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."[14] 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.[15] _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."[16] 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."[17] 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."[18] At Strawberry Hill the
hall and staircase were his special delight and they probably
formed the background of that dream in which he saw a gigantic
hand in armour on the staircase of an ancient castle. When Dr.
Burney visited Walpole's home in 1786 he remarked on the striking
recollections of _The Castle of Otranto_, brought to mind by "the
deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and
the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which
they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to
brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling
asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his
collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his
cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this
dilettante's nightmare. His interest in things mediaeval was not
that of an antiquary, but rather that of an artist who loves
things old because of their age and beauty. In a delightfully gay
letter to his friend, George Montagu, referring flippantly to his
appointment as Deputy Ranger of Rockingham Forest, he writes,
after drawing a vivid picture of a "Robin Hood reformé":
"Visions, you know, have always been my pasture; and so
far from growing old enough to quarrel with their
emptiness, I almost think there is no wisdom comparable
to that of exchanging what is called the realities of
life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old
histories and the babble of old people make one live
back into centuries that cannot disappoint one. One
holds fast and surely what is past. The dead have
exhausted their power of deceiving--one can trust
Catherine of Medicis now. In short, you have opened a
new landscape to my fancy; and my lady Beaulieu will
oblige me as much as you, if she puts the long bow into
your hands. I don't know, but the idea may produce some
other _Castle of Otranto_."[20]
So Walpole came near to anticipating the greenwood scenes of
_Ivanhoe_. The decking and trappings of chivalry filled him with
boyish delight, and he found in the glitter and colour of the
middle ages a refuge from the prosaic dullness of the eighteenth
century. A visit from "a Luxembourg, a Lusignan and a Montfort"
awoke in his whimsical fancy a mental image of himself in the
guise of a mediaeval baron: "I never felt myself so much in _The
Castle of Otranto_. It sounded as if a company of noble crusaders
were come to sojourn with me before they embarked for the Holy
Land";[21] and when he heard of the marvellous adventures of a
large wolf who had caused a panic in Lower Languedoc, he was
reminded of the enchanted monster of old romance and declared
that, had he known of the creature earlier, it should have
appeared in _The Castle of Otranto_.[22] "I have taken to
astronomy," he declares on another occasion,
"now that the scale is enlarged enough to satisfy my
taste, who love gigantic ideas--do not be afraid; I am
not going to write a second part to _The Castle of
Otranto_, nor another account of the Patagonians who
inhabit the new Brobdingnag planet."[23]
These unstudied utterances reveal, perhaps more clearly than
Walpole's deliberate confessions about his book, the mood of
irresponsible, light-hearted gaiety in which he started on his
enterprise. If we may rely on Walpole's account of its
composition, _The Castle of Otranto_ was fashioned rapidly in a
white heat of excitement, but the creation of the story probably
cost him more effort than he would have us believe. The result,
at least, lacks spontaneity. We never feel for a moment that we
are living invisible amidst the characters, but we sit aloof like
Puck, thinking: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" His
supernatural machinery is as undignified as the pantomime
properties of Jack the Giant-killer. The huge body scattered
piecemeal about the castle, the unwieldy sabre borne by a hundred
men, the helmet "tempestuously agitated," and even the "skeleton
in a hermit's cowl" are not only unalarming but mildly
ridiculous. Yet to the readers of his day the story was
captivating and entrancing. It satisfied a real craving for the
romantic and marvellous. The first edition of five hundred copies
was sold out in two months, and others followed rapidly. The
story was dramatised by Robert Jephson and produced at Covent
Garden Theatre under the title of _The Count of Narbonne_, with
an epilogue by Malone. It was staged again later in Dublin,
Kemble playing the title rôle. It was translated into French,
German and Italian. In England its success was immediate, though
several years elapsed before it was imitated. Gray, to whom the
story was first attributed, wrote of it in March, 1765: "It
engages our attention here (at Cambridge), makes some of us cry a
little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights." Mason
praised it, and Walpole's letters refer repeatedly to the vogue
it enjoyed. This widespread popularity is an indication of the
eagerness with which readers of 1765 desired to escape from the
present and to revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries.
Although Walpole regarded the composition of his Gothic story as
a whim, his love of the past was shared by others of his
generation. Of this Macpherson's _Ossian_ (1760-3), Kurd's
_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762), and Percy's _Reliques_
(1765), are, each in its fashion, a sufficient proof. The
half-century from 1760 to 1810 showed remarkably definite signs
of a renewed interest in things written between 1100 and 1650,
which had been neglected for a century or more. _The Castle of
Otranto_, which was "an attempt to blend the marvellous of old
story with the natural of modern novels" is an early symptom of
this revulsion to the past; and it exercised a charm on Scott as
well as on Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. _The Castle of Otranto_
is significant, not because of its intrinsic merit, but because
of its power in shaping the destiny of the novel.
The outline of the plot is worth recording for the sake of
tracing ancestral likenesses when we reach the later romances.
The only son of Manfred--the villain of the piece--is discovered
on his wedding morning dashed to pieces beneath an enormous
helmet. Determined that his line shall not become extinct,
Manfred decides to divorce Hippolyta and marry Isabella, his
son's bride. To escape from her pursuer, Isabella takes flight
down a "subterraneous passage," where she is succoured by a
"peasant" Theodore, who bears a curious resemblance to a portrait
of the "good Alfonso" in the gallery of the castle. The servants
of the castle are alarmed at intervals by the sudden appearance
of massive pieces of armour in different parts of the building. A
clap of thunder, which shakes the castle to its foundations,
heralds the culmination of the story. A hundred men bear in a
huge sabre; and an apparition of the illustrious Alfonso--whose
portrait in the gallery once walks straight out of its
frame[24]--appears, "dilated to an immense magnitude,"[25] and
demands that Manfred shall surrender Otranto to the rightful
heir, Theodore, who has been duly identified by the mark of a
"bloody arrow." Alfonso, thus pacified, ascends into heaven,
where he is received into glory by St. Nicholas. As Matilda, who
was beloved of Theodore, has incidentally been slain by her
father, Theodore consoles himself with Isabella. Manfred and his
wife meekly retire to neighbouring convents. With this
anti-climax the story closes. To present the "dry bones" of a
romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps
justifiable in the case of _The Castle of Otranto_, because
Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his
grandiloquent fashion:
"If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader
will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. There
is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions or
unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to
the catastrophe."[26]
But with all its faults _The Castle of Otranto_ did not fall
fruitless on the earth. The characters are mere puppets, yet we
meet the same types again and again in later Gothic romances.
Though Clara Reeve renounced such "obvious improbabilities" as a
ghost in a hermit's cowl and a walking picture, she was an
acknowledged disciple of Walpole, and, like him, made an
"interesting peasant" the hero of her story, _The Old English
Baron_. Jerome is the prototype of many a count disguised as
father confessor, Bianca the pattern of many a chattering
servant. The imprisoned wife reappears in countless romances,
including Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), and Mrs.
Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798). The tyrannical father--no
new creation, however--became so inevitable a figure in fiction
that Jane Austen had to assure her readers that Mr. Morland "was
not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters," and Miss
Martha Buskbody, the mantua-maker of Gandercleugh, whom Jedediah
Cleishbotham ingeniously called to his aid in writing the
conclusion of _Old Mortality_, assured him, as the fruit of her
experience in reading through the stock of three circulating
libraries that, in a novel, young people may fall in love without
the countenance of their parents, "because it is essential to the
necessary intricacy of the story." But apart from his characters,
who are so colourless that they hardly hold our attention,
Walpole bequeathed to his successors a remarkable collection of
useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic
castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being
invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto
contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges,
easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door--objects trivial and
insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible
possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the
requirements of Barrett's Cherubina, who, when looking for
lodgings demanded--to the indignation of a maidservant, who came
to the door--old pictures, tapestry, a spectre and creaking
hinges. Scott, writing in 1821, remarks:
"The apparition of the skeleton-hermit to the prince of
Vicenza was long accounted a masterpiece of the
horrible; but of late the valley of Jehosaphat could
hardly supply the dry bones necessary for the
exhibition of similar spectres."
But Cherubina, whose palate was jaded by a surfeit of the pungent
horrors of Walpole's successors, would probably have found _The
Castle of Otranto_ an insipid romance and would have lamented
that he did not make more effective use of his supernatural
machinery. His story offered hints and suggestions to those whose
greater gifts turned the materials he had marshalled to better
account, and he is to be honoured rather for what he instigated
others to perform than for what he actually accomplished himself.
_The Castle of Otranto_ was not intended as a serious
contribution to literature, but will always survive in literary
history as the ancestor of a thriving race of romances.
More than ten years before the publication of _The Castle of
Otranto_, Smollett, in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count
Fathom_, had chanced upon the devices employed later in the tale
of terror. The tremors of fear to which his rascally hero is
subjected lend the spice of alarm to what might have been but a
monotonous record of villainy. Smollett depicts skilfully the
imaginary terrors created by darkness and solitude. As the Count
travels through the forest:
"The darkness of the night, the silence and solitude of
the place, the indistinct images of the trees that
appeared on every side, stretching their extravagant
arms athwart the gloom, conspired, with the dejection
of spirits occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy
and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although
he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to
be invaded with an awful horror that gradually
prevailed over all the consolations of reason and
philosophy; nor was his heart free from the terrors of
assassination. In order to dissipate these agreeable
reveries, he had recourse to the conversation of his
guide, by whom he was entertained with the history of
divers travellers who had been robbed and murdered by
ruffians, whose retreat was in the recesses of that
very wood."[27]
The sighing of the trees, thunder and sudden flashes of lightning
add to the horror of a journey, which resembles Mrs. Radcliffe's
description of Emily's approach to Udolpho. When Count Fathom
takes refuge in a robber's hut, he discovers in his room, which
has no bolt on the inside of the door, the body of a recently
murdered man, concealed beneath some bundles of straw. Effecting
his escape by placing the corpse in his own bed to deceive the
robbers, the count is mistaken for a phantom by the old woman who
waits upon him. In carrying out his designs upon Celinda, the
count aggravates her natural timidity by relating dismal stories
of omens and apparitions, and then groans piteously outside her
door and causes the mysterious music of an Æolian harp to sound
upon the midnight air. Celinda sleeps, too, like the ill-starred
heroine of the novel of terror, "at the end of a long gallery,
scarce within hearing of any other inhabited part of the
house."[28] The scene in _Count Fathom_, in which Renaldo, at
midnight, visits, as he thinks, the tomb of Monimia, is
surrounded with circumstances of gloom and mystery:
"The uncommon darkness of the night, the solemn silence
and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the
occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his
fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy
expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl
screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was
opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering
taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary
aisle."
As he watches again on a second night:
"His ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some
few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed
to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason
shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which
represented this music as the prelude to something
strange and supernatural."[29]
The figure of a woman, arrayed in a flowing robe and veil,
approaches--and proves to be Monimia in the flesh. Although
Smollett precedes Walpole, in point of time, he is, in these
scenes, nearer in spirit to Udolpho than Otranto. His use of
terror, however, is merely incidental; he strays inadvertently
into the history of Gothic romance. The suspicions and
forebodings, with which Smollett plays occasionally upon the
nerves of his readers, become part of the ordinary routine in the
tale of terror.
Clara Reeve's Gothic story, first issued under the title of _The
Champion of Virtue_, but later as _The Old English Baron_, was
published in 1777--twelve years after Walpole's _Castle of
Otranto_, of which, as she herself asserted, it was the "literary
offspring." By eliminating all supernatural incidents save one
ghost, she sought to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
probability." Walpole, perhaps displeased by the slighting
references in the preface to some of the more extraordinary
incidents in his novel, received _The Old English Baron_ with
disdain, describing it as "totally void of imagination and
interest."[30] His strictures are unjust. There are certainly no
wild flights of fancy in Clara Reeve's story, but an even level
of interest is maintained throughout. Her style is simple and
refreshingly free from affectation. The plot is neither rapid nor
exhilarating, but it never actually stagnates. Like Walpole's
Gothic story, _The Old English Baron_ is supposed to be a
transcript from an ancient manuscript. The period, we are
assured, is that of the minority of Henry VI., but despite an
elaborately described tournament, we never really leave
eighteenth century England. Edmund Twyford, the reputed son of a
cottager, is befriended by a benevolent baron Fitzowen, but,
through his good fortune and estimable qualities, excites the
envy of Fitzowen's nephews and his eldest son. To prove the
courage of Edmund, who has been basely slandered by his enemies,
the baron asks him to spend three nights in the haunted apartment
of the castle. Up to this point, there has been nothing to
differentiate the story from an uneventful domestic novel. The
ghost is of the mechanical variety and does not inspire awe when
he actually appears, but Miss Reeve tries to prepare our minds
for the shock, before she introduces him. The rusty locks and the
sudden extinction of the lamp are a heritage from Walpole, but
the "hollow, rustling noise" and the glimmering light, naturally
explained later by the approach of a servant with a faggot,
anticipate Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Adeline later, in _The Romance of
the Forest_, Edmund is haunted by prophetic dreams. The second
night the ghost violently clashes his armour, but still remains
concealed. The third night dismal groans are heard. The ghost
does not deign to appear in person until the baron's nephews
watch, and then:
"All the doors flew open, a pale glimmering light
appeared at the door from the staircase, and a man in
complete armour entered the room: he stood with one
hand extended pointing to the outward door."
It is to vindicate the rights of this departed spirit that Sir
Ralph Harclay challenges Sir Walter Lovel to a "mediaeval"
tournament. Before the story closes, Edmund is identified as the
owner of Castle Lovel, and is married to Lady Emma, Fitzowen's
daughter. The narration of the unusual circumstances connected
with his birth takes some time, as the foster parents suffer from
what is described by writers on psychology as "total recall," and
are unable to select the salient details. The characters are
rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who
has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the
immaculate Edmund's happiness. The good and bad are sharply
distinguished. There are no "doubtful cases," and consequently
there is no difficulty in distributing appropriate rewards and
punishments at the close of the story--the whole "furnishing a
striking lesson to posterity of the overruling hand of providence
and the certainty of retribution." Clara Reeve was fifty-two
years of age when she published her Gothic story, and she writes
in the spirit of a maiden aunt striving to edify as well as to
entertain the younger generation. When Edmund takes Fitzowen to
view the fatal closet and the bones of his murdered father, he
considers the scene "too solemn for a lady to be present at"; and
his love-making is as frigid as the supernatural scenes. The hero
is young in years, but has no youthful ardour. The very ghost is
manipulated in a half-hearted fashion and fails to produce the
slightest thrill. The natural inclination of the authoress was
probably towards domestic fiction with a didactic intention, and
she attempted a "mediaeval" setting as a _tour de force_, in
emulation of Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_. The hero, whose birth
is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the
vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic
spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards
the romantic. _The Old English Baron_ is an unambitious work, but
it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity
of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild
degree of interest simply as a story, while _The Castle of
Otranto_ is only tolerable as a literary curiosity. A tragedy,
_Edmond_, _Orphan of the Castle_ (1799), was founded upon the
story, which was translated into French in 1800. Miss Reeve
informs the public in a preface to a late edition of _The Old
English Baron_ that, in compliance with the suggestion of a
friend, she had composed _Castle Connor, an Irish Story_, in
which apparitions were introduced. The manuscript of this tale
was unfortunately lost. Not even a mouldering fragment has been
rescued from an ebony cabinet in the deserted chamber of an
ancient abbey, and we are left wondering whether the ghosts spoke
with a brogue.
When Walpole wrote disparagingly of Clara Reeve's imitation of
his Gothic story, he singled out for praise a fragment which he
attributes to Mrs. Barbauld. The story to which he alludes is
evidently the unfinished _Sir Bertrand_, which is contained in
one of the volumes entitled _Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose_,
published jointly by J. and A.L. Aikin in 1773, and preceded by
an essay _On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror_. Leigh
Hunt, who reprinted _Sir Bertrand_, which had impressed him very
strongly in his boyhood, in his _Book for a Corner_ (1849)
ascribes the authorship of the tale to Dr. Aikin, commenting on
the fact that he was "a writer from whom this effusion was hardly
to have been looked for." It is probably safe to assume that
Walpole, who was a contemporary of the Aikins and who took a
lively interest in the literary gossip of the day, was right in
assigning _Sir Bertrand_ to Miss Aikin,[31] afterwards Mrs.
Barbauld, though the story is not included in _The Works of Anne
Letitia Barbauld_, edited by Miss Lucy Aikin in 1825. That the
minds of the Aikins were exercised about the sources of pleasure
in romance, especially when connected with horror and distress,
is clear not only from this essay and the illustrative fragment
but also from other essays and stories in the same
collection--_On Romances, an Imitation_, and _An Enquiry into
those Kinds of Distress which Excite Agreeable Sensations_. In
the preliminary essay to _Sir Bertrand_ an attempt is made to
explain why terrible scenes excite pleasurable emotions and to
distinguish between two different types of horror, as illustrated
by _The Castle of Otranto_, which unites the marvellous and the
terrible, and by a scene of mere natural horror in Smollett's
_Count Fathom_. The story _Sir Bertrand_ is an attempt to combine
the two kinds of horror in one composition. A knight, wandering
in darkness on a desolate and dreary moor, hears the tolling of a
bell, and, guided by a glimmering light, finds "an antique
mansion" with turrets at the corners. As he approaches the porch,
the light glides away. All is dark and still. The light reappears
and the bell tolls. As Sir Bertrand enters the castle, the door
closes behind him. A bluish flame leads him up a staircase till
he comes to a wide gallery and a second staircase, where the
light vanishes. He grasps a dead-cold hand which he severs from
the wrist with his sword. The blue flame now leads him to a
vault, where he sees the owner of the hand "completely armed,
thrusting forwards the bloody stump of an arm, with a terrible
frown and menacing gesture and brandishing a sword in the
remaining hand." When attacked, the figure vanishes, leaving
behind a massive, iron key which unlocks a door leading to an
apartment containing a coffin, and statues of black marble,
attired in Moorish costume, holding enormous sabres in their
right hands. As the knight enters, each of them rears an arm and
advances a leg and at the same moment the lid of the coffin opens
and the bell tolls. Sir Bertrand, guided by the flames,
approaches the coffin from which a lady in a shroud and a black
veil arises. When he kisses her, the whole building falls asunder
with a crash. Sir Bertrand is thrown into a trance and awakes in
a gorgeous room, where he sees a beautiful lady who thanks him as
her deliverer. At a banquet, nymphs place a laurel wreath on his
head, but as the lady is about to address him the fragment breaks
off.
The architecture of the castle, with its gallery, staircase and
subterranean vaults, closely resembles that of Walpole's Gothic
structure. The "enormous sabres" too are familiar to readers of
_The Castle of Otranto_. The gliding light, disquieting at the
outset of the story but before the close familiar grown, is
doomed to be the guide of many a distressed wanderer through the
Gothic labyrinths of later romances. Mrs. Barbauld chose her
properties with admirable discretion, but lacked the art to use
them cunningly. A tolling bell, heard in the silence and darkness
of a lonely moor, will quicken the beatings of the heart, but
employed as a prompter's signal to herald the advance of a group
of black statues is only absurd. After the grimly suggestive
opening, the story gradually loses in power as it proceeds and
the happy ending, which wings our thoughts back to the Sleeping
Beauty of childhood, is wholly incongruous. If the fragment had
ended abruptly at the moment when the lady arises in her shroud
from the coffin, _Sir Bertrand_ would have been a more effective
tale of terror. From the historical point of view Mrs. Barbauld's
curious patchwork is full of interest. She seems to be reaching
out wistfully towards the mysterious and the unknown. Genuinely
anxious to awaken a thrill of excitement in the breast of her
reader, she is hesitating and uncertain as to the best way of
winning her effect. She is but a pioneer in the art of freezing
the blood and it were idle to expect that she should rush boldly
into a forest of horrors. Naturally she prefers to follow the
tracks trodden by Walpole and Smollett; but with intuitive
foresight she seems to have realised the limitations of Walpole's
marvellous machinery, and to have attempted to explore the
regions of the fearful unknown. Her opening scene works on that
instinctive terror of the dark and the unseen, upon which Mrs.
Radcliffe bases many of her most moving incidents.
Among the _Poetical Sketches_ of Blake, written between 1768 and
1777, and published in 1783, there appears an extraordinary poem
written in blank verse, but divided into quatrains, and entitled
_Fair Elenor_. This juvenile production seems to indicate that
Blake was familiar with Walpole's Gothic story.[32] The heroine,
wandering disconsolately by night in the castle vaults--a place
of refuge first rendered fashionable by Isabella in _The Castle
of Otranto_--faints with horror, thinking that she beholds her
husband's ghost, but soon:
"Fancy returns, and now she thinks of bones
And grinning skulls and corruptible death
Wrapped in his shroud; and now fancies she hears
Deep sighs and sees pale, sickly ghosts gliding."
A reality more horrible than her imaginings awaits her. A
bleeding head is abruptly thrust into her arms by an assassin in
the employ of a villainous and anonymous "duke." Fair Elenor
retires to her bed and gives utterance to an outburst of similes
in praise of her dead lord. Thus encouraged, the bloody head of
her murdered husband describes its lurid past, and warns Elenor
to beware of the duke's dark designs. Elenor wisely avoids the
machinations of the villain, and brings an end to the poem, by
breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the
popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her
lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a
year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants,
all headless out of respect to their mistress.
Blake's youthful excursion into the murky gloom of Gothic vaults
resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no
connoisseur, would have declined it regretfully as a contribution
to his _Tales of Terror_, but _Fair Elenor_ is worthy of
remembrance as an early indication of Walpole's influence, which
was to become so potent on the history of Gothic romance.
The Gothic experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake, published in his
_Literary Hours_ (1798), are extremely instructive as indicating
the critical standpoint of the time. Drake, like Mrs. Barbauld
and her brother, was deeply interested in the sources of the
pleasure derived from tales of terror, and wrote his Gothic
stories to confirm and illustrate the theories propounded in his
essays. He discusses gravely and learnedly the kinds of
fictitious horror that excite agreeable sensations, and then
proceeds to arrange carefully calculated effects, designed to
alarm his readers, but not to outrage their sense of decorum. He
has none of the reckless daring of "Monk" Lewis, who flung
restraint to the winds and raced in mad career through an orgy of
horrors. In his enchanted castles we are disturbed by an uneasy
suspicion that the inhabitants are merely allegorical characters,
and that the spectre of a moral lurks in some dim recess ready to
spring out upon us suddenly. Dr. Drake's mind was as a house
divided against itself: he was a moralist, emulating the "sage
and serious Spenser" in his desire to exalt virtue and abase
vice, he was a critic working out, with calm detachment,
practical illustrations of the theories he had formulated, and he
was a romantic enthusiast, imbued with a vague but genuine
admiration for the wild superstitions of a bygone age. His
stories exhibit painful evidence of the conflict which waged
between the three sides of his nature. In the essay prefixed to
_Henry Fitzowen, a Gothic Tale_, he distinguishes between the two
species of Gothic superstition, the gloomy and the sportive, and
addresses an ode to the two goddesses of Superstition--one the
offspring of Fear and Midnight, the other of Hesper and the Moon.
In his story the spectres of darkness are put to flight by a
troop of aerial spirits. Dr. Drake knew the Gothic stories of
Walpole, Mrs. Barbauld, Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe; and
traces of the influence of each may be found in his work. Henry
Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and
diabolical rival--Walleran--whose character combines the most
dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical
gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for
his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a
spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a
thunderstorm to find his castle enveloped in total darkness and
two of his servants stretched dead at his feet. He learns from
his mother and sister, who are shut in a distant room, that
Adeline has been carried off by armed ruffians. Believing
Walleran to be responsible for this outrage, Fitzowen sets out
the next day in search of him. After weary wanderings he is
beguiled into a Gothic castle by a foul witch, who resembles one
of Spenser's loathly hags, and on his entrance hears peals of
diabolical laughter. He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouqué in _The
Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.
In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
where Schedoni, about to plunge a dagger into Ellena's bosom,
recoils, in the belief that he has discovered her to be his own
daughter, is commended as "appalling yet delighting the reader."
In the productions of Mrs. Radcliffe, "the Shakespeare of Romance
Writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the
softer graces of a Claude," he declares,
"may be found many scenes truly terrific in their
conception, yet so softened down, and the mind so much
relieved, by the intermixture of beautiful description,
or pathetic incident, that the impression of the whole
never becomes too strong, never degenerates into
horror, but pleasurable emotion is ever the
predominating result."
The famous scene in _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, the description of
Danger in Collins' _Ode to Fear_, the Scottish ballad of
_Hardyknute_ are mentioned as admirable examples of the fear
excited by natural causes. In the fragment called _Montmorenci_,
Drake aims at combining "picturesque description with some of
those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural
agency." As the curfew tolls sullenly, Henry de Montmorenci and
his two attendants rush from a castle into the darkness of a
stormy night. They hurry through a savage glen, in which a
swollen torrent falls over a precipice. After hearing the crash
of falling armour, they suddenly come upon a dying knight on
whose pale features every mark of horror is depicted. Led by
frightful screams of distress, Montmorenci and his men find a
maiden, who has been captured by banditti. Montmorenci slays the
leader, but is seized by the rest of the banditti and bound to a
tree overlooking a stupendous chasm into which he is to be
hurled. By almost superhuman struggles he effects his escape,
when suddenly--there at this terror-fraught moment, the fragment
wisely ends.
In _The Abbey of Clunedale_ Drake experiments feebly and
ineffectively with the "explained supernatural" in which Mrs.
Radcliffe was an adept. The ruined abbey, deemed to be haunted,
is visited at night as an act of penance by a man named Clifford
who, in a fit of unfounded jealousy, has slain his wife's
brother. Clifford, accompanied by his sister, and bearing a
light, kneels at his wife's tomb, and is mistaken for a spectral
being.
The Gothic tale entitled _Sir Egbert_ is based on an ancient
legend associated with one of the turrets of Rochester Castle.
Sir Egbert, searching for his friend, Conrad, who had disappeared
in suspicious circumstances, hears from the Knights Templars,
that the wicked Constable is believed to hold two lovers in a
profound and deathlike sleep. He resolves to make an attempt to
draw from its sheath the sword which separates them and so
restore them to life and liberty. Undismayed by the fate of those
who have fallen in the quest, Sir Egbert enters the castle, where
he is entertained at a gorgeous feast. When the festivities are
at their height, and Sir Egbert has momentarily forgotten his
enterprise, a terrible shriek is heard. The revellers vanish, and
Sir Egbert is left alone to face a spectral corpse, which beckons
him onward to a vault, where in flaming characters are inscribed
the words: "Death to him who violates the mysteries of Gundulph's
Tower." Nothing daunted, Sir Egbert amid execrations of fiends,
encounters delusive horrors and at last unsheathes the sword. The
lovers awake, and the whole apparatus of enchantment vanishes.
Conrad tells how he and Bertha, six years before, had been lured
by a wandering fire to a luxurious cavern, where they drank a
magic potion. The story closes with the marriage of Conrad and
Bertha, and of Egbert and Matilda, a sister of one of the other
victims of the same enchanter.
In Dr. Drake's stories are patiently collected all the heirlooms
necessary for the full equipment of a Gothic castle. Massive
doors, which sway ponderously on their hinges or are forcibly
burst open and which invariably close with a resounding crash,
dark, eerie galleries, broken staircases, decayed apartments,
mouldering floors, tolling bells, skeletons, corpses, howling
spectres--all are there; but the possessor, overwhelmed by the
very profusion which surrounds him, is at a loss how to make use
of them. He does not realise the true significance of a
half-stifled groan or an unearthly yell heard in the darkness.
Each new horror indeed seems but to put new life into the heart
of the redoubtable Sir Egbert, who, like Spenser's gallant
knights, advances from triumph to triumph vanquishing evil at
every step. It is impossible to become absorbed in his
personages, who have less body than his spectres, and whose
adventures take the form of a walk through an exhibition of
horrors, mechanically set in motion to prove their prowess. Dr.
Drake seems happier when the hideous beings are put to rout, and
the transformation-scene, which places fairyland before us,
suddenly descends on the stage. Yet the bungling attempts of Dr.
Drake are interesting as showing that grave and critical minds
were prepared to consider the tale of terror as a legitimate form
of literature, obeying certain definite rules of its own and
aiming at the excitement of a pleasurable fear. The seed of
Gothic story, sown at random by Horace Walpole, had by 1798 taken
firm root in the soil. Drake's enthusiasm for Gothic story was
associated with his love for older English poetry and with his
interest in Scandinavian mythology. He was a genuine admirer of
Spenser and attempted imitations, in modern diction, of old
ballads. It is for his bent towards the romantic, rather than for
his actual accomplishments, that Drake is worthy of remembrance.