The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
1764
This is the origin of the Gothic literary genre -- the novel that gave rise to all
other expressions of Gothic through two and a half centuries, up to the present day.
We will investigate twelve of the descendants of this initial work, and note how
Gothic changed – and didn’t – through time; but let us now go back to the wellspring.
The 4th Earl of Orford, whose life neatly spanned the 18th century, was the son of the
first British Prime Minister and a man of letters. Horace (or Horatio) Walpole was also
an antiquarian, and built a villa named Strawberry Hill with medieval Gothic elements such as turrets, pointed arches, and battlements with crenellated walls. In so doing, he was far ahead of the Gothic revival in architecture that would follow a century later.
Horace reached back to medieval times for literary inspiration as well. He claimed to have woken up one morning in the summer of 1764 after a night of vivid dreams (indigestion from a rich dinner, most likely) with a novel in his head. He wrote until his hand hurt and produced the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Since Horace was writing in what he considered a medieval style, it is to present-day tastes a largely unreadable little gem consisting of sentences the length and weight of freight trains, and urgent dialogue that gallops from page to page, in older editions untrammeled by quotation marks or paragraph breaks:
However, as it seemed to be the sole object of his curiosity, it soon became so to the rest of the spectators, whose conjectures were as absurd and improbable, as the catastrophe itself was unprecedented. In the midst of their senseless guesses, a young peasant, whom rumour had drawn thither from a neighbouring village, observed that the miraculous helmet was exactly like that on the figure in black marble of Alfonso the Good, one of their former princes, in the church of St. Nicholas. " Villain! What sayest thou?" cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar; how darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall pay for it.
Okay. But there are reasons to love Horace Walpole despite his lumbering prose. For example, he gave us the word “gloomth,” which is not used nearly enough today (it describes a darkish, museum-like interior atmosphere, which he considered essential for the display of his collections which ran from paintings to snuff boxes). And he really achieved a master stroke with Castle, creating a new literary genre that would chill and delight for generations to come as it adapted to new times, new fears, and new forms.
He published the first edition himself, presenting it as a just-discovered medieval manuscript. This established the convention that Gothic texts just turn up somewhere, missives from long ago, adding to their mystery. But the success that his novel enjoyed caused Horace to stand up and identify himself as the author in the second edition, and insert the world “Gothic” into the subtitle, lest there be any doubt. He also added a sonnet to a “Lady Coke.” No wonder he stayed up all night writing.
The Castle of Otranto established the conventions that defined Gothic. In it we find a medieval castle with labyrinthine cellars, trapdoors, and a bad case of intestinal gas, supernatural forces (actual or imagined) and their interaction with the natural world, haunted portraits, self-opening doors, a prophecy, a family curse, debauched nobility, a fair maiden fleeing from a rapacious horny old nobleman, and pieces of statuary that have nosebleeds or fly about and smash an unwitting uninteresting character like a bug. The past haunts the present and enables present evil. The location of the ancient family seat provides a path along which a curse can travel from a supernatural-driven time to the current generation. It asks the question, Are we trapped by our own history? Can we retain the riches and social standing and titles bequeathed by the past without also retaining its evil? Apparently not.
In short order, other Gothic writers would follow in Walpole’s footsteps and add other elements that were absorbed into Gothic: dreams, nightmares, visions, darkness, storms, cold, fog and mist, dark woods, a crashing or tempested sea, castles, ruins, haunted houses, secret or forbidden passageways, tricking gadgetry, disembodied voices and distant, untraceable music, disused libraries, newly-discovered old manuscripts and letters, secrets, coded messages, reappearing ancestors, secret paternity, mirrors, windows, doppelgangers, and mistaken identities. But in Otranto, we find the establishing conventions.
What we don’t find is a well-described meal. The characters in Otranto do a lot of things: they run breathlessly, they discharge a flood of tears, they foam at the mouth, they fall down, they swoon away, they shudder, recoil, and shriek, but the only time they sit down to eat is at a banquet notable mainly for heavy drinking. The two old horny noblemen are the only ones who enjoy themselves, since they are about to marry each other’s daughters. It goes without saying that neither daughter has much of an appetite. More details are not forthcoming, so for our first literary Gothic meal, we will go with a modest but sustaining feast that an 18th century English earl might have imagined for a 13th-century Italian noble household.
Menu
Roast Chicken with Verjuice, Served on Trenchers
Meat Pies with Raisins
Roast Turnips
Apple Tartlets with Messages
Libations: Mead, wine
Dessert: Syllabub, almonds, raisins, oranges
Ambience
Candlelight only. We’re going for gloomth here. Wall torches are very cool but it is acceptable – nay, wise – to use electric ones and just pretend.
Someone must play Serving Boy/Wench. Bring out each menu item separately and see it mostly consumed before serving another.
Dress: Medieval costumes, or at the least, appropriate headgear. Bonus points if any guests have to feed themselves through an armet.
No silverware; fingers and knives for the food, and goblets for the drinks. Wipe hands on the tablecloth or the shirt of anyone who has passed out.
Goth It Up
Work the word “gloomth” into the conversation thirteen times.
At various points, someone should burst out with a quote from Otranto:
“Villain! What sayest thou?”
“I will follow thee to the gulph of perdition!”
“Peace, blockhead!”
One of the guests should, after a quaff of mead, choke hideously and fall to the ground and expire. Feel free to fake this convincingly. The Deceased should lie there for the remainder of the meal, perhaps sniffed at by any convenient dog, as the remaining guests cast anxious looks at the body and narrow-eyed suspicious glances at each other and at their own goblets.
Recipes
Roast Chicken with Verjuice, Served on Trenchers
Verjuice or verjus is bottled juice of unripe grapes, popular in medieval times for the sour/tart flavor it imparted to meats. Find it online or in a specialty store, or cheat and use a strong homemade lemonade.
Trenchers were round slabs of bread that served as plates and could be eaten after absorbing the juices of the meal, or given as alms to some poor serf whose life was such hell that used soggy bread was a treat. You can make your own from your favorite bread recipe, or use a halved long slice of a good bakery bun with a substantial crust.
Ingredients
Fresh whole chicken
1.5 cups verjuice
1 cup minced fresh herbs: rosemary, parsley, lemongrass, sage, whatever you like
Wash the chicken and place it in a roasting pan; mix the fresh herbs with the verjuice and pour it over the chicken. Cook at 350 for 20 minutes per pound plus 15 minutes, basting from time to time.
Let the roasted chicken sit for about ten minutes, then cut into pieces and serve on trenchers.
Meat Pies with Raisins
(makes 12 small pies)
Ingredients
Pastry dough; you can make your own if you do that kind of thing, or use refrigerated biscuit/crescent dough, as long as you end up with twelve 3-inch rounds.
1 lb. ground beef, sausage, tofu crumbles, or whatever floats your caravel
1 cup finely-chopped celery, onions, garlic
Fresh herbs to taste
1 cup raisins, sultanas, or cranberries – any dried fruit along these lines that you like
1 beaten egg
Brown the meat mixture with the celery, onion, and garlic, fresh herbs, and dried fruit. Drain and place a spoonful in the center of your dough rounds. Fold over, pinch to seal, and brush with beaten egg. Make a cross in the top to vent and evoke divine assistance.
Bake at 350 for fifteen minutes.
Roast Turnips
Ingredients
6 fresh young white turnips, not too big (2 – 3 inches in diameter)
Wash, dry, and trim the tops and roots of the turnips. You can take one of two paths next, and one will have horrible consequences. I’m not going to tell you which one.
Cut the turnips into quarters and place them around your roasting chicken about 45 minutes before you expect it to be done.
~or~
Place the whole turnips in a baking dish and cover. Bake at 350 about 30 – 40 minutes, until they’re soft. Serve with fresh butter, ground pepper, and salt.
Apple Tartlets with Messages
(makes about 10)
Ingredients
Pie dough, whether your own special recipe from scratch or the refrigerator case at the local market; frozen tart shells (I’ve already claimed that band name) also work nicely.
Filling:
2 teaspoons butter
2 cups diced peeled tart apples
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt
Any thickish paper will work; a parchment look is appealing
Fine-point permanent marker
Tartlet shells: Roll out pre-made dough, cut out circles to line cupcake/muffin tins if you don’t have a tart baking pan; or thaw out the frozen tart shells according to directions.
Filling: Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add the apples and cook them, stirring, over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon juice and salt. Bring to a boil, throttle down the heat and stir for 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened and apples are tender. Let this mixture cool while you prepare the dire notes.
Messages: Cut the parchment paper into 1” x 2” strips. Use the marker to inscribe a message on each one. (Blood would be creepier but . . . no.)
Make them short and ominous.
cellar NW corner 4 ft
not your real father
mead is poisoned
29.9569 N 90.0761 W
Duke’s portrait midnight
Fold completed message in half and put it in the baked shell. You can wrap it in tin foil first if you want to be a wuss about it. Spoon apple mixture over it. Bake the pies for 15 minutes at 350.
Syllabub
Have a serf milk Crumbocke the Cow directly into a bowl of cider. If that is inconvenient, try this recipe instead:
Ingredients
1 cup cold heavy whipping cream
½ cup sugar
2 cups white wine
2 tablespoons lemon juice
nutmeg
Whip the cream and sugar together until the cream starts to thicken; drink 1¾ cup of the white wine while doing this, then gradually add in what’s left of it and the lemon juice. When it’s fluffy, it’s ready. Chill it until serving time, then place it in goblets with a sprinkle of nutmeg and perhaps a mint leaf on top.
Serve with whole peeled oranges and small bowls of almonds and raisins.
