Landscaping Gothic Allusions in Cosgrove’s England: Prospects, Palladianism and Paternal Landscapes

      In 1737 James Dormer took up residence at his estate, Rousham, about ten miles north of Oxford. The property included rolling lawns, clusters of trees, and long walks. The design of the many grandiose architectural and natural features, crafted by Charles Bridgeman, encompassed Dutch, English, Italian, and French influences. The paddock, with the help of the ha-ha, or sunken ditch, “allowed for grazing cattle to appear within the bounds of the immediate area of the house, uniting productive and aesthetic land uses” (199). Yet this design was drastically altered to resemble picturesque landscaping that mimics the composition, mainly in terms of gardens and views, of a landscape painting. William Kent redesigned the property with a Gothic influence that employed Gothic bridges, flying buttresses, ruined arches, and sculptures of violent creatures. Like the origins of Gothic literature, the Gothic elements of the property stood in stark contrast to the unadorned English country side just as the juxtaposition between antithetical principals of Roman authority and Gothic liberty. Nature was endowed with a false freedom to shape the landscape only within the confines of carefully manicured grounds. Even the likes of Horace Walpole commented that Dormer’s property illustrated that “all nature is a garden…the inversion of art and nature is compete [within the garden] and reveals stability and perfection in English society” (qtd. in Cosgrove).

            Rousham requires the viewer to “create nature as a picture—literally and theoretically—because all is an illusion” (204). Nature had a profound impact upon the development of the Gothic genera in terms of the psychological mystification of both the characters and the readers. If we take stock in David Hume’s theory that “all reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation” then nature and our interpretation of our emotions can confuse the distinction between reality and fantasy (qtd. in Cosgrove). The surroundings in Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” almost seem to come alive. In the tale, an ancient prophesy states, “the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it" (Walpole 11). This prophesy comes to light upon the death of the soon to be married Prince Conrad. A marriage between Conrad and Princess Isabella would have dramatically changed the composition of the ruling powers of the castle. The very nature or essence of the castle seems to work against the marriage when the large helmet of a statue crushes Conrad. The events of the story, while embodying elements of the Gothic, also depict a perversion of nature and its affects upon humans. Just as Dormer manipulated his property by manicuring and manipulating nature, so too does nature or architecture seem to manipulate the characters in Walpole’s story. There is a deeply rooted connection between the composure of natural surroundings and the psychological state of the individual that is exposed as casual in the Gothic where humans lack complete control. The efforts of Dormer to cultivate an estate that exuded opulence and perfection ultimately presented an illusion or perversion of nature akin to the skewed reality localized in the Gothic genera.