Gothic piles and cynical follies revisited: A quizzical tour through country house literature of the long eighteenth century

M-C Newbould

doi:10.35360/njes.424

Abstract

The eighteenth century witnessed an expansion in domestic tourism that allowed increasingly diversified visitors to access the grand homes of those for whom more lavish types of travel had furnished their seats, in town and country alike. Numerous travel guides and literary texts engage with the ongoing ‘country house’ tradition of praising the home, gardens, and owner of such places. However, the shifting social contexts in which both these buildings and the ideologies they embodied often drew writers to satirise critically the great houses they ostensibly admired. This essay examines how the Gothic aesthetic infused the broader country house tradition with a novel way of assessing the uneasy tension between tradition and innovation catalysed by the changing circumstances of the eighteenth century by examining the links several key writers forged between Gothic architectural structures and literary texts. It examines Horace Walpole’s Gothic projects in both The Castle of Otranto and Strawberry Hill; Mary Leapor’s Crumble Hall ; William Beckford’s Vathek and Fonthill; Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey ; before settling on a detailed discussion of Norman Abbey in Byron’s Don Juan , the literary equivalent of his own seat at Mansfield which, in turn, became a key spot on the tourist trail.

Highlights

The eighteenth century witnessed an expansion in domestic tourism that allowed increasingly diversified visitors to access the grand homes of those for whom more lavish types of travel had furnished their seats, in town and country alike
STRAWBERRY HILL, near Twickenham, the villa of the Earl of Orford is situated on an eminence near the Thames, commanding views of Twickenham, Richmond Hill and Park, Ham, Kingston, &c. This beautiful structure, formed from select parts of Gothic architecture in cathedrals, chapel-tombs, &c. was wholly built, at different times, by his Lordship, whose fine taste is displayed in the elegant embellishments of the edifice, and in the choice collection of pictures sculptures, antiquities, and curiosities that adorn it; many of which have been purchased from some of the first cabinets in Europe
The editor who signs the preface to the fourth edition (1792), places The Ambulator within this lineage of rambling tours with a purpose, and their condensation of the wider patterns of travel and tourism exhibited on grander scales throughout the century

Summary

Introduction

The eighteenth century witnessed an expansion in domestic tourism that allowed increasingly diversified visitors to access the grand homes of those for whom more lavish types of travel had furnished their seats, in town and country alike. Throughout the tangible and imaginary Gothic conjured by Beckford, Peacock and, most significantly here, Byron’s Don Juan (1818-23)—whose Norman Abbey, modelled on the poet’s own seat at Newstead, is first visited in Canto XIII (1823) (McGann 1986: 755)—each author takes his reader on a tour of the remnants of venerable antiquity to lament its decay, and to situate such ruination within the present, looking back in order to look forward.

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Conclusion