Matthew Lewis (writer)

Lewis was the first-born child of Matthew and Frances Maria Sewell Lewis. His father, Matthew Lewis, was the son of William Lewis and Jane Gregory and was born in England in 1750. He attended Westminster School before proceeding to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1769 and his master's in 1772. During his time at Westminster, Lewis's parents separated, and he idolised his mother without disregarding his father. Mrs Lewis moved to France in this period; while there, she was in continuous correspondence with Matthew.[2] The correspondence between Matthew and his mother consisted of discussion regarding the poor state of his mother's welfare and estate.

That same year, Lewis was appointed Chief Clerk in the War Office. The following year, he married Frances Maria Sewell, a young woman who was very popular at court. She was the third daughter of the senior judge Sir Thomas Sewell and was one of eight children born in his first marriage to Catherine Heath. Her family, like Lewis's, had connections with Jamaica. As a child, she spent her time in Ottershaw. In December 1775, in addition to his War Office post, Lewis became the Deputy Secretary at War. With one exception, he was the first to hold both positions and receive both salaries contemporaneously. Lewis owned considerable property in Jamaica, within four miles of Savanna-la-Mer, or Savanna-la-Mar, which was hit by a devastating earthquake and hurricane in 1779. His son would later inherit this property.[3]

In addition to Matthew Gregory Lewis, Matthew and Frances had three other children: Maria, Barrington, and Sophia Elizabeth. On 23 July 1781, when Matthew was six and his youngest sister one-and-a-half years old, Frances left her husband, taking the music master, Samuel Harrison, as her lover. During their estrangement, Frances lived under a different name, Langley, in order to hide her location from her husband, although he still learned of her whereabouts. On 3 July 1782, Frances gave birth to a child. That same day, hearing of the birth, her estranged husband returned. Afterwards, he began to arrange a legal separation from his wife. After formally accusing his wife of adultery through the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London on 27 February 1783, he petitioned the House of Lords for permission to bring about a bill of divorce. However, as these bills were rarely granted, it was rejected when brought to a vote. Consequently, Matthew and Frances remained married until his death in 1818. Frances, though withdrawing from society and temporarily moving to France, was always supported financially by her husband and then later, her son. She later returned to London and then finished her life at Leatherhead,[3] rejoining society and even becoming a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales.[4] Frances and her son remained quite close, with her taking on the responsibility of helping him with his literary career. She even became a published author, much to her son's dislike.[5]

Lewis had a tumultuous relationship with the mistresses his father took on, always siding with his exiled mother in family disputes. His rudeness to such women brought him to the perpetual verge of disinheritance, a threat commonly held over his head and sometimes acted on throughout his lifetime.[6]

Lewis's sisters (especially Lady Lushington) often suggested edits for Lewis's work aimed at making them more acceptable to the public, and went so far as to compose their own drafts of his plays. He rejected all such suggestions.[7]

Matthew Gregory Lewis began his education at a preparatory school called Marylebone Seminary under the Rev. Dr John Fountayne, Dean of York. Fountayne was a friend of both the Lewis and Sewell families. There Lewis learned Latin, Greek, French, writing, arithmetic, drawing, dancing, and fencing. He and his classmates were permitted to converse only in French throughout the day. Like many of his classmates, Lewis used the Marylebone Seminary as a stepping stone, proceeding from there to Westminster School, like his father, at the age of eight. There he acted in the Town Boys' Play as Falconbridge in King John and then My Lord Duke in James Townley's farce, High Life Below Stairs.

Again like his father, he entered Christ Church, Oxford on 27 April 1790 at the age of 15. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1794 and earned a master's degree from the same college in 1797. Lewis frequently complained about the obligation to learn classical languages at Oxford, and spent much of the actual time of his degree abroad in Germany working as a German diplomat. It was during this period he became acquainted with Goethe.[3]

Intended for a diplomatic career like his father, Matthew Gregory Lewis spent most of his school vacations abroad, studying modern languages. His travels sent him to London, Chatham, Scotland, and the continent at least twice, including Paris in 1791 and Weimar, Germany in 1792–1793. During these travels, Lewis enjoyed spending time in society, a trait that he retained throughout his life. In the same period he began translating existing works and writing his own plays.

In 1791, he sent his mother a copy of a farce that he had written named The Epistolary Intrigue. Though he intended the play to be performed at London's Drury Lane, it was rejected there and then later by the neighbouring Covent Garden. He supposedly completed a two-volume novel in the same period. This survives only in fragments in the posthumously published The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis. In March 1792, Lewis translated the French opera Felix and sent it to Drury Lane, hoping to earn money for his mother. While he tried to write a novel like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, he mainly adhered to theatre, writing The East Indian. However, it would be seven years before this appeared on stage at Drury Lane. In Germany, he even translated Wieland's Oberon, a difficult work of poetry which earned him the respect of his acquaintance, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

While Lewis pursued these literary ambitions, mainly to earn money for his mother, his father's influences secured him the position as an attaché to the British embassy in The Hague. He arrived on 15 May 1794 and remained until December of the same year. Though finding friends at the local bars (his favourite being Madame de Matignon's Salon), amongst visiting French aristocracy who were fleeing revolutionary France, Lewis saw The Hague as a place of boredom and disliked its Dutch citizens.[8] It was here that he produced, in ten weeks, his romance Ambrosio or The Monk, which was published anonymously in the summer of the following year. It immediately achieved celebrity for Lewis. However, some passages were of such a nature that about a year after its appearance, an injunction to restrain its sale was obtained. In the second edition, Lewis, in addition to citing himself as the author and as a Member of Parliament (for Hindon, Wiltshire), removed what he assumed were the objectionable passages, yet the work retained much of its horrific character. Lord Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers wrote of "Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell." The Marquis de Sade also praised Lewis in his essay "Reflections on the Novel".

Matthew Gregory Lewis, by Henry William Pickersgill, 1809

On 22 March 1802 Harriett Litchfield appeared in a Gothic monodrama at The Haymarket called The Captive by Lewis. This recounts the story of a wife imprisoned by her husband. The stage directions included details designed to improve the Gothic situation. Litchfield was complimented for her delivery "in the most perfect manner", but she plays a woman denied any human contact and kept in a modern dungeon. She is not mad but realises that she will soon be a maniac. The play is thought to have been suggested by one of Mary Wollstonecraft's books. It was said that even the staff of the theatre left in horror. The play was only staged once.[9]

Lewis held two estates in Jamaica: Cornwall estate in Westmoreland Parish and Hordley estate in Saint Thomas Parish. According to the slave registers, Hordley was co-owned with George Scott and Matthew Henry Scott and their shares were purchased by Lewis in 1817, thus making him sole owner of more than 500 slaves.[10][11]

Lewis visited Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley at Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1816 and recounted five ghost stories, which Shelley recorded in his "Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on return to England, 1816", beginning with the entry for 18 August, which was published posthumously.

Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica in 1818. During his visit he saw William Adamson's production of Adelgitha, and complained about the performance of John Castello, the "West Indian Roscius" who played the role of Lothair.[12] He died of yellow fever on board ship whilst sailing back and was buried at sea.

The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis, in two volumes, was published in 1839. The Effusions of Sensibility, his first novel, was never completed.

• The Effusions of Sensibility (unfinished)
• Ambrosio, or, The Monk: A Romance (3 volumes, 1796, revised 1798)
• The Bravo of Venice (1805)

• Poems (1812)

Feudal Tyrants; or, The Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans. A romance (1806, free translation of Benedikte Naubert: Elisabeth, Erbin von Toggenburg, oder Geschichte der Frauen von Sargans in der Schweiz, 1789)

• "My Uncle's Garret Window"
• "Oberon's Henchman or The Legend of the Three Sisters"

• Tales of Terror [1799]
• Tales of Wonder (1801)
• Romantic Tales (1808)

• Village Virtues: A Dramatic Satire (1796)
• The Castle Spectre (1796)
• The East Indian: A Comedy in Five Acts (1800)
• The Minister: A Tragedy, in Five Acts (1797)
• Alfonso, King of Castile: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1801)
• Adelgitha; or, The Fruit of a Single Error. A Tragedy in Five Acts (1806)
• One O'Clock, Or, The Knight and Wood Daemon, A Grand Musical Romance (1811)
• Timour the Tartar (1811)
• The Captive
• Rugantino, The Terrible Banditti-King, a melo-drama in three acts.[16]

• More Wonders: an heroic epistle to M. G. Lewis [A satire on his works] with a Praescript Extraordinary and An Ode on the Union (1801)
• Journal of a West India Proprietor Kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica (1833)
• The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis (1839)