Who Was Dracula? (7 page)

Caine attended Irving's first night at the Lyceum and was often hosted at the theater. He stayed with the Stokers in London and delighted in Bram's company, later describing him as “the big, breathless, impetuous hurricane of a man.” Holding out for a play, Irving once told Stoker how much he admired Hall Caine's imagination, convinced that he would “write a great work of weirdness some day.” Ironically, it was his own Acting Manager who wrote the greatest book of “weirdness,” and when
Dracula
was published, the novel was dedicated to “Hommy-Beg,” Manx slang for “Little Tommy,” which was Thomas Hall Caine's childhood nickname.

—

Henry Irving was not really sociable. But he was good at
acting
sociable, playing the gracious, genial host. This was particularly easy with the help of Bram Stoker behind the scenes: arranging the guest lists, contacting the caterer and designer, welcoming the guests, and then writing out Irving's elegant, literate toasts on a menu card, handing it to the actor, and standing quietly behind him. The Lyceum hosted a number of extravagant dinners. For example, the hundredth performance of
The Merchant of Venice
was followed by a feast for 350, filling the stage with tables of bright china, cut glass, fresh flowers, and the very best of London society. Specially printed copies of the play were provided to each guest. When Irving toasted the monarch, an unseen boys' choir provided a ghostly accompaniment of “God Save the Queen.” The decanter of port was passed. Cigars were offered. Oscar Wilde stood to recite a sonnet that praised Ellen Terry's Portia.

. . . The sober-suited lawyer's gown you donned,

And would not let the laws of Venice yield

Antonio's heart to that accursed Jew—

O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due:

I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

Most Lyceum dinners, much smaller affairs, were held in the Beefsteak Room. This magical, out-of-the-way little dining room was inspired by an old legacy, dating from 1735, of actors and theater technicians at the original Covent Garden. The eighteenth-century lunch group, who called themselves the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, later convened in the room at the Lyceum. When Irving took over the lease of the theater, Bram Stoker discovered the old, wood-paneled Beefsteak dining room, restoring it while Irving was away on a vacation.

It was no longer a club; it just offered all the pretensions of one. The Beefsteak Room was another opportunity for Stoker to organize and socialize, and for Irving to preside. It seated only thirty-six people. There was no room for the actors and crew of the Lyceum; they smelled the roasting meats, walked past the locked door, and heard the hum of conversation and the tinkle of crystal, mindful of their lowly standing. Only special guests of the Lyceum would be invited to the inner sanctum. After a performance they trudged up a back staircase to the small Gothic dining room decorated with theatrical memorabilia.

Before dinner was served, the door would open and Henry Irving would arrive, sometimes still in costume, welcoming his guests. Dinner was deliberately simple and unstuffy: roast chicken, grilled steaks, and potatoes. That just added to the unconventional atmosphere, for the Beefsteak Room was a rite of passage for London society, the place to be seen. Stoker, Lovejoy, and Irving presided over it all like lords at the castle. Oscar Wilde frequently petitioned for an invitation and was welcomed by his friends; his lilting laughter echoed through the hall. It's easy to see that the Beefsteak Room was an opportunity for Irving to prolong the performance and costar with a new group of celebrities.

In his recollections of Irving, Stoker reserved more than twelve pages of small type to list over a thousand celebrities, literary figures, royalty, and nobles who were guests at the Beefsteak Room. The list is a ridiculous exercise in name-dropping; clearly Stoker prized this part of his duty and appreciated the exclusivity imposed by Irving's little dining room.

—

As successful as the Lyceum productions were in London, Henry Irving's tours were responsible for financing their operations. Starting in 1883, they made eight tours of America. Irving had been warned that American audiences would be difficult. They were not. Americans loved the English actor and his melodramatic productions.

Stoker fell in love with the broad countryside, the big cities, and the rough-around-the-edges politicians, authors, cowboys, and showmen who became fans of the Lyceum. These were, to English sensibilities, deliciously theatrical personalities. Mark Twain became a good friend, later visiting the Lyceum and Stoker in London. They met William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the Wild West entrepreneur and showman. Irving and Stoker also socialized with four presidents: Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Part of the charm of America, for Stoker, was a country filled with Irish immigrants and proudly lacking a class system. The tall Irishman who was Irving's Acting Manager was almost as exotic, to Americans, as the famous English actor. Much to his surprise, the press was interested in what he had to say. He found himself at the center of interviews and receptions.

On their second trip to America in 1884, Irving and Stoker were able to meet Walt Whitman, who was then visiting his friend Thomas Donaldson in Philadelphia.

They arrived at Donaldson's home and as Stoker and Irving stepped into the parlor, admiring a painting, they noticed Whitman, seated on the opposite side of the room. “Great shaggy masses of grey-white hair fell over his collar . . . I knew at once who it was,” Stoker later wrote. But Donaldson rushed into the room to make the introduction. “Mr. Irving, I want you to know Mr. Walt Whitman,” he proudly said.

Stoker had offered a copy of
Leaves of Grass
to his boss, so the actor was familiar with Whitman's work. Irving grinned and offered his hand to the poet. As they chatted, Donaldson maneuvered Stoker into position. “Bram Stoker,” he casually announced to Whitman. Whitman noticed the name instantly, leaning forward.

“Bram Stoker—Abraham Stoker, is it?” Whitman purred. Stoker was thrilled to see the poet's bright blue eyes twinkle with recognition. They shook hands “as old friends,” recalling their correspondence of nearly a decade earlier. Quickly, the spotlight shifted from the guest of honor, Henry Irving, to Stoker, who was remembered as the charming Irish boy who had poured out his self-confessions and his love of poetry.

Irving and the poet chatted amiably; he said that Whitman reminded him of Tennyson. Although Whitman had not met Britain's poet laureate, he was tickled by the comparison and flattered to hear this. When Stoker drew his chair close, Whitman was curious about mutual friends in Dublin. “To me he was an old friend,” Stoker recalled, enthralled with their conversation. “I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded, broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree, incarnate sympathy, understanding with an insight that seemed more than human.”

Whitman asked his friend to promise that he'd visit his Camden, New Jersey, home on any future visits. Stoker gave his word and returned to see Whitman on two additional trips.

—

Ellen Terry resented the way that Irving could treat Stoker as a servant, depending on him for menial tasks and carelessly dismissing him from important decisions. Hall Caine saw Stoker's life as being the “absorption of one man's life in the life of another,” and regretted how often Stoker was forced to do “disagreeable things . . . assuming the responsibility, taking the blame, accepting the blow.”

Even worse, by the mid-1880s Irving had surrounded himself with a layer of sycophants—his personal secretary, Louis Austin, press agent Austin Brereton, and journalist Joseph Hatton. They were engaged to take notes for a projected book about his American tours, to publicize the tour and write speeches for their boss. At the end of the 1884 tour, Joseph Hatton's book
Henry Irving's Impressions of America
was published in Boston. It's an indulgent book, worshipfully celebrating Irving's celebrity. Hatton reduced Stoker to brief appearances, generally playing the part of the officious stuffed shirt, puzzled by Irving's wit or the company's amusement. Adding to the sense of competition, after the next tour of America, Stoker gathered materials for his own lecture, “A Glimpse of America,” which was later published as a pamphlet. A recipient of hospitality wherever he went, Stoker pointed out that “Americans have no princes of their own, [so] they make princes of whom they love.”

The Acting Manager was confused and irritated by Irving's buzzing satellites. They were a drain on the Lyceum budget and a continual threat to his position. The new men understood this, which made them all the more resentful. They saw Stoker as a clumsy sycophant.

Irving was part of the problem. He seemed to take some pleasure in this teasing, setting up tests for the men around him and dropping hints about loyalty. Louis Austin was asked to write Irving's speeches for Harvard University and for a farewell banquet in New York. When he brought the manuscript and recited it for Irving, it “made him tearful,” according to Austin. He had noticed Stoker's own draft for the speech on Irving's table, but the Governor waved it off. “Poor old Bram has been trying his hand, but there isn't an idea in the whole thing.” Austin, unable to resist the temptation to put another nail in the coffin, told his boss, “I should be very much surprised if there was.”

For a Christmas party during the 1885 American tour, Louis Austin wrote some satirical verses, lampooning his Lyceum cohorts. When it came time for Stoker to pick up the paper and read the poem written for him, the first line, “I'm in a mortal hurry,” drew gales of laughter. It was a perfect caricature; Stoker was known for his fever pitch, and Austin's efficient lines turned him into a buffoon. Austin reported that the poem left the Acting Manager “in a rage of jealousy because I had done something successful.” Years before, it would have been Stoker who was called upon for witticisms after the evening's drinks. Now he had to read a speech written by another.

It was unfair of Irving to dismiss his associate as “poor old Bram,” but there's no question that the actor knew how to play to his audience. Louis Austin sneered at Stoker's literary aspirations, writing to his wife, “His first effort in literature, that marvelous book [
Under the Sunset
]
neither you nor I nor anybody else could understand . . . never had and never will have the smallest return.”

—

Bram Stoker's family vacations were the only times he was away from the theatrical world. In the summer of 1890, Bram, Florence, and Noel spent three weeks in the Yorkshire village of Whitby. It was a quiet, misty port that had become popular as a Victorian resort town, steeped in gray medieval history. A series of 199 stone steps led from the red-tiled fishing village to St. Mary's Church. High on the east cliff, overlooking the town, was the crumbling skeleton of a Benedictine abbey, which added a haunted, Gothic element to the panorama. Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins had all spent time writing at Whitby. If Stoker thought that the colorful little fishing port might provide inspiration for a novel, he was right.

Stoker seemed to be turning over several ideas in his head; a novel, which was later titled
Miss Betty
, was a sweet adventure romance, set in eighteenth-century London. Another idea, which Stoker had begun to outline as four separate sections, was a tense horror story. Something about the wild Whitby landscape made this seem especially interesting, and Stoker got down to work.

While Florence and Noel visited local shows or were hosted at teas, Bram donned his comfortable clothes and stalked the town, asking about its history, writing down inscriptions from the gravestones, talking to the local fishermen, translating Yorkshire dialect into a sort of dictionary, and researching at the dusty Whitby Library. In London, he'd already begun notes for a new novel. When he started, he didn't have a name for the character. His early notes were labeled, simply, “Vampire.” It was at the Whitby Library, reading a book about middle-European history, that Stoker found the name that sounded right:
Dracula
.

THE VAMPIRE, “I AM DRACULA”

T
he elements of the story have become tightly interwoven into popular culture, but the plot of the original novel
Dracula
still surprises with unexpected twists.

The first page contains a dry little paragraph in which the author establishes the epistolary tale: “How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them.” It is Stoker's reassuring throat-clearing to lull the readers into his fiction.

Then the first four chapters take us directly to Transylvania, according to “Jonathan Harker's Journal (Kept in Shorthand).” Harker has been following the travel instructions of a Count Dracula, working his way into Eastern Europe. A former solicitor's clerk who has just taken his examinations and received word that he's a “full-blown solicitor,” Harker has been sent to “explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner.” He travels through Budapest and Bistritz, keeping a travelogue and noting the colorful meals that he's been served and the local dress of the peasants.

The journey becomes more haunting as he proceeds toward Transylvania. When Harker is about to leave for the Borgo Pass, his hosts at an inn become concerned about his travels. An old lady warns him that his journey will take place on the eve of Saint George's Day, a day with supernatural connotations. She places a rosary with a crucifix over his neck, “for your mother's sake.”

During his ride in the coach, Harker notices “an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags . . . in the distance . . . snowy peaks.” Here Stoker's descriptions of the landscape are purely imaginative; he never set foot in Transylvania and his mountain range is an exaggerated caricature of the Borgo Pass. But the Carpathians of
Dracula
are analogous for the increasing nightmare of Jonathan Harker's journey. At the pass, a mysterious driver and a carriage arrive to take him to Dracula's castle.

When Jonathan Harker arrives, Dracula greets him at the great door by saying, “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” Dracula's greetings are oddly jumbled; he tells Harker he is “welcome” three separate times, and then offers an innocuous and cheery greeting, that Harker should “Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!” Then he finally introduces himself: “I am Dracula.”

He is described as “an old man,” tall, thin, pale, clean-shaven except for a long white mustache that covers a set of red lips and sharp white teeth. His nose is thin and aquiline, with arched nostrils; his hair is “thin around the temples” but full and long. His eyes glow red. His breath is rank and horrifies Harker when Dracula passes close to him.

Still, the Count presents himself as a genial, if oddly unpleasant, host and he is anxious to talk in English to his new guest, share stories about his country, and hear about the property he is about to purchase in London: Carfax Abbey in Purfleet. The solicitor's clerk has helpfully taken Kodak photographs of the abbey for the new owner—a surprisingly modern twist in the cold depths of Transylvania.

Harker notices that Dracula's castle is dusty and neglected, although a fine small library is at his disposal, including English guidebooks and railway schedules that the Count has been studying. Dracula will not eat, drink, or smoke in front of Harker, making various excuses, but he serves his guest dinner and sits with him, offering friendly conversation.

But something seems wrong. Harker notices that there are no servants present. Dracula has evidently been making his dinner, clearing the plates, arranging the bedclothes, and—on one night—carrying his guest to bed, undressing him, and folding his clothes into a neat bundle. This domestic Dracula presents an unpleasant and unexpected image, especially as Harker begins to hear the rules of the mysterious castle. Dracula is absent for most of the day, and he forbids Harker from entering certain rooms, from writing unauthorized letters, or from sleeping anywhere except the room assigned him. Harker comes to realize that he's a captive, and Dracula inexplicably demands that he stay in Transylvania for a month.

A peculiarity of the castle is that there are no mirrors in it. As Harker endeavors to shave, holding his own small shaving glass up to his face, he suddenly realizes that Dracula is in the room behind him, although he did not see his reflection in the mirror. Surprised, Jonathan nicks his chin with the razor. Dracula reacts to the blood, lunging for Harker's throat, but when he notices the rosary he quickly recoils, cautioning his guest against such careless accidents. Dracula picks up the mirror, saying, “This is the wretched thing that has done the mischief,” and tossing it out the window.

One evening, Harker has an astonishing revelation. He is peering out of his window and looks down the castle wall, where Dracula's room must be. Dracula's window opens and the old man crawls completely out of the room and proceeds down the castle, facedown “with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.” Dracula moves “as a lizard moves along a wall,” until he disappears.

—

When Jonathan Harker defies Dracula's warning and sleeps outside of his room, he discovers that he's reduced to a sort of stupor, a dreamlike state, watching everything through half-closed eyes. He is approached by three tempting and beautiful women, who laugh among themselves and discuss how “he is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.” The first bends over him, licking her lips and lowering her head until he feels her breath and teeth against his throat, providing an unexpected thrill.

Suddenly Dracula appears in the room, furious, snarling, and pushing the women away. “How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? . . . This man belongs to me!” The women protest, pointing out that they will now “have nothing.” Dracula offers them a wriggling cloth sack with something inside, and they eagerly carry it away. Harker is horrified by the thought that the sack contains a living child.

Dracula's courtly manner and obsequious attention to Jonathan Harker has now been erased. He boldly asks Harker to write three letters to his friends, postdating them weeks in advance. The letters are to explain that he's left the castle and that he is returning home from Bistritz. Harker studies the dates that Dracula suggests to him and concludes in his journal, “I now know the span of my life.”

Meanwhile, the mysterious Count has busied himself with preparations for his journey, and a troupe of Gypsies arrives to pack a number of large wooden boxes onto carts. Harker tosses letters down to the Gypsies, attempting to convince them to post them, but Dracula intercepts the letters, returning them to Harker's room. He arrogantly burns the letter to Harker's fiancée, Mina, bothered that it's been written in shorthand so that he cannot understand it. The following evening, as Harker looks out his window, he notices Dracula leave down the castle wall once again, this time wearing Harker's own traveling suit.

Harker's dire situation leads him to boldly explore the Count's room, which adjoins a graveyard. There a stack of large, coffin-like boxes have been filled with a layer of earth. In one of the boxes, Harker finds the body of the Count, with his eyes open but without a breath or heartbeat—apparently newly dead. The next day Dracula comes to his room, explaining that he will be leaving Transylvania and Harker will be free to leave on the following day. That night, Harker searches the Count's room again and finds him in his coffin, but now “the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck.” Dracula seems bloated, sated, “like a filthy leech.” When a group of local workmen, Szgany and Slovaks, arrive with their wagons to carry away Dracula's wooden boxes, Harker finds himself trapped again within the castle, awaiting his fate with the three deadly women. He writes of his resolve to scale the wall and escape, and then head back to England.

These first four chapters of the novel form a perfect Gothic tale of sensuality and danger, leaving the reader, quite literally, with a cliffhanger. The earnest Jonathan Harker's account of Eastern Europe, starting as a travelogue, ingeniously supports Stoker's reality. When Dracula enters the tale, he is a strange, fascinating, if fussy old nobleman, offering genuine hospitality and conversation. By the end of Harker's diary pages, the Count has been transformed into a murderous, blood-soaked monster lying prostrate in a coffin, seeming to sneer at his guest's fevered realizations.

—

Now the narrative shifts abruptly to Mina Murray's journal and correspondence. She is Jonathan's fiancée in England and awaits his return from his business trip to Transylvania. An assistant schoolmistress, Mina eschews the thought of the “New Woman” but still exhibits a modern, enlightened sensibility. She is learning shorthand and typing to help Jonathan in his career as a solicitor.

Mina's letters are exchanged with her school friend Lucy Westenra, a beautiful and coquettish young lady. They are planning a holiday together in the resort town of Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. Lucy writes, excitedly, that she has had three proposals of marriage in one day! The first is from a young physician and the proprietor of a lunatic asylum in London, John Seward. The second is from a gallant American cowboy and adventurer, Quincey Morris. But she refuses both and accepts the proposal of a third, her true love, Arthur Holmwood, the heir to the title Lord Godalming.

Dr. Seward's journal (kept via phonograph recordings on wax cylinders) notes his disdain at being refused, but he also includes the first notes of an unusual patient, R. M. Renfield, fifty-nine years old, who seems “morbidly excitable.” A few short letters reveal that all of Lucy's suitors—Seward, Morris, and Holmwood—are old friends; Seward and Morris congratulate Holmwood on his engagement and good-naturedly commiserate about their lost love.

The ladies meet in Whitby, where Lucy arrives with her mother. Their holiday is ruined by various concerns: Mina finds that Jonathan's letters to her have mysteriously stopped, raising concerns about his safety. In Whitby, Lucy returns to an old habit of sleepwalking, and her fiancé, Arthur, is delayed in joining her, as his father, Lord Godalming, is seriously ill.

Mina records some of her conversations with an old Whitby sailor, Mr. Swales, who is described as “nearly a hundred.” He is argumentative and difficult; he sniffs about the inscriptions on the tombstones, and the notion of resurrection. Mr. Swales is one of Stoker's typical, colorful, “dialect” characters, and Mina's journal, improbably, quotes long paragraphs of his monologue, so packed with Yorkshire slang as to be nearly indecipherable.

But Whitby proves to be mysterious. The novel now includes a long article from
The Dailygraph
that offers an account of a derelict ship, the
Demeter
, from Varna, which ran ashore at Whitby. The captain's body was found lashed to the wheel, a crucifix tied to his hand. The ship was otherwise empty, with a load of large wooden boxes filled with earth. According to the article, when the wreck was brought ashore, an immense dog or wolf leapt from the bow and ran away on the beach.

The captain's log was examined and it told a horrific story. The crew was haunted by the notion that a dark stranger was aboard; members of the crew disappeared mysteriously, and the ship seemed engulfed in fog throughout the journey. In the last log entry, the captain vowed, “I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He—It!—dare not touch. . . .”

Lucy and Mina attend the funeral of the
Demeter
's captain, which is marked by a sad procession of ships up the harbor. At night, Mina finds that Lucy has been sleepwalking again. In the middle of the night, Mina leaves the flat to find her, in her white nightdress, on their favorite seat near the ruined abbey. As she approaches, Mina notices a dark figure leaning over Lucy. Mina calls her friend's name; the dark figure lifts its pale white face and stares at Mina, but by the time she runs to her, Lucy is alone again, reclining languidly across the seat. Mina pins a shawl around her friend's neck and escorts her back to their room. The next morning, when Mina finds two small punctures on Lucy's neck, she assumes that the injury was caused by her own carelessness with the pin.

A letter from a convent hospital in Budapest offers Mina news of her fiancé. Sister Agatha of the convent, writing for Jonathan, explains that he's had “some fearful shock . . . in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful.” Mina instantly goes to Budapest, to find him slowly recovering from his horrors. There he entrusts her with his notebook, the diary of the nightmares at Castle Dracula, telling her he never wants to hear the contents. Unexpectedly, Jonathan asks her to marry him as soon as possible, and the ceremony is performed that afternoon, with Jonathan in his hospital bed.

—

Dr. Seward keeps busy with his patient Renfield, who has become increasingly agitated. Renfield collects flies and spiders and is observed eating the flies, obsessed with the thoughts of devouring life. He suggests that his “Master” is coming for him. When Renfield escapes from the asylum, he runs to Carfax Abbey, the property adjoining Seward's home and asylum. This is, of course, the old abbey that Dracula has just purchased, where the mysterious boxes of earth have now been delivered.

Arthur Holmwood, concerned about Lucy's health, contacts Dr. Seward, who puzzles over the symptoms and, in turn, wires his professor, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, in Amsterdam, asking him to come to London to consult.

At this point in the novel, the reader realizes that all of these characters, places, and events are being tied together into one story. Dracula has arrived at Whitby precisely when Harker's fiancée, Mina, was visiting there. He seduces Lucy exactly when Mina is called to Jonathan. He is moving into a property next to Dr. Seward in London, precisely when Lucy is put in Dr. Seward's care. He is exerting an influence over Renfield, increasing his madness, just as Seward contemplates the case. It would all be ridiculously coincidental were the novel not so infused with a weird supernatural quality. There seems to be a deliberate, diabolical force focusing on this small group of people.