Caleb Williams by William Godwin

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CALEB WILLIAMS

OR THINGS AS THEY ARE

BY WILLIAM GODWIN

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST A. BAKER, M.A.

LONDON

1903

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

MR. FERDINANDO FALKLAND, a high-spirited and highly cultured gentleman,
a country squire in "a remote county of England."

CALEB WILLIAMS, a youth, his secretary, the discoverer of his secret,
and the supposed narrator of the consequent events.

MR. COLLINS, Falkland's steward and Caleb's friend.

THOMAS, a servant of Falkland's.

MR. FORESTER, Falkland's brother-in-law.

MR. BARNABAS TYRREL, a brutal and tyrannical squire.

MISS EMILY MELVILLE, his cousin and dependent, whom he cruelly maltreats
and does to death.

GRIMES, a brutal rustic, suborned by Tyrrel to abduct Miss Melville.

DR. WILSON; MRS. HAMMOND, friends of Miss Melville. MR. HAWKINS, farmer;
YOUNG HAWKINS, his son, Victims of Tyrrel's brutality, and wrongfully
hanged as his murderers.

GINES, a robber and thief-taker, instrument of Falkland's vengeance upon
Caleb.

MR. RAYMOND, an "Arcadian" captain of robbers.

LARKINS, one of his band.

AN OLD HAG, housekeeper to the robbers.

A GAOLER.

MISS PEGGY, the gaoler's daughter.

MRS. MARNEY, a poor gentlewoman, Caleb's friend in distress.

MR. SPURREL, a friend who informs on Caleb.

MRS. DENISON, a cultivated lady with whom Caleb is for a while on
friendly terms.

INTRODUCTION

The reputation of WILLIAM GODWIN as a social philosopher, and the merits
of his famous novel, "Caleb Williams," have been for more than a century
the subject of extreme divergencies of judgment among critics. "The
first systematic anarchist," as he is called by Professor Saintsbury,
aroused bitter contention with his writings during his own lifetime, and
his opponents have remained so prejudiced that even the staid
bibliographer Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a
place where one would think the most flagitious author safe from
animosity, speaks of Godwin's private life in terms that are little less
than scurrilous. Over against this persistent acrimony may be put the
fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, his biographer, to represent the
favourable judgment of our own time, whilst I will venture to quote one
remarkable passage that voices the opinions of many among Godwin's most
eminent contemporaries.

In "The Letters of Charles Lamb," Sir T.N. Talfourd says:

"Indifferent altogether to the politics of the age, Lamb could
not help being struck with productions of its newborn energies
so remarkable as the works and the character of Godwin. He
seemed to realise in himself what Wordsworth long afterwards
described, 'the central calm at the heart of all agitation.'
Through the medium of his mind the stormy convulsions of society
were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring
wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He
foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the
inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless
voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once
to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots
than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on
the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his species.
No one would have suspected the author of those wild theories
which startled the wise and shocked the prudent in the calm,
gentlemanly person who rarely said anything above the most
gentle commonplace, and took interest in little beyond the
whist-table."

WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) was son and grandson of Dissenting ministers,
and was destined for the same profession. In theology he began as a
Calvinist, and for a while was tinctured with the austere doctrines of
the Sandemanians. But his religious views soon took an unorthodox turn,
and in 1782, falling out with his congregation at Stowmarket, he came up
to London to earn his bread henceforward as a man of letters. In 1793
Godwin became one of the most famous men in England by the publication
of his "Political Justice," a work that his biographer would place side
by side with the "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," the "Essay on
Education," and "Emile," as one of "the unseen levers which have moved
the changes of the times." Although the book came out at what we should
call a "prohibitive price," it had an enormous circulation, and brought
its author in something like 1,000 guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb
Williams," which was published the next year, he illustrated in scenes
from real life many of the principles enunciated in his philosophical
work. "Caleb Williams" went through a number of editions, and was
dramatized by Colman the younger under the title of "The Iron Chest." It
has now been out of print for many years. Godwin wrote several other
novels, but one alone is readable now, "St. Leon," which is
philosophical in idea and purpose, and contains some passages of
singular eloquence and beauty.

Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was
the gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly
fond of whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many
celebrated men and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran were
among his closest male friends, while the story of his friendships with
Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia Opie, with the lady immortalized by Shelley as
Maria Gisborne, and with those literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee,
authors of the "Canterbury Tales," has a certain sentimental interest.
Afterwards he became known to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. He
married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His later years were clouded by great
embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he put out of reach of the worst
privations by the gift of a small sinecure, that of yeoman usher of the
Exchequer. He died in 1836.

Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by Godwin's
contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir T. N.
Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey and Allan
Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity. Hazlitt's
opinion is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":

"A masterpiece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic
and chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is
embodied in the finest possible manner in the character of
Falkland; as in Caleb Williams (who is not the first, but the
second character in the piece), we see the very demon of
curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which these two
characters are contrived to relieve and set off each other has
never been surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception
of the immortal satire of Cervantes."

Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:

"It has lived--though in comparative obscurity--for over a
century, and high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged
for that period raises a presumption that a book deserves the
title of classic."--_National Review, February_, 1902.

To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more
particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed
to illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes
him." He says:

"I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that
should in some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest.
Pursuing this idea, I invented first the third volume of my
tale, then the second, and, last of all, the first. I bent
myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and
pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being
overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the
most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume."

He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined
in the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought.
Falkland is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by
the social system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of
that system. The reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the
extraordinary contest between Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the
tragic situations that it involves. Compared with these the denunciation
of the social system is a matter of secondary interest; but it was
natural that the author of the "Political Justice," with his mind
preoccupied by the defects of the English social system, should make
those defects the, evil agencies of his plot. As the essential
conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which everything
is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to the
story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their
immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of
the law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and
ruins his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the
occasion of Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the
abandonment of the innocent Hawkinses to the gallows, is the consequence
of what Godwin expressly denounces, punishment for murder. "I conceived
it to be in the highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man
qualified for the most essential and extensive utility, merely out of
retrospect to an act which, whatever were its merits, could not be
retrieved." Then a new element is imported into the train of causation,
Caleb's insatiable curiosity, and the strife begins between these
well-matched antagonists, the man of wealth and station utilizing all
the advantages granted him by the state of society to crush his enemy.
Godwin, then, was justified in declaring that his book comprehended "a
general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which
man becomes the destroyer of man." Such were the words of the original
preface, which was suppressed for a short time owing to the fears caused
by the trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft and other revolutionists,
with whom Godwin was in profound sympathy. Had he intended "Caleb
Williams," however, from its first inception, to be an imaginative
version of the "Political Justice," he would have had to invent a
different plan and different characters. The arguments of a sociological
novel lack cogency unless the characters are fairly representative of
average mankind. Godwin's principal actors are both, to say the least,
exceptional. They are lofty idealizations of certain virtues and powers
of mind. Falkland is like Jean Valjean, a superhuman creature; and,
indeed, "Caleb Williams" may well be compared on one side with "Les
Miserables," for Victor Hugo's avowed purpose, likewise, was the
denunciation of social tyranny. But the characteristics that would have
weakened the implied theorem, had such been the main object, are the
very things that make the novel more powerful as drama of a grandiose,
spiritual kind. The high and concentrated imagination that created such
a being as Falkland, and the intensity of passion with which Caleb's
fatal energy of mind is sustained through that long, despairing
struggle, are of greater artistic value than the mechanical symmetry by
which morals are illustrated.

E. A. B.

PREFACE

BY THE AUTHOR.

The following narrative is intended to answer a purpose more general and
important than immediately appears upon the face of it. The question now
afloat in the world respecting THINGS AS THEY ARE is the most
interesting that can be presented to the human mind. While one party
pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms
the existing constitution of society. It seemed as if something would be
gained for the decision of this question if that constitution were
faithfully developed in its practical effects. What is now presented to
the public is no refined and abstract speculation; it is a study and
delineation of things passing in the moral world. It is but of late that
the inestimable importance of political principles has been adequately
apprehended. It is now known to philosophers that the spirit and
character of the Government intrudes itself into every rank of society.
But this is a truth highly worthy to be communicated to persons whom
books of philosophy and science are never likely to reach. Accordingly,
it was proposed, in the invention of the following work, to comprehend,
as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a
general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by
which man becomes the destroyer of man. If the author shall have taught
a valuable lesson, without subtracting from the interest and passion by
which a performance of this sort ought to be characterised, he will have
reason to congratulate himself upon the vehicle he has chosen.

_May_ 12, 1794.

This preface was withdrawn in the original edition, in compliance with
the alarms of booksellers. "Caleb Williams" made his first appearance in
the world in the same month in which the sanguinary plot broke out
against the liberties of Englishmen, which was happily terminated by the
acquittal of its first intended victims in the close of that year.
Terror was the order of the day; and it was feared that even the humble
novelist might be shown to be constructively a traitor.

_October_ 29, 1795.

AUTHOR'S LATEST PREFACE.

LONDON,

_November_ 20, 1832.

"CALEB WILLIAMS" has always been regarded by the public with an unusual
degree of favour. The proprietor of "THE STANDARD NOVELS" has therefore
imagined that even an account of the concoction and mode of writing of
the work would be viewed with some interest.

I finished the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice," the first work
which may be considered as written by me in a certain degree in the
maturity of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in
January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book was
published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my
pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By the
liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I
was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these
expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of
which, though innocent and in some degree useful, I am rather inclined
to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my favourite work, and from
that time gave up every other occupation that might interfere with it.
My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my wants at a
specified rate while the book was in the train of composition. Finally,
I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its
publication, and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to
what species of industry I should next devote myself.

I had always felt in myself some vocation towards the composition of a
narrative of fictitious adventure; and among the things of obscure note
which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature.
It is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should
have suggested itself on the present occasion.

But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had
been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from
boyhood, I was perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley:

"What shall I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?"

But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching my
object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very
often I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I felt
ever and anon impelled to repeat my effort.

At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced
that my object of building to myself a name would never be attained by
merely repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said,
even though I should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a
more than usual point and elegance. The world, I believed, would accept
nothing from me with distinguishing favour that did not bear upon the
face of it the undoubted stamp of originality. Having long ruminated
upon the principles of Political Justice, I persuaded myself that I
could offer to the public, in a treatise on this subject, things at once
new, true, and important. In the progress of the work I became more
sanguine and confident. I talked over my ideas with a few familiar
friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous
encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some
inconsiderable degree, got before its publication, and a certain number
of persons were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false
modesty in me to say that its acceptance, when published, did not nearly
come up to everything that could soberly have been expected by me. In
consequence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the period in
which I was engaged in the work and afterwards, acquired a certain
elevation, and made me now unwilling to stoop to what was insignificant.

I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this
idea, I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and
last of all the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of
adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension
of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most
fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next
called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to
account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to
alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never
to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I
apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the
investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a
sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might
deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in
his power. This constituted the outline of my second volume.

The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account
for the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer
should be invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution
that nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of
intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my
tale be answered without his appearing to have been originally endowed
with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his
being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of
his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him, so to speak, the
tenant of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel
prompted almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were ample
materials for a first volume.

I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention
from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of
adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of
plot would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and
interest in a tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the
reader, which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other
way.

I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down
hints for my story before I engaged seriously and methodically in its
composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded
to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or
three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these
memorandums. They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly
enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the
time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of
two, three, four, five, or six lines each.

I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the
most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the
afflatus was upon me. I held it for a maxim that any portion that was
written when I was not fully in the vein told for considerably worse
than nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than
industry against the grain. Idleness was only time lost; and the next
day, it may be, was as promising as ever. It was merely a day perished
from the calendar. But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong
spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to
correct and set right again. I wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for
a week or ten days not a line. Yet all came to the same thing in the
sequel. On an average, a volume of "Caleb Williams" cost me four months,
neither less nor more.

It must be admitted, however, that during the whole period, bating a few
intervals, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself a
thousand times, "I will write a tale that shall constitute an epoch in
the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be
exactly the same man that he was before."--I put these things down just
as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it
will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such
perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his
best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vainglorious impulse for
nearly forty years.

When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume, I was
prevailed upon by the extreme importunity of an old and intimate friend
to allow him the perusal of my manuscript. On the second day he returned
it with a note to this purpose: "I return you your manuscript, because I
promised to do so. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should
have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly
prove the grave of your literary fame."

I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly
critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety before I
recovered the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I
felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But
it was all I had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed
decision. It stood in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and
I did not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I
tell that the second and third judgment would be more favourable than
the first? Then what would have been the result? No; I had nothing for
it but to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint of resolution I
became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to the end, trusting as I could
to my own anticipations of the whole, and bidding the world wait its
time before it should be admitted to the consult.

I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But
I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making
the hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted
in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the
best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in
which my imagination revelled the most freely was the analysis of the
private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical
dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive,
and recording the gradually accumulating impulses which led the
personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of
proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.

When I had determined on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my
method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to
bear on my subject. I never entertained the fear that in this way of
proceeding I should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors. I
imagined that I had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which
would always preserve me from plagiarism. I read other authors, that I
might see what they had done, or, more properly, that I might forcibly
hold my mind and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my
predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time
that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding the
direction they pursued, and disdaining to inquire whether by any chance
it for a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine.

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