Haunted by Horace? Twilight tours, guides and the revival of the Gothic

Abstract

This paper uses a hauntological approach to examine the extent to which the present is haunted by the past. Specifically, it looks at playful indeterminate referentiality and the relationship between the tour guide and their revived subjects and subject matter. Tour guides of Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham daily and nightly volunteer to introduce visitors to an extra-ordinary pseudo-gothic castle built by rakish socialite, writer, politician, and architect Sir Horace Walpole (1717–1797). Walpole’s building works and textual writings prefigured the Gothic Revival and mass appeal of the technological phantasmagoria. Through this louche inter-textuality, Walpole is animated by the guides of his house, some of whom present an open-ended queer reading of place and person. This paper argues that this haunting by Horace is a theatricalization on the aura of materialism, a ‘phantomime’ afterlife from an enlightened Gothic revival.

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