The Vampyre By Dr. John Polidori

 The Vampyre 

By Dr. John Polidori

Dr. John Polidori was born on September 7th, 1795 in London. He was the eldest son of Gaetano Polidori, a well-known Italian scholar and translator, and Anna Maria Pierce, an English governess; and ended up with three brothers and four sisters (Did all of them survive childhood?  Because let’s just say that the childhood hazards in early 19th century London were… numerous.{as far as I could tell yes}). Dr. Polidori started off his life at high speed, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1815 before his 20th birthday with a medical degree, having defended a thesis on sleepwalking (Good job dude!). The very next year the famous Lord Byron hired him to be his personal physician and traveling companion (Traveling companion, huh?  Face it folks, the entire horror genre is queer as fuck, and there is no escaping it.{As far as I can find no one has suggested a romantic or sexual relationship between the two.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen but there’s not even any smoke…}). Dr. Polidori was part of that party in 1816 that was the start of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, remember this because we'll come back to this. Towards the end of 1816, Lord Byron dismissed him and he spent the rest of the year and part of 1817 wandering Italy before returning to England. He spent four years trying to establish himself as a doctor or a writer and failed completely dying in 1821 widely assumed by suicide (Oh that… Fuck.).  

Now Dr. Polidori never meant for The Vampyre to see the light of day according to both him and Lord Byron. Remember that party? Well Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a story about a man using a traveling companion to hide evidence of his own death for some sinister purpose, but never wrote a good beginning or end for it. Giving up completely on it. Dr. Polidori claims he used it as inspiration for The Vampyre because a young lady that he refused to ever name dared him to do it. He claimed he left the full story with her and took off for Italy and later England when he parted ways with Lord Byron (Read: when Lord Byron broke up with him.{and fired him}). Somehow in 1818, the story ended up in a packet of documents that the owner of New Monthly, a magazine that was starting to flag against new competition and looking for a way to turn things around, like publishing a new Lord Byron story!  The owner of the magazine, against the advice of his own editor, published The Vampyre as Lord Byron's newest masterpiece. Well, it saved the magazine but completely outraged Lord Byron who publicly published letters crediting John Polidori as the author and calling the owner of the magazine a number of rather insulting names (Good on Lord Byron!). 

By then it was too late, as thousands had read it and it kick-started a vampire craze that in some ways continues to this day. Now, there are a couple of interesting things to note here.  First of all, the name of the villain Lord Ruthven was used by Carolina Lamb, a cast-off mistress of Lord Byron in a story she wrote to mock Lord Byron. This strongly suggests that some of Dr. Polidori's resentments towards his boss were being aired here (Oh my catty Fellow-Queers, going all literary Mean Girls...). Second, are the changes that Dr. Polidori made to the Vampire myth. Vampires weren't unknown to English audiences, having appeared as Arabic or Eastern European monsters in various poems and such in the past, but there was no real agreement on what made a vampire, a vampire, in English literature. 

In Eastern Europe, the vampire was mainly a rural problem. Vampires mostly (but not only) arose when an evil person committed suicide. They were allowed to remain on Earth to bedevil the living, slipping out of their graves at night to prey on their families and friends. The cure was to dig them right back up, stake, and behead them. So the majority of vampires were peasants who preyed on other peasants (Fucking class traitor undead.{I think expecting loyalty from the undead is a little much} The Charge of Dead Men in WW1 says otherwise!{Those guys weren’t actually dead yet!}). Dr. Polidori instead made the vampire urban, aristocratic, and instead of preying on peasants under cover of night, preying on the upper-middle class that was close to aristocratic society but not really a part of it. He also added or at least intensified the sexual element of vampirism, Lord Ruthven is drawn to innocent women that he can corrupt before destroying; especially those in committed relationships, to maximize the amount of destruction he can do to others. His predatory actions are covered from sight by a veil of rank, power, and privilege and above all the silence of those who know (Might be some commentary on English society here…). 

It's this version of the vampire that seems to have the most staying power honestly (For reasons that are obvious to everyone.). As it's the one that returns over and over in the last 200 years. A creature of the night that is not human but entrenched in human society to the point of being part of the top of the social pyramid, and using that to cover its ravening of humanity. We certainly see elements of this in Dracula, where the vampire is an aristocrat who preys on people lower down the social hierarchy than himself. When we think about it, there is certainly a space for such a monster in our modern lives isn't there (Jeffrey Bezos {I was actually thinking of Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly, etc.})? This is maybe why the monster in the story remains while the very passive hero of the story is all but forgotten. 

The story is told in third-person narration, mostly from the view of Aubrey, a young man who is described as viewing the world around him in deeply naive and romantic terms (Oh that sweet summer child…). He befriends Ruthven, but upon learning that he’s actually a terrible person who loves destroying innocent people’s lives breaks with him but not before foiling his designs on a young Italian lady. He takes off to Greece where he falls in love with a young lady, and it's there that he learns about the superstition of the vampire. It's not the elaborate superstition that we're used to but a rather straightforward and brutal one. Vampires are real, they are supernatural in their strength, speed, and hunger; and if you are out exposed in the dark of night, they will kill you and there's nothing you can do about it. So being inside before sunset, that's your only protection. 

Aubrey being an English Protagonist in Eastern Europe doesn't fucking listen to the natives (The original sin of all English protagonists, so it seems.{They do seem rather arrogant in most of the works I’ve reviewed huh?}) and only survives because his love comes out into darkness after him and sacrifices herself for him. Heartbroken, Aubrey does the most Victorian thing he can do: swoon into invalid sickness.  I shouldn't be too hard on Victorians, although they seem frail to my modern sensibilities.  After all, they live in homes that are 70% poison by weight, drink polluted waters, and breathe polluted air.  That can't be good for their ability to resist sudden assaults of any-type.  It's honestly a bloody wonder any of them survive long enough to procreate and raise children, so a bit of frailty should be understandable.  Still... They do seem to love swooning and becoming unable to care for themselves at any emotional or psychological shock. (I would comment further here but… this paragraph is perfection.)

At this point, Lord Ruthven reappears and cares for Aubrey and they mend their friendship agreeing to hunt vampires together. This ends up leading to Lord Ruthven seeming killed by bandits and he swears Aubrey to keep his death secret for a year and a day (Don’t do it bro!  You know what he is!). Aubrey agrees and Lord Ruthven dies laughing. Aubrey returns to Italy, finding the lady he had protected from Lord Ruthven has died, distressed, he returns to England and sinks into an understandable depression. Of course, then Lord Ruthven returns and invokes Aubrey's own oath against him while working his wiles on Aubrey's beloved sister. The stress of wanting to protect his sister and being unable to break his oath drives him mad (Why?  Just break your oath bro!  Seriously, that was bad faith in the worst way.{I’m not sure there may have been a supernatural element but it could just be Aubrey swooning over his honor, the story is unclear}), especially since he finds out that his sister is going to marry Lord Ruthven. Aubrey decides at this point to break his oath by writing a letter to his sister explaining everything but it's too late, Lord Ruthven has married his sister and murdered her. 

As you can see the story is very basic and if you read the original prose, it's very much a product of its time. Much is said in metaphor or cloaked in very purple prose. Meaning that a modern reader might have trouble following exactly what is going on. I honestly found it rather staid and kinda dry for a horror story. I would blame this on the period, but honestly, I've read the original Frankenstein and found it much better written and understandable. The biggest contribution here is the Vampire himself and Dr. Polidori does a wonderful job of crafting a memorable and despicable villain; if a rather simple and straightforward one. Lord Ruthven is simply a monster driven by its horrid hunger with barely anything covering those unwholesome appetites. The basic elements that make the vampire memorable are there but it's missing the spark, the dark flame that will carry it forward and mesmerize people for centuries. It's up to later writers like Bram to add additional complexity (And queerness) and motivation to the vampire. 

If I had to grade The Vampyre by John Polidori in a modern context, I'd have to give it a C- at best, which I can already hear my readership recoiling at the sheer gall and arrogance I'm displaying by that. The story is, however, very valuable in transporting the Vampire from the rural mists of Eastern Europe, a predator of peasants by peasants that can be safely ignored, into an aristocrat hunting in the very drawing rooms in the center of civilization as the audience of time understood it. Turning it into a creature of dread that the average reader had to realize they had precious little protection from. For that Dr. John Polidori deserves better than he got. But I suppose having created something that will remain in the public memory for centuries is a fairly good legacy and it is certainly a rare one. Next, in our opening of Fangsgiving we look at Carmilla but no need to wait, we're opening with a double header!