them.” The Pall Mall Gazette, June 15, 1887. ———. “Punch and the Puppets.” All the Year Round 7, no. 178 (1872), 517–522. ———. “Punch’s Prototypes.” The Cornhill Magazine 24, no. 141 (1895), 305–313. ———. “Robbing a Club Money Box at Bedworth, Near Coventry.” Birmingham Daily Post, March 19, 1858. ———. “A Spirited Answer.” Punch, June 8, 1878. ———. “Two Children Murdered by their Father at Ripon.” The Times, June 27, 1837. Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. London: Vintage, 2001. Ashton, John. Modern Street Ballads. London: Chatto & Windus, 1888. Bell, Karl. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012. ———. The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Booth, William. In Darkest England and the Way Out. New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1890. Bowie, Archibald Granger. “The Story of Punch and Judy.” The Theatre: A Monthly Review of Drama, Music, and Fine Arts 3 (1884), 17–24. Carr, Thomas. Modern Spiritualism an Imposture. Newcastle-on-Tyne: Alex McCallum, Edinburgh: The Religious Tract Society, and London: H. J. Tresidder, 1864. Clarke, David. “Unmasking Spring-heeled Jack: A Case Study of a 19th Century Ghost Panic.” Contemporary Legend 9 (2006), 28–52. Collins, Dick. Introduction to Wagner the Werewolf by George W. M. Reynolds, vii–xvii. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006. Crone, Rosalind. Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in NineteenthCentury London. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Davidson, Randall Thomas and William Benham. Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. II. London: Macmillan and Co, 1891. Davies, Owen. Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999.

The Popular Devil  187 Dennis, Richard. Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Duane, Patrick A. “Penny Dreadfuls: Late Nineteenth-Century Boys’ Literature and Crime.” Victorian Studies 22, no. 2 (1979), 133–150. Erdozain, Dominic. The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010. Farmer, John., ed. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. I – A – Byz. London: printed by author, 1890. Farmer, John S., and W. E. Henley, ed. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. II – C. – Fizzle. London: printed by author, 1891. ———. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. III – Fla. – Hyps. London: printed by author, 1893. ———. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years, with Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc., Vol. VI. – Rea to Stozzle. London: printed by author, 1903. Gates. R. L. The Vanished Country Folk and Other Studies in Arcady. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd, 1914. Griffin, Emma. “Popular Culture in Industrializing England.” The Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002), 619–635. Gutch, Eliza, ed. County Folklore, Vol. VI, Printed Extracts No. VIII: Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning the East Riding of Yorkshire. London: David Nutt, 1912. Hanop, Josephine. Victorian Portable Theatres. London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1989. Hindley, Charles. Curiosities of Street Literature: Comprising “Cocks,” or “Catchpennies,”: A Large and Curious Assortment of Street-Drolleries, Squibs, Histories, Comic Tales in Prose and Verse, Broadsides of the Royal Family, Political Litanies, Dialogues, Catechisms, Acts of Parliament, Street Political Papers, a Variety of “Ballads on a Subject,” Dying Speeches and Confessions. London: Reeves and Turner, 1871. Horne, Richard H. “The Great Fairs and Markets of Europe.” The Saint Paul’s Magazine 12 (1873), 169–185. Hotten, John Camden. The Slang Dictionary, Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal: A New Impression. London: Chatto & Windus, 1913. Humphreys, Anne. “G. W. M. Reynolds: Popular Literature and Popular Politics.” Victorian Periodicals Review 16, no. 3/4 (1983), 79–89. Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. James, Louis. “Time, Politics and the Symbolic Imagination in Reynolds’s Social Melodrama.” In G. W. M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics,

188  The Popular Devil and the Press, edited by Anne Humphreys and Louis James, 179–198. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008. Janes, Dominic. “The Confessional Unmasked: Religious Merchandise and Obscenity in Victorian England.” Victorian Literature and Culture 41 (2013), 677–690. ———. Victorian Reformation: The Fight Over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Leach, Robert. The Punch and Judy Show: History, Tradition and Meaning. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1985. Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor; A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work, Vol. I.: The London Street Folk, Book the First. London: George Woodfall and Son, 1871. ———. London Labour and the London Poor; A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work: The London Street Folk; Comprising, Street Sellers, Street Buyers, Street Finders, Street Performers, Street Artizans, Street Labourers, Vol. III. London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company, 1861. McCormick, John, Clodagh McCormick, and John Phillips. The Victorian Marionette Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004. Neuburg, Victor E. “The Literature of the Streets.” In The Victorian Cities: Images and Realities, Volume 1, edited by H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, 191–210. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. O’Brien, Ellen. ““The Most Beautiful Murder”: The Transgressive Aesthetics of Murder in Victorian Street Ballads.” Victorian Literature and Culture 28, no. 1 (2000), 15–37. Odden, Karen. “Puffed Papers and Broken Promises: White-Collar Crime and Literary Justice in The Way We Live Now.” In Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation, edited by Andrew Maunder and Grace Moore, 135–146. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004. Ollier, Charles. “A Few Passages of Dreams, Night-Noises, and Phantoms, Part III.: Phantoms.” Charles Ainsworth’s Magazine 6 (1844), 356–362. Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 8th ed. Edited by Paul Beale. London: Routledge, 2006. Reynolds, George W. R. Faust: A Romance. London: John Dicks, 1883. ———. The Necromancer: A Romance. Edited by Dick Collins. Kansas City: Valancourt Books, 2007. ———. Wagner the Werewolf. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006. Roud, Steve. Introduction to Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions, edited by Steve Roud and David Atkinson, 1–17. Oxford: Routledge, [2014] 2016. Sargent, Helen Child and George Lyman Kittredge, ed. English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Edited from the Collection of Francis James Child. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904. Scott, Patrick. Christianity and a Personal Devil: An Essay. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1874. Sharpe, James. Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

The Popular Devil  189 Speaight, George. The History of the English Puppet Theatre. New York: John de Graff, n. d. Springhall, John. “‘Disseminating Impure Literature’: The ‘Penny Dreadful’: The ‘Penny Dreadful’ Publishing Business since 1860.” The Economic History Review 47, no. 3 (1994), 567–584. ———. ““A Life Story for the People?”: Edwin J. Brett and the London “LowLife” Penny Dreadfuls of the 1860s.” Victorian Studies 33, no. 2 (1990), 223–246. Story, Alfred T. “Punch and Judy.” The Strand Magazine 10 (1895), 461–471. Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Ware, J. Redding. Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase. London: George Routledge & Sons, Limited and New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1909. Williams, Ralph Vaughan, Frank Kidson, Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, and J. A. Fuller-Maitland. “Songs Collected from Sussex.” Journal of the English Folk-Song Society 2, no. 8 (1906), 184–209. Wright, Thomas. The Great Army of London Poor: Sketches of Life and Character in a Thames-Side River District. London: T. Woolmer, 1875.

5

The Literary and Theatrical Devil

In 1877, the Poet’s Magazine published an article analysing the differences between ‘The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe’. The writer made it clear that, while these famous Devils were members of the same genus, it would have been hard to classify them as the same species, let alone the same individual in different hats. It would have been an even greater mistake to confuse them with the Satan of Christian theology.1 The relationship between different representations and conceptualisations of the diabolic could be uneasy, with another writer noting that diabolically themed literature often impaired belief in the Devil as a doctrine. 2 Writers, both prior to and during the Victorian era, frequently downplayed the theological Devil or treated him as a vehicle for their own ideas. Literary and theatrical Devils tended to either lack gravitas or, as in the case of the rather magnificent Miltonic Devil, have the wrong kind. The article published in the Poet’s Magazine was not an isolated case, with other writers comparing and contrasting the Devils of Luther, Milton, and Goethe and Dante, Milton, and Goethe.3 As these articles indicate, the Victorians often viewed the literary Devil as both distinct from the Devil of theology and as more of a series of personas than a character. The Victorians own diabolic literary and theatrical experiments were informed by and undertaken in the shadow of previous portrayals of the Devil. Diabolic literature and theatre drew on both prominent diabolic works of the past such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Faust and a long tradition of using the diabolic in humour and entertainment. The literary Devil’s changeability and relative distance from religious doctrine provided significant possibilities for Victorian writers. The Devil’s status as a well-worn theme had the advantage of familiarity, as audiences were already used to interpreting him in accordance with the intentions of the author. He was a versatile stock figure, who could be reached for and shaped on a whim, although his core of evil and negation survived almost every transformation. The form his evil took was a matter of taste and he was portrayed both in print and on the stage as everything from a genuinely terrifying evil spirit to a harmless joke. It was rare for him to be truly frightening, as he was often too humanised

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  191 or too mundane to truly chill the blood. This mundanity stemmed from the very act of treating him as a character as, by the nineteenth century, it seemed unlikely that the biblical Devil, if he existed, would behave in a way conducive to a good story. Victorian depictions of the Devil were still all, to some extent, inspired by his traditional role as the enemy of God. While the canon of diabolic literature and the Devil’s longstanding role in popular culture were also major influences, it was his religious identity which rendered him recognisable and allowed him to serve as a symbol of evil and disorder. Unchained from the need to follow the grand narrative of the Christian universe, the literary Devil did not call for a unified approach from the writers he inspired. While some writers did take up the implied challenge and depict him in idiosyncratic ways, most depictions were fairly conventional, with the majority of both literary and theatrical works in which he served as a primary theme taking the form of variants of the Faust legend. The popularity of Faustian narratives was partially explained by the fact that Goethe’s Mephistopheles proved to be a particularly towering devil and partially by the adaptability of the Faust story. As the Devil wanted any soul he could get, he was liable to appear in any form to anyone. The Faust trope also provided a good dose of drama and suspense, which might, depending on the author, be either light entertainment or a serious commentary on contemporary concerns. The Devil of Victorian literature and theatre was a protean figure but one with a favourite shape.

Influences and Inheritances The literary Devil’s development into a humanised figure was welladvanced by the Victorian period. The idea of the Devil as ‘a personal entity’ emerged in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, with John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) being a particularly significant milestone.4 Other works which played a notable role in humanising the Devil included Goethe’s Faust (parts one and two were published in 1790 and 1832, respectively) and the satanically themed poetry of the Romantics. There was still some place for less sympathetic Devils, with Dante’s Divine Comedy (completed 1320) and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), with its hideous devil Apollyon, enjoying considerable popularity during the Victorian era. In 1855, an article published in Sharpe’s London Magazine offered a strong statement of the significance of both the monstrous Devil of Dante and the more sympathetic Devil of Milton, describing the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost as being, along with the Iliad, ‘the three great productions of the epic muse’.5 Works like Dante’s Divine Comedy also provided a way of actively engaging with past views of the Devil and of plotting his developmental stages. The Divine Comedy’s descriptions of hell did not necessarily

192  The Literary and Theatrical Devil resonate with Victorian readers, with one writer condemning Dante’s portrayal of the Devil as a ‘huge monster’ for emphasising the ‘material’ over the ‘spiritual’.6 The materiality of Dante’s Devil was generally viewed as a superstitious impossibility stemming from the irrationality and brutality of the medieval era.7 Adherents of a more ‘enlightened and rational Christianity’ tended to recoil from Dante’s descriptions of a ‘very hot and ungentlemanly’ hell.8 As with other literary portrayals of the Devil, however, readers did not need to view Dante’s Devil as plausible in order to appreciate him. The implausibility of his Devil did little damage to Dante’s status in the Victorian imagination. During the nineteenth century, he was ‘discovered’ by a British audience, following Henry Francis Cary’s translation Commedia, The Vision: or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri (1814).9 This translation helped to upend the eighteenthcentury perception that he was challenging and ‘inelegant’, leading to a ‘Dante-mania’.10 His theological datedness faded in the face of his cultural and intellectual significance, with Maria Francesca Rossetti stating, in her study A Shadow of Dante (1871), that he was ‘a name unlimited in place and period…He rises before us…like the Pyramids – awful, massive, solitary’.11 His cultural prominence persisted into the latter part of the century, with one writer noting in 1887 that there was a ‘growing enthusiasm’ for his work.12 Disgust at the horrors of his hell was sometimes balanced by ‘a sense of nostalgia’ for the perceived security of the medieval worldview.13 It is possible that, as Alison Millbank has argued, much of Dante’s Victorian appeal stemmed from the way his medieval Catholic worldview contrasted with nineteenth-century English Protestantism, allowing him to powerfully represent a tantalisingly ‘unified metaphysical system’ without being ‘easily assimilated to nineteenth-century political or moral categories’.14 While Rossetti acknowledged that Dante’s descriptions of hell could be ‘grotesque’ or even ‘ludicrous’, she argued that readers who sought ‘to gaze on Dante’s Hell with Dante’s eyes’ perceived ‘in that grotesqueness a realized horror, in that ludicrousness a sovereign contempt of evil’.15 While Dante’s Devil was not always palatable to a nineteenth- century audience, he offered no threat to traditional views of good and evil. Another work which can be placed in this category is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian allegory depicting the journey of the protagonist Christian from the ‘City of Destruction’ (the world) to the ‘Celestial City’ (heaven). Christian overcome many travails to reach his objective, including a battle with the demon Apollyon, the ruler of the ‘City of Destruction’.16 The Pilgrim’s Progress was often taken seriously as a source of religious instruction, with one Victorian writer stating that it was ‘ranked by divines as next to the Holy Scriptures’.17 It was also extremely popular, being published in over 1000 editions prior to the First World War.18 The Pilgrim’s Progress depicted a universal story

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  193 of spiritual struggle, which offered readers redemption and consolation. It had considerable relevance for nineteenth-century readers, resonating with Victorian notions of spiritual travail in which grace could only be achieved after expending considerable effort resisting the Devil’s temptations.19 The continuing popularity of Bunyan’s depiction of Apollyon demonstrated that traditional depictions of the demonic were not always unappealing to nineteenth-century audiences, although an affection for Bunyan did not always indicate piety, as he was increasingly appreciated for his secular literary value. 20 Milton’s portrayal of Satan in his epic poem Paradise Lost, which depicted the war in heaven and the fall of man, had the potential to be more dangerous, as Satan was the focus of much of the poem’s ‘traditional epic material’. 21 Also, as one Victorian writer put it, Milton’s Satan was ‘in no way repulsive…His glorious beauty and sublimely heroic attributes…irradiate his overthrow’. Ideally, this radiance should have only been a gloss on his inevitable degeneration into a much less sublime figure.22 Nevertheless, a significant subset of readers continued to see something heroic or close to it in Milton’s Satan, with one writer stating that, although humanity generally regarded the Devil with ‘hatred and disgust’, the Satan of Paradise Lost excited ‘unwilling admiration’. 23 While Milton’s heyday as a cultural influence predated the Victorian period, with his work providing significant inspiration for the Romantic writers of the early nineteenth century, Victorian society still exhibited considerable interest in him on both an academic and a popular level.24 George Eliot stated that his influence was so profound that ‘perhaps to the majority of English minds…it would be difficult to say how much of their belief about Satan…is gathered from the Bible, and how much from Paradise Lost’. 25 While this sort of theological confusion might have been a cause for concern, it was certainly not the case that Paradise Lost was always seen as inimical to faith, with one clergyman declaring it both ‘a work of art’ and ‘a contribution to sacred literature’. 26 Its prominence was linked to the prominence of Christianity, and there is some evidence that the prestige of Milton’s Satan had somewhat declined by the end of the century, with an article published in 1889 stating that society had ‘passed into other modes of…thought’ and another writer noting in 1900 that in an age of decreased theological certainty, Paradise Lost was not always afforded its previous status. 27 Nevertheless, Linda M. Lewis has claimed that ‘[v]irtually every major British poet of the nineteenth century was haunted by Milton’s great epic’. 28 Diabolic ideas were so closely associated with Milton that it was difficult for a writer to refer to any topic with satanic connotations without making, at least, an indirect Miltonic reference.29 One anonymous Victorian commentator stated that ‘every succeeding writer, down to the present time, who has handled the same subject, has been largely… indebted to him’.30 An example of a work, which drew extensively on

194  The Literary and Theatrical Devil Miltonic tropes, was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem ‘A Drama of Exile’ (1844), which depicted Eve’s ‘spiritual awakening’ upon being exiled from the Garden of Eden.31 Browning depicted Lucifer as a ‘Titanic spirit of scorn’, with a regal air and a ‘glorious darkness’ who defiantly proclaimed that he had the ‘[s]trength’ to ‘behold’ but not ‘worship’ God.32 She made the figure of the semi-magnificent Devil her own by portraying him as, in contrast to Milton’s approach, a ‘rebel against Divine love rather than Divine power’, who yearned to ruin rather than conquer the world.33 She also tackled contemporary issues, using the character of Eve to examine gender roles.34 Another poem, which drew heavily on Milton, was George Meredith’s sonnet ‘Lucifer in Starlight’ (1883), which used Miltonic language and imagery to address nineteenth- century concerns about the nature of the universe.35 Meredith approvingly depicted a world governed entirely by natural laws, with Lucifer visiting earth but finding his presence irrelevant.36 As these works indicate, Miltonic tropes were highly flexible and could easily be used to convey ideas at variance with the original work. The Victorians also inherited diabolic tropes from the gothic genre. Emerging in the mid-eighteenth century, the gothic was defined by dark themes, intense emotionality, an interest in the supernatural, and historical (often medieval) settings.37 It was common for gothic writers to draw inspiration from Paradise Lost, although they tended to be ‘traditional’ in their outlook, concurring with Milton that Satan was unsympathetic.38 Diabolically themed gothic works in English included Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796), in which the career of a wicked monk ended with the Devil claiming his soul, Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya; or the Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century (1806), in which a villainous woman was tempted by the Devil in the form of a black man, and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale (1820), in which the protagonist sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for an extended lifespan. These works, which all featured a protagonist who was tempted by the Devil to their detriment, can be situated within the Faustian tradition.39 The gothic Devil was rarely a magnificent figure, with Lewis, for instance, being eager to use him to inspire horror.40 Victorian readers were not always impressed by earlier gothic visions of the Devil, with one writer stating that Melmoth the Wanderer was ‘about the maddest work ever written by a man of real ability’ and expressing surprise that it had found any readers.41 Despite the fact that earlier gothic works sometimes inspired disgust or confusion, the gothic had a considerable influence on Victorian fiction. Diabolism also remained relevant in the Victorian gothic. Fred Botting has noted that the gothic, through the use of historical settings, allowed the past (including archaic superstitions such as a personal Devil) to intrude upon the present.42 The gothic was a reminder that the Devil was not so easy to banish, especially if the only weapon available was reason,

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  195 which could crumble in the face of sufficient emotionality. A key distinction between pre-Victorian and Victorian gothic works was that, while earlier gothic fiction tended be set in the non-English (usually Catholic) past, later works infringed upon the English present.43 While the gothic novel in its original form declined in popularity in the early nineteenth century, the genre did not disappear, persisting in constantly evolving forms. Its themes were utilised by writers of Victorian-era sensation fiction, with the works of authors like Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon allowing the gothic access to the English domestic realm.44 The mid-nineteenth century also saw the emergence of gothic fiction with an urban setting and, by the latter part of the century, the ‘urban gothic’ was a commonplace of horror fiction.45 Towards the end of the century, the gothic experienced a period of renewed popularity, with the appearance of a variety of uncanny and disturbing works, including Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890, 1891), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898).46 The intrusion of the gothic into modernity was a boon for the demonic, as it gave it a more direct route into the mundane world. Victorian ideas about the Devil were also influenced by the diabolic interests of the Romanic Movement. Romanticism is a generalised and not entirely unproblematic term for a literary movement of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Broadly speaking, Romantic works were a response to the intellectual and cultural developments of the Enlightenment and were often characterised by a focus on individual subjectivity, emotionality, and an interest in transcendence.47 Romantic writers were greatly influenced by gothic and Miltonic tropes, with a substantial subset of Romantic poetry featuring heroes, who were, like Milton’s Satan, rebellious outcasts in possession of dark or forbidden knowledge.48 By the late-eighteenth century, Milton’s Satan was often conceptualised as a ‘sublime and humanized figure’.49 He became symbolic of rebellion against oppressive social institutions, with his depravity being treated as less significant than his more majestic qualities.50 In 1812, the poet Robert Southey harshly condemned the immorality and impiety of what he described as the ‘Satanic school’ of English poetry. His outrage was largely inspired by the Romantic writer Lord Byron’s poem Don Juan (1819–1824), which was widely condemned as immoral and nihilistic. Byron made extensive use of demonic themes, with the Devil making direct appearances in his poem The Vision of Judgement (1822) and his plays Cain (1821) and The Deformed Transformed (1824). His poems Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), The Giaour (1813), Manfred (1816–1817), and The Corsair (1814) also drew inspiration from Paradise Lost, featuring isolated yet magnetic heroes. 51 Cain, in which Lucifer was represented as a sort of ‘enlightenment moralist’ who opposed religious tyranny, was especially sympathetic, with one Victorian critic describing Byron’s Lucifer as a ‘beautiful, proud,

196  The Literary and Theatrical Devil sorrowful blasphemer’.52 Other writers who have, due to their use of diabolic themes, been identified as members of the loosely defined ‘Satanic school’ include William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley.53 The prestige of Byron and other similar writers had already begun to fade by the 1820s in the face of religious and moral criticism. 54 By the 1860s, it was possible to dismiss Byron’s Lucifer as a heightened version of the poet himself.55 Nevertheless, British Romanticism helped to establish a Victorian literary landscape in which it was possible to sympathise with the Devil. The influence of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary movements on Victorian views of the Devil was especially evident in the profound impact of Goethe’s two-part drama Faust on Victorian culture. Faust was based on the legend of the sixteenth-century magus Dr. Johannes Faustus, who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Faustus’ narrative traditionally incorporated various wonders, such as astonishing acts of conjuration and the Devil’s appearance in the form of a black poodle, and concluded with Faustus being carried away to hell.56 England had already produced its own famous version in the form of Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604, 1616). Marlowe’s work received renewed attention from the Romantics, who associated him with ‘poetic rebellion’, and some interest continued into the Victorian era, although it often centred on Marlowe personally rather than his portrayal of the demonic.57 The profile of Doctor Faustus did rise over the course of the century, as, although it had previously been less popular, by the mid-nineteenth century, it was regarded as Marlowe’s best work. It is likely that this surge in popularity was inspired by the fact that, as the play concluded with Faustus’ damnation, it could easily be interpreted within a traditional moral framework.58 Despite this interest, Marlowe exerted very little influence on Victorian literature and Goethe’s version was regarded as ‘the canonic treatment’.59 Goethe’s work was considerably more complex than the original legend, with Part One depicting the demon Mephistopheles making a wager with God that he could tempt Faust away from righteousness. This claim was not idle boasting, with Faust, who had become despondent about the state of human knowledge, agreeing to make a pact whereby Mephistopheles would fulfil his desires on earth but he would serve Mephistopheles in hell, with the added condition that if he ever experienced something so wonderful that he wished it would last forever, he would die immediately. The story included a subplot in which Faust met, seduced, and impregnated a young woman named Margarete or Gretchen. Shortly afterwards, Margarete inadvertently killed her mother with a sleeping potion and then drowned the child she had had by Faust. She was sentenced to death for murder but achieved salvation by refusing to use diabolic means to escape.60 Part Two, in which Faust undertook a

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  197 series of supernatural exploits, including fathering a child with Helen of Troy, was significantly different in tone. It also inverted the traditional ending of the legend, as, while Faust did die, his last actions were so selfless that he was redeemed.61 While the first section was limited in focus, taking the form of a series of closely integrated episodes and using aspects of domestic tragedy, the second addressed wider matters and was more intellectual and less internally united.62 Unsurprisingly, Part One was vastly more popular.63 This gap in popularity was indicative of the fact that, when reading about the demonic, Victorian audiences looked for entertainment over earnestness. The status of Goethe’s work is indicated by an article published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1841, which stated that no book had ever been ‘so belaboured by translators…The Faust is every where; may be had in every shape, from five shillings a copy to five guineas’.64 Its popularity endured into the late nineteenth century, although there is some suggestion that it may have declined a little by the end.65 Goethe’s depiction of the diabolic proved highly influential on the role of the Devil in English literature and theatre, as Mephistopheles was strikingly different from many other depictions of demonic figures. He lacked the admixture of misery, which defined characters like Milton’s Satan, seeming to actively enjoy his role as an evil-doer.66 One nineteenth-century writer commented that he seemed like Milton’s Satan six thousand years after the Fall, when he had become ‘smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper’.67 He was not an ‘earnest’ Devil intended to inspire belief, being less a literal representation of the demonic than an allegorical expression of modern selfishness, cynicism, and nihilism.68 Nevertheless, he was not entirely unconventional as, like many popular and folkloric depictions of the demonic, he was treated with ‘a certain levity’.69 He was also situated in a ‘picturesque and romantic’ narrative, which offered compelling characters and an intriguing historical setting.70 The significance of works like Goethe’s for a Victorian audience is indicative of the fact that the diabolic was not marginal to the Victorian literary world but occupied a significant role in the nineteenth-century imagination, although, as discussed in the second chapter, the minimal role of the demonic pact in nineteenth-century folklore emphasised the sometimes sharp contrast between the Devil’s role in literature and the Devil’s role in supernatural belief.

Faust in Poetry and Prose While the popularity of Goethe’s Faust played a significant role in the ubiquity of the Faust legend in Victorian culture, English writers produced numerous versions of their own in both verse and prose, although none seriously challenged Goethe. One of the most significant poetic versions was Philip James Bailey’s epic Festus (1839) in which

198  The Literary and Theatrical Devil a young Romantic scholar made a pact with Lucifer in exchange for extraordinary powers but, as he had never entirely committed himself to the diabolic, eventually achieved salvation.71 Bailey was a member of the so-called ‘Spasmodic School’ of Victorian poetry, which Herbert F. Tucker has described as ‘Romanticism in bells and whistles’.72 Active in the mid-nineteenth century, the Spasmodic poets were a broadly defined group whose work took the form of verse dramas characterised by intense emotionality and subjectivity.73 Festus was a weighty endeavour, intended to be both a work of poetry and theology, which included discussions between Festus and Lucifer about sin, freewill, and eschatology.74 While it is possible that he did draw some limited inspiration from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Bailey’s poem was essentially a reworked version of Goethe’s Faust.75 Lucifer proved less engaging than Mephistopheles, with one critic describing him as ‘[p]erhaps the mildest devil of literature’.76 He lacked either the pride of Milton’s Satan or the ‘burning discontent’ of Byron’s Lucifer, being instead ‘a calm, sublime intelligence…working out obediently the mysterious designs of the Creator’.77 Upon its first publication, Festus excited admiration from multiple prominent literary figures, including Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Elizabeth and Robert Browning, gradually attaining a prominent place in the Victorian literary universe.78 By 1877, it was in its tenth English edition.79 Despite the fact that Bailey’s theology was unorthodox, Festus gained the attention of the Evangelical press and was often classified as ‘edifying’ literature.80 Bailey’s work was a product of the fact that, following Goethe’s Faust, Faustian narratives became acceptable as a vehicle for intellectual and spiritual speculation. It is also highly illustrative of the substantial role of the Faust legend in Victorian culture. Other Faustian poems included Arthur Hugh Clough’s Dipsychus (1869), which explored religious uncertainty through a young man named Dipsychus, who was tempted by the Devil as a result of his interest in biblical criticism.81 In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘The Lay of the Brown Rosary’ (1840, 1844), a young woman made a bargain with the ghost of a wicked nun in order to prevent herself from dying before she could marry her sweetheart. Unfortunately, as tends to be the case with such bargains, there was a catch, with her fiancé dropping dead on their wedding day. Despite the fact that her bargain was made through an unusual intermediary, its diabolic nature was not in question, with the priest who officiated at her wedding being unable to say the name of God.82 Browning described her gothic ballad as ‘wild and wicked’.83 Robert Browning used the legend in a parodic fashion in the epilogue to his Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887) ‘Fust and his Friends’ in which some acquaintances of Johann Fust, who was credited with the invention of printing, concluded that he had made a pact with the Devil.84 Roden Noel’s didactic spiritualist epic ‘A Modern

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  199 Faust’ (1888) used Faustian themes to explore the human condition.85 Too ‘abstruse’ to be widely read, Noel’s poem used the spiritual temptation of a man, who had begun to doubt God’s goodness in the face of human suffering, to argue that the universe was ‘a God-penetrated unity’ in which ‘all is spirit’. Noel’s version of Satan was ‘chiefly, though not entirely, the man’s worst self’.86 William Watson took a less serious approach in his ‘exquisite fantasy’ ‘The Eloping Angels’ (1893), in which Mephisto showed Faust heaven and helped some angels to visit earth.87 As this melange of approaches indicates, the Faust legend verged on being more of a tool than a topic, as it was simply a basic template which a poet could use in any way they chose. The legend also inspired prose treatments. The prolific writer William Harrison Ainsworth used it as the inspiration for his gothic novel Auriol; or, The Elixir of Life (1844), which, opening in the Elizabethan era, detailed the adventures of Auriol Darcy, who used an elixir he had obtained from his alchemist great-grandfather to extend his lifespan. Auriol faced his Mephistopheles in the form of the malevolent Rosicrucian Cyprian de Rougemont, who had become fabulously wealthy through a deal with the Devil. Rougemont was determined to bring about Auriol’s damnation, as, if he did not obtain his soul for the Devil, he would be forced to cede his own. Rougemont served a demonic role, with Auriol describing him as ‘Satan’.88 Ainsworth took the conventional step of combining a Faustian narrative with a romantic one, with Auriol conceiving a passion for a beautiful maiden named Ebba Thorneycroft.89 In Ainsworth’s case, the Devil was only there to add a touch of supernatural drama. Mary Elizabeth Braddon used the legend as the basis for her Gerard, Or, The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1891), in which her protagonist Gerard Hillersdon’s inheritance of a significant fortune was clouded by the revelation that he had only a short time to live.90 Hillersdon also suffered under the malign influence of a ‘Fate-reader’ named Justin Jermyn, who had been mysteriously involved in his sudden change of fortune. Jermyn was a thoroughly nineteenth-century manifestation of the demonic, being described as ‘a pleasant-looking young man, tall, slim, and fair’. There was a suggestion of the otherworldly about him but it was subtle, taking the form of a ‘gnome-like’ laugh and something indefinably satyr-like about his haircut or ears.91 Braddon also combined her Faustian story with romance, with Hillersdon having dramatic relationships with two different women.92 Braddon assumed that her readers were familiar with various versions of the Faust tale, drawing directly on Goethe’s version in a scene in which Gerard dreamt that he was back in the church he had attended as a boy, which ‘changed to the pit of hell, and the village congregation became an assembly of devils, and on the steps of Satan’s throne stood a figure like Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and the face…was the face of Justin Jermyn’.93 Jermyn also stated that

200  The Literary and Theatrical Devil Charles Gounod’s Faust was his second favourite opera.94 For Braddon, Faust was so ubiquitous that it was not incongruous or even excessive to embed sub-versions within her own Faustian narrative. Gerard provided a powerful demonstration of the cultural prominence of the Faust legend, as it indicated that a writer of popular fiction could expect not only that a Faustian tale would attract readers, but that her audience would be capable of deciphering various references to alternate versions of Faust. The most significant Faustian novel of the Victorian period was Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan (1895), which was also the best-selling novel of the century.95 Her protagonist was a failed and impoverished author named Geoffrey Tempest. Having reached the depths of despair, he suddenly inherited a huge fortune from a deceased relative and made a new friend in the form of the absurdly wealthy Prince Lucio Rimanez. He was unaware that his relative had obtained his wealth via a demonic pact and that Rimanez was the Devil himself. Corelli described her Devil as handsome, with ‘full dark eyes’ and a mouth ‘set in the perfect curve of beauty’.96 Tempest’s apparent good fortune soon began to exhibit sinister undertones, with wealth neutering his literary gifts.97 Thankfully, Corelli’s Devil was much less enthusiastic about damnation than average, as he did not truly desire to corrupt humanity but was instead compelled to do so until they repudiated him, although that prospect was unlikely.98 Tempest, however, defied expectations, as when he learned Rimanez’s true identity, he ensured his own salvation by rejecting him. Soon afterwards, he found that his bankers had stolen his fortune but this event proved to be the catalyst for the return of his literary prowess and his luck turned, with a book he had previously published attracting renewed attention.99 Corelli believed that the imagination could reveal spiritual and moral truths.100 The Sorrows of Satan was topical, addressing many contemporary concerns, including decadent literature, moral relativism, the New Woman, mesmerism, degeneration, and ‘Blavatskyism’, suggesting that it was best to contain such threats to the social order through a judicious application of Christianity and traditional morality.101 Corelli’s depiction of sin was somewhat contradictory as, while she clearly condemned it, she also rendered it captivating and used it to provide most of the novel’s interest.102 Religious opinion of her book was divided, with the well-known Anglo-Catholic monk Father Ignatius recommending that every clergyman own a copy, while the Rev. Anthony C. Deane characterising her work as ‘nauseating’.103 Using the Devil for entertainment could be fraught, as he was both commonplace and strongly related to serious concerns about sin, evil, and the nature of the spiritual world. Despite her significant commercial success, ‘the oracle of culture’ tended to mock Corelli’s writing.104 The popularity of her oeuvre baffled ‘journalists and literary men’, who struggled to comprehend the

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  201 popularity of what was so clearly ‘low art’.105 George Bernard Shaw was disgusted by her relatively sympathetic portrayal of the Devil, complaining that a ‘snivelling, remorseful devil…sneaking about the railings of heaven in the hope that he will presently be let in and forgiven, is an abomination to me’.106 Nevertheless, any critical sniping paled in the face of the sheer popularity of The Sorrows of Satan, with the reading public being enraptured by its enticing mix of glamorous sin and comfortingly conventional morality.

Ghost Stories and Horror Fiction The Devil’s intermittent appearances in ghost stories and horror fiction also demonstrate the dominance of the Faustian model, as well as indicating that the literary Devil retained some power to frighten. ‘Ghost story’ is an extremely broad term for a form of short supernatural narrative, which originated in the early nineteenth century and was at its most popular in the late-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. While ghost stories always centred on some type of threat or anxiety, this threat could be a literal supernatural entity (a ghost or other supernatural creature) or a misinterpretation of mundane phenomena.107 Ghost stories can be categorised as part of the larger gothic genre, as they shared similar themes and also enjoyed widespread popular appeal.108 Often using mundane settings, ghost stories addressed the effects of the past on the present, as well as liminality and its attendant fears, exploring the ambiguous boundaries between ‘life and death, visibility and invisibility, presence and absence’.109 It is difficult to firmly distinguish between ghost stories, gothic fiction, and horror fiction, with the Devil’s appearances bridging the divides between supernatural genres.110 This chapter will forgo strict definitions and simply explore the ability of the literary Devil to unsettle or intrude on the mundane world, demonstrating that he was just as capable of accomplishing this objective as a ghost and that, even if not central, his role in Victorian supernatural fiction was not insubstantial. As Jen Cadwallader has pointed out, Victorian ghost stories drew significant inspiration from and existed in dialogue with Victorian religion so the Devil was not out of place.111 While the Devil was not a spectre, he could be spectral, as both ghosts and devils were capable of causing fear and disruption and were ambiguous enough that the exact threat they posed was often unclear. A ‘central figure’ in the history of the British ghost story, the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu authored multiple stories with Faustian themes, including ‘The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh’ (1838) and ‘Sir Dominick’s Bargain’ (1872), both centring on noblemen who sold their souls for wealth, and ‘Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter’ (1838), in which a young woman was forced to marry a demonic figure.112

202  The Literary and Theatrical Devil Le Fanu’s treatments of the Faust theme were distinguished by the ‘reality’ and violence of his spirits.113 The brutality of close encounters with Le Fanu’s version of the demonic was indicated by the gruesomeness of the deaths of Sir Robert Ardagh and Sir Dominick, with ‘hardly a vestige’ of Ardagh’s body being recognisable and Sir Dominick leaving behind a ‘rusty stain’.114 Le Fanu’s Faustian stories were somewhat removed from the everyday world by their use of historical settings. ‘The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh’ and ‘Sir Dominick’s Bargain’ were presented as folkloric tales and ‘Schalken’ used a seventeenth- century setting.115 The act of telling a supernatural tale could, however, allow the past and present to intersect in uncomfortable ways. As Andrew Smith notes, characters did not have to be literal ghosts to be ‘rendered spectral’ by ‘their encounters with plots, people, and political concepts’.116 Furthermore, it was the psychological power of the narrative, especially its ability to disturb and to subvert ‘the domestic scene’, which was of primary importance.117 Le Fanu also authored stories in which the demonic intruded directly on the modern world. In ‘The Mysterious Lodger’ (1850), a couple took in a lodger who was revealed to be a demonic being. The story explored the tension between faith and doubt, with the devout wife’s faith being tested but ultimately vindicated and the husband, who had been a staunch atheist, finding religion after an encounter with an angelic figure.118 ‘Green Tea’ (1869), in which an Anglican clergyman was haunted by a demonic monkey, was much less consoling.119 The clergyman consulted a doctor with occult interests named Martin Hesselius, who concluded that his habitual consumption of green tea had opened his ‘inner eye’. This explanation drew on Emmanuel Swedenborg’s claim that, following a spiritual awakening which opened his ‘interior sight’, he was able to observe heaven and hell and communicate with angels and demons.120 Hesselius proved unhelpful, as the clergyman committing suicide and it remained unclear whether the cause of the tragedy had been supernatural malevolence or ‘hereditary suicidal mania’.121 The mundane world could be disrupted in multiple ways, with supernatural threats like a diabolic monkey mingling with more earthly concerns like insanity. This ambiguity is reminiscent of Hilary Grimes’ argument that there is a distinction between the ‘supernatural’ and the ‘uncanny’, with the supernatural relating to definite ‘disturbances in the exterior world’ and the uncanny to ‘psychological…disturbances in the internal body, or mind’, meaning that ‘the supernatural is a cause and the uncanny an effect’.122 There was nothing incongruous about the diabolic potentially being both a real and a psychological phenomenon in the same narrative, as it was difficult to distinguish clearly between what was real and what was merely psychological. To even attempt to do so would be to ask the wrong question, imposing easy answers on a genre which actively resisted them.

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  203 The prominent ghost-story writer M. R. James used religious and folkloric concepts to create a disturbing atmosphere. His stories Canon Alberic’s ‘Scrap-Book’ ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book’ (1894), in which an educated Englishman’s purchase of an antique manuscript resulted in demonic harassment, and ‘Count Magnus’ (1904), in which a traveller disturbed the tomb of a nobleman, who had made a diabolic pact, and was pursued and destroyed by its occupant, were notable examples.123 James’ works thrived on indeterminacy, with the exact nature of his spectral or demonic intrusions often remaining unclear, but were permeated by a sense of evil which his characters ignored at their peril.124 The indistinctness of James’ terrors was calculated to appeal to an audience who were often suspicious of flamboyant manifestations of religion and the supernatural.125 Clive Bloom has argued that ‘when hell opens’ in James’ stories, ‘it is contentless’, meaning that his diabolic narratives contained no serious message, being, despite their affectations, implicitly de-fanged by their modern context.126 There was something innately horrific, however, about an evil (especially an old-fashioned diabolic one) which could not be rationally comprehended or constrained by modernity. When the educated protagonist of ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book’ was faced with the hideous terror of a traditional demon, his instinct was not to reason but simply to grab a crucifix.127 In ‘Count Magnus’, something as improbable as the folkloric figure of ‘the learned black magician’ (complete with demonic companion) was able to kill a tourist.128 James’ demons could not be related to or reasoned with and were entirely immune to secularisation. A subset of stories used the diabolic to address social issues, although not always in a way intended to frighten. ‘Witch In-Grain’ (1894) and ‘The Priest’s Pavan’ (1903), authored by the now nearly forgotten writer of Decadent horror fiction R. Murray Gilchrist, used the diabolic as an oblique way of exploring gender and sexuality.129 His work, which drew inspiration from mythology, art, medieval folklore, and Renaissance drama, treated women as significant (often emphasising ‘myths of female power’), suggesting that, in the absence of repression, sexuality could be a positive force.130 ‘The Priest’s Pavan’ was the name of a demonic tune, which, when played at a wedding, served as the catalyst for the transformation of the wedding guests into demons and the abduction of the bride by a shining figure, implied to be the Devil.131 A dreamy, almost hallucinatory story, ‘The Priest’s Pavan’ inverted conventional wisdom about marriage, rendering the traditional gendered behaviour of the bride uncanny and horrifying. ‘Witch In-Grain’, a vignette told in equally dreamy style, revealed that a young woman named Michal was a witch. Michal’s intense scholarliness and interest in forbidden knowledge transgressed gendered boundaries and her story concluded at a witch’s sabbath, where she was approached by a diabolic ‘Shape’ who ‘wrapped her in his blackness’.132 Laurence C. Bush has described Michal as a ‘female Faust’ and certainly her contact with the diabolic

204  The Literary and Theatrical Devil released her from social constraints and won her the secret knowledge that was the traditional province of the male sorcerer.133 For Gilchrist, the diabolic served as a sort of substance, which, when applied to society, transformed or dissolved it, revealing the potential horror underlying its institutions. Emilia Dilke’s ‘The Silver Cage’ (1886), published in her collection The Shrine of Death, and Other Stories, centred on a woman, who, tired of waiting to give her soul to Love, doomed herself by giving it to the Devil. Dilke used her story to explore themes of ‘sexual awakening’ and thwarted female desire, associating marriage and conventional gender roles with the demonic.134 Dilke was strongly involved with both feminism and trade unionism and her fiction reflected her political leanings.135 Eschewing the realistic settings popular in nineteenth-century supernatural fiction, ‘The Silver Cage’ opened with the Devil spying on a woman who had placed her soul in a silver cage and hung it in an acacia tree. Entranced, he took the form of a man and tricked her into allowing him into her garden. Their subsequent relationship, in which the Devil received both her possessions and her obedience, resembled an unhappy marriage. Her soul fell silent and, realising that she would never experience love, she died, allowing it the only form of freedom left.136 One reviewer criticised Dilke’s stories on the grounds that they were intensely gloomy and lacked a clear moral, indicating that, while it was possible to use the demonic for social commentary, readers tended to want either entertainment or more comfortable fables.137 While the diabolic could be used to frighten or inform, there were a subset of stories, which made no pretence of doing either. In Wilkie Collins’ story ‘The Devil’s Spectacles’ (1879), a sailor who had made a demonic pact received a pair of spectacles which enabled him to read the thoughts of others. Following his death, they passed to a young man who attempted to use them to resolve his romantic woes. Apart from a diabolic pact, the story’s exceedingly lurid plot included arctic exploration, cannibalism, a death-bed confession, an interfering mother, a well-born woman masquerading as a servant, and a love triangle.138 In this case, the Devil took a backseat to sensationalism, being simply one more outré element in a plot full of them. His diminished status was further indicated by a mild controversy about the story’s title, which was changed to ‘The Magic Spectacles’ for an American audience, as Collins realised that the Devil was ‘too sacred a personage in the U.S.’ for his name to be used so frivolously.139 The same caveat did not apply to Britain.

Poetic Alternatives While the Faust legend dominated most of the Victorian era’s diabolic literary output, there was a subset of poetry which took the diabolic

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  205 in unconventional directions. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem ‘Eden Bower’ (1869) was inspired by the night-demon of Jewish folklore Lilith, who had been the first wife of Adam but had become a demon due to her unwillingness to accept her husband’s authority. Lilith was an unusual topic for a Victorian writer, as she was almost absent from both commissioned art and ‘serious literature’.140 She did, however, resonate with the Victorian cultural tendency, noted by Nina Auerbach, to invest women with spiritually extreme qualities, with virtuous women becoming angels and wicked women devils.141 In Rossetti’s version, Lilith was originally a serpent who transformed into a woman.142 After being replaced by Eve, she sought out her old ‘serpent-mate’ and hatched a plot to expel Adam and Eve from Paradise.143 Despite his unconventional subject matter, Rossetti also drew inspiration from familiar diabolic tropes, as he was still working within the ancient and resonant narrative of the Fall of Man.144 Nevertheless, one reviewer stated that ‘Eden Bower’ teemed ‘with…mysterious power and doom’.145 Lilith also featured in Robert Browning’s poem ‘Adam, Lilith, and Eve’ (1883), in which an unnamed woman, implied to be Lilith, admitted that she really had loved Adam.146 Overall, she remained an exceedingly rare subject throughout the Victorian era. There was also a limited but significant corpus of poetry which used the demonic to explore serious religious and psychological issues, while eschewing Faustian themes or references to Paradise Lost. The religious poet and temperance advocate Henry Septimus Sutton’s ‘Sonnet I.’ (1848) took aim at scientific challenges to religion, with the Devil responding to the damnation of a man, who had been more interested in fossils than spirituality, by stating: ‘Let him come here, and classify for me/ Hell’s burning rocks…’147 Christina Rossetti’s devotional poem ‘The Three Enemies’ (1862), likely inspired by her own experiences of temptation, examined the three traditional Christian spiritual foes of the world, the flesh, and the Devil.148 The Catholic poet Lionel Johnson also wrote several poems about temptation. In his anguished work ‘The Dark Angel’ (1893), he attributed his attraction to men and its resulting shame and loneliness to the influence of a ‘dark angel’.149 He tackled his alcoholism in ‘Vinum Daemonum’ (1893), written from the perspective of the ‘the Prince of this World’, who claimed responsibility for ‘the draughts, that satisfy/ This World’s desires’.150 Finally, his poem ‘Satanas’ (1898), written in Latin, addressed ‘the devil’s attraction’ in general.151 Homosexuality and the diabolic were treated more positively in the socialist and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter’s poem ‘The Secret of Time and Satan’ (1888), in which Satan, who was portrayed as a beautiful, masculine figure, served as ‘a…loving but initially harsh mystic initiator’.152 Carpenter’s approach to the diabolic reflected his view that sexuality, spirituality, and the potential for radical cultural change were intertwined.153 It is necessary to take the Devil’s ability to

206  The Literary and Theatrical Devil convey a wide variety of religious and spiritual sentiments seriously, even if his many uses often lacked a clear unifying core which could be used to trace precise relationships between different poems. Even when the subject matter was unpleasant, works like Rossetti’s ‘The Three Enemies’ or Johnson’s ‘The Dark Angel’ treated religion earnestly and portrayed it as a positive or essential force. Other writers used the diabolic to reflect on spiritual uncertainty or even to condemn religion. Philip Acton’s sonnet ‘The Devil’ (1875) treated the Devil as theologically uncertain, opening: ‘Serpent, or Spirit, whatsoe’er thou art…’ Acton used his poem to criticise the attribution of human wickedness ‘to some extraneous source’.154 Mary Elizabeth Coleridge’s ‘The Devil’s Funeral’ (1908, although written earlier), which examined the death of the Devil as a doctrine, expressed similar unease. She noted that the Devil’s decline had prompted widely divergent theological responses, declaring: ‘One of them thinks he has slain God too, With the self-same sword that Satan slew./ One of them thinks he has saved God’s life; The Devil was ever the God of strife’ but wondered if his decline might allow evil free reign.155 The atheist Constance Naden used the demonic to delegitimise religion, with a demon in her sonnet ‘The Pessimist’s Vision’ (1887) barring the way to hell and declaring that earth would more than satisfy her ‘lust for pain’.156 Even when used to express religious views, the Devil proved extremely flexible, able to convey everything from devout Catholicism to strident atheism. A subset of Victorian poetry also utilised the Devil in sensational or humorous but unusual ways. Publishing under the name Thomas Ingoldsby, the clergyman Richard Harris Barham used the diabolic to humorous effect in his popular comic ghost stories and poetry The Ingoldsby Legends (1837, 1840, 1843).157 His work consisted of reworked versions of medieval tales.158 It was largely set in a fantastical past, with his Devil being either a buffoon or, more rarely, a dangerous but still ludicrous folkloric force. In ‘Saint Medard: A Legend of Afric’, he collected souls in a sack and dreamed of eating holy men on toast.159 ‘The Lay of St. Dunstan’ parodied a saint who was best known from a legend (already ridiculous from a Victorian point of view) in which he banished the Devil by grabbing his nose with a pair of heated tongs.160 Barham’s view of the Devil as a literary character was best exemplified by his ‘Raising the Devil: A Legend of Cornelius Agrippa’, in which the magus promised to show a youth the Devil, described in Romantic terms as the ‘incarnate Fiend that Heaven defied’, but instead left him with an empty purse.161 While the Devil of medieval legend was good for a laugh, the Devil as Miltonic rebel was, in Barham’s opinion, too ludicrous to bother with. Barham’s work demonstrated the influence of historical views of the Devil on Victorian literature and illustrated that depicting the Devil as active or gruesome could sometimes indicate that he was ridiculous rather than threatening. The contrast between Barham’s work and more

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  207 solemn poetic treatments of the diabolic was reflective of the Devil’s varied role in Victorian poetry. He was an easy way of injecting a little drama and served as an excellent shorthand symbol for anything an author disliked or found concerning. In short, he was a useful item in the Victorian poet’s literary toolkit.

The Stage The Devil also made frequent appearances on stage, which were influenced by, although distinct from, his appearances on the Victorian bookcase. David L. Pike, an expert on the theatrical Devil in nineteenth-century London and Paris, has noted that the early to mid-nineteenth century witnessed a pronounced interest in the demonic, describing this era as ‘the heyday of satanism’.162 The Devil’s theatrical role was also dominated by the Faust legend, with the story’s exceedingly numerous stage versions being heavily influenced by Goethe.163 While the actor and manager William Poel staged a version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in London in 1896, this event was rare enough to qualify as an anomaly.164 Theatrical versions of Faust often emphasised romance, with one writer declaring that ‘a Faust without a Margaret, or some one…corresponding to her, would…be like a siege of Troy without a Helen’.165 Despite the fact that it would have been ‘absurd’ to characterise Goethe’s work as ‘a mere tale of sorcery’, spectacle predominated over theology or philosophy, with writers and directors feeling no need to faithfully preserve his ideas, plot, or spirit.166 Stage versions of the Faust story were exceedingly numerous, being performed throughout the century.167 Productions varied in both tone and target audience, although the majority were light-hearted or, at least, contained elements of comedy. English audiences were also familiar with a range of Faustian music, with the Philharmonic Society’s latenineteenth-century programmes including the overture and an aria from Louis Spohr’s Faust (1816), an extract from Robert Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust (1844–1853), Richard Wagner’s Faust Overture (1855), and songs from Charles Gounod’s opera Faust (1859).168 A review of the 1880 production of the Italian composer Arrigo Boito’s opera Mefistofele mentioned Schumann, Spohr, and Gounod, as well as Faustian works by Franz Liszt and Louis-Hector Berlioz.169 It is hardly surprising that a reviewer of a production entitled Faust Up to Date (1888) noted that ‘[i]t might have been thought that Goethe’s legend was too hackneyed a subject…for a new version’, although, as they still expected the show to be popular, there was no mystery about why there were so many versions.170 Audiences could also take in productions of other Faustian narratives. Carl Maria von Weber’s 1821 opera Der Freischütz (‘The Free Marksman’ or The Charmed Bullet), in which a huntsman who had

208  The Literary and Theatrical Devil sold himself to the Devil attempted to exchange the soul of a virtuous woodsman, was popular in the early to mid-century period.171 The Bottle Imp (mentioned in the previous chapter) appeared several times in the earlier part of the century and Byron’s Faustian drama Manfred was produced in multiple versions, although by 1900 it had been reduced to ‘a novelty’.172 Michael William Balfe’s comic opera Satanella (Royal Opera, Convent Garden, London, 1858, 1884) combined romance and diabolism with a ‘female fiend’ who attempted to obtain the hero’s soul but repented out of pity for him and his sweetheart.173 The romantic and demonic also collided in Arthur Sullivan’s wildly popular cantata The Golden Legend (1886), in which a prince afflicted with leprosy and under temptation by Lucifer could only be cured if he allowed a young woman to die in his place.174 Henry Arthur Jones made a rare attempt at treating the Devil seriously in his Faustian play The Tempter (1893) in which the Devil prevented a royal marriage, which could have averted the Hundred Years’ War.175 Unfortunately, Jones’ unpleasant Devil did not appeal to audiences.176 Faustian productions of all kinds tended to emphasise spectacle, humour, and romance, with a reviewer describing W. S. Gilbert’s Gretchen (1876), which attempted to use the Faust narrative as the basis for a ‘philosophical treatise on human nature’ as a ‘deplorable blunder’.177 Nevertheless, as suggested by the variety of his stage appearances, Faust, like the Devil, transcended genre and format. The most famous nineteenth-century production was the Lyceum version, produced by the prominent actor Henry Irving.178 The Lyceum Faust used an array of exciting effects, treating audiences to ‘obscene creatures flitting on bat-like wings through the air, the noise of…infernal revels, and the…illumination of pandemonium’. Irving appeared as Mephistopheles, resplendent in ‘flaming scarlet’.179 Faust emphasised spectacle to such an extent that one critic noted that it was fashionable to take Irving to task ‘for vulgarising and attenuating Goethe’, although they also commented that if you can lay your hand upon your heart and say you are keenly desirous of seeing Goethe’s Faust put upon the stage exactly as it stands – well, I will try my best to look as though I believed you.180 Irving played Mephistopheles with an admixture of humour and it is possible that the play’s extensive use of the diabolic, especially in its comical form, played a role in its struggle for critical respectability, with one writer commenting that the Devil’s presence removed the human ‘struggle’ necessary for a serious drama.181 Nevertheless, the Lyceum Faust proved so popular that it stimulated sales of Goethe’s work.182 It also inspired multiple derivative productions, with Manchester’s Queen’s Theatre including a ‘Demon King’ in ‘mephistophelean garb’ in its Christmas pantomime, Irving’s close friend J. L. Toole producing

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  209 Fa(u)st and Loose about a conjuror whose magic tricks always went awry, and the play being produced in attenuated versions in the temporary, lower-class theatres known as ‘penny gaffs’.183 The fact that the Lyceum Faust was not always considered intellectually respectable and the ease with which it was adapted into pantomimes and magic tricks demonstrated the strong link between the diabolic and the spectacular and hinted that the Devil could be considered an anti-intellectual force. The Devil also appeared on stage outside of the Faustian format with reasonable regularity, although no particular narrative ever posed a serious threat to the dominance of the Faustian model. In 1838, the Lyceum Theatre produced a libretto entitled The Devil’s Opera, intended as ‘a satire upon the taste for diablerie prevalent at the time’.184 One commentator, writing in 1867, noted the prominence of the theatrical Devil, declaring: How largely the stage…derives its aliment from the literature of diablerie may be judged by the most cursory glance…The Fausts, Mephistopheles’, Robert-the-Devils, Zampas, Don Giovanni’s, Manfreds, the Devils on Two Sticks, Little Devils, Leviathans, Satans, Belzebubs, Evil Eyes, the Angel and Devils, Olympic Devils, &c.…chequer the catalogues… Seeking to explain the Devil’s appeal, he speculated that humanity retained an ‘awe of the supernatural’ and was intrigued by his ‘deluding powers’ and ‘sardonic intelligence’.185 Apart from his considerable personal magnetism, the Devil was also a useful stock figure, serving as an all-purpose vehicle for satire and spectacle. Many of the aforementioned characters were widely familiar to Victorian audiences. Various forms of The Devil on Two Sticks, adapted from Alain René Lesage’s novel Le Diable boiteux (1707), were popular in the early part of the period. In 1836, the choreographer Jean Coralli and the playwright Edmund Burat de Gurgy created a ballet based on the novel. Part comedy, part ‘morality play’, it centred on a student named Cléophas, who, having released a rather harmless devil named Asmodée from a bottle, was subjected to a series of ‘worldly lessons’. Asmodée used his ability to lift the roofs off dwellings, exposing the private lives of the inhabitants, as a teaching aid.186 The Devil on Two Sticks, which appeared at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1836 and 1837, was part of the broader genre of the ‘devil in town’, in which the Devil visited a metropolis, providing commentary on the modern city.187 Similar productions included the satire The Devil in London (Adelphi Theatre, London, 1840), The Devil of Marseilles; or, The Spirit of Avarice (Adelphi, 1846), and the burlesque Asmodeus, the Devil on Two Sticks; or, The Force of Friendship (Adelphi, 1859).188 Robert the Devil or Robert le Diable, which depicted the adventures of a nobleman who

210  The Literary and Theatrical Devil was unaware that his father was the Devil, appeared on stage numerous times, most famously in the form of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable (1831). English performances of Meyerbeer’s work included appearances at London’s Royal Italian Opera in 1849 and 1869 and at Her Majesty’s Opera in 1876 and 1877.189 The story also inspired W. S. Gilbert’s operatic burlesque Robert the Devil; or, the Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun (1868).190 Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which a libertine killed the father of an attempted conquest and was sent to hell for his crimes, also proved enduringly popular, with a critic noting in 1861 that a performance was ‘an annual necessity’.191 While not mentioned, the pantomime provided another important example of the theatrical Devil. A clash between good and evil, often represented by a good fairy and a demon, was a central aspect of the Victorian pantomime.192 Pantomime demons were ‘merry, though malicious’ and served a functional role, moving the action of the show forward.193 The pantomime demon distilled the humour and spectacle of the theatrical Devil down to its purest form and his strong association with pantomime goes some way to explaining why he was so difficult to take seriously on stage. Like Faust, this motley assortment of diabolic entertainments was united by the fantastical rather than the theological. As Gilbert and Jones discovered to their detriment, it was a risky prospect to create a literary or theatrical Devil who lacked amusement value, as he was judged above all on his ability to entertain. The fact that diabolic works often succeeded is demonstrated by their popularity, with the Devil appearing regularly on the Victorian stage and the era’s best-selling novel being Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan. The Victorians had the advantage of inheriting a rich tradition of devilish literature, which informed their own diabolic literary and theatrical works. Victorian writers took advantage of the Devil’s mutability, with their work veering from the nonsensical humour of the pantomime to the terror of the ghost story. The Devil’s appearances in both literature and theatre were dominated by the Faust legend, which appeared in a dizzying array of variants – both humorous and unnerving. The Devil of literature and theatre appeared to do everything and express every emotion but he only occasionally conveyed any serious theological message. While there was not a strict divide between the literary and theological Devils, there was also no particular need for Victorian writers to explicitly connect the two. Although the literary Devil was able to frighten, he was far more likely to be humorous, spectacular, romantic, or sympathetic. He was, in many ways, the most human of the Devil’s Victorian manifestations.

Notes 1 Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe,” 303. 2 Anon., “Demonology,” 716.

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  211 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Anon., “The Three Devils,” 648–666; Anon., “A Trio of Fiends,” 264–275. Schipper, “From Milton to Modern Satanism,” 104–105, 119. Anon., “Milton and His Epic,” 308. Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe,” 305–306. Anon., “A Trio of Fiends,” 265–266; Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe: Second Article,” 383–384. Mariotti, “The Spirit of Dante,” 8. Smith, “The Holy Stone Where Dante Sat,” 94. Saglia, “Dante and British Romantic Women Writers,” 184–185. Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, 1. Ryder, “Revelations of the After-World,” 286. Straub, “Dante’s Beatrice and Victorian Gender Ideology,” 206. Milbank, Dante and the Victorians, 1. Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, 62. Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Anon., “Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”,” 83. Reagles, “The Atheist Bunyan,” 1. Mason, “The Victorians and Bunyan’s Legacy,” 151. Reagles, “The Atheist Bunyan,” 2. Leonard, introduction, xii. Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe,” 308–309; Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe: Second Article,” 378. Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe: Second Article,” 377–379; T. S., “Dante and Milton,” 245. Gray, Milton and the Victorians, 2–4. Ibid., 145. Cox, “Milton’s Paradise Lost,” 241–242. Browning, “The Religion of Dante,” 152; Rawlings, “The Transfigured Theology of “Paradise Lost”,” 32–33. Lewis, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Spiritual Progress, 51. Gray, Milton and the Victorians, 45–46. T. S., “Dante and Milton,” 245. Lewis, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Spiritual Progress, 49. Anon., “Lucifer and the Poets”; Browning, A Drama of Exile and Other Poems, 18. Anon., “The Poetry of Mrs. E. B. Browning,” 380. Lewis, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Spiritual Progress, 49–85. Hiemstra, “Reconstructing Milton’s Satan”,” 123–124, 127. Brown, “Victorian Poetry and Science,” 148–149. Botting, Gothic, 1–2. Tichelaar, The Gothic Wanderer, 13. Dacre, Zofloya; Lewis, The Monk; Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer. Anon., “Past “Sensationalists”,” 51–52. Ibid., 52. Botting, Gothic, 3. Ridenhour, In Darkest London, 1–2. Ibid., 2–3. Ibid., 3. Hogle, “Introduction,” 1–2. Casaliggi and Fermanis, Romanticism, 1–8. Botting, Gothic, 89. Schock, Romantic Satanism, 2. Casaliggi and Fermanis, Romanticism, 83–84.

212  The Literary and Theatrical Devil 51 Parker, The Devil as Muse, 113–114, 130. 52 Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe: Second Article,” 381–382; Parker, The Devil as Muse, 130–132. 53 Butler, “Culture’s Medium,” 146; Schock, Romantic Satanism, 2. 54 Butler, “Culture’s Medium,” 147–148. 55 Noel, “Lord Byron and His Times,” 627. 56 Luke, introduction, xiii–xiv. 57 Hopkins, “Marlowe’s Reception and Influence,” 287–289. 58 Brandt, “The Critical Backstory,” 24. 59 Dabbs, Reforming Marlowe, 18; Fitzsimmons, “Introduction,” 1. 60 Goethe, Faust, Part One. 61 Goethe, Faust, Part Two. 62 Saul, “Aesthetic Humanism,” 269. 63 Anon., “Sir Theodore Martin’s Second Part of ‘Faust.’,” 725. 64 Anon., “A Chapter about Faustus and the Devil,” 269. 65 Heinemann, “A Biographical List of the English Translations and Annotated Editions of Goethe’s Faust,” 100–105; Mozley, “The Decline of Goethe,” 51–52. 66 Hutchings, “The Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe: Second Article,” 383. 67 Anon., “The Three Devils,” 657. 68 Anon., “A Trio of Fiends,” 264, 271. 69 Wilson, “Facts and Fancies about Faust,” 782. 70 Ibid. 788–790. 71 Henke, “James Joyce and Philip James Bailey’s Festus,” 445. 72 Tucker, Epic, 340. 73 Cronin, “The Spasmodics,” 291–292. 74 McKillop, “A Victorian Faust,” 743, 747–750. 75 Ibid., 747–750. 76 M’Dougall, “The Satanic in Literature,” 338–339. 77 Anon., “Lucifer and the Poets”. 78 Henke, “James Joyce and Philip James Bailey’s Festus,” 445. 79 Cronin, “The Spasmodics,” 291. 80 McKillop, “A Victorian Faust,” 759–760; Tucker, Epic, 344. 81 D’Agnillo, Arthur Hugh Clough, 218, n. 5; Kenny, Arthur Hugh Clough, 216. 82 Donaldson, Stone, and Taylor, The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. 1, 309–331; Browning, The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. 1, 284–302. 83 Browning, The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. 1, 315–330. 84 Browning, “Fust and His Friends,” 241–272. 85 Ellis, “Roden Noel,” 101; Symonds, review of A Modern Faust and Other Poems by Roden Noel, 33–34. 86 Anon., “Mr. Roden Noel’s New Poem,” 373. 87 Anon., review of The Eloping Angels by William Watson, 121; Forman, “William Watson,” 541; McKillop, “A Victorian Faust,” 766. 88 Ainsworth, Auriol, 127–138. 89 Bragg, ““A Thousand Peculiar and Varied Forms”,” 163–164; Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, 30. 90 Braddon, Gerard. 91 Ibid., 7, 16–45. 92 Braddon, Gerard. 93 Ibid., 175.

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  213 94 Ibid., 18. 95 James, “Marie Corelli and the Value of Literary Self-Consciousness,” 134–135. 96 Stasiak, “Victorian Professionals, Intersubjectivity, and the fin-de-siecle Gothic Text,” 96. 97 Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan; Gannon, “Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan,” 381. 98 James, “Marie Corelli and the Value of Literary Self-Consciousness,” 149. 99 Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan, 315–354. 100 Gannon, “Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan,” 380. 101 James, “Marie Corelli and the Value of Literary Self-Consciousness,” 135. 102 Moss, “Marie Corelli,” 90. 103 Gannon, “Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan,” 377. 104 E. C., “Problems of Popularity,” 50. 105 Federico, Idol of Suburbia, 61. 106 Weintraub, “Marie Corelli’s Satan and Don Juan in Hell,” 166. 107 Briggs, “The Ghost Story,” 176–177; Hay, A History of the Modern British Ghost Story, 19. 108 Briggs, “The Ghost Story,” 176–177. 109 Briggs, “The Ghost Story,” 181; Hay, A History of the Modern British Ghost, 1, 19, 21–22. 110 Bloom, “Horror Fiction,” 211. 111 Cadwallader, Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction, 3. 112 Hay, A History of the Modern British Ghost Story, 11–12; Imfeld, The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology, 116–119; Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers, Vol. 1, 27–97, 201–236; Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers, Vol. 2, 182–254. Sage, “Irish Gothic,” 142. 113 114 Le Fanu, Madam Crowl’s Ghost, 123; Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers, Vol. 1, 50. 115 Imfeld, The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology, 115; Le Fanu, Madam Crowl’s Ghost, 121–134; Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers, Vol. 1, 27–97; Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers, Vol. 2, 182–254. 116 Smith, The Ghost Story, 4. 117 Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings, 4–5. 118 Imfeld, The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology, 110, 127. 119 Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, Vol. 1, 3–95. 120 Ibid., 26–34. Ibid., 83–95. 121 Grimes, The Late Victorian Gothic, 6–7. 122 James, Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary, 3–28, 151–179. 123 124 Brewster, “Casting an Eye,” 43; O’Briain,“‘The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail Against It’,” 47–48. 125 O’Briain, “‘The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail Against It’,” 47–48. Bloom, “Horror Fiction,” 219. 126 127 James, Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary, 25. 128 Simpson, ““The Rules of Folklore” in the Ghost Stories of M. R. James,” 12. 129 Bush, “R. Murray Gilchrist’s Short Fiction,” 1–6. 130 Ibid., 2–6, 70–71. 131 Gilchrist, A Night on the Moor, 163–168. 132 Ibid., 86–88. 133 Bush, “R. Murray Gilchrist’s Short Fiction,” 90–91. 134 Israel, Names and Stories, 105.

214  The Literary and Theatrical Devil 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167

168

Ibid., 3. Dilke, The Shrine of Death, 27–29, 33–35. Anon., review of The Shrine of Death by Lady Dilke, 1536. Baker, A Wilkie Collins Chronology, 182; Collins, The Haunted Hotel, 293–323. Gasson, Wilkie Collins, 49. Allen, ““One Strangling Golden Hair”,” 286. Auerbach, Woman and the Demon, 64–65. Briggs, “The Legends of Lilith and the Wandering Jew in NineteenthCentury Literature,” 132. Pittman, “The Strumpet and the Snake,” 47–49. Briggs, “The Legends of Lilith and the Wandering Jew in NineteenthCentury Literature,” 133, 135. Anon., “Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” 689. Briggs, “The Legends of Lilith and the Wandering Jew in NineteenthCentury Literature,” 135–136; Browning, The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, Vol. II, 637. Owen, “Sutton, Henry Septimus”; Sutton, Poems, 29. Packer, Christina Rossetti, 66; Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems, 143–146. Hanson, Decadence and Catholicism, 87–89; Johnson, Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson, 77–79. Hanson, Decadence and Catholicism, 87–88; Johnson, Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson, 229. Hönnighausen, The Symbolist Tradition in English Literature, 217; Johnson, Twenty-One Poems, 35–36. Carpenter, “The Secret of Time and Satan”; Faxneld, Satanic Feminism, 337. Dixon, “Out of Your Clinging Kisses,” 143–163. Acton, “The Devil,” 184. Coleridge, Poems, 32–33. Alarabi, “Constance Naden’s Philosophical Poetry,” 848; Naden, A Modern Apostle, 157. Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends; Summers, “Review of the Supernatural in Modern English Fiction,” 356, n. 5. Roud, London Lore, 189. Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends, 394–402. Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends, 145–146; Simpson and Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore. Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends, 393–394. Pike, Metropolis on the Styx, 67. Adams, A Dictionary of the Drama, Vol. 1, 502. Bevington, “The Performance History,” 47. Anon., ““Faust” at Drury Lane,” 680. Silver, “Shaver Silver About Faust,” 705. Anon., “Faust Up to Date,” 309; Clarke, “The Faust Legends,” 258–259; Griffel, Operas in English, 168; Nicoll, A History of English Drama, Vol. 4, 330; Anon., “Our Musical Box,” 119; Wynne, Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage, 50–57. Philharmonic Society, Eighty-Second Season, Sixth Concert, Vol. 6, 7 June 1894, NCCO; Philharmonic Society, Seventy-Third Season, Fourth Concert, Vol. 4, 22 Apr. 1885, NCCO; Philharmonic Society, EightyEighth Year, Second Concert, Vol. 2, 21 Mar. 1900, NCCO; Philharmonic

The Literary and Theatrical Devil  215

169 170 171

172

173 174

175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189

190 191 192 193

Society, Sixty-Fifth Season, Third Concert, Vol. 3, 22 Mar. 1877, NCCO; Philharmonic Society, Fifty-Eighth Season, Sixth Concert, Vol. 6, 6 June 1870, NCCO; Philharmonic Society, Fifty-Ninth Season, Seventh Concert, Vol. 7, 19 June 1871, NCCO; Philharmonic Society, Seventy-Fifth Season, Seventh Concert, Vol. 7, 15 June 1887, NCCO. Anon., “Our Musical Box,” 119. Anon., “Faust Up to Date,” 309. Anon., “Drury Lane,” (1839), 2; Anon., “Drury Lane,” (1840), 26; Anon., “German Opera,” 267; Anon., “Royal Italian Opera,” (1851), 329–330; Balthazar, Historical Dictionary of Opera, 134; Grout and Williams, A Short History of Opera, 428; Kennedy, Oxford Dictionary of Opera Characters, 49, 263. Anon., “Byron’s “Manfred”,” 330–331; Anon., “The Drama and Public Amusements,” 492; Anon., “Dramatic Gossip,” 164; Anon., “English Opera House,” n. p.; Anon., “Manfred at Drury Lane Theatre,” 153; Beach, “The Sources of Stevenson’s Bottle Imp,” 12–13; Starck, “The Bottle Imp,” 94. Anon., “Royal English Opera,” 819–820; Anon., “Satanella,” 146–147. Ainger, Gilbert and Sullivan, 275–276; Bradley, Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers, 137–138; Anon., “The Beauty Stone,” 159; Anon., “The Beauty Stone,” 682; Max., “The Beauty Stone,” 744; Stanford, “Sullivan’s “Golden Legend”,” 400. Pisani, Music for the Melodramatic Theatre, 277. J. F. N., ““The Beauty Stone” at the Savoy,” 611; Pisani, Music for the Melodramatic Theatre, 277. Anon., “Mr. Gilbert’s Gretchen,” 431–432. Wynne, Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage, 44. Wynne, Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage, 50–57. A. B. W., “The Drama,” 445–446. A. B. W., “The Drama,” 445–446; Anon., “December,” 77. Pennell, “The Decline and Fall of Dr. Faustus,” 394. Booth, Victorian Spectacular Theatre, 181, n. 56; Pennell, “The Decline and Fall of Dr. Faustus,” 400–407; Wynne, Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage, 50–57. Adams, A Dictionary of the Drama, Vol. 1, 397. Malcolm, “Doctor Faustus,” 155. Meglin, “Le Diable Boiteux,” 263–269. Anon., “Drury Lane Theatre,” n. p.; Adams, A Dictionary of the Drama, Vol. 1, 396; Pike, Metropolis on the Styx, 65–68. Nicoll, A History of Early Nineteenth-Century Drama, Vol. 2, 361, 521; Anon., “Drury Lane Theatre,” n. p. Anon., “Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable,” 740; Anon., “Robert Le Diable at Her Majesty’s,” 394; Anon., “Royal Italian Opera,” (1849), 306; Everist, “The Name of the Rose,” 211; Murray, Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 948; Silver, “Shaver Silver Across “Robert le Diable”,” 363. Anon., “Covent-Garden,” 77; Anon., “Here, There, and Everywhere,” 165; Booth, “Gilbert, W. S.”; Stedman, W. S. Gilbert, 62. Anon., “The Musical World,” 312; Kennedy, Oxford Dictionary of Opera Characters, 71. Booth, Theatre in the Victorian Age, 200; Taylor, “Continuity and Transformation in Twentieth-Century Pantomime,” 186. Anon., “The People of Pantomime,” 203.

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Conclusion

The primary purpose of this book has been to demonstrate that the Devil played a significant role in Victorian English culture. It serves as a response to the still relatively common perception among historians that the Devil was only of minor cultural and theological relevance in a nineteenth-century English context. Prior to the 1980s, the Weberian model of disenchantment had a pronounced influence on the historiography of Victorian religion and the supernatural, meaning that the Devil tended to be conceptualised as premodern, with his role in Victorian culture pushed to the periphery. This book adds to previous research on the Victorian supernatural by historians such as Owen Davies, Karl Bell, Alex Owen, and Alison Butler, who have shed considerable light on the prominent place of the uncanny in nineteenth-century England, demonstrating that the supernatural, including the diabolic, was an organic and integral part of English modernity. It demonstrates that the Devil permeated Victorian culture, playing notable roles in religion, folklore, spiritualism, occultism, popular culture, literature, and theatre. Far from evaporating in the face of a progressive process of disenchantment, the diabolic flourished in Victorian England, indicating that the Devil could play a vibrant role in modernity. The Victorian Devil was a being of many faces. He blurred the boundaries between belief and non-belief, fear and entertainment, being equally likely to feature as a spiritual threat in a fiery sermon or a comic figure in a humorous broadside. Despite the diversity of his cultural role, his identity was offered a degree of unity by his long-standing role as a traditional Christian figure. His appearances in the bible and in theological discourse (whether the scholarly discussions of clergymen or the popular understandings of the laity) served as the components of a loosely defined but recognisable archetypical form. Both his image as the fearsome enemy of God and his image as the buffoonish butt of the joke were derived from traditional Christian knowledge. While he had traditionally been conceptualised as frightening and powerful, this power was undercut by the fact that he was also, ultimately, powerless and contemptible, as he existed only to serve God’s purposes and would eventually face absolute defeat. His status as a crucial component of the

Conclusion  225 traditional Christian universe gifted him with both universal recognisability and tremendous symbolic power. His bestial guises were derived from his current state as a vile spiritual entity and his more attractive or sympathetic ones from his original form as an angel of light. The vast majority of his forms, even his apparently non-religious ones, were, therefore, closely informed by his religious identity. The Devil’s protean nature, combined with the cultural power of his traditional religious identity, allowed him to infiltrate numerous Victorian cultural domains. He continued to play a role in the beliefs and practices of the majority of denominations, including the Church of England, most Non-Conformist groups, and the Roman Catholic Church. Even for the small number of denominations (most prominently the Unitarians) who formally rejected the Devil, spiritual evil remained a topic of concern. Although official rejection was rare, controversy was common. A substantial number of Victorian Christians balked at the old-fashioned horror of a personal Devil, either rejecting him or reducing him to an abstract evil force or a mere symbol of human wickedness. Hell also provoked an intense debate, with Victorian theologians engaging in heated arguments about the existence and morality of eternal punishment. Although a significant subset of Christians doubted the existence of a personal Devil, many continued to view him as a dangerous reality. Even individuals who completely rejected hell did not necessarily abandon the Devil, with many of even the most non-traditional theologians continuing to fear malign spiritual influences. The nineteenth-century Devil offered neither a straightforward story of the persistence of tradition nor a classic narrative of a Victorian ‘crisis of faith’, instead indicating the ways in which belief and doubt and tradition and innovation could coexist. The Victorian Devil’s theological role provides significant evidence for the continuing importance of traditional religious ideas in a Victorian context. It also raises questions about the nature of the ‘decline’ of a religious belief or practice and the way in which this issue should be conceptualised within historiographical discourse. While it is true that doubt about the existence of a personal Devil increased during the nineteenth century, whether the Devil’s role in Victorian culture is best described using an overarching narrative of decline is a more complicated question. A theoretical model which focuses exclusively or primarily on decline risks understating just how common and culturally prominent traditional diabolic ideas remained during the nineteenth century, as well as obscuring the important role of spiritual innovation in Victorian culture. The Devil, even in his traditional theological form, never came close to irrelevance, meaning that a religious idea’s lessening degree of importance to some sectors of society can coexist with its relatively widespread importance to others. Decline is far from an absolute term and can obscure continuing relevance or adaptation as easily as it highlights some aspects of changing attitudes.

226  Conclusion The Devil’s ongoing role in Victorian culture was also reflected in the persistence of diabolic folklore. Like the theological Devil, the folkloric Devil was emblematic of the fact that Victorian society was far from disenchanted. The Devil’s folkloric role encompassed a melange of beliefs, practices, narratives, and entertainments. Just as the orthodox Christian universe provided the overarching structure in which Victorian Christians lived their lives, folkloric ideas were a part of everyday life for many individuals. The Devil’s presence permeated the material world, being associated with a wide variety of dangerous or sinister plants, animals, and landscape features. Occasionally, individuals even reported encountering the Devil directly, although it was more common for him to be conceptualised as an unseen source of misfortune. He also played a minor role in magical belief, with both witches and cunning folk being sporadically associated with diabolism. The Devil’s role in magical belief hinted at the complexity of his relationship to other supernatural ideas, in which he was often only one component of a larger structure of beliefs and practices. While diabolic folklore played a meaningful role in the lives of some segments of the Victorian population, for others (especially many among the middle and upper classes), it was simply superstition. The idea that ‘superstitious’ folkloric beliefs were destined to inevitably fade away due to modernisation fuelled educated attempts to collect England’s folklore before it was too late. The folkloric Devil’s many functions provide an example of the diversity which could be present within even a single component of a supernatural concept. The belief that some ideas about spiritual evil were more ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ than others is also powerfully demonstrated by the Devil’s role in spiritualism and occultism. While he cast a shadow over nineteenth-century English culture’s spiritualist and occult currents, his place within them was profoundly uncertain. Although he made limited appearances in their ideas and activities, spiritualists and occultists often devalued or rejected the Devil. Spiritualists typically repudiated both hell and the Devil, preferring to envision the spiritual world as a compassionate realm in which human spirits had the potential to evolve posthumously. Many occultists, including Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland and the members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, also formulated alternate models of spiritual evil. These models, coupled with the prominence of theological debate regarding the Devil’s existence, demonstrate that, by the Victorian era, he was not obligatory. He could be discarded in the face of personal distaste or changing spiritual fashion. Victorian spiritualism and occultism also, however, demonstrated that it was easier to repudiate the Devil than avoid him. Spiritualists suffered especially grievously in this regard, being dogged throughout the period by accusations of diabolism. It was also common for spiritualists and occultists to express concern about spiritual evil, indicating that the Devil’s function often persisted in some fashion even if

Conclusion  227 his form did not. Furthermore, the Devil’s symbolic potential remained entirely intact, although it was sometimes used in unconventional ways, with a prominent example being the representation of Lucifer as a radical ‘light-bringer’ by the Theosophical Society. The role of spiritual evil in Victorian spiritualism and occultism demonstrates the proactive creativity with which some Victorians approached the spiritual universe. As was the case with the Devil’s theological and folkloric roles, the Devil’s occult role highlights the pluralism of Victorian spirituality and the fact that it was common for Victorian individuals to actively negotiate their own place within an evolving spiritual universe. It also indicates that spiritualists and occultists were often forced to position their own beliefs in relation to traditional Christian ideas. They could choose their own ideological views but they did not have control over the environment in which they chose them and the fact of the matter was that they could not escape the influence of traditional Christianity. The abolition of the Devil was an ideological goal rather than a cultural reality. When spiritualists and occultists are compared with the broader Victorian population, their view of the Devil represented one end of a spectrum. It was not an oddity but it was also not archetypical. Victorian theology, folklore, spiritualism, and occultism were, despite their diversity, united by a common concern about spiritual evil. They all played a role in managing the darker side of the spiritual world, both in terms of providing or informing codes of right behaviour and in offering practical support to combat misfortune, negative emotion, and spiritual malevolence. While the form this management took varied, sometimes involving a literal Devil and sometimes not, it was rare for an individual or group to be entirely unconcerned about evil and almost as rare for them to entirely eliminate the spiritual from the equation. Even much criticism of the Devil was founded on concerns about the nature of evil, with critics arguing that the doctrines of a personal Devil and a fiery hell were themselves depraved, as they suggested an immoral universe presided over by a vindictive God. The Devil’s opponents tended to have a vision of a better society, which could be created through the elimination of the diabolic. Exactly what this society looked like varied. For the most part, it was not secular. While secularists certainly opposed the Devil, they were greatly outnumbered by religious factions and spiritualist groups, who wished to eliminate the diabolic from theology, and occultists, who wished to spiritually empower the individual in ways which left little room for a straightforward clash between God and Devil. Some individuals also opposed specific ideas about the Devil (such as ‘superstitious’ folkloric beliefs) but did not necessarily reject him entirely. Both those who championed the Devil and those who rejected him considered their position to be self-evidently correct and saw themselves as correcting harmful misinformation. It was unclear which viewpoint

228  Conclusion would prevail. As this ideological conflict demonstrates, even those individuals who doubted the existence of the Devil often took their own doubt and, therefore, the topic of the Devil seriously. The Devil’s greatest enemy was, perhaps, not doubt but apathy, which, as it tended to be less vocal, is difficult to measure. While there was certainly a sector of the population who were uninterested in the Devil, the sheer volume of discussion about hell and the Devil demonstrate that they retained enough cultural significance to be topical throughout the period. Part of their topicality stemmed from the fact that they often became entwined with other issues relating to religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, including the nature of morality and the distinction between legitimate and ‘superstitious’ beliefs. Doubt and even decline are distinct from apathy or irrelevance. The amount of disagreement about the nature and existence of the diabolic was indicative of the fact that, by the Victorian era, belief in a personal Devil was an ideological position rather than simply common sense. A rejection of a personal Devil did not necessarily mean a rejection of religion in general or even of all forms of supernatural evil. The shifting fortunes of the Victorian Devil do not provide straightforward evidence for secularisation. Interpreting his cultural role in this way depends on equating religious diversity with decline, treating earlier forms of the English Devil as inherently more important, and assuming that the currently marginalised state of the Devil within western belief systems was the inevitable outcome of a Victorian ideological milieu which was frequently alien to the present in both its ideas and motivations. The Victorian diabolic offers evidence that the supernatural played a complicated role in English modernity, without a clear trajectory of decline, persistence, or innovation but instead a complicated, ever-shifting pattern of all three. This pattern is also evident in the Devil’s substantial role in nineteenthcentury entertainment and humour. The Devil’s protean nature and wide recognisability allowed him to make frequent appearances in popular culture, including broadsides, chapbooks, penny dreadfuls, and puppet shows. His portrayals in popular culture strayed far from the earnestness of his theological role. They were often light-hearted and humorous and seemed to call into question his power to intimidate, as no one was particularly frightened by his defeat in a Punch and Judy show or his appearance in a comic broadside. This flippant attitude was only one side of the story. Hints of seriousness were apparent in the fact that the Devil was often used figuratively to convey condemnation and criticism, appearing in texts such as crime broadsides, in which he was used to symbolise murder and other social evils. The Devil was a potent symbol for human evil because everyone recognised his religious meaning. There was not necessarily a contradiction between his appearances in theology and his use in entertainment. Even instances in which the

Conclusion  229 diabolic was viewed as a genuine danger were sometimes used for recreation and amusement. The Devil’s more entertaining forms were not separate from his theological, folkloric, or occult ones but rather existed in dialogue with them. The boundaries between belief and entertainment were porous and laughter could turn to fear or fear to laughter with relative ease. For instance, the bogeyman Spring-heeled Jack, who often sported diabolic features, inspired penny dreadfuls even as his appearances were reported to have caused mayhem and terror. In addition, even the most cartoonish image of an evil figure with horns and tail did not have an indeterminate meaning. While the Devil of popular culture was a caricature of his theological form, he was still recognisably the Devil. The Devil also played an extensive role in literature and theatrical productions. He featured in numerous novels, ghost stories, poems, and plays in which he often served as a symbol of human wickedness. The vast majority of writers who drew on diabolic themes used them primarily to provide entertainment via humour, spectacle, or suspense rather than to convey serious theological or philosophical messages. Nevertheless, like his role in popular culture, the Devil’s literary and theatrical role did little to undermine his theological one. Despite how common it was for the Devil to cause controversy, it was comparatively rare for the use of diabolic themes in entertainment to attract much condemnation. This fact suggests that it was considered relatively acceptable, even by those who believed in a personal Devil. Versions of the Faust legend dominated both diabolic literature and theatre. Faust’s story provided a flexible structure, which could be transplanted to an almost infinite number of settings and reworked with any characters, who were convenient or relevant. It contained timeless messages about temptation, evil, and the need to make wise and moral choices but also provided plenty of scope for jokes, chills, and, in the case of stage productions, spectacular effects. While it is true that the Devil’s use in entertainment and literature was rarely actively hostile to religion, it is less clear whether it reflected a certain apathy. By the nineteenth century, certain diabolic narratives (such as diabolic pacts) were distinguished by the fact that most educated members of the population did not believe in them. This dismissive attitude allowed tropes like the Faustian pact to be used in much the same way as a fairy tale. It is possible that, as historians such as Jeffrey Burton Russell have suggested, the frequency of the nineteenth-century Devil’s non-religious appearances was a symptom of his declining religious importance, signifying that his meaning had fragmented. The Devil was certainly affected by the ideological currents of modernity, with his appearances in Victorian entertainment and literature echoing the melange of ideas about the diabolic present in Victorian religion. Nevertheless, the Devil’s meaning was often not as diverse as his forms and, in most cases, depictions continued to draw significantly on traditional ideas, especially his powerful association with evil and negativity. The Victorian

230  Conclusion Devil’s role in entertainment and literature reflects a certain looseness in the use of religious tropes and the fact that, for many Victorians, some aspects of diabolic lore had become implausible. It does not indicate that the Devil’s meaning had totally fragmented or that he had been relegated to a trivial irrelevance. If the Devil’s role in Victorian entertainment and literature is to be read as a consequence of the decline of the diabolic, then this conclusion generally has to be based on its lack of theological depth rather than on any significantly transgressive message in its contents. The Devil’s role in Victorian literature and entertainment was largely reflective of his role in other cultural arenas, meaning that it was pluralistic and not without ideological tension. Far from being swept aside by modernity, the Devil’s ambiguity allowed him to adapt to and even thrive in a Victorian context. His complexity and variability allowed him to play a diverse role in Victorian culture, as it meant that he was relevant in a wide variety of contexts. The Victorian Devil had many faces, with the frivolous and the serious, the theological and the secular mingling freely. One of his defining features and the source of much of his vitality was, therefore, a significant degree of internal disunity. Nevertheless, he derived a level of internal coherence from his theological role, with his cultural appearances largely being based (albeit sometimes loosely) on his traditional biblical and theological characteristics. This mixture is the source of his importance for the historian, as a study of his nineteenth-century forms illuminates the resilience of folklore, the dynamism of spiritualism and occultism, the ongoing importance of traditional Christian concepts, and the prominent role of the supernatural in nineteenth-century popular culture, literature, and theatre. The way the Victorians conceptualised supernatural evil illuminates the fact that nineteenth-century ideas about the supernatural consisted of an ongoing dialogue between tradition and innovation and belief and entertainment with neither entirely eclipsing the other. While the Victorian Devil was a controversial figure, he remained consistently relevant enough to be worth contesting and even his most ardent foes never managed to cast him into utter obscurity. Whether central or peripheral, vital or diminished, he was always undeniably present.

Index

acrobats 178 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius 133, 206 Ainsworth, William Harrison 199 alchemy 133, 134, 143, 144 alcohol 44, 50, 54, 85, 103, 160–161, 168, 205; see also temperance Alighieri, Dante 38, 160, 190, 191–192 angels 41, 52, 124, 131–132, 134, 136, 140, 143–144, 145, 166, 168, 178, 199, 202, 205–206, 209; see also devils Anglicanism see Church of England anthropology 78 anti-Catholicism 36, 58–59, 167; see also Catholicism antichrist 124, 146 antiquarians 18, 75, 77–78, 81, 82, 85, 90, 95, 98, 99 apocalypse 31, 121, 124–125 apotropaic magic 76, 84–5, 89, 91, 94; see also luck astral plane 138, 140–1, 143–4, 145, 148 astrology 8, 133–4 Athanasian Creed 38–9 atheism 61, 147, 174, 202, 206; see also secularism atonement 36, 53, 61 Axon, William 75 Babes in the Wood 165, 178 Bailey, James Philip 197–8 Balfe, Michael William 208 baptism 40, 42, 57, 83, 86, 89 Baptists 33, 34, 45, 46, 47–9, 56, 59 Barham, Richard Harris 206–7 Baring-Gould Sabine 95, 100 Barrett, Francis 134 Berlioz, Louis-Hector 207

Besant, Annie 137 The Bible: biblical criticism 10, 28–9, 32, 39, 41–2, 47–8, 60, 198; the Devil and hell in 4, 31, 32, 39, 40, 41, 44, 46, 51, 54, 57–8, 85, 224, 230; in literature 191–3; in occultism 139; in spiritualism 124–6; use of biblical references 61; in Victorian Christianity 10, 39, 40, 45, 55, 57–8 black dogs 16, 76, 86, 91–2, 104 Blake, William 8, 147, 196 Blavatsky, Helena 136–9, 200; see also Theosophical Society Boito, Arrigo 207 Book of Common Prayer 36, 38 Booth, Catherine 53; see also Salvation Army Booth, William 53–4, 160; see also Salvation Army Bottle Imp 178, 208 Braddon, Mary Elizabeth 195, 199–200 Bradlaugh, Charles 61 Brand, John 77 Bray, Anna Eliza 77, 87, 93, 94, 104 Bristol 38, 46 Britten, Emma Hardinge 129 Broad Church 36, 41, 42, 44; see also Church of England Broadsides; ballads 162–5; crime 168–70; humorous 3, 163–6; frightening depictions of the Devil in 165–6; gender in 164–5; in historiography 14, 163; religious 166–7; temperance 168; ‘true accounts’ 165–6; use of diabolic symbolism in 169–70; in Victorian culture 2, 13, 14, 159, 162–3, 171 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 122, 194, 198

232 Index Browning, Robert 198, 205 Buddhism 136 Bunyan, John 191, 192–3 Burne, Charlotte 81–2, 86, 89, 94, 95, 98, 102 Byron, George Gordon (Lord Byron) 18, 190, 195–6, 198, 208 cabala 99, 133, 134, 142 Carpenter, Edward 205 cartoons 160, 167 Catholicism 7, 33–6, 57–60, 125–6, 192, 195, 205–6, 225 chapbooks 2, 14, 162, 172, 228 charms 87, 94, 96; see also cunningfolk and magic Child, Francis James 101–2; see also folk music children’s games 18, 95, 97, 98–100, 104 church buildings 42, 88–90, 97, 99–100, 104, 199 Church of England: the Devil and 28, 30, 31–4, 36–45, 51, 55, 58, 75–6, 167, 225; mesmerism and 120–1; spiritualism and 123–5, 127; in diabolically-themed fiction 202 cities, envisioned as diabolic 160 clairvoyance 119, 125, 126, 130, 144 class: and the Devil 12; and folklore 11, 76–7, 79, 82–3, 87, 98, 100, 105; impact on surviving primary source material 12–16, 18, 76–7, 83, 100; in the historiography of modern English supernatural ideas 12; and popular culture 159–62, 170, 172, 209; and religious affiliation 34–6, 53; and spiritualism and occultism 12, 122 Clough, Arthur Hugh 198 Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth 206 Collins, Wilkie 195, 204 conditionalism 31–2, 46, 47, 49, 56 Congregationalism 33, 34, 45, 46–7, 49, 56 Corelli, Marie 200–1, 210 Cornwall 35, 51–2, 89, 92, 93–4, 95, 97, 100 crime 95, 139, 167, 168–70, 179, 228 Crowley, Aleister 142, 146–7 crystallomancy 134–5 cunning-folk 76, 95–7

Dacre, Charlotte 194 damned souls 17, 31–2, 48, 53, 55, 57, 59–60, 124, 131; see also hell dancing 43, 50, 75, 96, 102–3, 171 Davies, Charles Maurice 37, 45, 125 death 31, 37, 42, 43, 51, 75, 92–3, 96, 103–4, 127, 201, 204; see also heaven, hell, and spiritualism decadent fiction 200, 203 denominations, distribution 33–6 Devil, characteristics in the Victorian era 1–5 Devil, in folklore: character and attributes 83–8; encounters with 103–5; entertainment; 97–103; folklorists 81–3; the landscape 88–90; magic 93–7; names 85; the natural world 90–3 Devil, historiography of 5–12 Devil, in literature: ghost and horror fiction 201–4; influences on Victorian literature 190–7; Faustian poetry and prose 197–201; other diabolic poetry 204–6 Devil, popular culture: cheap reading material 171–5; broadsides 162–70; English language 161–2; live entertainment 175–9; supernatural as entertainment 179–80 Devil, in spiritualism and occultism: mesmerism 120–1; occultism 132–48; psychical research 130–2; spiritualism 122–30 Devil, in theatre: Faustian 207–9; other 209–10 Devil, theological: in Catholicism 57–60; in the Church of England 36–45; in Nonconformity 45–57; use by secularists 61–2 Devil, used as symbol 5, 9–10, 17, 29, 45–6, 62, 136–8, 140, 147, 170, 191, 207, 225, 228–9 disenchantment see secularisation The Divine Comedy see Alighieri, Dante Dee, John see magic, Enochian Dilke, Emilia 204 Doctor Faustus see Marlowe, Christopher Don Giovanni 210 Dorset 89, 96–7, 98, 102 Dove, William, murder case 95, 97 dreams 11, 51–2, 92, 139, 169, 199

Index  233 devils: in Christianity 17, 30, 31, 39, 41–4, 48, 52, 53, 55, 57, 59; in folklore 75, 81, 86–7, 88, 91, 94, 96, 97, 103–4; in literature 191–2, 196–9, 202, 203, 205, 206; and mesmerism 120; and occultism 17, 134–5, 136, 138, 139, 141, 143–5, 147, 148; in popular culture 2, 166, 168–9, 170, 178–80; and psychical research 131–2; and spiritualism 124, 127–8, 130; in theatre 208, 209, 210 Devil’s Hoofmarks 1, 12–13, 15–17, 19 Devil on Two Sticks 209 Devon 1, 12–13, 15–17, 19, 77, 86, 89, 92, 104 diabolic pacts 95–96, 97, 197; see also Faust divination 143, 144–5, 165–6, 199 dualism 32, 139 education 3, 7–8, 11, 14–17, 16–17, 28, 76–7, 83, 87, 105, 133, 229 elementals 138–9, 141, 143–5, 148 Enlightenment 7, 195 Elliotson, John 121 English language, use of diabolic terms 161–2; see also proverbs esotericism 9–10, 119, 132–3, 139, 140; see also occultism Essays and Reviews 36, 41–2 Essex 90 eternal punishment see hell ethnology see anthropology 78–80 Evangelicalism 34, 36–7, 39, 43, 45–6, 49–50, 121, 123, 160, 168, 198; see also Low Church evolution 28, 30–1, 47, 49, 60, 78–9, 119, 127, 130, 136, 138, 140, 195, 226–7 Faust: popular culture 95, 173–5; legend 135, 196; literature 8, 19, 38, 173–5, 190–1, 194, 196–204, 229; theatre 19, 207–9, 229 Faber, Frederick William 59 fairies 85, 86–7, 171–2, 180, 210 Fall, the 28, 53, 193, 197, 205 Farrar, Frederic William 32–3, 41, 58 Faust (Goethe) see Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust (Lyceum production) 208–9

fear 4–5, 19, 43, 50–2, 55, 60–1, 62, 77, 83–5, 87, 98–100, 101–2, 105, 121, 159, 161, 165, 175, 179, 190–1, 201, 224–5, 229 Festus see Bailey, James Philip feminism 9–10, 204 Ficino, Marsilio 133 folk drama 18, 97, 102–3 folk music 82, 100–2, 165–6 folk tales 2, 11, 18, 78, 81–2, 86–7, 98, 100–1, 105 folklorists 13, 15, 18, 75–83; see also Devil, in folklore Folklore Society 79–80 Fratres Lucis 134 Freemasonry 133–4, 142 Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter or The Charmed Bullet) 207–8 Furniss, John 58–9 gambling 44, 50, 83–4, 98, 160–1, 162 gender 9–10, 12, 101–2, 164–5, 173–4, 194, 203–5 ghosts 11–12, 75, 76, 81, 83, 86, 92, 98, 122, 131, 165, 171, 176–7, 180, 198, 201–2; see also spiritualism and psychical research ghost stories 2, 19, 201–4, 210, 229 giants 81–2, 89 Gilbert, W. S. 208, 210 Gilchrist, R. Murray 203–4 Gladstone, William 28, 30 Gloucestershire 88, 89, 96 Gnosticism 139 goats 85–6 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 8, 19, 190–1, 196–9, 207–9; see also Faust Gosse, Edmund 61 gothic 172–5, 194–5, 198, 199, 201 Gounod, Charles 199–200, 207 grimoires 133, 142, 146 Guy Fawkes Day 178–9 Hampshire 88, 89, 94 Harland, John 80–2, 102 heaven: in folklore 91, 93, 103; in literature 192–3, 199, 201, 202; in popular culture 168, 169, 173, 178; in spiritualism 123, 127; in Victorian Christianity 29, 32, 33, 37, 47, 51–3, 55, 57, 58 hell: in folklore 86, 88, 91, 98, 103; in literature 191–2, 196, 199,

234 Index 202, 205, 206; in occultism 138; in popular culture 160, 161–2, 164, 166, 168–72, 173–4, 178; spiritualist views 127; in theatre 210; in Victorian theology 3, 10, 18, 28–33, 36–62, 81, 123–4; see also conditionalism and universalism Hermetic Brothers of Egypt 134 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 18, 142–7, 226 Hermetic Society 140–2 Hermeticism 132–3, 139, 140–7; see also occultism High Church 36–41, 59, 167; see also Church of England Hinduism 79, 136–7 Hockley, Frederick 134–5, 142 homosexuality 205 humour: and the Devil’s role in Victorian society 1–2, 4–5, 161, 224, 228–9; in folklore 75, 78, 82–4, 85, 87, 89, 101, 103–5; in literature 190, 206; in popular culture 159, 161–2, 163–8, 172, 178, 180; in theatre 208, 210 hypnotism 130, 143 Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C 146 Inferno see Alighieri, Dante The Ingoldsby Legends see Barham, Richard Harris Ireland 34–6, 59, 201–2 Irving, Henry 208 James, M. R. 203 Jesuits 60 Jesus 31, 48, 51–3, 55, 96, 123–4, 134, 139 Johnson, Lionel 205 Jones, Henry Arthur 208 karma 136, 138 Kingsford, Anna Bonus 139–142, 226; see also Maitland, Edward Kingsley, Charles 42, 44 Lancashire 16, 35, 57, 80, 81, 86, 93, 98, 102 landscape legends 18, 88–90, 226 Lang, Andrew 78 Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan 201–2 legend-tripping 99–100

leisure: characterised as diabolic 43–4, 54, 159–1, 180; religious uses 44, 54 Lewis, Matthew 194 Lilith 145, 205 Liszt, Franz 207 literacy 7–8, 13–14, 16–17, 172 Liverpool 34, 55, 120 London 9, 34–6, 50, 61, 124–5, 136, 140, 142, 159–60, 167, 171, 177, 180, 207–10 loss of faith 10–11, 30–1 Low Church 36, 39–41, 167; see also Church of England luck 18, 76–7, 84, 87–8, 90–2, 162, 226–7; see also apotropaic magic Lucifer, use as symbol by Theosophists 136–8, 227 Lyceum 208–9 Macdonald, George 46–7 magic: black 93–6, 142, 144, 146–7; Egyptian 133–4, 142–3, 145; Enochian 142; natural 133–4; ritual 119, 135–6, 142–8; white: 76, 93–7; see also cunning-folk, occultism, and witchcraft Maitland, Edward 18, 139–41, 226; see also Kingsford, Anna Bonus Manchester 34, 100 Manfred 195, 208 Manning, Henry Edward 125 Marlowe, Christopher 196, 198, 207 Marryat, Florence 127 Martineau, Harriet 121 Martineau, James 56 materialism 127, 136, 140 Mathers, Samuel Liddell MacGregor 142–3, 146; see also Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Mayhew, Henry 176, 179 medicine and healing 93, 96–7, 120–1, 139 Melmoth the Wanderer 194 Mephistopheles 163, 191, 196–200, 208–9; see also Faust Meredith, George 194 mesmerism 11, 18, 119, 120–1, 126, 130, 134, 143, 148, 200 Methodism 7, 8, 33–5, 45, 50–3, 59, 61, 160, 165, 166–7 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 209–10 middle ages 4, 79, 82, 103, 131–2, 142, 146, 191–2, 194, 203, 206

Index  235 Midlands 34, 102 millenarianism see apocalypse Milton, John 2, 4, 5, 8, 19, 38, 75, 190–1, 193–5, 197–8, 205 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della 133 modernity 3–12, 19, 76, 79–80, 105, 119–20, 195, 203, 224, 228–30 Moody, Dwight L. 55 morality 32, 39–40, 42–4, 50–1, 55, 60–1, 84, 96, 140–1, 147, 160–2, 164, 169–71, 174, 176–7, 195–6, 200–1, 225, 228–9 Moses, William Stainton 127–8 Müller, Max 78 music 49, 53–4, 82, 97, 100–2, 122, 162–3, 164–6, 175, 177, 207–8; see also broadsides and folk music Myers, Frederic W. H. 129–32 mysticism 57, 119, 132, 139, 146, 147, 205 mythology 78–82, 87, 137, 203

poetry 2, 13, 19, 87, 166, 168–9, 171–2, 191–99, 204–7 popular culture 9, 19, 159–89 portable theatre 178 possession 41, 48, 57–8, 97, 131, 147 poverty 43, 54, 76, 159–60, 167–68, 170, 171, 174, 200 predestination 47, 56 premillennialism see apocalypse Presbyterianism 33–5, 56–7 progress 13–4, 28, 55, 60, 76–82, 123, 126–7, 136, 138, 140, 226 proverbs 80, 86, 161, 162 Punch 160 Punch and Judy 2, 5, 19, 175–8, 228 puppets 2, 5, 19, 159, 175–8, 228 purgatory 58–60, 131, 141 Pusey, Edward Bouverie 39–40, 167 psychical research 129, 130–2

Naden, Constance 206 natural world 8, 10, 76, 78, 90–93, 97, 194 necromancy 134, 145–6 Neoplatonism 142 Newman, John Henry 59 newspapers 13, 15, 76–7 Noel, Roden 198–9 Norfolk 35, 88, 92, 94

Regardie, Israel 144–5 reincarnation 136, 138 resurrection 31–2 Reynolds, G. W. M. 172–5 ritualism see High Church rhymes, traditional 90–1, 99, 100–1 Robert the Devil 209–10 Romanticism 4, 8, 77, 87, 191, 193, 195–6, 197–8, 206 Rosicrucianism 119, 132–4, 142–3, 199 Rossetti, Christina 205 Rossetti, Dante Gabrielle 205 Rossetti, Maria Francesca 192 rough music 101 Royal Italian Opera 210 Royal Order of Sikha 134

occultism 1–2, 11, 13, 18, 119–120, 132–48, 224, 226–7, 230 Olcott, Henry Steel 136 opera 199–200, 207–10 oral tradition 13–15, 17, 82, 94, 98, 165–6; see also folklore Order of the Swastika 134 Oxford 78, 88, 99–100 pamphlets 6, 41, 52, 120, 123–5, 140, 171–2, 179 pantheism 57, 139 pantomime 5, 208, 210 Paradise Lost see Milton, John penny bloods, penny dreadfuls 159, 172–5, 180, 228–9 penny gaffs 208–9 The Pilgrim’s Progress see Bunyan, John philanthropy 44, 49, 129, 159–160 Podmore, Frank 131–2

Quakers 33–4, 45, 49–50

salvation see heaven and universalism Salvation Army 33, 53–4, 160 Sat B’Hai 134 Satanism 8, 9, 146–7, 207 Schumann, Robert 207 science 10, 12, 93, 119, 121–3, 126, 130–2, 136–42, 205 Scotland 34–5, 56 scrying 134–5 secularisation 3–4, 8, 11–12, 29, 119, 203, 226, 224, 228 secularism 18, 54, 61–2, 227 sensation fiction 195

236 Index sensationalism 38, 54, 172, 204 sex 94, 139, 164–5, 169, 173, 203–5 Shaw, George Bernard 201 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 196 Shropshire 81–2, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, 98, 104 sin 28, 33, 39, 43, 45, 47–8, 51, 53–4, 56, 58–9, 75, 85, 103–4, 127, 160, 166–7, 169, 180, 198, 200–1 Sinnett, Alfred Percy 138–9 Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia 134 Society of Eight 134 Society for Psychical Research 130 Somerset 85, 92, 96, 101 The Sorrows of Satan see Corelli, Marie souls 31–2, 33, 39, 42, 48, 49, 56, 57, 92, 95, 97, 122, 124, 127–8, 140–1, 148, 167, 171–4, 194, 196, 199, 201, 204, 206, 207–8 spiritualism 2, 11, 13, 18–9, 119–20, 122–130, 131, 134, 137, 138–9, 147–8, 198–9, 224, 226–7, 230 Spohr, Louis 207 Spring-heeled Jack 12, 19, 159, 177, 179–80, 229 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon 48–9 Stead, William Thomas 127–9 Sullivan, Arthur 208 superstition 8, 11, 13–4, 16–7, 59, 62, 75–7, 80–1, 83, 87, 93–4, 105, 121, 131–2, 136, 165, 179, 192, 226–8 Sutton, Henry Septimus 205 Swedenborgianism 33, 35, 55, 57, 202 Taylor, Robert 61 temperance 160, 168, 205 Temple, Frederick 41

temptation 2, 6–7, 39–41, 44, 48, 56, 167–9, 196, 199, 205, 208, 229 theatre 9, 19, 43, 171, 190–1, 197, 207–10, 229–30 Theatre Royal, Drury Lane 209 Theobald, Florence 126–8 Theobald, Morell 128 Theosophical Society 18, 119, 136–9, 140, 148, 227 Thoms, William John 77–8, 80 toadmen 95 Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth 44, 121 Tylor, Edward Burnett 78–9 Unitarianism 33–4, 45, 55–6, 57, 225 universalism 31–3, 37, 47, 49, 51, 56, 58 urbanisation 34, 76 Victorian crisis of faith 3–4, 10–11, 122–3, 225 Victorian supernatural, historiography of 5–12, 224 visions 52, 134–5, 147, 166 Wagner, Richard 207 Waite, Arthur Edward 132, 146 Watson, William 199 Weber, Max 11 Westcott, William Wynn 142–3 witchcraft 5–8, 11–2, 18, 93–5, 97, 124, 132, 137, 166, 180, 203–4, 226; see also magic Woodman, W. R. 142–3 Yorkshire 42, 80–1, 89, 101