SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE
Part Seven
by H. P. Lovecraft
(Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)
III. The Early Gothic Novel
The shadow-haunted landscapes of _Ossian_, the chaotic visions ofWilliam Blake, the grotesque witch-dances in Burns's _Tam O' Shanter_,the sinister daemonism of Coleridge's _Christabel_ and _AncientMariner_, the ghostly charm of James Hogg's _Kilmeny_, and the morerestrained approaches to cosmic horror in _Lamia_ and many of Keats'sother poems, are typical British illustrations of the advent of theweird to formal literature. Our Teutonic cousins of the continent wereequally receptive to the rising flood, and Burger's _Wild Huntsman_and the even more famous daemon-bridegroom ballad of _Lenore_--bothimitated in English by Scott, whose respect for the supernatural wasalways great--are only a taste of the eerie wealth which German songhad commenced to provide. Thomas Moore adapted from such sources thelegend of the ghoulish statue-bride (later used by Prosper Merimeein _The Venus of Ille_, and traceable back to great antiquity) whichechoes so shiveringly in his ballad of _The Ring_; whilst Goethe'sdeathless masterpiece _Faust_, crossing from mere balladry into theclassic, cosmic tragedy of the ages, may be held as the ultimate heightto which this German poetic impulse arose.
But it remained for a very sprightly and worldly Englishman--noneother than Horace Walpole himself--to give the growing impulsedefinite shape and become the actual founder of the literaryhorror-story as a permanent form. Fond of mediaeval romance and mysteryas a dilettante's diversion, and with a quaintly imitated Gothic castleas his abode at Strawberry Hill, Walpole in 1764 published _The Castleof Otranto_, a tale of the supernatural which, though thoroughlyunconvincing and mediocre in itself, was destined to exert an almostunparallelled influence on the literature of the weird. First venturingit only as a 'translation' by one "William Marshal, Gent." from theItalian of a mythical "Onuphrio Muralto," the author later acknowledgedhis connection with the book and took pleasure in its wide andinstantaneous popularity--a popularity which extended to many editions,early dramatizations, and wholesale imitation both in England and inGermany.
The story--tedious, artificial, and melodramatic--is further impairedby a brisk and prosaic style whose urbane sprightliness nowhere permitsthe creation of a truly weird atmosphere. It tells of Manfred, anunscrupulous and usurping prince determined to found a line, who afterthe mysterious sudden death of his only son, Conrad, on the latter'sbridal morn, attempts to put away his wife Hippolita and wed the ladydestined for the unfortunate youth--the lad, by the way, having beencrushed by the preternatural fall of a gigantic helmet in the castlecourtyard. Isabella, the widowed bride, flees from this design; andencounters in subterranean crypts beneath the castle a noble youngpreserver, Theodore, who seems to be a peasant yet strangely resemblesthe old lord Alfonso who ruled the domain before Manfred's times.Shortly thereafter supernatural phenomena assail the castle in diversways; fragments of gigantic armour being discovered here and there,a portrait walking out of its frame, a thunderclap destroying theedifice, and a colossal armoured spectre of Alfonso rising out of theruins to ascend through parting clouds to the bosom of St. Nicholas.Theodore, having wooed through death--for she is slain by her fatherby mistake--is discovered to be the son of Alfonso and rightful heirto the estate. He concludes the tale by wedding Isabella and preparingto live happily ever after whilst Manfred, whose usurpation was thecause of his son's death and his own supernatural harassings, retiresto a monastery for penitence; his saddened wife seeking asylum in aneighboring convent.
Such is the tale; flat, stilted, and altogether devoid of the truecosmic horror which makes weird literature. Yet such was the thirstof the age for those touches of strangeness and spectral antiquityit reflects, that it was seriously received by the soundest readersand raised in spite of its intrinsic ineptness to a pedestal of loftyimportance in literary history. What it did above all else was tocreate a novel type of scene, puppet-characters, and incidents; which,handled to better advantage by writers more naturally adapted to weirdcreation, stimulated the growth of an imitative Gothic school which inturn inspired the real weavers of cosmic terror--the line of actualartists beginning with Poe. This novel dramatic paraphernalia consistedfirst of all of the Gothic castle, with its awesome antiquity, vastdistances and ramblings, deserted or ruined wings, damp corridors,unwholesome hidden catacombs, and a galaxy of ghosts and appallinglegends, as a nucleus of suspense and daemoniac fright. In addition,it included the tyrannical and malevolent nobleman as villain; thesaintly, long-persecuted, and generally insipid heroine who undergoesthe major terrors and serves as a point of view and focus for thereader's sympathies; the valorous and immaculate hero, always of highbirth but often in humble disguise; the convention of high-soundingforeign names; mostly Italian, for the characters; and the infinitearray of stage properties which includes strange lights, damptrapdoors, extinguished lamps, mouldy hidden manuscripts, creakinghinges, shaking arras, and the like. All this paraphernalia reappearswith amusing sameness, yet sometimes with tremendous effect, throughoutthe history of the Gothic novel; and is by no means extinct even today,though subtler technique now forces it to assume a less naive andobvious form. An harmonious milieu for a new school had been found, andthe writing world was not slow to grasp the opportunity.
German romance at once responded to the Walpole influence, and soonbecame a byword for the weird and ghastly. In England, one of the firstimitators was the celebrated Mr. Barbauld, then Miss Aiken, who in 1773published an unfinished fragment called _Sir Bertrand_, in which thestrings of genuine terror were truly touched with no clumsy hand. Anobleman on a dark and lonely moor, attracted by a tolling bell anddistant light, enters a strange and ancient turreted castle whose doorsopen and close and whose bluish will-o'-the-wisps lead up mysteriousstaircases toward dead hands and animated black statues. A coffin witha dead lady, whom Sir Bertrand kisses, is finally reached; and upon thekiss, the scene dissolves to give place to a splendid apartment wherethe lady, restored to life, holds a banquet in honour of her rescuer.Walpole admired this tale, though he accorded less respect to an evenmore prominent off-spring of his Otranto--_The Old English Baron_, byClara Reeve, published in 1777. Truly enough, this tale lacks the realvibration to the note of outer darkness and mystery which distinguishesMrs. Barbauld's fragment and though less crude than Walpole's novel,and more artistically economical of horror in its possession of onlyone spectral figure, it is nevertheless too definitely insipid forgreatness. Here again we have the virtuous heir to the castle disguisedas a peasant and restored to his heritage through the ghost of hisfather; and here again we have a case of wide popularity leading tomany editions, dramatizations, and ultimate translation into French.Miss Reeve wrote another weird novel, unfortunately unpublished andlost.
continued next month]