“The Old Portrait” (1890)

I thought it was unusual to find this Hume Nisbet story in the Vampire Tales anthology for a couple of reasons. First, it’s the second Nisbet story in the volume. Not many other writers here—which includes most of the public domain greats—get that treatment, and it is a large volume. Then, even though both stories are dated incorrectly—both as 1900, whereas ISFDB has both as 1890—they are separated by other stories. I know this anthology was put together by a person or people taking advantage of the ease of scraping online public domain material, and probably doing it in a hurry, but generally they seem to know what they’re doing. Just so, both “The Old Portrait” and “The Vampire Maid” are pretty good. “The Old Portrait” is Nisbet’s first published story, per ISFDB, and the better of the two. Nisbet (not to be confused with E. Nesbit) may be worth seeking out further. “The Old Portrait” is very short, with a somewhat strained yet intriguing premise. Our first-person narrator has a hobby and keen interest in picture frames and framing, which is how we get to “the old portrait” he has acquired for the frame on a December day. Picture and frame are so dirty none of the details of the image or woodwork can be made out. On Christmas Eve, our guy goes to work gently with soap and hot water and eventually finds an image that “asserted its awful crudeness, vile drawing, and intense vulgarity.” Good thing he bought it just for the frame! But hark, it turns out the vile portrait of some publican and his jewelry was actually painted over something else, which in turn our guy goes to work industriously removing. After midnight, he finds the image of a woman, and then the image begins to hypnotize him. He describes the woman in increasing detail, in effusive and poetic terms. We can see even through this that she looks like a corpse. Well, after all, I suppose this is why we find it in an anthology called Vampire Tales (to be fair, it could also fit in Christmas-themed anthologies). These stories often involve things more accurately described as wannabe vampires. It gets to be part of their charm, and you have to classify this story as one such. The vampire lives inside the painting under a coat of paint and another of dirt. Even the ever-loving frame is now revealed as corrupt: “what had before looked like scrollwork of flowers and fruit were loathsome snake-like worms twined amongst charnel-house bones.” More developments: “I thought the frame was still on the easel with the canvas, but the woman had stepped from them and was approaching me with a floating motion.” This is another vampire story where (spoiler) the victim somehow lives to tell the tale. I like the way it takes on its vampire via the medium of painting and manages to pull it off.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
Read story online.
Listen to story online.