The Castle of Otranto 1798.
Frontispiece to The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, 5 vols.(London 1798), here vol. 2.
“Oh! the helmet! the helmet!”
The scene that sets the entire novel in motion is the imminent marriage of Conrad and Matilda.
When Conrad, Prince Manfred’s darling son, fails to show up for his own wedding, the prince sends servants out to find him. They call out, “Oh! the helmet! the helmet!” He goes to see what has happened:
“Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily; but, what a sight for a father’s eyes! He beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, a hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.”
(Illustration: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story [London 1825], plate on p. 3.)
The Castle of Otranto 1800.
In an undated note to Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer, Caroline wrote:
“You sent me the Castle of Otranto when I was in the Harz — do you still remember? — before my first or second childbed, and were vehemently reproached for having sent something as frightening as this Burg to a woman in my condition.”
(The frontispiece from Jeffery’s Edition of the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, translated by William Marshal, new ed. [London 1800].)
The Castle of Otranto 1794.
Johann Heinrich Meil’s illustrations to Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer’s translation The Castle of Otranto as Die Burg von Otranto: Eine gotische Geschichte; Mit vier Kupfern (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Himburg, 1794).
In the first illustration, Prince Manfred sees the helmet plumes on an ancestor’s statue suddenly move in reaction to his unseemly proposal of marriage to Isabella, the former fiancée of his tragically deceased son, Conrad.
In the second, the friar recognizes Theodore as his son from the “mark of the bloody arrow.”
The Castle of Otranto 1794.
In the third illustration, Matilda and Theodore meet on the “dark tower,” where Mathilde offers to help him escape.
In the fourth, Manfred impetuously and mistakenly stabs to death his own daughter, Matilda, in the chapel.
The Castle of Otranto 1800.
Illustrations from Jeffery’s Edition of the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, translated by William Marshal, new ed. (London 1800).
The Castle of Otranto 1791, 1796.
The illustrations in Jeffrey’s 1791 and 1796 editions exhibit slightly different coloring and enhancement.
The Castle of Otranto 1800.
Illustrations from Jeffery’s Edition of the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, translated by William Marshal, new ed. (London 1800).
The Castle of Otranto 1791, 1796.
The Castle of Otranto 1800.
Illustrations from Jeffery’s Edition of the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, translated by William Marshal, new ed. (London 1800).
The Castle of Otranto 1791, 1796.
The influence of Otranto on later German literature.
Walpole’s novel exerted considerable influence on German literature for the rest of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, not least in that part of Romanticism inclined toward the darker, unknown, inexplicable side of life. The following vignettes typify this literary fascination with ghosts of the sort found in Walpole’s book and its successors.
Friedrich August Wilhelm Schmidt, Almanach romantisch-ländicher Gemählde für 1799. Mit Kupfern und Musik (Berlin 1799), plates (1797) accompanying “Graf Königsmark und sein Verwalter” and “Kunz von Drachenfels.”
The influence of Otranto on later German literature.
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Das Gespenst, accompanying Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Gellerts Fabeln, Sammlung der besten deutschen prosaischen Schriftsteller und Dichter 1 (Carlsruhe 1774), in Genealogischer Calender für West-Preussen auf das Jahr 1776 zu Berlin (Berlin), Herzog August Bibliothek, Museumsnr./Signatur Uh 4° 47 (111); Gottlieb Böttger d.Ä., Kennen Sie mich?, Herzog August Bibliothek, Museumsnr./Signatur Graph. A1: 276.