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Chapter II - The Beginnings of Gothic Romance
Walpole's admiration for Gothic art and his interest in the middle
ages; the mediaeval revival at the close of the eighteenth century;
The Castle of Otranto ; Walpole's bequest to later romance- writers;
Smollett's incidental anticipation of the methods of Gothic Romance;
Clara Reeve's Old English Baron and her effort to bring her story
"within the utmost verge of probability"; Mrs. Barbauld's Gothic
fragment; Blake's Fair Elenor ; the critical theories and Gothic
experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake.
To
Horace Walpole, whose
Castle of Otranto was published on
Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having
introduced the
Gothic
Romance and of having made it fashionable.
Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age devoted
to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval tale disguised
as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio Muralto," by
William
Marshall.
It was only after it had been received with enthusiasm
that he confessed the authorship. As he explained frankly in a
letter to his friend Mason: "It is not everybody that may in this
country play the fool with impunity."
That
Walpole regarded his
story merely as a fanciful, amusing trifle is clear from the letter
he wrote to Miss Hannah More reproving her for putting so frantic a
thing into the hands of a Bristol milkwoman who wrote poetry
in her leisure hours. The
Castle of Otranto was but another
manifestation of that admiration for the Gothic which had found
expression fourteen years earlier in his miniature castle at
Strawberry Hill, with its old armour and "lean windows fattened with
rich saints."
Strawberry Hill
The word "Gothic" in the early eighteenth century
was used as a term of reproach. To
Addison, Siena Cathedral was but
a "barbarous" building, which might have been a miracle of
architecture, had our forefathers "only been instructed in the right
way."
Pope in his Preface to Shakespeare admits the strength and
majesty of the Gothic, but deplores its irregularity. In Letters on
Chivalry and Romance , published two years before
The Castle of Otranto,
Hurd pleads that Spenser's Faerie Queene should be read
and criticised as a Gothic, not a classical, poem.
He clearly
recognises the right of the Gothic to be judged by laws of its own.
When the nineteenth century is reached the epithet has lost all
tinge of blame, and has become entirely one of praise. From the time
when he began to build his castle, in 1750,
Walpole's letters abound
in references to the Gothic, and he confesses once: "In the
heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building."
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