It was 1816, and Lord Byron had invited a few friends to spend time at his villa near Lake Geneva. Among these friends were fellow poet Percy Shelley and his 18-year old wife Mary Shelley, and also John Polidori, his personal physician. “It proved a wet, ungenial summer”, Mary Shelley later wrote.
1816 has been named the Year Without a Summer, because of a climate disaster that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora that left most of the world shrouded in clouds and significantly colder. Because of this, the friends were forced to stay inside most of the time. To wile away the hours, and promted by the nastiness of the weather, they decided to tell each other ghost stories and tales of horror. Being poets themselves, it was Lord Byron who suggested they have a contest to see who could write the scariest ghost story to tell to the others. Probably the most notable of these was Mary’s contribution, which later evolved into her first novel: “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” in 1818. But slightly less well known was Byron’s contribution “A Fragment”, which Polidori later used as inspiration for “The Vampyre” in 1819, which is often considered to be the first real vampire fiction.
Now, vampires have a history much deeper than the 1800’s. They have been around since at least the Middle Ages, predominantly in slavic cultures (which gave us the word Upir that became Vampire). Their legend is presumed to stem from the misinterpretation of bodily decay. Recently buried corpses, when dug up, looked more alive, with blood entering the capillaries more freely and longer hair and fingernails. They also looked bloated from intestinal gases, which could also push blood up and out of the mouth, making it look as if they had been feeding. Clearly these were no ordinary corpses, but a manifestation of Evil! In the eighteenth century, when the Austrian Empire spanned into the east, western Europeans were introduced to the local customs. It was a grim place, with many dying from unknown diseases and plague. They described the strange rituals that intended to prevent the dead from rising, and a vampire hysteria swept across Europe. The austrian empress had to dispatch her personal physician, the dutch Gerard van Swieten, to disprove these strange rumors with scientific evidence. But by then the image of the vampire had already captured the imagination of artists, including later Polidori…
Polidori may have been the first to write about the vampire posing as a nobleman, but he certainly wasn’t the last. In 1872 Sheridan Le Fanu wrote “Carmilla”, a story about a female vampire that seduced the daughter of a nobleman. Both these works have been cited as inspiration for what is surely the most influencial piece of vampire fiction: Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”. It includes many elements of what we have seen before, such as the Eastern European Transsylvanian setting, rituals such as staking the heart and burying with garlic, and a learned dutch foreign doctor who battles the creatures of the night. (It also has a cowboy. Seriously, go read it, it’s worth it.)
However, if not for a critical copyright battle, Stoker’s masterpiece might have remained in darkness and obscurity. It was in 1922 with the advance of silent films, that a german studio adapted the book into the now-classic Nosferatu. Characters names and some plotpoints were changed, but Max Schreck as Count Orlok was clearly a Dracula stand-in. Florence Balcombe, Stoker’s widow, sued the studio, which went bankrupt shortly after. All copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but some survived, and it is now regarded as a masterpiece of early german cinema. To prevent further misuse, Florence gave copyright to a stage production of Dracula by Hamilton Deane, a family friend who had been a neighbor in Dublin. And here is where the titular vampire truly began to shine. Bela Lugosi’s performance was iconic, and lent many of the character’s iconic style such as the cape and Bela’s thick hungarian accent. He also portrayed the vampire in the 1931 movie production, which popularised the Transsylvanian nobleman even more.
Since then, there have been many interpretations of vampires and the illustrious Dracula. Notable ones include Christopher Lee in the Hammer Horror films of the 1950’s and 60’s, Frank Langella in Dracula (1979), Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992, the Anne Rice novels and the adaptation of Interview with the Vampire from 1994, and (although I hate to mention it) the Twilight Saga.
I think it is fair to say that, with its legacy, the Vampire has truly become immortal…
Thanks loves! It was really fun writing about the history of vampires. I am obliged to mention that I am not a proper researcher, and I probably misquoted and overexaggerated many of these details. But I think that it is in storytelling the vampire truly shines.
~ Love, Sanne
P.S. I did end up carving a pumpkin this Hallowe’en! I made an instagram post about it, if you want to see his cute little face.