Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula

447 Pages·1992·11.466 MB·English

by  Christopher Frayling

VAMPYRES
Christopher Frayling is Professor of Cultural History and Head of the
Faculty of Humanities at the Royal College of Art. An historian, a critic
and a broadcaster, he is well known for his work on Radio 4 (Kaleido­
scope, Stop the Week, America - the Movie, The Rime of the Bounty);
Radio 3 (Critics' Forum, Third Opinion, Third Ear); BBC2 television
(Movie Profiles, Timewatch, Design Awards) and Channel 4 (The Art of
Persuasion). He has published numerous books and articles on aspects of
cultural history including Napoleon Wrote Fiction (1972) and Spaghetti
Westerns (1980).
Professor Frayling is a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum,
Chairman of the Visual Arts Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain
and a member of the Arts Council, and was until recently a governor of
the British Film Institute. He is currently writing a book about Sergio
Leone for Faber.
He is married and lives irr JBath.

VAMPYRES
Lord Byron to Count Dracula
CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING
IY
faberandfaber
LONDON BOSTON
First published in 1991
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London wcin 3AU
A considerably shorter version, The Vampyre,
was published by Gollanz in 1978
This paperback edition first published in 1992
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
All rights reserved
Translation of The Family of the Vourdalak
© Christopher Frayling, 1978
This selection and editorial matter © Christopher Frayling, 1991
Christopher Frayling is hereby identified as author
of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The lines from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot from
Collected Poems iQOQ-62, Faber and Faber Ltd, 1922,
are reprinted by courtesy of Mrs Valerie Eliot; On
the Vampire by Ernest Jones is reproduced by kind
permission of the Estate of Ernest Jones and the
Hogarth Press; ‘The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories’
by Maurice Richardson was first published in the
Twentieth Century magazine, December 1959.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the
publisher s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-571-16792-6
May 28 - Went to Geneva. Introduced to a room
where about 8; 2 ladies. Lord Byron’s name was alone
mentioned; mine, like a star in the halo of the moon,
invisible__’
Polidori’s Diary
For Dr John William Polidori,
who came too close to a vampire

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
LORD BYRON TO COUNT DRACULA I
1 LIGHTEN OUR DARKNESS 85
A Voyage to the Levant Joseph Pitton de Toumefort 87
Treatise on the Vampires of Hungary and
Surrounding Regions Dom Augustin Calmet 92
2 LORD RUTHVEN AND HIS CLAN IO5
The Vampyre John Polidori 107
Fragment of a Story Lord Byron 126
A Visit to the Theatre Alexandre Dumas 131
Vamey, the Vampyre James Malcolm Rymer 145
3 THE TEMPESTUOUS LOVELINESS OF TERROR 163
Wake Not the Dead attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck 165
Aurelia E. T. A. Hoffmann 190
What Was It? Fitz-James O'Brien 208
A Kiss of Judas ‘XL.’ 221
4 A CREATURE OF FOLKLORE 251
The Family of the Vourdalak Alexis Tolstoy 253
The Fate of Madame Cabanel Eliza Lynn Linton 280
5 THE GENESIS OF DRACULA 295
Bram Stoker’s Working Papers for Dracula 303
Bram Stoker’s Research Papers for Dracula 317
6 COUNT DRACULA 349
Dracula’s Guest Bram Stoker 351
Dracula Bram Stoker 364
7 HAEMOSEXUALITY 385
Psychopathia Sexualis Richard von Krafft-Ebing 390
On the Vampire Ernest Jones 398
The Psychoanalysis of Count DraculaM aurice Richardson 418
Epilogue 423
Bibliography and Acknowledgements 424
List of Illustrations
1 A Chilean vampire at work (from the Courier de l’Europe, October
1784)
2 Marie Antoinette as a vampire (from a French Revolutionary print)
3 A vampire rises from the grave (from an early eighteenth-century
treatise on the undead)
4 Goya, The Consequences (etching from the series ‘The Disasters of
War’, started 1808)
5 A victim of Polidori’s vampire Lord Ruthven (from a pocket edition
of The Vampyre, early 1850s)
6 Mr T. P. Cooke as a kilted Lord Ruthven in the first dramatization
of The Vampyre (from a theatre handbill of autumn, 1820)
7 The cover of the first number of the marathon penny-dreadful
Varney, the Vampyre, or The Feast of Blood (1853 edition)
8 Sir Francis Varney tries to impress Flora Bannerworth (from
Ch. xxiv of Varney, the Vampyre)
9 John Tenniel, The Irish Vampire (from Punch, 24 October 1885)
i o Walter Crane (attr.), The capitalist vampire feeds on labour (illustration
of the early 1890s)
11 Aubrey Beardsley, The Kiss of Judas (from the Pall Mall Magazine of
July 1893)
12 The Invisible Giant (illustration from Bram Stoker’s first book of
fantasy, Under the Sunset, 1882)
13 D. M. Fristen, Carmilla (illustration for Le Fanu’s story, from The
Dark Blue magazine, 1871)
14 Felicien Rops, Le Plus Bel Amour de Don Juan (engraving of 1879)
15 Edvard Munch, Puberty (By Night) (etching of 1902)
16 Felicien Rops, U Agonie ou Mors et Vita (drawing of 1870s)
17 E. A. Bielz, north-eastern detail of a map of Transylvania (from
Charles Boner’s Transylvania, 1865)
18 Woodcut portrait of Vlad the Impaler, the Voivode of Wallachia
(from a Bamberg pamphlet of 1491)
19 The very first Dracula illustration (the cover of a rare paperback
edition of 1901)