“The Vampyre” (1819)

This story by John William Polidori is considered by some to be the first vampire story, but the claim is more about literary history, as vampire monsters appear to date well back into antiquity and oral traditions. Pu Songling’s “Blood-Drinking Corpse,” written at least 150 years earlier in China, alone provides evidence. Polidori’s story now has more interest as coming from the same writing session in June 1816 with Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron that produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel. Polidori, who would die a few years later at the age of 25, was there as Lord Byron’s attending physician—perhaps the source of laudanum that reportedly may have fueled the writing session, along with the thunderstorms that kept them housebound. Polidori was only 20 and, honestly, it shows in the quality of the writing. It is alternately rushed and slow and he often has trouble composing even competent sentences. “The Vampyre” is thus not an easy read, the language exasperatingly both antiquated and inexpert. Even Songling’s much shorter version feels more vampire-like. Polidori’s one innovation, and admittedly it’s an important one, was to make his vampire a debonair gentleman—certainly the aristocratic origins of Count Dracula are here in Lord Ruthven (later reincarnating himself as the Earl of Marsden). Lord Ruthven, with or without further aliases, went on to his own life in tales, plays, operas, and novels, notably including Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. In “The Vampyre,” he’s more of a silently operating louche Lothario figure, taking advantage of women. Most of the vampire stories I’ve read feature female vampires, which might be why I resist crediting this story’s influence, but it’s there and it’s big, of course. Lord Ruthven is more mysterious rake than uncanny monster, though he does have a murderous side. I kept hoping he would take advantage of Aubrey, his young protégé who rejects him and then reunites with him. But no, it’s more Aubrey’s sister that he is after. “Miss Aubrey” has little discernible personality, but the story does come most alive when she is in danger, which is not often enough. The language is antique, Polidori is not a bit of an experienced writer, and my kindle version is riddled with OCR typos. Historically important, yes, I can see that, but it’s a tough sled to read even without the typos.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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“The Spectre Bridegroom” (1819)

[spoilers] This story by Washington Irving may be his best known after “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” although in my opinion (with all due respect for him as a pioneer) “The Adventure of the German Student,” which came five years later, is his best I’ve seen. The earlier classics are all from Irving’s Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. This story is a little proud of its own cleverness but comes by it honestly as it is actually clever, and well done, though it never takes itself much seriously. Really it is the story of a prank, but a strange and macabre one. It turns out Irving was another Anglo-American infatuated with Germany. I don’t know how I missed this (maybe the Nazis). I know my Humanities 101 class in college started with Goethe, so it’s always been there for me to see. Irving based both “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” on German folklore and here he doesn’t even bother to move it out of Germany. It is a sitcom premise though it broods with gloomy atmosphere. A man is to marry a woman he has never met, arranged by their parents, but is attacked and killed by highway robbers on the way to the wedding. He and his old bosom buddy were already late, now this really tears it. The dead fiance’s companion—as it happens, an enemy of the bride’s family—immediately goes on to the wedding party to pass the news. Now comes the comedy part. The bride’s family is so happy and relieved he has arrived he can’t get a word in edgewise. They presume he is the groom none of them has ever seen. Yes, we’re approaching stretcher territory now. In all the confusion he and the bride fall in love at first sight. More sitcom: our pretender has the presence of mind to strike on a brilliant idea. Granted he has the whole evening to work it out, but basically he makes himself more and more gloomy as the evening goes along. At midnight, he announces dramatically that he must leave—he was killed earlier tonight by robbers and must be buried tomorrow. He leaves the wedding party stunned. At first they think he is astoundingly rude and then they are just astounded when they get the news. A more modern sensibility might end it somewhere around here as a kind of conte cruel with a sharp twist. This being 1819 and horror as we know it in its infancy, we carry on with the romance. He appears to the bride and conducts some other shenanigans as a ghost before cluing her in. The ending is also very sitcom, with all revealed and all forgiven and this former enemy of the family welcomed to marry their daughter, who loves him true, and happily ever after.

65 Great Tales of the Supernatural, ed. Mary Danby (out of print)
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"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1819)

Washington Irving's chestnut came out the year after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first published. That's some bona fides. It's old and it prefigures many things. I was exposed to it somewhere along the line—maybe I read it in junior high or saw TV productions or heard readings. Something. Whatever, I feel like I've always known it even if I don't always remember the details. This American brand of horror—Nathaniel Hawthorne provides more examples, though Edgar Allan Poe does not entirely fit the profile—is rooted in Puritanism, of course. In 1819, Puritanism might have been two centuries old, but it was still callow in comparison to the millennium-plus age of Europe's Roman Catholic Church, whose ancient corruption alone is a much better underpinning for ghosts, blasted spiritual lives, violence, and/or remorse. Let's not forget the druids and barbarian tribes and such either. Horror is one case where I generally favor the Europeans. Maybe because I was raised on it, or in it, American horror stories like this one too often feel close to yippee ki-yay tall tales folklore and myth, campfire ghost stories that rely too much on some cheap shock gimmick like the teller whispering and then standing up suddenly and howling. Who wouldn't get a jolt of adrenaline? But that's not really the point, is it? Here the one thing, the only thing, is headlessness (as opposed to heedlessness, though that is arguably part of the point too). "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" manages a few effective paragraphs near the end, with the Headless Horseman seemingly in hot pursuit of the hapless Ichabod Crane. But otherwise it is mostly endless setup and description at deadly plodding pace. The ending is terrible, and distinctly American as well. In fact, Irving often looks forward to Mark Twain here in the gentle notes of deadpan skepticism. But "Sleepy Hollow"—it was all a practical joke? Everything of weird interest is drained by that. Plus you hate to see a bully win (reminding me once again, as compulsive aside, that Donald Trump is a very old American story). Irving's language is antiquated too, as long as I'm complaining—I object to the frequency of "peradventure." Is this story really beloved by children? Is it beloved by anyone? It's not particularly beloved by me. I know it's a certain icon of American Halloween imagery and ritual but what does that mean? Irving's "Tom Walker and the Devil" is much better in every way, as I recall, though it is also dogged by problems of American horror. "Sleepy Hollow" is less overtly Puritan, set in the times following the American Revolutionary War, when the general project at hand was to build out the structures of a democratic society, in which case superstition necessarily needs to be treated skeptically. But the story often seems to have something less than moral clarity, with its implicit suggestion that bullies gain favor and power and then, in the natural order of things, banish intellectuals and teachers. Or maybe just, in my contrarian way, I don't like the story because everyone else seems to, especially at this time of year.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror, Weird and Supernatural Short Stories, pub. Dark Chaos
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