Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the mummy, the wicked surgeon and the headless corpse
For the Halloween season, read about one of Ireland’s best ghost story writers, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and what the RIA Library collection can tell us about possible inspiration for his work.
While the shadow of Bram Stoker’s Dracula looms large in the Irish literary imagination at this time of year, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) is another writer of ghostly tales and supernatural horror stories who deserves attention. Here in the Library we have been uncovering some fantastic sources in the collection that give an insight into his early life and reading material that may have provided inspiration for his work.
Header image: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland.
Mummy in Dad’s library
Le Fanu was born in 1814, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rev. Thomas Philip Le Fanu. He was privately educated at home before attending Trinity College Dublin and his father’s library would have played an important role in the formation of his young imagination. Upon his death, Rev. Thomas Le Fanu’s library was sold at a public auction at Charles Sharpe’s sale room on Anglesea Street. A copy of the catalogue is available in the RIA Library and a quick perusal gives us an idea of the kind of literature into which the young Joseph immersed himself.
As one might expect in the library of a clergyman, there is a large collection of theological volumes. As befit the education of a gentlemen of the period, there is also a large selection of travel writing, sciences and history. The Romantic writers Byron, Cowper, Coleridge and Scott provided more opportunities for escapism, while satirists such as Hogarth and Fielding offered the Le Fanu family some light entertainment. Since ghost stories and Halloween are our present interest, we were very pleased to see gothic classics like The Mysteries of Udolpho and Confessions of an English Opium Eater present on the list. However, the most surprising find was that of The Mummy: a Tale of the XXII century. Published anonymously in 1827, The Mummy was a futuristic tale set in the year 2126, written by Jane C Loudon. It is the first English-language story of a re-animated mummy and one can only imagine how thrilling the 13-year-old Joseph would have found this novel in the context of 19th century Egyptomania in the British empire.
Life in the Phoenix Park
In 1815, when Le Fanu was an infant, his father was appointed Chaplain to the Royal Hibernian Military School in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. This boarding school was set up for the children and orphans of personnel in military service. As his father held the post until 1826, Le Fanu lived in the park up to the age of 11 or 12. It seems life at the school made a strong impression on young Joseph’s imagination because despite the family’s subsequent move to Limerick, Chapelizod provides the setting for Le Fanu’s best known ghost stories: Ghost stories of Chapelizod (1851) and The house by the churchyard (1863), narrated by the fictional Charles De Cresseron. They all first appeared in the Dublin University Magazine, a publication that Le Fanu took over in 1861.
A beating drummer and a savage surgeon
In the Library, as part of the Haliday Collection, we hold a copy of the Regulations for the establishment and government of the Royal Hibernian Military School (1819), which paints a picture of the life and routine of the Chaplain, the officers and other staff members, and the children at the school.
Le Fanu’s father would have been one of the most highly paid members of the staff, being entitled to £250 per annum, a furnished house and some other allowances. He was responsible for chapel services, morning and evening prayer, and the general education of the boys.
Somewhat more unsettling is the description of the role of the Drummer, who in addition to his drumming duties, was also responsible for acting as Sexton in the Chapel when the Chaplain required assistance and administering corporal punishment when required! While Le Fanu’s short ghost story, The Sexton’s Adventure, describes the drunken sexton of the village church in Chapelizod, rather than the school sexton, one wonders if his encounters with what sounds like a relatively poorly paid (£18 per annum) and, perhaps, cruel employee at the school had any impact on this tale.
Another interesting character that Le Fanu may have encountered was the school surgeon, Edward Trevor, M.D. (c. 1765-1837). Here in the regulations we see him signing off on the diet plan for the children of the school. However, Trevor is more infamous for his association with another Dublin institution, Kilmainham Gaol. As Patrick Long of the Dictionary of Irish Biography noted, Trevor was known for “exercising a regime of psychological control and physical terror” and his barbarous treatment of both Anne Devlin and Robert Emmet following the ill-fated rebellion of 1803 is well-documented.
In fact, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), playwright and politician, made a statement in the parliament to condemn Trevor’s reign of terror at Kilmainham. Sheridan happened to be Le Fanu’s great-uncle, which accounts for the ‘Sheridan’ in Joseph’s name. His young namesake may have heard whispers of the surgeon’s dastardly deeds around the school campus, and perhaps even the rumour, unsubstantiated to this day, that Trevor stole Emmet’s headless corpse and hid it following the execution. The location of Emmet’s body remains a mystery to this day.
We hope you have enjoyed this Halloween post and that we have persuaded you that the devil is in the detail! You can search our online catalogue and we are always delighted to welcome new readers to the RIA Library. Please visit our website to learn more about our services.
