Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
For Mary the arrival of another son brought a small end to her suffering, but she never completely recovered from the deaths
of Clara and William. She still avoided emotional commitment with her husband and even to a degree with her new baby because
of her strong fear that he would be taken from her as well. She expressed these feelings to Marianne Hunt: “he is my only
one and although he is so healthy and promising that for the life of me I cannot fear yet it is a bitter thought that all
should be risked on one, yet how much sweeter than to be childless as I was for 5 hateful months.” Mary’s fear of losing a
child was so great that she blistered her feet by walking vigorously to encourage her milk production so that she could nourish
the infant. Percy wrote that his wife’s life, “after the frightful events of the last two years . . . seems wholly to be bound
up” in her new son’s. Mary watched over Percy Florence for hours, even while he was sleeping.
In Florence Shelley wrote perhaps his most popular poem,
Ode to the West Wind,
which indicates that he too was trying to come out of his misery.
O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
The poem ends with the immortal lines
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
That optimistic spirit of the poem would prove to be misplaced.
Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!
—
The Vampyre,
Dr. John Polidori, 1819
T
HE SAME YEAR
that Mary lost her two children, 1819, saw the publication of Dr. John Polidori’s tale
The Vampyre,
the second of the modern myths created at the Villa Diodati in the haunted summer of 1816. The vampire figure was not new.
It had long been the subject of legends and folklore before it was used in fiction in the nineteenth century. The belief that
some dead people rose from the grave and fed on the blood of the living was widespread; such stories are found in Chinese
and Japanese traditions as well. Nor was belief in vampires limited only to the ignorant. Rousseau, who did not believe in
them, nevertheless had written, “If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is
lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is
most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?” The Roman Catholic Church had recognized the existence
of vampires in the fifteenth century.
The editor who wrote an introduction to the original publication of Polidori’s book noted that the
London Journal
of 1732 printed an account of a case of vampirism in Hungary. A man named Arnold Paul (or Arnod Paole), who had served in
the army on the borders of Turkish Serbia, complained that while there he had been tormented by a vampire. He had found a
way to counter the threat by eating some of the dirt from the vampire’s grave and rubbing himself with its blood. However,
Paul himself, after returning to his home village, fell off a hay wagon and broke his neck. After his burial, he himself became
a vampire, and many people complained of being tormented by him. A local magistrate gave permission to open Paul’s grave.
When his corpse was disinterred, it was found to be uncorrupted. A stake was driven through its heart, upon which a shower
of blood spurted from the body and Paul cried out as if alive. Similar sightings and stories about vampires were recorded
throughout the eighteenth century.
The editor also noted that in many parts of Greece, the transformation into vampire form is thought to be some kind of punishment
after death. That belief, the editor speculated, may have inspired certain lines from Byron’s poem
The Giaour:
But first, on earth as Vampyre 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.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave —
Go—and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!
Polidori’s monster, however, had modern touches that would influence all future vampire tale-tellers from Bram Stoker to Anne
Rice. His vampire, Lord Ruthven, was an aristocrat, not a peasant or outcast as folkloric vampires were. Second, the vampire
really is Ruthven and not a spirit that inhabits his body. Third, Ruthven is a traveler, a wanderer through the world. Finally,
he is a seducer who preys on innocent victims; women, rather than being repelled, are attracted to him. All these elements
were innovations introduced by Polidori—and of course all were inspired by none other than Lord Byron.
B
yron had been the first to start writing a ghost story in response to his famous challenge. Writing came easily to him, and
when he got down to work was capable of producing hundreds of lines of poetry in a night. However, prose did not seem to be
his métier, for after writing only a few pages, he gave up the effort. What he did complete was intriguing. Told from the
point of view of a young man, it describes the narrator’s acquaintance and travels with Augustus Darvell, “a man of considerable
fortune and ancient family.” As in many of Byron’s epic poems, the narrator and Darvell travel to the East, exploring Greek
ruins near Ephesus. Darvell shows a familiarity with the area that indicates he has been there before. He tells the narrator
that he has returned to die. He has one last request: giving the narrator his ring, he makes him swear to throw it into a
certain spring near the Bay of Eleusis. Afterward, he must go to the temple of Ceres and wait one hour. Darvell refuses to
explain what will happen next.
This is, of course, a hook calculated to draw the reader into the story, and shows Byron’s narrative skill. Unfortunately,
readers were destined to be disappointed, for after describing Darvell’s sudden death, and the rapid decomposition of his
body (“his countenance in a few minutes became nearly black”), Byron left his task, never completing the story.
The sudden darkening of the face after death was commonly held to be one of the attributes of vampires. It is obvious that
the event the narrator will observe if he follows Darvell’s instructions is the reappearance of his friend. If Byron had decided
to continue, he would have told his own vampire story, which would have been a logical outgrowth of the discussions that inspired
Mary Shelley to write
Frankenstein
. Both deal, in a sense, with immortality. Mary envisions it achieved through science; Byron, through supernatural means.
Byron’s vision is thus closer to the traditional Gothic tales; Mary rises above them.
Byron dated his fragment June 17, 1816. At that time Polidori was still floundering with the hackneyed effort Mary described
in her 1831 introduction to
Frankenstein
. He eventually incorporated it into another story, but must not have gotten very far with it in the summer of 1816, for it
is never mentioned again in anyone’s journals or letters.
After the Shelleys and Claire left Lake Geneva, Byron had less need for Polidori. At the beginning of the 1816 trip, Byron
had been taking large amounts of laxatives to keep his weight down, and required a doctor’s presence to ensure he didn’t damage
his health. Now he allowed himself to relax as old friends such as John Cam Hobhouse came to visit him at Villa Diodati. Hobhouse
reported to Byron’s sister, “A considerable change has taken place in his health; no brandy, no very late hours, no quarts
of magnesia, nor deluges of soda water.”
Polidori became not only superfluous, but also a burden, since he required emotional tending. Once, thinking that he was going
to be fired, he had gone to his room with the intention of committing suicide. Byron appeared at the door and offered his
hand as a “sign of reconciliation.” On another occasion, Polidori got into an argument with a local apothecary about the quality
of the magnesia he was supplying. Incensed at the man’s “impudent” tone, Polidori struck him, breaking his eyeglasses. He
was hauled into court and ordered to pay for the damage. Byron could not have been pleased at attracting further notoriety.
All in all, as Byron explained in a letter to his sister, “I had no use for [Polidori] & his temper & habits were not good.”
Byron eventually found some way of dismissing Polidori without putting him into a suicidal depression. In a letter to his
father, Polidori put the best face on things, perhaps parroting whatever Byron had told him: “We have parted, finding that
our tempers did not agree. he [
sic
] propos[ed] it & it was settled. there was no immediate cause, but a continued series of slight quarrels. I believe the fault,
if any, has been on my part, I am not accustomed to have a master, & there fore my conduct was not free & easy.”
Polidori was not ready to return to England, and decided to travel to Italy, the land of his forebears. Shipping his trunks
ahead to Milan, he set out on foot from Geneva. It was an ambitious trek, and his travel journal reveals only that he suffered
from ill-fitting shoes and sore feet. It took him fifteen days, and when he arrived, he found waiting for him another letter
of rebuke from his father: “your letter produced in me a twofold and opposite sensation: gratification at your having quitted
a man so discredited in public opinion, and sorrow at seeing you almost a vagrant, and at the uncertainty at your lot.” In
other words, not only did his father disapprove of what Polidori had been doing, he also disapproved of his not doing it any
longer.
Byron had been generous with severance pay, and Polidori could for the time being enjoy some of the finer things in life.
He spent some evenings at La Scala, where he met a well-known literary priest, Father Ludovico di Breme, author of an Italian
work on Romanticism. At Father di Breme’s box, Polidori was introduced to prominent visitors such as Marie-Henri Beyle, better
known by his pen name Stendhal. One evening Byron appeared as well, and Stendhal misunderstood the relationship between the
two men, later recalling that Polidori was Byron’s “pimp.”
Even here, Polidori managed to make a spectacle of himself that rivaled the one on stage. One night an Austrian officer who
wore a large fur hat was blocking Polidori’s view of the stage. Polidori asked him to remove it, and the officer took offense.
He asked Polidori to step outside, and Polidori, expecting a duel, willingly did so. However, the officer merely wanted to
arrest him without a fuss. Byron, feeling that he was honor-bound as an Englishman to come to Polidori’s defense, rushed to
the local guardhouse with some friends. Stendhal, who had followed out of curiosity, described the incident: “There were fifteen
or twenty of us gathered around the prisoner. Everybody was talking at once. M. Polidori was beside himself and red as a beet.
Lord Byron, who on the contrary was very pale, was having great difficulty containing his rage.” Finally, one of Byron’s friends
suggested that those without titles leave the room. That left Byron and some others, who guaranteed Polidori’s good behavior
by writing their names on a card. Impressed, the Austrians released Polidori, but the next day he was unceremoniously expelled
from Milan.
Still on foot, traveling in the midst of a thunderstorm, he made his way to the town of Arezzo, where his uncle Luigi Polidori
lived. The uncle wrote to his brother in England praising his nephew but sounding a note of alarm about his gambling and problems
with money. Polidori hatched a plan to go to Brazil as medical advisor to the Danish consul. He sought his former employer’s
assistance, and Byron wrote to John Murray asking if he could get Polidori some letters of recommendation from friends in
the British government. But the Brazil venture did not come to pass.
Polidori practiced medicine in Italy for a while, and traveled with an English family, the Guilfords, whose father had died
while they visited Pisa. Apparently Polidori supervised his embalming and now prepared to take the body back to England. He
bid a final farewell to Byron at Venice, where the poet gave him some books for Murray and two miniatures of himself for Byron’s
sister. Byron could not help ridiculing Polidori’s efforts. In a letter to another friend, he wrote, “The Doctor Polidori
is here on his way to England with the present Lord Guilford—having actually embowelled the last at Pisa & spiced & pickled
him for his rancid ancestors.—The said Doctor has had several invalids under his pr
o
scriptions—but now has no more patients—because his patients are no more.”
In the spring of 1817, Polidori settled in Norwich, opening a medical practice. He did not prosper, possibly because he had
few connections in the community, but also because his religion made him something of an outsider as well. He was continually
forced to borrow money from his father and godfather—always a terrible and humiliating experience. Both made him beg and offered
advice as if he were still a child. His father wrote in a letter, “It is, however, time for you to put your head to work,
for if you did not start using your judgement at the age you have now reached, I despair of your ever making use of it. Independence
is what every sage and prudent man must aspire to, but it cannot be obtained by one who does not know how to limit his expenses
to the means that he can readily obtain.”