At the
preview, the curator Tim Pye defined the essentials for a Gothic novel: a dark medieval castle, terrifying spectres,
mistaken identities, battling knights and a general air of doom. One could
also add moonlight seen through clouds, bats, ivy and owls.
- Tintern Abbey
The
exhibition opens with Horace Walpole’s The
Castle of Otranto (1764), the first Gothic novel. I enjoyed the lively
Czech cartoon film of the novel, done as a magic lantern show – very
atmospheric, and full of what Walpole called ‘gloomth’. And there are a couple of painted prints of ruined
abbeys, designed to be back lit by candles flickering behind the Gothic
windows.
2. Castle
of Otranto
A spate of
Gothic novels followed in the 1780-90s, the most famous of which was Ann
Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho.
Mrs Radcliffe was a skilled writer and the book gave the genre literary
respectability. The exhibition also has a case containing all seven of the ‘Northanger
Horrids’ which Isabella Thorpe recommended to Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, published by the Minerva Press with creepy titles like The Castle of Wolfenbach (1794) by Eliza
Parsons, and The Necromancer (1794)
by Carl Friedrich Kahlert.
3. Nathaniel
Grogan The Mysteries of Udolpho
Interestingly,
perhaps as a result of the French Revolution, the genre began to change, the
first of many transformations in its 250 year history. Tim Pye suggested that
the French Revolution was so frightening in its own right that the Gothic novel
had to up its game: you can’t have reality being more blood-curdling than the Gothic novels specifically written to
terrify.
The
genre moved from spectres in ruined castles to monsters in human form; for
example, Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and later, Dr Polidori’s The Vampyre, inspired by Lord Byron’s fragment written whilst they
were all staying at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Leman in the Alps.
Now the monstrous came in human form and, worse, the vampire could be someone
one knew – in disguise.
4.
Frankenstein
There is
also a terrific clip from the 1935 film The
Bride of Frankenstein with Boris
Karloff and Elsa Lanchester. Her screams (at about three minute intervals) pierce
the air as you go round the exhibition.
The
exhibit which probably attracted the most press attention was the mid-Victorian
Vampire Hunting Kit borrowed from the Royal Armouries. One can only speculate
as to why they own such a thing – unholy disturbances in the Bloody Tower,
perhaps?
The
handsome box contains everything a respectable vampire-hunter could possibly want:
wooden mallet and stakes, crucifix, rosary, Book of Common Prayer, bottles of
Holy Water, crushed garlic, a pistol, an iron mould for making bullets, and
some bullets.
5:
Vampire Hunting Kit.
I cannot
resist ending with a splendid poster from 1890 of the decidedly Gothic
melodrama Manhood. It has all the
elements of a Gothic play: noble hero with clinging heroine, Gothic ruins,
moonlight, ivy, bats, an owl, a graveyard, and a man with a gun, loaded one
presumes with a silver bullet, who has just shot another man – probably a
vampire in disguise.
6:
Manhood poster.
I’m
looking forward to the BBC programmes.
Elizabeth
Hawksley
The British
Library exhibition, Terror and Wonder:
The Gothic Imagination runs from 3 October, 2014 to 20 January, 2015. www.bl.uk/gothic
Images:
1. Tintern Abbey, 1812, courtesy of the British
Library Board2. Watercolour of The Castle of Otranto from Walpole’s personal copy of the book, courtesy of the British Library
3. 'Lady Blanche crosses the ravine’ from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Nathaniel Grogan, late 1790s, courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland
4. Frankenstein’s monster from the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, courtesy of the British Library
5. Vampire Hunting Kit, courtesy of the Royal Armouries
6. 1890 theatre poster for Manhood, performed at the Elephant and Castle Theatre, courtesy of the British Library Board
