Who Was Dracula? (22 page)

Of course, Oscar Wilde was precisely the sort of author who would be expected to encode messages or key words into his texts. Bram Stoker was not. The literary references in
Dracula
are apparent, often clumsy, or applied like a paper-thin veneer. It becomes difficult to imagine Stoker plotting his adventure and simultaneously planting concealed references to Wilde. We're reminded of Samuel Goldwyn's famous advice to his film writers, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”

But it is equally easy to imagine how elements of Wilde's friendship, Wilde's fame and fall from grace, left subconscious evidence as Stoker was constructing his story. The evidence is tempting.

Stoker's 1890 notes did not originally include the little crucifix that Jonathan Harker receives from a peasant woman as he leaves for Dracula's castle—“For your mother's sake.” This scene was integrated into the story as Stoker was writing it, presumably around 1895, after Wilde's trial.

Harker's crucifix is the talisman that saves his life when he cuts himself shaving. It repels Dracula's reflexive attack. A similar crucifix in the hand of Van Helsing, “a little gold crucifix,” drives away the vampire after he defiles Mina.

When he added the crucifix to his story, wouldn't Bram Stoker have remembered his wife's little gold crucifix? This had once been a gift from Oscar Wilde, a pledge of his love for Florence, and was returned to Wilde after she chose to marry Bram.

That little cross, passing between them, was the talisman of Florence's near-tragic romance. It was the object that had once united three friends and rivals during their carefree days in Dublin. Stoker was certainly mindful of the great man, suddenly powerless to help himself; he had made a wreck of his own existence and then corrupted so many others with a dangerous kiss.

THE STRANGER, “HERE I AM NOBLE”

A
fter Oscar Wilde's conviction, the theater critic Clement Scott wrote in the
Daily Telegraph
, “Open the windows! Let in the fresh air.”

Henry Labouchère sniffed that he was sorry that Wilde had been sentenced to only two years in jail; his amendment, he claimed, had originally suggested seven years. But by 1895, Labouchère had made a specialty of misremembering the details behind his amendment; he was anxious to portray himself as a hero. Now he was on the public's side by excoriating the playwright. Wilde's imprisonment was a fine thing, Labby declared in his magazine,
Truth
. “Far from his being any the worse for the imprisonment, there seems to be every reason to anticipate that he will benefit by it physically, if not morally.”

The Marquess of Queensberry sent a letter to the editor of the
Star
, dismissing the idea of sympathy. “I would treat [Wilde] with all possible consideration as a sexual pervert of an utterly diseased mind, and not as a sane criminal. If this is sympathy, Mr. Wilde has it from me to this extent.”

Actor Fred Terry recalled a joke that circulated through the profession. “Which was Wilde's favorite play?” “Obviously, ‘A Woman's of No Importance!'”

When Oscar Wilde's trial had begun, two of his successful comedies were playing in the West End,
An Ideal Husband
and
The Importance of Being Earnest
. With the scandal, Wilde's name was removed from the signboards and programs at the theaters. For a short time, the plays continued, drawing laughs and an occasional catcall. Then the plays were withdrawn. Julia Neilson, an actress in
An Ideal Husband
, remembered, “Public feeling ran so high against Wilde that our audience vanished.”

Wilde was taken to Pentonville, where he worked on the treadmill and was given general labor, making postbags, or picking oakum—pulling apart the fibers of old ropes so that they could be used for insulation. He was transferred to Wandsworth and, later, Reading, where he worked in the gardens and in the library.

Oscar Wilde was released on May 18, 1897, and headed immediately to France. He was reconciled with Alfred Douglas but never with his wife and children. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a poem written after his release, was published in 1898. Wilde spent his last years in self-imposed exile, living meagerly, supported by his friends. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900. His long, confessionary letter to Alfred Douglas, his understanding of their relationship, was published as the essay, “De Profundis.” This was composed at Reading and published five years after Oscar Wilde's death.

—

Stoker's perfect silence about Wilde is now impossible to interpret, except that he intended to give no interpretation. If we look at the reactions of his friends, Stoker's silence might suggest his genuine discomfort.

An associate of Hall Caine recalled Caine's deep shock just after Wilde's conviction: “To think of it! That man, that genius as he is, whom you and I have seen feted and flattered. . . . It haunts me. It is like some foul and horrible stain on our craft and on us all, which nothing can wash out. It is the most awful tragedy in the whole history of literature.”

It's easy to imagine Bram Stoker struck with the same impression—hurt and deep embarrassment for the profession. Irving and Terry were two of the few actors who refused to criticize Wilde, even after his conviction. They sent their best wishes—through Wilde's friend Charles Ricketts—just before Oscar's release from prison. Ellen Terry explained her own reactions in her autobiography. As expected, she was deeply honest and compassionate. “When Oscar was found guilty of that unnameable sin . . . I was revolted by his very name,” she wrote. “Then he wrote ‘De Profundis' . . . it purified Oscar and I loved him again.” Once again, it's easy to imagine Stoker sharing this view; certainly Ellen Terry's magnanimity would have had a strong influence on him.

Terry told how, after Wilde's release, she visited Paris with her friend Aimee Lowther when they saw “a man gazing wolfishly into a pastrycook's windows, biting his fingers.” They recognized Oscar and went to speak with him. “We induced him to come and eat with us in a quiet hotel and for a while he sparkled, just as of old.”

This recollection is especially interesting, as a Stoker family rumor held that Bram Stoker later visited Paris, quietly taking money to Wilde. Perhaps this kindness was Stoker's own idea or Florence's suggestion; she later referred to her old Dublin beau as “poor Oscar.” Or maybe Stoker was reprising his usual role as the emissary for Irving and Terry. There's no evidence of this mission to Paris, but—true or not—the significance of the story is that Stoker's support seemed possible, and even logical, within his family.

Although the book was published just after he left Reading, there's no evidence that Wilde ever read
Dracula
.

—

One of the continuing puzzles of
Dracula
is the author's view of his inspirations. For many years, there was a necessary corollary to the theory, “Henry Irving is Count Dracula.” That was, “Bram Stoker hated his boss.” Could Stoker have imagined Henry Irving as an ancient villain, an unholy creature? Was he intending to wreak his revenge, after a long career, within the pages of his novel? Similarly, could Stoker have imagined Walt Whitman as the devil? Could he have been so incensed at his failure to self-censure that he attempted to pass judgment on the wise old poet? Did Oscar Wilde's imprisonment signal something much deeper than embarrassment and confusion? Could Stoker have truly come to loathe him and then portray him as a dangerous, unholy beast?

There are hints within the book. Dracula, considered one of literature's greatest villains, may not have been a villain in the novel that bears his name. He almost perfectly matches the description of a Byronic hero.

Lord Byron introduced the convention in
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
, written in 1812, a poem that was thought to be partly autobiographical. The character type returned in other works of his, such as
Manfred
and
The Corsair
. Unlike most protagonists, Byron's heroes were dark, haunted characters—combinations of charm and cruelty and unapologetic about their situations. They were nobles who might find themselves cast as rebels, in exile or seeking revenge. His inspiration is often thought to be Milton's Lucifer, a powerful but flawed character.

Byron's Conrad, in the poem
The Corsair
, epitomizes the Byronic hero:

He knew himself a villain—but he deem'd

The rest no better than the thing he seem'd; . . .

He knew himself detested, but he knew

The hearts that loath'd him, crouch'd and dreaded too.

Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt

From all affection and from all contempt.

The connection to Lord Byron is tempting, in terms of literary history. Byron was the guest at Lake Geneva in 1816 who suggested that everyone write a ghost story. This was the impetus for
Frankenstein
, and Byron's physician and traveling companion, John Polidori, wrote
The Vampyre
, which became the model of the aristocratic vampire. Polidori may have used his employer, Byron, as a model for the vampire, just as Stoker later used his employer, Irving.

Varney the Vampire
, the vampire novel that preceded
Dracula
, first suggested the idea of a sympathetic vampire, frustrated by his own dilemma. But Stoker's Dracula is something more and exhibits the pride and the blindness that would have earned him a place in tragedy.

Dracula is a mysterious nobleman with a tragic past. He triumphed in war and endured through centuries due to his peculiar curse. In Transylvania, Dracula functions very efficiently. He is surrounded by a group of “brides” who depend upon him and who, in the past, must have shared a relationship with him. His necessary crimes seem easy in that setting, and perhaps even expected. (The novel portrays only one mother whose child has been stolen.) The local residents fear him but obediently work for him.

His mistake is in aspiring to something more. He confesses to Jonathan Harker:

I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. . . . Here I am a noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, and here I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him not—and to know not is to care not for. . . . I have been so long master that I would be master still—or at least that none other should be master of me.

Why does he wish to go to London? There is that awful pun that the vampire wishes to “share its life,” but Dracula presumably can find all the blood he needs in Transylvania. Jonathan Harker imagines infesting the city with a new circle of demons, but Dracula himself neither proselytizes nor recruits. He goes to London because he “longs.” He aspires to the city because it offers “the whirl and rush of humanity.”

Immediately, he has difficulty when he confronts contemporary society. Jonathan Harker does not obey. In London, Dracula's early crimes draw reprisal. His victims refuse to be complacent. He is hunted down and driven from the city. When he finally admits defeat and races back to Transylvania, he is not allowed a retreat. The vampire hunters anticipate his route by analyzing his experience in battle. They chase him back to his castle and punish him.

In this case, Dracula's great crime is overreaching, the same way the Greeks would have portrayed his hubris. He cannot properly evaluate the new world, its moral men and intelligent women, just as he is surprised by the touches of innovation that surround him: shorthand, the typewriter, the phonograph. Had Dracula remained in Transylvania, the tragedy would not have taken place as, presumably, he had found a way to exist peacefully in Transylvania for centuries.

This perspective changes the story. Stoker similarly saw that Whitman's poetry was perfect in its artistry until it was included in certain books and distributed to certain readers (like the sarcastic young men at Trinity).

Wilde was free to exercise his personal choices within the cloistered worlds of literature and the theater, but by overreaching, by boldly expressing those views to the general society, he had to be driven back.

Similarly, Henry Irving's career could be seen as a West Country actor, a man of little education, who made an assault on the London theater. There he found an uncomfortable fit with society. He was criticized by highbrows for his lowbrow tastes and he fought for acceptance from critics and intellectuals because he had aspired to be a part of the “whirl and rush” of the great capital city, organizing its greatest theater.

Irving was an instinctive actor but not an intellect. He received only limited education and never gave speeches extemporaneously; he memorized the words and then acted as if it were extemporaneous. He could make plays sensational; he could make parts dramatic. But when the taste for spectacle changed, he had no instinct for a new direction, nor would he trust the intellect of others. Shaw, Conan Doyle, and Stoker tried to tempt him into modern productions, without success. Eventually, he was pushed out of the Lyceum.

If Dracula is a Byronic hero, we see the tragedy of his place in modern society and anticipate the inevitable punishment for his aspirations. Dracula withdraws into the story—becoming less of a character and more of a dilemma, a pestilence—but his “humanity” comes to be recognized by Mina, who forms a psychic connection with him and generates sympathy for him. She insists that the pursuit of the hunters should not be “a work of hate.” She believes, “That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.”

When Mina watches Dracula die, she notices a surprising “look of peace” in his face, “such as I never could have imagined might have rested there before.”

In creating the character of Dracula, Bram Stoker may have been inspired by the great men of his life, their flaws, and their limitations. But the puzzling, tragic elements of Dracula's character suggest that Stoker could always have sympathy—not hatred—for these inspirations.

—

Readers have identified little bits of Bram Stoker within the novel; the author used his own traits and preferences in conjunction with other characters'. As the protagonist at the start of the story, Jonathan Harker shares Stoker's profession, solicitor. He probably experiences Stoker's dream, the attack of the vampire brides and the appearance of Dracula. When locked in Castle Dracula, he becomes a mixture of clerk and adventurer, a perfect blend of Stoker's fastidious job of Acting Manager and his taste for athleticism.

—

With the introduction of Abraham Van Helsing, we see traces of Stoker again. The most obvious clue is the character's name. Abraham is the author's name, as well as his father's name. Van Helsing is an insightful researcher and a thorough investigator. He is gallant with women and fatherly in his advice. To all the people around him, he is the man with the answers, the man who is able to solve the problems and describe a course of action.

Paul Murray, Bram Stoker's biographer, suggested that Dracula also exhibits Stoker-like qualities. “Like Dracula . . . Stoker is a man of many parts, willing to turn his hand to more or less anything. Just as Stoker tackled a multiplicity of roles for Irving, so the Count has made himself generally useful, acting as a coachman, cook and domestic servant. He also arranges travel and transport (his boxes of earth resembling the theatrical baggage which Stoker looked after), reading reference works and dabbling in the law. Like Stoker, too, he is immensely strong physically.”