The Castle of Otranto
Transcribed from the 1901 Cassell and Company edition by David Price,email ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY (New Series)
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THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO.
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BY HORACE WALPOLE.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_ 1901
INTRODUCTION
HORACE WALPOLE was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the greatstatesman, who died Earl of Orford. He was born in 1717, the year inwhich his father resigned office, remaining in opposition for almostthree years before his return to a long tenure of power. Horace Walpolewas educated at Eton, where he formed a school friendship with ThomasGray, who was but a few months older. In 1739 Gray wastravelling-companion with Walpole in France and Italy until they differedand parted; but the friendship was afterwards renewed, and remained firmto the end. Horace Walpole went from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge,and entered Parliament in 1741, the year before his father’s finalresignation and acceptance of an earldom. His way of life was made easyto him. As Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk ofthe Estreats in the Exchequer, he received nearly two thousand a year fordoing nothing, lived with his father, and amused himself.
Horace Walpole idled, and amused himself with the small life of thefashionable world to which he was proud of belonging, though he had aquick eye for its vanities. He had social wit, and liked to put it tosmall uses. But he was not an empty idler, and there were seasons whenhe could become a sharp judge of himself. “I am sensible,” he wrote tohis most intimate friend, “I am sensible of having more follies andweaknesses and fewer real good qualities than most men. I sometimesreflect on this, though, I own, too seldom. I always want to beginacting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might be if Iwould.” He had deep home affections, and, under many politeaffectations, plenty of good sense.
Horace Walpole’s father died in 1745. The eldest son, who succeeded tothe earldom, died in 1751, and left a son, George, who was for a timeinsane, and lived until 1791. As George left no child, the title andestates passed to Horace Walpole, then seventy-four years old, and theonly uncle who survived. Horace Walpole thus became Earl of Orford,during the last six years of his life. As to the title, he said that hefelt himself being called names in his old age. He died unmarried, inthe year 1797, at the age of eighty.
He had turned his house at Strawberry Hill, by the Thames, nearTwickenham, into a Gothic villa—eighteenth-century Gothic—and amusedhimself by spending freely upon its adornment with such things as werethen fashionable as objects of taste. But he delighted also in hisflowers and his trellises of roses, and the quiet Thames. When confinedby gout to his London house in Arlington Street, flowers from StrawberryHill and a bird were necessary consolations. He set up also atStrawberry Hill a private printing press, at which he printed his friendGray’s poems, also in 1758 his own “Catalogue of the Royal and NobleAuthors of England,” and five volumes of “Anecdotes of Painting inEngland,” between 1762 and 1771.
Horace Walpole produced _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1765, at the matureage of forty-eight. It was suggested by a dream from which he said hewaked one morning, and of which “all I could recover was, that I hadthought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head likemine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost banister of agreat staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I satdown and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended tosay or relate.” So began the tale which professed to be translated by“William Marshal, gentleman, from the Italian of Onuphro Muralto, canonof the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto.” It was written in twomonths. Walpole’s friend Gray reported to him that at Cambridge the bookmade “some of them cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bedo’ nights.” _The Castle of Otranto_ was, in its own way, an early signof the reaction towards romance in the latter part of the last century.This gives it interest. But it has had many followers, and the hardymodern reader, when he read’s Gray’s note from Cambridge, needs to bereminded of its date.
H. M.