Trollheart

Born to Darkness: Recipe for a Vampire

Following on from the above, the Slavic countries seem to have held very firm ideas about how one became a vampire, so let’s have a look at some of them here.

Dabbling in the black arts, being a conjurer or magician
Being a person of poor moral fibre
Unnatural death
Untimely death
Suicide
Born with a caul
Born with a tail
Improperly buried
Animal jumping or bird flying over the corpse or the empty grave
Incest between mother and son
Living a life that was not pious
Dying alone or unseen
Corpse swelling or turning black before burial

Some Slavic regions believed the genesis or birth of the vampire was a gradual event which went in stages. In the first forty days the vampire was most vulnerable, as it started out as an invisible shadow (?) and then as it fed gradually got stronger, forming an invisible (again) boneless, jelly-like mass before finally taking on a full human body. It was then free to roam, even visiting its widow or other women and having children by them. These children had the special sight that resulted in their being the dhampirs as noted above, preparing them for a life as vampire hunters. Not quite following in father’s footsteps, then!

So much for “real” vampires, so far at least. We’ve explored how vampires are supposed to be created, how they can be killed or thwarted, we’ve looked into some of the beliefs surrounding them (and will again later, going a little deeper) and we’ve theorised about who or what the very first vampires were, where they came from. We’ve outlined the characteristics, powers and the various Achilles heels of vampires, and seen the role religion, especially Christianity plays or played in keeping them at bay or destroying them.

But where vampires really started to come to life, so to speak, was in the pages of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature. Gothic fantasies, horror stories, even romances as humans began to have encounters with these evil but fascinating beings. In fact, were it not for the various stories and novels written about them, it’s likely the vampire would be forgotten now as an ancient remnant of an ignorant belief, the name Dracula would mean nothing to us, and Hollywood would have had to look elsewhere for its big moneyspinners.

So let’s look next at vampire literature, and media later, but written material first. And if I can, I want to try to do this chronologically. Which means we begin with this.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Part I: Stalking the Written Word
The Vampire in Literature

Timeline: 18th century

Note: It seems that somehow I missed out some of the earlier, indeed, earliest references to vampires when I started this, so let me amend that now. Oddly enough, my many books of vampire lore tend to be quite mute on the early material, only mentioning the more well-known ones, so I have to trust Wiki and then search out examples, or extracts, or if I’m lucky, whole texts, if they’re available.

In the light of this, we now have starting off our history of vampire literature the very first ever mention of the breed in fiction, this honour going to another, different German poet from the eighteenth century.

Title: Der Vampir
Format: Poem
Author: Heinrich August Ossenfelder
Nationality: German
Written:* 1748
Published: 1748
Impact:** ? but given it’s in German probably not much

* Unless I have information to the contrary, I'm going to suppose the piece was published in the same year as it was written. This may not always be the case, but the composition date is seldom shown, just the publication one.

** Refers to not only the impact on vampire and gothic literature, but also on the wider world. Scored from 1 to 10. This will begin to fade out as vampire literature (and later, movies) becomes more widespread, but it's important with the early works to show how they affected society and literature in general. In the case of works not in English, it's likely I won't be able to gauge its effect on its readership, unless it's mentioned.

Synposis: None really. It’s written as a kind of threat, warning or even dark promise to a woman called Christine (not sure what the attraction of this name is, Coleridge uses a similar one for his poem: maybe the similarity to Christ?) that she will fall victim to a vampire. It does mention the drinking of blood, so therefore the first time this is broached in literature, though Ossenfelder refers to vampires as unmortal, rather than immortal or undead. He also seems to begin the trope - surely taken from the folk beliefs - of a vampire coming in upon a sleeping victim and draining their blood, I assume this always being due to people being most off their guard while asleep, as the Major in Fawlty Towers once remarked. The power of the vampire to hold sway over its victims is described in the final lines of the poem:

“And last shall I thee question
Compared to such instruction
What are a mother’s charms?”

Intriguing to see he uses the couplet “sleeping/creeping”, which would become part of Poe’s famous The Raven almost a hundred years later. Yes, they’re common words, but I find it noteworthy that they’re used here in another gothic, nightmarish poem which also references death and has an implacable enemy as its protagonist, who seems destined to triumph at the close of the poem.

But back to this one. It would appear the vampire is exulting in his power over Christine, and basically telling her nobody can protect her, least of all her mother, who is powerless against his magic. The poem doesn’t always rhyme, but then I’m reading the translation from German, and it surely loses something in the conversion to English. Not all poetry, of course, has to rhyme, but some of the lines here seem out of place, though again I imagine that’s due to their being translated and the German version probably flows much better.

It’s unclear here whether the narrator is actually a vampire, or is just comparing himself to one to frighten and terrorise the girl, who has apparently jilted him. Hard to be sure: he talks of “draining your life blood away”, but whether that’s just a fancy way of saying he’s going to murder her or whether he actually intends to drink her blood, is left fairly ambiguous. Then he speaks of “crossing death’s threshold” with her “in my cold arms”. So is he going to kill himself too (otherwise why the description of his arms as cold?) or is he really a vampire?

The poem is very short - only twenty-two lines - but it raises a whole host of questions. Who is this guy? Was she betrothed to him? Was he an unwelcome suitor, what we would call today a stalker? Was she/is she afraid of him? What did she do to incur his wrath, or did she in fact do anything, and is this all in his twisted imagination? Perhaps it’s because she won’t even look at him that he considers murderous revenge. Maybe it’s something to do with the mother: did she advise her daughter against starting a relationship with him, or convince her to break off the one she had, if she had one? Is he intending to punish the mother by taking her daughter? Is it even (pause for gasp of horror) possible this is her father, intent on raping and killing her?

Although it’s not by any means made clear that he is a vampire - maybe he thinks or wishes he was one, maybe he just wants to frighten her by using the local legends, or maybe he’s just likening what he’s going to do to her to what a vampire would do (“to a vampire’s health a-drinking”) - it’s still the first mention of the term in literature, the word only mentioned twice in the poem, with blood drinking once and death once. Few texts would specify a vampire, their authors preferring to let the reader make up his or her own mind, but the seed had been planted and the very idea of vampires had begun its slow and indomitable stalk through the pages of literature, a presence that would only increase and become more prevalent down the next hundred years or so.


Title: Lenore
Format: Poem
Author: Gottfried August Bürger (mmm… burger!)
Nationality: German
Written: 1773
Published: 1774
Impact: 10

Although neither the first real reference to vampiric beings in literature, nor strictly speaking a vampire piece, Lenore is accepted as one of the first poems to actively portray someone ostensibly coming back from the dead, and was a huge influence on the later genre of vampire and gothic fiction. A product of its time, it also cautions against pissing God off, as we’ll see.

Synopsis: A woman, upset at the failure of her husband to return from the wars in Prussia, rails against God for taking him. Her mother tells Lenore to repent, or God will punish her and she will go to Hell, but she will not. She says God has never done her any good. Some time later she is visited by a stranger who takes her on horseback by night to where he says is their marriage bed. Lenore, thinking that this is her husband returned, is happy until, at sunrise, they arrive at the cemetery gates and it’s clear that the figure is in fact Death. He takes her to her husband’s grave and she realises she is dead, Death telling her she should not have spoken out against God.

Again, although this is not considered a vampire story, the nascent elements of what would become vampire and gothic fiction are here. A figure, not standing by the foot of the bed or over the sleeping girl, as would become the motif for vampire fiction, but nevertheless arriving mysteriously at night, offering her a choice: come with him and discover what he has to show her or remain where she is, and remain ignorant of the fate of her husband. A fascination with death and the unknown, a veiled threat of death, gothic images such as dancing skeletons, moonlight, black horses and graveyards, all to become features of vampire books, stories and later films.

Bürger uses a phrase here that will crop up again and again in not only vampire or gothic literature, but in other genres too, even used by Dickens a hundred years later, when Lenore asks Death, riding before her on the horse, why they are galloping so swiftly, and he replies “the dead travel fast.” The phrase is also used in the opening chapter of what must surely be the seminal vampire novel, Bram Stoker’s Dracula



Title: Travels into Dalmatia; containing general observations on the natural history of that country and the neighboring islands; the natural productions, arts, manners and customs of the inhabitants: in a series of letters from Abbe Alberto Fortis
Format: Travelogue
Author: Alberto Fortis
Nationality: Italian
Written: 1774
Published: 1774
Impact: ?
Synopsis: After exhaustive research I’ve been unable to track down a copy (unless I’m a member of various libraries, which I ain’t) or even an extract from this. All I can tell you is what Wiki tells me, that it features a fight against vampires, which really makes me wish I could get it, but I can’t, so we move on. Must be noted as the first Italian vampire story anyway.


Title: The Bride of Corinth ( Die Braut von Korinth)
Format: Poem
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nationality: German
Written: 1797
Published: 1797
Impact: ?
Synopsis: A youth comes to Corinth seeking his bride, but tired he beholds instead a beautiful young woman who “in-hies through the door with silent tread” (which I think is meant to mean she sort of floats in?) and he of course falls in love with her. But she is distressed, and tells him she is the sister of the girl he is to marry, and she herself has been locked away, with the intimation that she is dead. Nevertheless, stricken by her beauty the youth pledges himself to her, and they exchange tokens, she giving him a golden chain and asking for a lock of his hair. Midnight strikes, and she seems happy at the sound; she drinks the wine (“blood-red”) but won’t touch the food no matter how much he tries to persuade her.

He sinks into despair and she comforts him, but again seems to intimate that she is dead, or dying (Yes! the maid, whom thou/Call’st thy loved one now,/Is as cold as ice, though white as snow”) and he embraces her, sharing his breath with her (as if he believes she is dead). Just then the mother appears, and shocked at seeing her dead child there she realises - if she hadn’t already - that she is a vampire. Sort of. I mean, it’s not actually said, and the word is never used once here, the only draining going on being breath to breath and not even a mention of blood, other than the wine, but she does tell the young fellah that he’s doomed now that he’s shared her kiss, and will die tomorrow. Well, that’s just wonderful, isn’t it? Come here all the way to meet my bride, take pity on (read, get horny for) her sister and then I have to die. What a world!

Goethe does a pretty good job here taking on the Church (presumably Catholic but it seems to refer to all Christianity, and given that the poem is based on an ancient Greek myth, it’s probably the new religion of Jesus they’re getting at). He has the (never named; in fact, nobody is named at all) girl complain that

“From the house, so silent now, are driven
All the gods who reign’d supreme of yore;
One Invisible now rules in heaven,
On the cross a Saviour they adore.
Victims slay they here,
Neither lamb nor steer,
But the altars reek with human gore.”

Later, facing her mother, she either laments or gloats at the efforts of the priests to help her, as she wanders from her coffin.

“But from out my coffin’s prison-bounds
By a wond’rous fate I’m forced to rove,
While the blessings and the chaunting sounds
That your priests delight in, useless prove.”

I suppose it’s the classic tale of doomed love, and though it’s not confirmed, the possession of the lock of his hair gives the girl power over the youth I guess, and damns him to her fate. Given that this is based on an ancient Greek legend which predates Christ, technically it could be said to be the very first vampire story, and certainly the first with a female vampire. Though is she a vampire, or just some unquiet spirit who can’t find rest? It’s not made clear, and in the ancient world were such things as vampires even known about or believed in? More likely she would have been seen as a revenant, or some evil spirit, even if she wasn’t necessarily what we would term evil.



Title: Christabel
Format: Poem
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Nationality: English
Written: 1797/1800
Published: 1816
Impact: 7

Note: Although only published in 1816, and therefore really a nineteenth-century piece, I've left this here in the eighteenth as it was written then. Plus, I forgot.

Said to have been a possible influence on what is generally regarded as one of the first proper vampires novels, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla as well as Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Sleeper. Also, as an aside, possibly (though I have no idea) the first inference of lesbianism in Gothic - or indeed, any - fiction. Maybe.

Synopsis: Having gone into the woods to pray, Christabel finds a woman hiding behind a tree, who says she has been abducted and left there. Christabel offers to pray with her, but the woman, whose name is given as Geraldine, refuses, but agrees to accompany her rescuer back to her house, where they spend the night together. Though not actually confirmed as a vampire, she is barked at a by a dog, finds it impossible to cross an iron gate and has, when she disrobes, undefined but obviously worrying marks on her back which seem to mark her as a child of the devil. The poem, though written in two parts, was never finished, so unfortunately we never learn if Coleridge had intended for her to be taken as a vampire.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Timeline: 19th Century


Title: Thalaba the Destroyer
Format: Poem
Author: Robert Southey
Nationality: English
Written: 1800
Published: 1801
Impact: 3

Noted here only because it’s said to be the first time an English author/poet references vampires, “Thalaba the Destroyer” is a long, epic, Arabian Nights-style saga set in the Middle East, and the only point at which a vampire is mentioned is during one of the hero’s adventures, as detailed below. Other than that, I can’t see that it’s of any interest to us.

Synopsis: I have no intention of summarising the entire, twelve-book (!) poem, as ninety-nine percent of it has nothing to do with vampires. But the part that does concern us is when the hero, Thalaba, stands by his wife’s graveside, mourning her passing. A spirit appears and chides him, telling him God is not happy with him. But Thalaba recognises the spirit as a vampire, and kills it. Yeah, that’s it. Hardly worth it, huh?


Title: The Vampyre
Format: Poem
Author: John Stagg
Nationality: English
Written: 1810
Published: 1810
Impact: ?
Synopsis: Before we get to that, let’s just give this guy props, as he was blind, known in England as “the blind bard.” He’s also only the second English author to write about vampires, beating Lord Byron by three years. His poem concerns the worry of a wife for her husband, who is not looking the ticket. "Why looks my lord so deadly pale?/Why fades the crimson from his cheek?”

Midnight seems to exert its mystical power over the husband, too, as his wife bemoans how at that time “You sadly pant and tug for breath,/As if some supernat'ral pow'r/Were pulling you away to death?/Restless, tho' sleeping, still you groan/And with convulsive horror start.”

The husband tries to explain: "Young Sigismund, my once dear friend,/ But now my persecutor foul,/Doth his malevolence extend/ E'en to the torture of my soul.” He tells his wife that his old friend is haunting him, visiting him at night, draining his blood. That’s not the worst though, as he sorrowfully tells her she’s next. “When dead, I too shall seek thy life,/Thy blood by Herman shall be drain'd!” But he tells her of a way to prevent this, basically by staking him when he dies. She stays by his side till he does pass, and then uses a lamp to frighten off the bloodthirsty Sigismund.

The next day, after she has told the town council what her husband has revealed to her, they break open Sigismund’s coffin and sure enough there he is: not decayed and full of blood. So they stake him and poor old Herman too, and the curse is broken.

I have some questions. First, if Herman knew how to get rid of that pesky Sigismund, why did he wait till he was at death’s door to tell his wife? Why not get himself released earlier, when he might still have regained his strength? And how did he come by this knowledge? Who told him how to break the curse? And while we’re at it, how did Sigismund get vampirised? All questions, it would seem, that will never be answered.


Title: The Giaour
Format: Poem
Author: Lord Byron
Nationality: English
Written: 1810/1811
Published: 1813
Impact: 4

Synopsis: The poem itself is an epic one, and deals with the Turkish practice of what I suppose we would refer to today as “honour killings”, and the Giaour of the title refers to an infidel or unbeliever. In the poem, having learned of the folklore during his Grand Tour of the east, Byron mentions the vampire, and alludes that the Giaour is condemned to the following fate for his crimes:

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Byron wrote in the notes his findings on vampire folklore while travelling through Europe:

The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant. Honest Tournefort tells a long story about these 'Vroucolachas', as he calls them. The Romaic term is 'Vardoulacha'. I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find that 'Broucolokas' is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation—the moderns, however, use the word I mention. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly attested.

This is interesting to connoisseurs of vampire literature as it is the first time we hear actual specifics of what was believed - or used later by writers of vampire stories - to be the curse laid upon the Undead. Here, there are certain restrictions, as the vampire is doomed to take the life of his own family, though interestingly there is no allusion to his victims becoming like him, merely dying a horrible death. There are hints, like in the line, “shall know the demon for their sire”, the last word being pounced upon by writers of Gothic and/or vampire fiction as a descriptor for the perceived relationship between a vampire and what became known as a fledgling or scion, sire being of course an old word for father, also used in the animal world, most typically of horses.

Intriguing, too, how Byron notes that the vampire seems to hate and loathe his new existence after death - “Yet loathe the banquet” - and makes it seem as if he is compelled to kill, whereas later vampiric figures in literature and film would enjoy the hunt, the chase, the kill. The vampire sketched in The Giaour is really a pathetic, almost pitiable figure, one who has committed a dreadful crime and been punished beyond all measure, marked as a killer who must satisfy his grisly urges, whether he will or no. In this passage at least (I haven’t read the whole thing of course) Byron does not make it clear if the vampire is meant to be immortal, nor is it clear what he means when he says the vampire must “haunt thy native place”: is he saying the grave, or the city, town or village where the vampire lived, or indeed is he being more general, and referring to the world, Earth, the abode of the living? I can’t confirm that.

What is clear though is that, of the accounts we have looked at up to now, this is the first clear evidence of a writer using the vampiric legends to animate their character, and so would have to stand as one of the first vampire novels. If, that is, it wasn’t for the fact that it is a poem - and only twelve lines of it - and also that the vampire is a mere incidental to the entirety of the thing. So while Leonore vaguely seems to be a poem about death, and not necessarily vampires, and Christabel does not make it clear either that Coleridge is talking about the undead when he writes of Geraldine, we’re still on the hunt for the first real evidence of vampires in an actual novel.

Before we move on though, some interesting points. The Giaour was, apparently, a great influence on the later writings of that most happy of scribes, Edgar Allan Poe, and also on John William Polidori, whose later novel The Vampyre (1819) would go on to be recognised as one of the first of the genre. Polidori, it seems was Byron’s doctor at one point and had a real falling out with him, whereupon he wrote The Vampyre and based its protagonist, Lord Ruthven, on the peer. The problem here was two, even threefold. First, he had neither advised Byron he was basing his character on him, nor obtained his permission to do so. Second, his story was inspired by - I won’t say ripped off from but apparently based very closely on Byron’s own work of the same year, A Fragment - also known as Fragment of a Novel and The Burial: A Fragment - based so closely in fact that it was taken for Byron’s own work, and published, without Polidori’s knowledge, in a collection of Byron’s work. This caused a great scandal when Polidori demanded it be removed, citing himself as the author, and thus opening, I assume, himself up to charges of plagiarism.

Which brings us neatly to…

Title: Fragment of a Novel (A Fragment/TheBurial: A Fragment)
Format: Short Story
Author: Lord Byron
Nationality: English
Written: 1819
Published: 1819
Impact: 8

Synopsis: Two men travel through Europe on a Grand Tour, one of them quite old. As they go on the old man, Augustus Darvell, becomes weaker and begins to sicken. As they reach a cemetery in Turkey he collapses and dies, but before he does he extracts from his companion (who is never named, and is the narrator of the tale) a promise to release no information about his death. As Darvell dies, the narrator is shocked to see his body decompose rapidly, as a stork arrives in the cemetery with a snake in its mouth. The narrator buries him, feeling a strange lack of sorrow (“I was tearless”).

Like the title says, it’s a fragment only and the story ends there, as Byron never completed it. Polidori claims - though how true this is I have no idea - that Byron intended for Darvell to come back to life and seek out the narrator’s sister in England, which would draw quite a parallel to Stoker’s later, and more famous work. Again though, there is no confirmation that the old man was a vampire, and if he was, how come he got sick and died? Aren’t vampires meant to be immortal? And while we’re at it (although in fairness the “rules” of vampire literature had yet to be written, but even so, going from legend and folk beliefs) how could a vampire walk in the sun?

Again, we’re tantalisingly close, and there are certainly elements of vampire literature here, but it’s a case of joining the dots, and there’s no guarantee that we would see the same picture emerge as Byron had intended. I’d have to research further, but was A Fragment meant to have a vampire as one of its two characters? There could have been other explanations, though I think it is generally accepted now that the idea was that Darvell was to have been a vampire. As I say, if that’s the case then there are certain questions to be answered which never will be.

Another thing that’s very interesting here is the style of the story. It’s told in the form of a letter, after the fact; the narrator writes the letter, presumably to a friend, relating his experiences, and of course this is how Dracula will mostly unfold, as a series of letters written by Jonathan Harker to his wife-to-be. So it would be churlish to suggest Stoker had not read Byron before he embarked on what would become his masterpiece, and the most famous, if not the first, vampire novel. Also, the action takes place away from England, allowing the idea of “foreign ideas and practices”, and certainly foreign beliefs, to permeate it, give the reader the uneasy feeling that they are in unfamiliar, even hostile territory, and to long (in the person of Byron’s narrator) for the shores of good old England again, sentiments expressed most heartily by Harker, and with mounting despair that they will ever be realised, as he waits for a living death in Castle Dracula.

However, Byron himself claimed to have no interest in vampires: "I have besides a personal dislike to 'Vampires,' and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to reveal their secrets." In many ways, it wasn’t so much his writing, but he himself who became the skeleton upon which the modern vampire in literature was built, given flesh and ascribed rules. This, then, you would have to say, would be down to Polidori and his thinly-disguised portrayal of Byron as Lord Ruthven. But if Polidori was “inspired” by A Fragment, does the genesis, if you will, of the literary vampire bounce back into Byron’s hands, as he wrote that story? Who is the true grandfather of the vampire in print? He’s got to be in the running, despite his own views and his apparent wish to dissociate himself from vampire writing.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

When I said "just" I meant "only". It's been like a decade since I read it.

__________________

Trollheart

The next dark step for vampires...


It's fitting that Dracula becomes the last (and paradoxically, also first, at least first proper) vampire novel of the nineteenth century, as it marks a turning point in vampire, horror, gothic and even adventure literature, setting down standards and tropes, and introducing us to concepts which would characterise novels of its type right up to today. Dracula can easily be seen as a demarcation line, showing where the idea of just writing a novel about a vampire, or a novel with a vampire, changed to become the process of writing a vampire novel. In other words, the point at which vampire novels rose out of the grip, as it were, of gothic fiction and became their own genre.

Nowhere would this be more evident than in vampire movies.

And so, after a deep exploration of the origins, and rise within early literature of vampires, we come to the next stage. Although vampires are as popular today in books as they ever were, and have gone on to star or feature in comics too, the beginning of the twentieth century would herald a new age, and provide for the humble literary vampire a bridge to a new world, as they took their first faltering, and indeed silent and monochrome, steps onto the silver screen. Once vampires were seen on film, their popularity soared and they would become inextricable from the public consciousness. Those who did not care for books, had no time for them or, perhaps in some cases, certainly at the turn of the century, could not read, were able to experience the full drama, mythos and horror of the creature who had frozen the blood and quickened the heartbeat of all who had read about him.

For a long time, as you might expect, vampires remained exclusively male. Despite the power of Le Fanu's quasi-lesbian anti-heroine Carmilla, it was either decided having female vampires on the screen was too much of a leap for the audience, or was considered immoral to portray women in such an evil and lustful way. It would take time - mostly due, I think (though I will research and we'll explore it in depth once the time arrives) to Hammer Pictures, who would break many cinematic taboos in their time - before women would take their place alongside their male counterparts in evil. But for now, the only roles available for them would be that of the victim, screaming (soundlessly, for some time) and imploring someone, anyone to rescue them.

Of course, in time vampires would transition to the small screen, where they would become even more popular and famous, and, some might argue, quite watered down as the writers of various televisions series strove to de-monstrify, if you will, the creature of the night and explore what made him tick, and how he - or she - might survive, even thrive in the new century they found themselves in.

But most people would come to know vampires under the name all but copyrighted by Bram Stoker, and for many decades Dracula would reign supreme as the only vampire in town. But he wasn't the first, and in time he would be supplanted by, ironically, younger (at least looking), hipper vampires more in tune with the modern world, and would find himself, in a sort of closing of the circle, again out of touch, pushed to the background, all but forgotten, occasionally dragged screaming out into the daylight to suffer yet another reinvention, reinterpretation or even rebirth, as writer after writer put their own spin on Stoker's unique creation.

So in part two I will of course be continuing to track this remorseless killer through the pages of the novels he, and she, stalked, but I will be concentrating more on the movies, as this is when the vampire really came of age. You could call the onset of movies – from the black-and-white silent ones to the first ever talkies - almost the true birthplace of the vampire we know today, the silver screen the conduit through which the creation of Stoker and the writers before him came snarling into our collective human consciousness, and has never really left. A golden age, perhaps, or more accurately a dark age for the vampire, as he – and she – strode purposefully forward in this brave new world, determined to bend it to their will.

I'll again have to check, but I think it may be the case that the first true horror movie was also a vampire one, as other supernatural creatures, from ghosts to werewolves and mummies – and later zombies of course – only turn up much later in the history of cinema, so in many ways, if that's true, then the vampire was, as it were, in on the ground floor, or, to completely screw up the metaphor, at the very top of the horror food chain from the beginning. As he was destined to be the monarch of the macabre in literature, so too would he assume his throne as the apex predator of movie-goers' minds and stride with a sneer of contempt into their dreams and their nightmares, kicking off many an epiphany in the brains of writers of later vampire fiction.

If the literary vampire of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had, by and large, survived by cloaking himself in shadow and hiding from the world of light, the twentieth century equivalent would walk boldly out into that (metaphorical) light and declare his presence for all to see. You could almost hear in his hissing, sibilant, seductive voice the words of the pharaoh Ramesses II, as imagined by Shelley: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Part II: Walking off the Page:
O Brave New World, That Has Such Monsters in it!

As the century turned and the nineteenth gave way to the twentieth, vampire literature remained popular, but was about to make something of a transition which would make it even more so, and allow it to reach a larger and more varied audience. Now set free from the chains of superstition and folklore, and accepted as a genuine character in literature, vampires were hungry for more, and with the advent of new technologies on the near horizon, they would soon get their wish. As silver screens across the country began to light up with “magic pictures”, and cinema took its first, fumbling, silent steps in the dark, vampires would be there. One thing, as I noted in the very beginning of this journal, some years ago now, that people love is to be frightened, and while today you can be shocked by anything from a slasher stalking unwary co-eds to maniacal lunatics with saws, other dimensions and even Hell itself - or a variant of it - this is all possible due to hi-tech special effects, myriad colour film and the one thing that really brought movies, if you will, to life: sound.

But back in the first years of the twentieth century film-makers were just getting to grips with this new and exciting medium, and feeling proud if they could get images of people up on those screens. And so they should have been: early cinema was fraught with trial and error, and paved the way for the blockbusters we take today for granted. But sound was a long way off yet, and so cinemas rang to the music of pianos and audiences watched in rapt amazement as people moved jerkily across the screen, their words mouthed and carried to the eyes of the onlookers via speech cards.

Such a medium would not suit today’s horror movies, even going back fifty years or more, but one creature that needed few if any words to hypnotise and terrify was our friend the vampire. If you watch even the classic Hammer Dracula movies, the only real dialogue is from the human characters; the vampire (usually Stoker’s eponymous father of vampires, or a variant of him) tends to speak but little, allowing his movements and his expressions to convey the fear and spellbinding awe of his presence. So vampires were from the beginning a good fit for silent movies, which is probably why they feature in the very first of what could be called horror movies, where the action generally is minimal, the effects all but absent, and evil can be conveyed by the arching of an eyebrow, a shadow thrown across a wall or staircase, or a bat flying across a moonlit sky. Hey, who needs words, right?

Still, though I don’t know a lot about silent cinema (that will change when I start researching my History of Cinema journal, projected 2026/2028) it’s fairly clear that though there were some classics such as Broken Blossoms , The Wind and of course Metropolis, the heyday of the medium seems to have been in the area of comedy. Slapstick, physical, pratfall comedy: your Keystone Cops, your Buster Keatons, your Harold Lloyds. And of course your Charlie Chaplins. So I’m not going to suggest that vampire movies came of age in the era of silent film. There was one classic of course, as we probably all know, but other than that, it’s a sporadic history really up until a certain studio whose name relates to a workman’s tool got involved, and then suddenly everyone loved Dracula. And slowly -very slowly - by extension, other vampires. Nevertheless, vampire movies - well, let’s be honest: Dracula movies, which is really about all there was back then - did surface in the early years of the medium.

That of course does not mean for a moment that vampire literature vanished, or that people lost interest in the written word regarding these monsters. Far from it: like two of their kind feasting on each other, the one fed the other and even now, it’s hard to say which is the more popular, with television in the frame too. But all that’s for later. Back as the twentieth century dawned, people were still fascinated with writing about vampires, and to be fair to these authors, few if any took Stoker’s story as their guide, despite perhaps the, to say the least, loose nature of copyright at that time. So we have plenty more vampire literature to look into, and we will.

But inevitably, as time marches on and cinema comes of age, it will be the screen we will be mostly concentrating on. I will be doing a full timeline, which is to say, looking at when this book was released and then this film, so that it will involve both media (and later of course television, but that will be in part three) so that neither gets missed out. And with the century only begun and cinema not due to raise its head for another twenty years, it leaves us with two decades of writing to get through, so this is where we begin, or indeed, take back up the story.

Timeline: 1900 - 1920

Title: “The Tomb of Sarah”
Format: Short story
Author: F.G. Loring
Nationality: English
Written: 1900 (note: from now on I'm just going to put down when the story was published as the date here; if it was written years prior, I generally don't know that, and anyway, it's more a case, surely, of when people could read it. So "written" is now interchangeable, in this case, with "published").
Impact: ?
Famous firsts: First “sympathetic” vampire story?
Synopsis: Before I even read it through, based on the little I have read, it appears to me that Loring was basing his story somewhat on that of Countess Bathory, the infamous “Blood Countess” of the sixteenth century, in that it concerns the opening of the tomb of a woman described as “the evil Countess Sarah.” Now, I may find this to be mere coincidence, but consider: given that this is a story written only three years after that seminal Stoker novel, and that unsubstantiated sources often claim Dracula was based on her legend, it sort of makes sense, especially if Loring, a navy man and radio technician by trade, wanted to write something different, but building on the success and fame and indeed popularity of the Irishman’s novel. Why exactly he decided to write a vampire novel is a mystery to me; I read that he normally wrote technical manuals and so forth, so how that suddenly becomes an incentive to delve into the dark world of gothic fiction I don’t know, but there it is.

Rather like the more famous story, “The Tomb of Sarah” is also written in the form, mostly, of a journal, though in this case the author’s father. As a restorer of churches, he is called upon to renovate a particular church wherein he finds a tomb with a rather disturbing message inscribed on it, more a warning really (well, to those of us who can see what’s going to happen anyway). The inscription reads: SARAH.
1630.
FOR THE SAKE OF THE DEAD AND THE WELFARE
OF THE LIVING, LET THIS SEPULCHRE REMAIN
UNTOUCHED AND ITS OCCUPANT UNDISTURBED TILL
THE COMING OF CHRIST.
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND
THE HOLY GHOST.


To be fair to the author’s father, he doesn’t wave away the warning dismissively - in fact, so far as I can read, he doesn’t even take it as a warning, more a request not to disturb the dead - and is greatly concerned that, due to the subsidence of the old church, it must be moved, otherwise the floor may collapse. Reading up on the legend, he discovers this Sarah to be the Countess Sarah, who was believed to be a witch or some monster, who had as a familiar a wolf. This wolf, it was said, would catch children or small animals and bring them to the countess so that she could suck their blood. Believed invincible, this contention was proven false when a mad peasant woman, who blamed her for the loss of her two children, carried off (she said, according to the legend) by her wolf, strangled her. She died, as the tomb notes, in 1630.

The description Loring gives, and that of the decoration upon it, is chilling: The tomb is built of black marble, surmounted by an enormous slab of the same material. On the slab is a magnificent group of figures. A young and handsome woman reclines upon a couch; round her neck is a piece of rope, the end of which she holds in her hand. At her side is a gigantic dog with bared fangs and lolling tongue. The face of the reclining figure is a cruel one: the corners of the mouth are curiously lifted, showing the sharp points of long canine or dog teeth. The whole group, though magnificently executed, leaves a most unpleasant sensation.


When the top part is removed - the tomb is so heavy that they must move it in two pieces, Loring notes that it seems to have been sealed with some sort of putty or mortar, which has kept it airtight, and when they look in, expecting to see a wizened corpse and smell the foul stench of over two hundred years of decay, they are amazed that the body, though looking emaciated and starved, yet looks fresh and young, and there is no smell. Lacerations around the neck show that the legend may very well be true, and the cord which hung around her throat in the carving is here too.

The author’s father has been described by the author at the beginning as a man who is well-versed in folklore and tradition, and has been researching the history and legends attached to his own family. A man, it would seem, ahead of his time - a sort of Van Helsing figure, you might say - he knows all about vampires, and so when at sunset the day the tomb is opened every dog in the village begins howling, then suddenly stops, and mist rolls in on a summer night, he fears the inevitable. Not everyone, of course, is as open-minded as he, and he can’t mention his suspicions to anyone, so he decides to observe alone. With great courage and determination, he watches as, after another chorus of dog howls, this time from the churchyard, a huge lupine shape appears out of the fog and bounds away. Terrified, but intent on proving that it is what he thinks it is, he waits for it to return.

And it does. Just after midnight, with another dreadful howl, and vanishes into the mist. The next day he goes to see the rector, and tells him of a “large dog” he has noticed prowling around. They decide to see if they can trap it, lest it worry the cattle, or worse, and the author’s father - whom we now learn is called Harry, and therefore so shall I name him - prevails upon the rector, a man called Grant, to help him lift the lid of the tomb, pretending he wants to take a sample of the mortar for some reason. As they do, the rector gives out a gasp. The corpse in the tomb looks to be alive, all colour having returned to it, and its eyes seeming to contain a light of malevolent life. Spooked (he quickly convinces himself it was a trick of the light, or his own imagination) Grant has the lid closed. But Harry knows what they have seen.

He also knows what the “mortar” that sealed the tomb is: pieces of the Host, the Communion wafers which vampires abhor - apparently - as the power of God and light. He believes this protects him; he also knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that the wolf spoken of in the tales of the countess was not her pet or her familiar, but she herself. Drained by two centuries of sleep and starvation, the undead thing is weak, and can only hunt as a wolf for now. But once her strength returns, the curse of the vampire will descend on the village. He has to stop her before this happens.

He prevails upon Grant to accompany him, and, having failed to penetrate the ghostly fog - “there was something so chilly about it, and a faint scent so disgustingly rank and loathsome that neither our nerves nor our stomachs were proof against it” - they hide and watch the big wolf walk by, coming out of the churchyard. Finally convinced this is more than a simple dog, Grant agrees to help, though being a rector his first instinct is to pray and put it all in the hands of God. Harry tells him though that he knows what to do, and when they open the tomb again there is such a change come over the corpse that the rector almost believes. The body is now fresh and young, the teeth grown long over the lips, a trickle of blood leaking down from them, and worst of all, the smell! Like that of a slaughterhouse, writes Harry, knowing what has happened.

The next night they prepare to put an end to the vampire. Harry leaves a message in his account that, should he or both of them fall, whoever reads his words will know what to do to save the village. They lock themselves into the church and gasp as a mist arises from the tomb, coalescing into the figure of Sarah. Even the sceptical parson cannot pretend this is anything other than what it is, and places himself in Harry’s hands. They wait till Sarah leaves the church, walking literally through the wall, then they go to her tomb and open it. They place dog roses in the now-empty sepulchre, and Harry makes a circle of garlic and dog roses around the tomb, a circle the vampire cannot step into. He warns Grant to be on his guard, as the vampire can hypnotise him from a distance and cause him to walk outside of the circle, where he will be hers.

And she does. She tries her best to entice him, but Harry remains strong. Forcing her into the tomb he removes her power, and then the two of them lift her out and read the burial service over her, releasing her soul, as Harry stakes her, and all is well. Or is it?

A sort of postscript or epilogue tells of a child being found a few days later in the church, very pale and drawn, with two small marks on her throat…

Comments: I really like this story. For only the second one after Dracula - and Blood of the Vampyre was written, or at least published, the same year - Loring does a very good job both paying homage to Bram Stoker and making sure he is not copying him. While he uses some elements of Dracula there are others he makes up - or takes from folklore - himself, and he turns a few of what would later become vampire literary traditions on their head, such as vampires being unable to go into a church - Sarah is buried in one, and seems to suffer no ill-effects leaving it - and weakness confining the vampire to animal form. In Dracula this seemed to be a sign of his strength. He also allows his vampire to walk through solid objects, just as she is. We know Dracula can do this, but he has to turn into a mist in order to do so.

I like the overall sympathetic way Loring treats his vampire. Is this because she is a female and he felt that women should not be too demonised in his story, especially as, as would be the case for decades, the vampire hunters are both male, and as always the hammering in of the stake couldn’t have a more phallic interpretation when used against a female vampire, an almost ultimate rape? But in his story, the stake does not necessarily kill the vampire, but releases the spirit of the woman it has trapped for centuries. This is really interesting, and deserves further discussion.

Stoker’s - and, for a long time, everyone else’s - vampires are pure evil. Monsters, fiends from the pit, creatures preying on humanity, gorging on their blood. There will not really be a story which, to again I think quote Otto from The Simpsons, looks at it from the vampire’s point of view till the closing parts of the twentieth century, when Anne Rice will make us think differently about the undead. Here though Loring is sympathetic. He doesn’t see the vampire as evil, or, to put it more accurately, he doesn’t see the countess as evil. He believes her possessed of an evil spirit, and therefore essentially innocent, as he calls her “the poor body” and speaks of “release from this living hell”, so it’s clear he does not see her as a monster, but only that which has her entrapped in its evil web.

This is in contrast to, I think (would have to check as it’s been over a year since I wrote in this journal) the first vampire not seen as an out-and-out evil monster, but a soul ensnared, and able to be released. Even in Dracula, Stoker does not give us to understand that the count’s soul has been released when he is killed. There is no mention of any evil force inhabiting his essence; it is assumed he is evil, and this is the case with just about every other vampire we have come across. There have been exceptions, where in one - I can’t recall, but the one where the man is telling his wife his friend has been taken over and he is next - the idea of pity for the damned soul is floated, but once taken, the human and the vampire are, even in that story, treated as one.

So here I think, while we cannot call his vampire the first female example, and while it is surely, as I hazarded at the start, based at least partly on Countess Bathory, I think we can allow him the first notion of a vampire who is not beyond redemption or salvation, or to be more accurate, a soul which is not beyond the grace of God, if only the evil being holding it prisoner can be destroyed. I’m also not sure (though I should be) that Dracula turned to dust, so this could be the first example of the usage of that form of vampire death. It’s also interesting that the panther the countess is said to own/turn into is called Bagh: is this a reference to Kipling’s Bagheera from The Jungle Book?

While I am very impressed with this story, if hardly original, I would say there is a fundamental flaw in it that shows me that perhaps Loring may not have been cut out for fiction, or at least, adventure or suspense writing. While the father relates the tale well, he tends to, if you will, shoot himself in the foot literarily, as twice he tells us the outcome of the event and then goes into the narrative. Stoker at least had the sense to have Harker talk about what they were going to do, then write the scenes, and leave the outcome till afterwards, as is, to be fair, the way this sort of writing should be done. But Loring says things like, “July 12th. All is over. After the most terrible night of watching and horror one Vampire at least will trouble the world no more". And then “And now to my tale”. It’s like putting the ending before the denouement, or something. It tells you that everything is okay, so that the tension, the suspense, the fear is removed, and you really don’t have any worries for the hero, as you know it all worked out. I feel that’s a mistake.

Otherwise, he makes good use of vampire lore, while choosing not to reference all of it (nothing about running water, mirrors, bats or crucifixes) and the story stands up very well for one of, if not the first of the twentieth century.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

__________________

Trollheart

Title: La Morte amoreuse (The Dead Lover)
Format: Short story
Author: Théophile Gautier,
Nationality: French
Written: 1836
Published: 1836
Impact: ?

Synopsis: Perhaps the first vampire story to feature a priest getting it on with the Undead, this story tells of Romauld, who, at his ordination, sees a beautiful woman in the church who promises to love him and make him happier than he would be in Paradise. Taking this as a clear signal that Satan is tempting him (I assume) he ignores the voice and goes ahead with the ceremony, becoming a priest. But on the way home he is given a card which reads “Clarimonde, at the Palace Concini”. He forgets about it, but the life of a priest is boring, and eventually Romauld remembers the card, and the woman, and the voice, and asks his parish priest about it. Father Serapion is worried, telling him that Clarimonde was a notorious courtesan (polite term for prostitute) and that the palace mentioned on his card is where she lives.

Lives? Didn’t Father Serapion say…? Yes, yes he did, but the priest tells his curate that Clarimonde has died before, and come back. He warns him to stay away from the palace. And so he does. End of story.

Right.

One night a messenger arrives on horseback, asking him to come and minister to a dying woman. When he arrives he is too late and is told that the woman is dead. No prizes for guessing who it is. Overcome by grief, he kisses Clarimonde, little realising that his breath has revived her. She kisses him and tells him that soon they will be together. He faints. Well, I guess you would, wouldn’t you? Indeed she does come to him some time later, appearing in his bedroom, and convinces him to travel with her to Venice, where her health fluctuates. She sucks blood from a cut on Romauld’s finger, though, and seems to revive. He now knows she’s a vampire, but he doesn’t care. He’s being led by his heart or his dick or both, and stays with her.

Father Serapion is having none of this, and brings Romauld to Clarimonde’s tomb, where he shows the curate that the woman is still miraculously (!) preserved, and further, there is blood on her lips. He throws holy water on the body and it crumbles to dust. She returns once more than night to berate Romauld for what she sees as his treachery in revealing her tomb, and then vanishes forever.

And so we have another female vampire, the second ever, but this one is already made when we meet her, and there are no real extenuating circumstances which would allow us to have sympathy with her. She’s simply a vampire who feeds on men’s insecurities and lusts, and is destroyed by the power of God. I think this is the first time holy water is used as a weapon, though it will be taken up as one in later vampire lore. I also believe this is the first time a vampire is seen to walk in a church; even the vampires led by Armand in The Vampire Lestat marvel that Lestat is able to take refuge in the church. Usually such consecrated ground, basically enemy territory, is forbidden to them, entry restricted. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Clarimonde.

The description of her body, when it’s found by Serapion and Romauld, is almost identical to how Lucy is discovered in her grave in Dracula, though in fairness this mostly derives I believe from the folk tales and beliefs of eastern Europe. Given that Clarimonde is the temptress (her name seems to translate to something like simple world) it’s odd that the priest who saves Romuald is called Serapion, close enough to serpent, while his curate’s name surely originates in that of Shakespeare’s tragic hero, who also transcends the bounds of what is believed to be acceptable in his time, by falling in love with the wrong woman, one who belongs to the side of the enemy, and who is punished for his transgression by the death of the woman he loves.

And there’s a call back to Leonore, when the mysterious rider comes to spirit Romauld off to the palace of the vampire, essentially into the abode of the dead. The choice for Gautier to have his vampire, like authors before him, crumble to dust, shows a belief in and a desire to demonstrate how very old the vampire is, despite her appearance of youth. Dracula also becomes a pile of dust, and of course famously the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer just pop when pricked with a stake and leave only a puff of dust behind.

There’s also perhaps the first instance of a priest struggling with the completely incompatible edict of the church to remain celibate, and his natural desire as a man to love a woman. In the story, he sort of does both: he doesn’t give up being a priest and does in fact consort with the dark side, has his end away and then after he has had his fun gets rid of the embarrassing evidence and goes back to being a priest. Sort of not really a very strong moral there, is there? I mean, he doesn’t really suffer any long-lasting trauma that I can see, other than a morbid fear of women, nor is he punished by being, for instance, expelled or excommunicated from the church. Kind of a win-win for our man Romauld, eh?

Contrary to Wake Not the Dead or The Virgin Vampire, there’s no real attempt to see this from the woman’s point of view; Clarimonde is depicted as nothing more than a foul temptress, and while in the previous two the man was at least partially - and in the case of the former, completely - responsible for what happened, here he’s kind of given a free pass. It’s Clarimonde who starts the supernatural wooing, which he bravely and heroically resists, then she who tricks him by getting him to kiss her, so trapping him. Though it could be said that his decision to go to Venice with her is made of his own free will, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gautier couched it in terms that made it look as if he was compelled by her to go, while his decision to stay with her, even when he realises what she is, can surely only be laid at his own door.

Then he does what most men do when caught with their metaphorical, or even literal pants down: tries to destroy the woman who is causing him so much trouble, and with the aid of his parish priest, succeeds. Score! Now he’s free to go back to being a pious priest, without having to worry about being tempted by undead women. What a hero. It’s pretty one-sided, blaming the woman for everything, and one might wonder why Gautier didn’t make the vampire male, tempting a woman (of course she couldn’t be a priest, so maybe that’s why. Could have made her a nun though)? If he was going to go to the trouble of making the vampire female, was the point just to be able to blame her for everything and leave the man getting away scot free, proving that at the heart of all men’s problems, going right back to the old Garden of Eden, stands a woman? Sigh.

There’s a clear parallel here to the old fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, where Clarimonde, dead (or, one could say, sleeping for many years) is “awoken” by the power of the kiss of the young priest. She’s already in a castle, and does indeed take him to be her lover, even if neither end up living happily ever after. We also see the two diametric sides of the ever-raging conflict between Good and Evil, God and Satan, with Romauld being portrayed as being on the side of God (naturally, being a priest) and Clarimonde fighting for the Devil, again putting the woman on the side of evil and teaching perhaps a dangerous moral, but one quite prevalent at that time, that women would tempt men into sin, and also maybe setting up a rationale for the celibacy rule in the church, saying here, look what happens when a priest gives in to the pleasures of the flesh!

And, too, there’s the idea of the priest turning from spiritual things to those of the physical, or to quote Kate Bush, sensual world, denying his calling and falling into temptation, exactly as we’re told Jesus did not, while in the desert and tempted by Satan. This perhaps proves that man is weak, and needs the strength of God and his faith to rescue him from such dangers. Deliver us from evil, eh? I think Romauld claims too much when he says, at the start of the story, that “finally by the grace of God and the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded in casting out the evil spirit that possessed me.” Eh, no you didn’t, pal: it was your parish priest who did the deed. I guess you brought him there, to the tomb, but you’re claiming credit here for something you did not do.

Your dreams weren’t exactly thrilling though, were they, at the beginning? “I slept only to dream that I was saying mass”. Oh wow. I do like his description of “the black soutane as a garb of mourning for one's self, so that your very dress might serve as a pall for your coffin.” I’m sure a lot of young (and older) priests felt this way eventually. He goes on to lament his new state: “But one hour passed before an altar, a few hastily articulated words, had forever cut me off from the number of the living, and I had myself sealed down the stone of my own tomb; I had with my own hand bolted the gate of my prison!”

Twice Clarimonde is described in serpentine terms, and yet there’s a great tragedy in this story. Yes, she is a vampire, but to be simplistic about it, she is what cam be called a good vampire. Unlike Brunhilda, she doesn’t go roaming the streets searching for prey, she doesn’t kill children, she doesn’t prowl the graveyard. In fact, the one and only victim of her vampirism is Romauld, and he a willing one. She restricts herself to only a few drops, loathing the fact that she has to do it to keep herself alive. She’s not a ravening monster, merely someone doing what she needs to do to survive.

The force that sustains her return to life is not evil, but love, and that’s the true tragedy here. She genuinely loves Romauld, having dreamed of him before finally seeing him in the flesh, just as he is about to sacrifice all he is as a man to the church, and when she is dying, it seems she really is dying: it’s no trick. It’s Romauld’s love for her that brings her back, and that love that sustains her in her new un-life. To be fair, she doesn’t deserve the end she gets. Where, to coin a phrase, is the harm? But Serapion, acting for the intractable Church, which sees everything in black and white terms as good or evil (or, to put it another, more accurate way, you’re either with us or against us) has to destroy her and free his curate. In the end, he’s not free, as he’s now miserable, and fears even catching the gaze of any woman, constantly looking down in order to avoid further temptation, and counselling his readers to emulate his example.

So Clarimonde is maybe the first sympathetic vampire we come across. I’m not so sure about Alinska, as I haven’t been able to read the full story, but this is definitely the first time I feel genuinely sorry for the death of a vampire, and don’t see the necessity for it. One last point: Romauld admits he has never seen a single woman before his ordination - he says “I knew in a vague sort of a way that there was something called Woman, but I never permitted my thoughts to dwell on such a subject, and I lived in a state of perfect innocence. Twice a year only I saw my infirm and aged mother, and in those visits were comprised my sole relations with the outer world.” - and yet he describes Clarimonde as a “woman of surpassing beauty.” How does he know? If he has never seen a woman, perhaps all are as beautiful as her. Perhaps she’s ugly compared to others. With nothing to compare her to, how can he make such an assertion?

Like many vampire stories, this has a downbeat, morose ending. The vampire is vanquished but there’s no sense of triumph or victory, release or escape. It’s a depressing, fatalistic result that continues to leave a bad taste in the mouths of both the hero and the reader. It does however seem to raise the question for the first time as to whether it’s right to kill a vampire just because he or she is a vampire. Is there a moral, religious or spiritual imperative to kill all that is seen to oppose the will of God, and if so, are we entering here on the territory of fear-mongering and xenophobia? Is simply being different, not necessarily evil (or if you like, just a little evil) enough to justify the destruction of a fellow creature? Is the fact that we hate and abhor it sufficient excuse to terminate its existence? Questions that few vampire authors will ask till about the twentieth century, showing maybe that Gautier could have been well ahead of his time in terms of thinking and his ideas about vampires.

Oh, and one more point before I close. It's not the first, or only story to do so, but it's interesting that the author does not include the word vampire in the title, perhaps leading us away from what might be seen as her "inherent evil" and showing us that this is really more a tragic love story than some blood-soaked vampire tale.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Title: The Family of the Vourdalak
Format: Novel
Author: Aleksey Tolstoy
Nationality: Russian
Written: 1839
Published: 1884 (in Russian) 1950 (in French)
Impact: ?

But given it was the great Tolstoy, you’d have to imagine quite high. Originally, apparently, written in French by Tolstoy, so perhaps odd that it took another seventy years before it was published in that language…

In this novel we have a French diplomat arriving, for some reason, at the house of a peasant in Serbia, who has gone to hunt a Turk criminal. The man’s two sons have been told that they are to wait exactly ten days for his return, and if he comes back a moment later they are to drive a stake through his heart, as he will be a vourdalak, or a vampire. When he appears at exactly the right moment, both of his sons are confused. One thinks he’s still a man, the other swears he’s a vampire. But they err on the side of mercy and let him live. Shortly afterwards the young son of one of the boys falls ill, and it’s obvious they should have gone down to B&Q and had it over with. The diplomat has the kind of pressing, urgent business diplomats usually have, and heads off.

On his return, six months later, the diplomat drops in again on the peasant, more to have it away with his daughter, whom he had fallen for earlier in the year, than any worry about whether there are vampires in the area. Which is unfortunate for him, as of course the girl is now turned, and then the whole family - all now vampires, or vourdalaks - attack him and he only manages to escape due to great fortune.

I can’t speak for the other novels, not having read any of them, but this seems only to be the second time both a female vampire is in print and that she uses her feminine wiles to try to trap an unwary man. Not hard, as we all know what we men are led by, and as Phil Collins once sang, “He knew he was walking into a waiting trap neatly set up for him with a bait so richly wrapped.” It may also be the first novel to present us with a whole family of vampires. Stoker of course would build both elements into his seminal, genre-defining masterpiece only fifteen years later.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Title: Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood
Format: Novel (originally a Penny Dreadful series)
Author: either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest
Nationality: English
Written: 1845
Published: 1845 -7 as a serial, 1847 as novel
Impact: 10

“There was a tall, gaunt form—there was the faded ancient apparel—the lustrous metallic-looking eyes—its half-opened mouth, exhibiting tusk-like teeth! It was—yes, it was—the vampyre!”

This was the big one. This was when vampire lore, and indeed Gothic literature, really began to take off and became so popular it would be hard to keep up with it. Published originally in what was known as the “Penny Dreadful” - both from its price of one penny and its perceived lurid and inappropriate stories, possibly comparable to pulp fiction in the 1940s and 1950s - Varney the Vampire built on the work of John Polidori and further embellished the literary vampire, creating many of the tropes and characteristics we still see today. It’s the first story not to be set in a specific time (though that may have been down to poor writing or memory) and also to take place in more than one location. Usually, English people either wanted to read about stories set in England or in a faraway place, but Varney the Vampire utilises such settings as Venice and Naples as well as more familiar territory in Bath, Winchester and London.

As would most writers of vampiric fiction for decades, the author keeps his vampire a member of the nobility, an aristocrat, and he is Sir Francis Varney, who has been cursed to become a vampire after accidentally killing his own son in Cromwellian England. By all accounts (all right, by the account I read in Wiki) it’s not a very good story, very confused and jumps from subject to subject, but it does differ from Polidori’s story in that Varney appears disgusted with his condition, and the novel tries to elicit sympathy for him from the reader, whereas in The Vampyre there is no such remorse on behalf of Lord Ruthven, and we’re happy to see him die. Also differing is the death of Varney, who commits suicide at the end by jumping into a volcano (as you do) and leaving behind the account of his life.

But readers of Penny Dreadfuls could hardly have been accounted the greatest of literary critics, and they ate this up and screamed for more. Particularly as a serial, it must have seemed great stuff, as they waited breathlessly for the next instalment. The author uses the idea of the vampire being immortal and basically indestructible to allow him to die several times in the novel, only to come back to life, providing perhaps the first example of a cliffhanger that ends with the “hero”’s death and then resolves it in the next chapter, almost, but not quite, cartoon-like.

Varney is the first vampire in literature to be mentioned having fangs. Ruthven is merely described as having torn the throat of his victims, and it could as easily be by use of some knife or machete or other tool as by fangs, whereas Varney’s attack leaves what would become the classic mark of the vampire: two small incisions on the neck where the fangs had sunk in. He makes his entrance through windows, another trope that would become a classic feature of Hollywood vampires, especially Dracula (and be parodied almost as much); he has superhuman strength and can hypnotise his victims. Conversely, the author ignores many of the legends behind vampire tales. Like Byron’s Darvell, Varney has no fear of the sun and also doesn’t get spooked by crucifixes or garlic, he can eat and drink human food, but it does not agree with him, and there’s as yet, so far as I can see, no mention of his not having a reflection.

One thing that is taken account of in the novel is the claim by Lord Byron, going all the way back to that passage from The Giaour, in which it’s claimed that vampires are doomed to kill their own family, as in Varney the Vampire, the creature torments, hunts and slays mostly the members of the Bannermouth family, of whom it is hinted - though never confirmed - he is an ancestor. Unlike Byron’s Darvell however, in A Fragment, and indeed also unlike Lord Ruthven, Varney, while he can pass as a human, is not the suave, debonair gentleman that Polidori shows us in The Vampyre, for when he is hungry, lusting for blood, his appearance changes dramatically:

“The figure turns half round, and the light falls upon the face. It is perfectly white—perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth—the fearful looking teeth—projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends.”

A world removed from the aristocratic Ruthven, or indeed Count Dracula, who would not appear on the scene for another fifty years. Whoever wrote the novel, they were certainly going for sensationalism and appealing to the crowd, and while they could write, it doesn’t appear they were given to too much in the way of restraint. Nor, indeed, averse to a little plagiarism, as in this account where the hypnotic effect of Varney is described:

“The glance of a serpent could not have produced a greater effect upon her than did the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic looking eyes. . . . She cannot withdraw her eyes from that marble-looking face. He holds her with his glittering eye.”

Holds her with his glittering eye, eh? Samuel Taylor Coleridge might have something to say about that! Something explored by Polidori and expanded on in the plays and operas that used his writing, but that, so far as I can see, died out of vampire literature was the healing qualities of the moon. While the sun went on to be the end of every vampire, even the strongest (other than the ridiculous ones that walk around impudently in the sunshine in series A Discovery of Witches), the moon as a restorative force does not seem to have caught on with later writers, possibly because it would be hard to explain how and why it should work.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018