Dracula’s Brethren Read online

  The frontispiece from the 1820 edition of ‘The Bride of the Isles’.

  Copyright

  HARPER

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

  Selection, Introduction, and Notes © Richard Dalby and Brian J. Frost 2017

  Cover design and illustration by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008216481

  Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008216498

  Version: 2017-04-05

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  The Bride of the Isles by Anonymous (1820)

  The Unholy Compact Abjured by Charles Pigault-Lebrun (1825)

  Viy by Nikolai Gogol (1835)

  The Burgomaster in Bottle by Erckmann-Chatrian (1849)

  Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (1869)

  Professor Brankel’s Secret by Fergus Hume (1882)

  John Barrington Cowles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1884)

  Manor by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1884)

  Old Aeson by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1890)

  The Mask by Richard Marsh (1892)

  The Last of the Vampires by Phil Robinson (1893)

  The Story of Jella and the Macic by Professor P. Jones (1895)

  The Ring of Knowledge by William Beer (1896)

  A Beautiful Vampire by Arabella Kenealy (1896)

  The Story of Baelbrow by E. & H. Heron (1898)

  The Purple Terror by Fred M. White (1899)

  Glámr by Sabine Baring-Gould (1904)

  The Vampire Nemesis by ‘Dolly’ (1905)

  The Electric Vampire by F. H. Power (1910)

  Footnotes

  Bibliography

  About the Editors

  By the Same Editor

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  ARRANGED chronologically, the nineteen stories in this anthology are culled from books and magazines published between 1820 and 1910, a period noted for producing some of the finest vampire tales ever written. The first vampire story to make a significant impact on European literature was ‘The Vampyre,’ by John William Polidori, which set a precedent by depicting the vampire as an aristocrat. Erroneously attributed to Lord Byron when it was first published in the April 1819 issue of The New Monthly Magazine, this story subsequently inspired a surge of popular interest in vampires and established the vampire’s image as a fatal lover.

  In 1820 the French author Cyprien Bérard penned a novel-length sequel to Polidori’s story, titling it Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires. This, in turn, formed the basis for James R. Planché’s play The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, which had its first performance on the London stage in August 1820. Not long afterwards an anonymously-written short story adapted from the play, bearing the title ‘The Bride of the Isles: A Tale Founded on the Popular Legend of the Vampire,’ was put on sale by an enterprising Dublin publisher. Better than most vampire tales written in the early 1800s, its inclusion in the present volume marks its first appearance in an anthology exclusively devoted to vampire fiction.

  The earliest known vampire story by an American writer, Robert C. Sands’ ‘The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo’ (1819), broke new ground by featuring a mulatto vampire. A more significant innovation, the introduction of the female vampire into prose fiction, is the main claim to fame of Ernst Raupach’s ‘Wake Not the Dead,’ which was, for many years, falsely attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck. A cautionary tale about the folly of bringing the dead back to life, it was originally published in Leipzig in 1822, and received its first English translation a year later when it was included in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations. Less well-known is the quaintly titled story ‘Pepopukin in Corsica,’ in which a disagreeable suitor is sent packing by inspiring in him a dread of vampires. Originally published in 1827, in The Stanley Tales, Vol. 1, where it was credited to ‘A. Y.’, it was recently claimed that the author these initials belonged to was Arthur Young. Another story from the 1820s, this time by a French writer, is ‘The Unholy Compact Abjured’ (1825), by Charles Pigault-Lebrun, in which a soldier seeking shelter for the night encounters demonic vampires in a spooky chateau.

  Russian literature’s first major contribution to the vampire canon was Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Viy,’ which comes from his 1835 collection Mirgorod. Described by Edmund Wilson as ‘one of the most terrific things of its kind ever written,’ it is about a young philosopher’s frightening encounter with a witch-vampire and monstrous winged creatures under the control of the King of the Gnomes. The most famous vampire story from the 1830s is undoubtedly ‘La Morte Amoureuse’ (1836), by the French author Théophile Gautier. Anthologised many times under different titles (e.g. ‘Clarimonde,’ ‘The Dreamland Bride,’ and ‘The Beautiful Dead’), it tells of a young priest’s illicit relationship with a dead courtesan, whose beguiling revenant draws him into a fantastical dreamworld and nightly sucks small quantities of his blood to sustain her life-in-death existence.

  Meanwhile, in America, Edgar Allan Poe was turning out a string of morbid horror tales, several of which dealt with unusual forms of vampirism. In ‘Ligeia’ (1838), for instance, he introduced the idea of mental vampirism, linking it with the allied theme of metempsychosis. The ill-fated title character, a beautiful, highly intelligent woman, gradually wastes away as a result of her husband’s obsessive desire to know her completely; but, in a final twist, retribution for this subconscious act of vampirism seems likely when the dead woman’s spirit possesses the body of her marital successor, suggesting that the roles of vampire and victim will shortly be reversed. A variation on the same theme occurs in another of Poe’s stories, ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1845), in which an artist totally absorbed in capturing an absolute likeness of his lovely young bride is unaware of the devitalising effect it is having on her frail constitution, and fails to notice that with each sitting the woman’s life force is ebbing away. Psychic vampirism of an even more bizarre kind is the underlying theme of Poe’s masterpiece, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839). In this story the psychic vampire is the ancestral home of the Usher family, and its victims are the current occupants, Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline. By some hideous process, the ancient mansion – a sentient stone organism impregnated with the evil emanations of past generations of Ushers – is having a devitalising effect on the doomed couple, bringing the horror of madness into their lives. These three stories, along with two others utilising the vampire theme, ‘Morella’ (1835) and ‘Berenice’ (1835), were collected together in Dead Brides: Vampire Tales (1999).

  A story by one of Poe’s contemporaries,
James Kirke Paulding’s ‘The Vroucolacas,’ has, in the past, attracted the curiosity of vampire aficionados due to its extreme rarity, but since it has become accessible on an internet website any hopes that it might turn out to be a forgotten gem have sadly been dashed. Originally published in the June 1846 issue of Graham’s Magazine, it is about a frustrated suitor pretending to be a vampire in order to win the hand of his sweetheart. Vampiric possession is the theme of Erckmann-Chatrian’s ‘The Burgomaster in Bottle,’ which first appeared in the French journal Le Démocrate du Rhin in 1849. Since then, this story has strangely been overlooked by compilers of vampire anthologies, a situation finally rectified by its inclusion within these pages. The most frequently anthologised vampire tale from the 1840s is ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ the bloodsucking villain of which, Azzo von Klatka, is thought to have been the model for Count Dracula. Formerly uncredited, it has recently been established that the author of this story was a little-known German writer named Karl von Wachsmann, and it first appeared in print in 1844, which is much earlier than was previously supposed. Hereditary vampirism is the theme of Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s ‘Upyr,’ which was first published in 1841 under the pseudonym ‘Krasnorogsky.’ Also worth a brief mention is the vampire episode from Alexandre Dumas’s The Thousand and One Phantoms (1848), which usually bears the title ‘The Pale Lady’ when it is published separately.

  Novels with a vampire as the central character were something of a rarity in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the only one remembered today is Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood, which was originally published in weekly instalments between 1845 and 1847, coming out in book form immediately afterwards. The vampiric hero-villain of this long, rambling narrative is Sir Francis Varney, a tall, gaunt figure with cadaverous features, who is made even more frightening to look at by his glassy eyes, taloned hands, and fang-like teeth. He is also incredibly strong, can move about rapidly, and is a master of disguise. Even on those occasions where he is seemingly killed, he is subsequently revived by the Moon’s rays, allowing him to resume his nefarious activities. Finally, after an interminable series of escapades, Varney becomes tired of his life of horror, and ends it all by throwing himself into the crater of Mount Vesuvius. Currently available in a number of paperback editions, in which the novel’s authorship is attributed to either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas P. Prest, this crudely-written ‘penny dreadful’ is really only noteworthy for the influence it had on later writers, who reworked the variations on the vampire theme which it had introduced.

  In comparison with the previous decade, the 1850s were lean years for vampire fiction. The only work of any significance was Charles Wilkins Webber’s Spiritual Vampirism (1853), which had the distinction of being the first novel to have psychic vampirism as its theme. The following decade was more fruitful, producing some notable short stories featuring female vampires. Of these, none are more highly regarded than Ivan Turgenev’s ‘Phantoms’ (1864), the hero of which is repeatedly visited at night by a phantasmal female figure, who he suspects is secretly sucking his blood. The first vampire story by an Australian author, ‘The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale’ (1867), by Mary Fortune, centres on events that take place inside a strange house where everything in it is coloured white. A doctor’s desire to solve the mystery leads to the shocking discovery that this has been done by the owner of the property to placate his ward, a beautiful young noblewoman, who suffers from a rare type of anthropophagy, making her prone to homicidal rages whenever she sees something coloured scarlet. One of the earliest appearances of the ‘vamp’ – the name usually given to a heartless, man-eating seductress – was in ‘A Vampire,’ an episode in G. J. Whyte-Melville’s Bones and I; or, The Skeleton at Home (1868). Calling herself Madame de St Croix, this insatiable sexual vampire has remained youthful and desirable over many years and has acquired a string of lovers, all of whom have died in mysterious circumstances. On more traditional lines is William Gilbert’s ‘The Last Lords of Gardonal’ (1867), in which a nobleman is attacked by his beautiful bride on their wedding night, unaware that she has been brought back to life by a wizard’s magical powers, and can only survive in her present state by sucking her husband’s blood.

  Vampirism of a much more unusual kind occurs in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse’ (1869). In this chilling tale an ancient curse is activated when a seed found in a mummy’s wrappings is planted, and the white flower it bears slowly absorbs the vitality of a young woman after she pins it to her dress. One of the least effective stories from the 1860s is ‘The Vampire; or, Pedro Pacheco and the Bruxa’ (1863), by William H. G. Kingston. Although the main narrative is preceded by a fascinating account of the activities of vicious Portuguese vampires called Bruxas, their non-appearance in the story itself is something of a letdown.

  The only vampire-themed novels from the 1860s remembered today are Le Chevalier Ténèbre (1860) and La Vampire (1865), both of which were written by Paul Féval. In the earlier novel, two notorious male siblings, one a ghoul, the other a vampire, periodically emerge from their 400-year-old graves and go on the rampage. The later novel features the equally formidable Countess Addhema – a pale, fleshless old woman with a bald pate – who is temporarily transformed into a ravishing beauty every time she applies to her bare skull a living head of hair torn from one of her beautiful young female victims. Féval added to his tally of vampire novels in the following decade, penning La Ville Vampire in 1874. A parody of early nineteenth century Gothic novels, its unlikely heroine is the real-life author Ann Radcliffe, who mounts an expedition to find the legendary vampire-infested city of Selene, hoping to rescue a friend who has been taken there following her abduction by the evil vampire lord Otto Goetzi.

  The first story to feature a lesbian vampire was Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ (1871). In this frequently anthologised classic a young woman named Laura is visited nightly in her bedchamber by the new house guest, the alluring Carmilla, and is drawn into an increasingly intimate relationship with her. Thereafter, Laura’s health declines, raising fears that she is the victim of a vampire. It eventually transpires that Carmilla is the revenant of Countess Mircalla Karnstein, who has been dead for more than one hundred and fifty years.

  In the 1880s – looked on today as the beginning of supernatural fiction’s golden era – there was a noticeable broadening of the vampire story’s scope. For example, bigotry, and the tragic circumstances that may arise from it, provides the basis for Eliza Lynn Linton’s ‘The Fate of Madame Cabanel’ (1880), in which a young Englishwoman living among superstitious French peasants is brutally murdered after being mistaken for a vampire. In contrast, Phil Robinson’s ‘The Man-Eating Tree’ (1881) is about an arboreal vampire poetically described as ‘a great limb with a thousand clammy hands.’ In another offbeat story, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ ‘Manor’ (1884), a drowned sailor’s corpse becomes reanimated and issues from its grave at night to suck the blood of a youth who had been in a homosexual relationship with the dead man. A unique story from 1886 which is still capable of sending shivers up and down readers’ spines is Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Horla,’ the narrator of which fears he has become the plaything of an invisible vampire. Psychic vampirism is the theme of Frank R. Stockton’s ‘A Borrowed Month’ (1886), in which a young man suffering from a debilitating illness discovers that, by the force of his will, he can draw energy and vitality from his friends. Psychic vampirism of a more sinister kind is practised in Conan Doyle’s ‘John Barrington Cowles’ (1884); this time the perpetrator is a beautiful, sadistic woman who luxuriates in her ability to destroy her lovers.

  Sabine Baring-Gould’s ‘Margery of Quether’ (1884) is, without doubt, one of the oddest vampire stories in English literature. Satirising the politics of its day – with many references to the controversial reforms to the land laws – it was popular for a while, but soon sank into a lengthy period of obscurity. However, since its inclusion in Vintage Vampire S
tories (2011) this story’s cynical humour can now be savoured once again. A more conventional story, Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s ‘The Family of the Vourdalak,’ draws its inspiration from Serbian folklore. Originally written in 1839, but not published until 1884, it tells of a French diplomat’s frightening encounter with vampires, which happens when he stops for the night at a village, and discovers it is deserted apart from a single family, all of whom have been transformed into vampires after the head of the household was bitten by one.

  Two other significant stories from the 1880s are ‘Ken’s Mystery’ (1883), by Julian Hawthorne, and ‘A Mystery of the Campagna’ (1887), by ‘Von Degen’ (pseudonym of Anne Crawford). In the former, the hero becomes romantically entangled with a legendary vampiress after travelling with her into the past through the agency of a magic ring; and, in the latter, a composer holidaying in Italy becomes the victim of a centuries-old vampiress whose sarcophagus is concealed in an underground burial chamber.

  As might be expected from one of the most fertile periods in the history of supernatural fiction, the final decade of the nineteenth century yielded a rich harvest of vampire stories, several of which are among the finest ever written. Particularly outstanding is Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Parasite,’ which is a compelling tale about a psychic vampire. Originally published in Harper’s Weekly, 10 November–1 December 1894, it revolves around the machinations of a frail, middle-aged spinster who is able to control the thoughts and actions of other people by her amazing mental powers. In particular, she conceives a passion for a university professor, whom she hypnotises in an attempt to make him reciprocate her love, eventually resorting to vampiric possession when this ploy fails.

  One of the few stories from the 1890s to feature a psychic vampire of the male gender is ‘Old Aeson’ (1890), by Arthur Quiller-Couch, which tells how a man who gives shelter in his home to a decrepit stranger soon lives to regret his charity when his guest usurps his position in the household by stealing his youth and most of his substance. Two other stories from the 1890s with psychic vampirism as their main motif are ‘A Modern Vampire’ (1894), by W. L. Alden, in which an author has his energy drained by a pretty young woman he has befriended; and ‘A Beautiful Vampire’ (1896), by Arabella Kenealy, whose central character, a menopausal woman, steals beauty and sexual energy from those around her in order to remain attractive to members of the opposite sex.