Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

Chapter 9

VAMPIRES!

Recent medical studies have shed new light upon the age-old myth of the bloodsucking vampire. In 1985, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Canadian biochemist proposed that vampires of folklore might have actually existed--not as monsters so much as victims of a rare blood disorder. As Time magazine reported, "The creatures who haunted those drafty old castles were actually the victims of a rare hereditary blood disease called porphyria (Seligmann, 72)." Porphyria is caused by the deficiency of heme, one of the pigments in oxygen-carrying red blood cells (72).

In his own lifetime Prince Eddy was considered sickly, although no actual diagnosis was ever made public. Since he came from the "tainted" blood of George III, he might have suffered from porphyria, and the resulting madness could have driven him to hunt "new blood." David Dolphin at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver suggests, "Vampires might have been porphyria victims, sucking the blood of those closest to them in a desperate effort to acquire the heme their bodies could not make (Seligmann, 72)."

Eddy came from the line of George III through his grandmother, Queen Victoria; however, the transmission of porphyria could very well have happened through Eddy's own father, Edward VI. In legend, victims bitten by vampires become vampires themselves. Professor Dolphin believes this tendency happens in families of porphyria victims where symptoms may not appear unless some stressful event activates them. He explains, "If someone drank a lot of your blood, that would certainly be stressful (72)." The Spierling theory argues that the Ripper murders were somehow Eddy's retaliation against his father, Bertie. Could "Collar and Cuffs" be hiding an old family secret? "He wore a high collar to hide the same scar, from the same cause, which disfigured his mother's neck," Harrison remarks--without ever revealing the cause (151). Had Edward VII initiated his son into the horrors of porphyria, activating the blood lust in the autumn of 1888? Once, in a speech at the Destitute Children's Home at Radwich, Eddy quoted this scriptural passage from First Chronicles 21:17: "Some bone marks of the affliction that comes of their parents' sins (Harrison, 45)." Those marks of afflictions can even be worn on royal necks and wrists.

Making a royal prince a mass murderer by way of vampirism seems a very baroque method of reasoning, unless other members of the family also exhibited the same symptoms of porphyria and vampirism. Some of these symptoms are very readily recognized. In extreme cases of porphyria, the disease is responsible for facial deformities, photosensitivity, madness, and finally death. Dolphin believes:

Because the disorder is characterized by extreme sensitivity to sunlight, anyone afflicted did well to stay indoors during the daytime, just like the 'children of the night,' as vampires and werewolves were sometimes called. Exposed to daylight, porphyria victims risked having their skin disfigured by sores, scars and excessive hairiness; sometimes the nose and fingers would fall off. The skin of the lips and gums stretched and tightened, making the teeth look like fangs (72).

The physical descriptions bring to mind the red-mottled face of Victoria's Uncle Ernest, the Duke of Cumberland, who was considered monstrous not only because of his appearance but also because of his vicious behavior--he was accused of cutting his valet's throat (Longford, 17). The Duke of Cumberland was the son of King George III, notorious for madness attributed to porphyria. George III was also the Hanover father found at the throat of his heir, the Prince Regent, later George IV.

Other possible sufferers of vampirism in the royal line may include Empress Alexandra of Russia and Prince Asturias of Spain. Empress Alexandra was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria through Princess Alice. The description of the empress by Paleoque, the French Ambassador at the Imperial Court, suggests someone not quite human: "The Empress used to look fixedly into vacancy, her smile quickly became set, and her characteristic shy blush alternated with livid pallor. Her bluish lips were swollen, and the diamond ornament on her breast rose and fell with her labored breathing (90)." Concerning Prince Asturias, great grandson to Victoria through Princess Beatrice, "There was a macabre rumour prevalent among the simpler-minded Spanish peasants, which no number of official denials could stamp out, that a young soldier had to be sacrificed every day in order that his warm blood might be used to keep the heir apparent alive (Aronson, 281-282)." More interesting than whether or not the British royal family were vampires is the question of whether they believed themselves to be vampires. Certainly  Victoria and Albert were concerned about family bloodlines. Queen Victoria once wrote to Vicky, the Empress Frederick, "Darling Papa often with vehemence said, 'We must have some strong dark blood (Aronson, 170).'"

The Queen herself was intrigued by vampires as indicated in her diary. On November 23, 1880, she wrote after reading Jane Eyre: "The description of the mysterious maniac's nightly appearances is awfully thrilling (Hibbert, 265)." Here is the description that Jane gives Rochester in Chapter 25:

'Fearful and ghastly to me--oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face--it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and fearful blackened inhalation of the lineaments!'
'Ghosts are usually pale, Jane.'
'This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?'
'You may.'
'Of the foul German spectre--the vampire.'

Perhaps this description evokes some memory of a German folk tale the Queen had heard from childhood. Both she and Prince Albert, being Hanoverian and Saxe-Coburg, were German themselves, and as Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula says about the vampire, "He flourish [sic] in Germany all over (Chapter 19)."

Dracula is a good starting point in investigating legitimate beliefs about the vampire. Too many modern perceptions about this creature of folklore are based upon cinematographic conventions. For example, most people believe vampires to be children of the night, unable to leave their coffins by day. However, Paul Twitchell, in Dreadful Pleasures, writes, "In pre-cinematic folklore the vampire was super-powerful in moonlight and only ordinary during the day. Hence Bram Stoker's Dracula walked undetected around London at noontime in a business suit and straw hat (106)." While movies notoriously sacrifice veracity for thrills, Dracula has been praised for exact adherence to the history and folklore of the parallels between Victoria's biographies and Bram stoker's fiction.

In Chapter XVIII of Dracula, Dr. Van Helsing gives a catalog of definitive traits by which a vampire can be recognized:

We have [sic] still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply [sic], the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements; the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the  meaner things: the rat, and the owl, and the bat--the moth, and the fox, and the wolf; he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown.

As for necromancy, Queen Victoria's divination with the dead accompanied by John Brown and Robert Lees has come to be accepted as common knowledge. Though not accepted historically, persistent rumors claim that contact with Prince Albert was made in which the dead consort would return upon her command.

As for brutishness, Queen Victoria was never known by word, thought, or deed to be a brute; though many of the policies implemented by her ministers could be characterized as brutish, Britain's constitutional monarchy gave her little actual power. However, there is one peculiar characteristic of a brute that has been attached to her by even the most adoring biographers--vile smells! Cecil Woodham-Smith writes that during the reign of Victoria, "Buckingham Palace also contained more dangerous defects, drains which did not function, unsatisfactory ventilation, accumulations of vile-smelling rubbish unseen below stairs . . . (265)." It is interesting that the fetid odors should not have come below stairs where servants worked and presumably garbage might fester. The only alternative is that the "vile-smelling rubbish" must have been upstairs "unseen" in the private apartments or the rooms of state. Compare Woodham-Smith's description of vile smells with this passage from Stoker's Dracula:

But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. Faugh! It sickens me to think of it. Every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness (Chapter XIX).

Another characteristic suggesting the brute was the cold-blooded nature of the Queen. Cecil Woodham-Smith declares, "The Court 'shivered in icy magnificence,' but the Queen was not affected. Later the chilliness of Balmoral was dreaded by her Court (265)." Compare this trait with the description of Count Dracula: "His hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice . . . (Chapter II)."

As for directing the elements--the storm, the fog, the thunder--there is a legend commented upon by various historians concerning the Queen's Weather. No matter how inclement the weather conditions might be, the Queen had only to order a perfect day, and that glorious sunshine arrived right on schedule. On the morning of Victoria and Albert's wedding, Woodham-Smith relates, "'Dreadful day,' wrote Greville, 'torrents of rain, and violent gusts of wind . . . ' Later the day cleared and the sun broke through to bring the brilliant sunshine so regularly attendant on the Queen's activities that it was known as 'Queen's Weather (206).'"

Sometimes the Queen's prerogative had disastrous effects. As Michael Harrison explains, "It was the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and of what came to be called, 'Jubliee Weather--a six weeks' drought in which not a single drop of rain fell in any part of Great Britain, driving the farmers to despair (126)."

As for commanding all meaner things--the rat and owl and bat, the moth and the fox and the wolf--no direct link has ever been made between Queen Victoria and any of these animals. However, there is the striking coincidence of the toads. In 1848 a group of Chartists, members of Britain's upstart labor movement, descended upon Cowes ready to petition voting rights from the Queen on the Isle of Wight. What was feared by the government to be a potentially inflammatory act of sedition was defused by a sudden rain storm in which the sky incredibly rained toads, as if nature were contemptuously dampening the political rally (Longford, 197).

As for appearing at will, becoming small, and vanishing altogether, Queen Victoria lived out a life of remote seclusion in order to mourn the death of Prince Albert and commune with his spirit. For more than 10 years, her subjects were denied any public appearance, and even after opening Parliament in 1871, the Queen disappeared from public record due to a bee sting. The bee sting was the official explanation, but Stanley Weintraub remains skeptical. He writes, "Given the severity of her complications--for one reason or another, she was incapacitated for nearly three months--the record is puzzlingly thin, with much evidence of cover-up (364)." Mysterious in her comings and goings, and inscrutable in her disappearances, the Queen caused her Prime Minister, Gladstone, to remark, "The Queen is invisible . . . (360)."

There are many traits Queen Victoria and Count Dracula share superficially. She was given to morbid feelings of melancholia in which she would celebrate the deaths of friends and relatives. She enjoyed visiting tombs and gravesites, especially the mausoleum at Frogmore where Prince Albert was buried. Count Dracula would have understood these feelings perfectly; as he told Jonathan Harker, "We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead . . . I am no longer young and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth (Chapter II)." Anecdotal evidence shows surprising parallels between Prince Albert and the Count. Neither liked mirrors. Dracula despised mirrors, for being soulless, he had lost his reflection. Near death, Prince Albert became frightened of mirrors and the visions he saw in them. Lady Elizabeth Longford writes, "He could see the Blue Room reflected in a mirror and thought that he was back in the nightmarish gloom of Holyrood Palace [Scotland]. She had his pillows lowered so that the mirror and its ghoulish reflections were out of sight (298)." Another striking coincidence between the Prince and the Count is the significance of "old earth." At the end of the novel, Dracula is turned out of his coffin filled with old earth, thereby exposed to sunlight and destroyed. After Prince Albert's death, the Queen cryptically confided to Lord Hertford, "The Prince had caught the fever from watching 'old earth' being turned up at the International Exhibition (Longford, 312)."

Also noteworthy is Queen Victoria's attraction to throats. On February 11, 1840, the day after her wedding to Prince Albert, Victoria penned in her diary:

When day dawned (for we did not sleep much) and I beheld that beautiful angelic face by my side, it was more than I can express! He does look so beautiful in his shirt only, with his beautiful throat seen. We got up at 1/4. When I had laced I went to dearest Albert's room, and we breakfasted together. He had a black velvet jacket on, without any neckcloth on, and looked more beautiful than it is possible for me to say (Hibbert, 64).

Two days later, she wrote, "My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me. I went in and saw him shave; a great delight for me (65)." By then Albert's health was already failing. Two days earlier, Queen Victoria wrote, "Poor dear Albert felt sick and uncomfortable, and lay down in my room (64)." His health would remain indifferent as long as he stayed in England. In fact, his early death had been described as a death wish (Morris, 393) because of the enormous appetites of the Queen, who used him up (Longford, 292). Perhaps influenced by the family curse, Albert's own fatalism caused his premature demise. He was always overly concerned about protecting his family, ever fearful of its imminent destruction, as if something inherently unhealthy flowed through their blood. If porphyria or hemophilia, or even an unholy curse, should cause family members to become vampires, need all members of the family be afflicted?

Certainly not. As the great vampire authority Bram Stoker writes:

There have been from the loins of this very one [Dracula] great men and good women, and their graves make sacred earth where alone this foulness can dwell. For it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good; in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest (Chapter XVIII).

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