Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (38 page)

Eric, Count Stenbock

(1860–1895)

L
ATER IN THIS ANTHOLOGY,
you will find M. R. James’s story “Count Magnus.” A real (and considerably less frightening) Count Magnus appears in the true story of Eric Stenbock—his grandfather, who administered the paternal trust fund left behind by Eric’s father, who died when the boy was only a year old. Like Aleksei Tolstoy, Stenbock was born into a world of social advantages and material comfort, including other trust funds and his inheritance of both the title Count Eric and a vast family estate in Estonia. His father was an aristocratic Swede whose titles included Baron de Torpa and Count de Bogesun. Another grandfather was a Bremen-born textile businessman who emigrated to sooty Manchester and built Thirlestaine Hall in Cheltenham, where Erik Magnus Andreas Harry Stenbock was born. To this already formidable parade of names, he added Stanislaus when he converted to Catholicism.

Upon inheriting the Estonian estate at the age of twenty-five, Stenbock moved there and settled into a lifestyle reminiscent of that of Oscar Wilde, or perhaps of his creation Dorian Gray. Visitors to his home first passed a fox and a bear and a small herd of reindeer that lived in the garden, only to find their host lounging in a silk smoking gown with a snake around his neck. Stenbock smoked the air with incense, seduced his muse with opium, mixed famously toxic cocktails, cavorted in outlandish costumes, and populated the house with decadent statues of Eros and Buddha. His home was also a shrine to the Pre-Raphaelite works of Simeon Solomon, a painter of unconvincingly winged young men who sport shaggy rock-star locks and the requisite pouty Pre-Raphaelite lips. Stenbock knew Solomon, with whom he is thought to have been romantically (or at least sexually) involved. Stenbock’s sexual orientation was well-known within his circle, but he never suffered Solomon’s Wildean fate—hard labor for soliciting sexual favors from men.

After a couple of years in Estonia, Stenbock moved back to England and became a popular member of bohemian literary circles. He knew illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and poet William Butler Yeats. The latter memorably described Stenbock: “Scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men.” Stenbock published a single volume of dark but lively stories and three books of moody verse. In 1893, a newspaper review of his third volume of poems,
The Shadow of Death
, denounced it for “the maudlin sentiment, the affected preciousness, the sham mysticism,” and finally decided “it must be a parody.” Two years later, Stenbock died on the first day of Oscar Wilde’s trial.

“A True Story of a Vampire” first appeared in 1894 in his story collection
Studies of Death
, which is subtitled
Romantic Tales.
Interestingly, the female narrator is named Carmela; Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” had appeared only twenty-two years before. Stenbock also reverses the gender of the vampire and the victim, returning to the tense male-male attraction that showed up in vampire fiction as early as Byron and Polidori.

A True Story of a Vampire

V
AMPIRE STORIES ARE GENERALLY
located in Styria; mine is also. Styria is by no means the romantic kind of place described by those who have certainly never been there. It is a flat, uninteresting country, only celebrated by its turkeys, its capons, and the stupidity of its inhabitants. Vampires generally arrive by night, in carriages drawn by two black horses.

Our Vampire arrived by the commonplace means of the railway train, and in the afternoon. You must think that I am joking, or perhaps that by the word “Vampire” I mean a financial vampire. No, I am quite serious. The Vampire of whom I am speaking, who laid waste our hearth and home, was a real vampire.

Vampires are generally described as dark, sinister-looking, and singularly handsome. Our Vampire was, on the contrary, rather fair, and certainly not at first sight sinister-looking, and though decidedly attractive in appearance, not what one would call singularly handsome.

Yes, he desolated our home, killed my brother—the one object of my adoration—also my dear father. Yet, at the same time, I must say that I myself came under the spell of his fascination, and, in spite of all, have no ill-will towards him now.

Doubtless you have read in the papers
passim
of “the Baroness and her beasts.” It is to tell how I came to spend most of my useless wealth on an asylum for stray animals that I am writing this.

I am old now; what happened then was when I was a little girl of about thirteen. I will begin by describing our household. We were Poles; our name was Wronski: we lived in Styria, where we had a castle. Our household was very limited. It consisted, with the exclusion of domestics, of only my father, my governess—a worthy Belgian named mademoiselle Vonnaert—my brother, and myself. Let me begin with my father: He was old, and both my brother and I were children of his old age. Of my mother I remember nothing: she died in giving birth to my brother, who is only one year, or not as much, younger than myself. Our father was studious, continually occupied in reading books, chiefly on recondite subjects and in all kinds of unknown languages. He had a long white beard, and wore habitually a black velvet skull-cap.

How kind he was to us! It was more than I could tell. Still it was not I who was the favourite. His whole heart went out to Gabriel—Gabryel as we spelt it in Polish. He was always called by the Russian abbreviation Gavril—I mean, of course, my brother, who had a resemblance to the only portrait of my mother, a slight chalk sketch which hung in my father’s study. But I was by no means jealous: my brother was and has been the only love of my life. It is for his sake that I am now keeping in Westbourne Park a home for stray cats and dogs.

I was at that time, as I said before, a little girl; my name was Carmela. My long tangled hair was always all over the place, and never would be combed straight. I was not pretty—at least, looking at a photograph of me at that time, I do not think I could describe myself as such. Yet at the same time, when I look at my photograph, I think my expression may have been pleasing to some people: irregular features, large mouth, and large wild eyes.

I was by way of being naughty—not so naughty as Gabriel in the opinion of Mlle. Vonnaert. Mlle. Vonnaert, I may intercalate, was a wholly excellent person, middle-aged, who really did speak good French, although she was a Belgian, and could make herself understood in German, which, as you may or may not know, is the current language of Styria.

I find it difficult to describe my brother, Gabriel; there was something about him strange and superhuman, or perhaps I should rather say praeter-human, something between the animal and the divine. Perhaps the Greek idea of the Faun might illustrate what I mean; but that will not do either. He had large, wild, gazelle-like eyes: his hair, like mine, was in a perpetual tangle—that point he had in common with me, and indeed, as I afterwards heard, our mother having been of gypsy race, it will account for much of the innate wildness there was in our natures. I was wild enough, but Gabriel was much wilder. Nothing would induce him to put on shoes and socks, except on Sundays—when he also allowed his hair to be combed, but only by me. How shall I describe the grace of that lovely mouth, shaped verily en arc d’amour. I always think of the text in the Psalm, “Grace is shed forth on thy lips, therefore has God blessed thee eternally”—lips that seemed to exhale the very breath of life. Then that beautiful, lithe, living, elastic form!

He could run faster than any deer: spring like a squirrel to the topmost branch of a tree: he might have stood for the sign and symbol of vitality itself. But seldom could he be induced by Mlle. Vonnaert to learn lessons, but when he did so, he learned with extraordinary quickness. He would play upon every conceivable instrument, holding a violin here, there, and everywhere except the right place: manufacturing instruments for himself out of reeds—even sticks. Mlle. Vonnaert made futile efforts to induce him to learn to play the piano. I suppose he was what was called spoilt, though merely in the superficial sense of the word. Our father allowed him to indulge in every caprice.

One of his peculiarities, when quite a little child, was horror at the sight of meat. Nothing on earth would induce him to taste it. Another thing which was particularly remarkable about him was his extraordinary power over animals. Everything seemed to come tame to his hand. Birds would sit on his shoulder. Then sometimes Mlle. Vonnaert and I would lose him in the woods—he would suddenly dart away. Then we would find him singing softly or whistling to himself, with all manner of woodland creatures around him,—hedgehogs, little foxes, wild rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and such like. He would frequently bring these things home with him and insist on keeping them. This strange menagerie was the terror of poor Mlle. Vonnaert’s heart. He chose to live in a little room at the top of a turret; but which, instead of going upstairs, he chose to reach by means of a very tall chestnut tree, through the window. But in contradiction to all this, it was his custom to serve every Sunday Mass in the parish church, with hair nicely combed and with white surplice and red cassock. He looked as demure and tamed as possible. Then came the element of the divine. What an expression of ecstasy there was in those glorious eyes!

Thus far I have not been speaking about the Vampire. However, let me begin with my narrative at last. One day my father had to go to the neighboring town—as he frequently had. This time he returned accompanied by a guest. The gentleman, he said, had missed his train, through the late arrival of another at our station, which was a junction, and he would therefore, as trains were not frequent in our parts, have had to wait there all night. He had joined in conversation with my father in the too-late-arriving train from the town: and had consequently accepted my father’s invitation to stay the night at our house. But of course, you know, in those out-of-the-way parts we are almost patriarchal in our hospitality.

He was announced under the name of Count Vardalek—the name being Hungarian. But he spoke German well enough: not with the monotonous accentuation of Hungarians, but rather, if anything, with a slight Slavonic intonation. His voice was particularly soft and insinuating. We soon afterwards found out he could talk Polish, and Mlle. Vonnaert vouched for his good French. Indeed he seemed to know all languages. But let me give my first impressions. He was rather tall, with fair wavy hair, rather long, which accentuated a certain effeminacy about his smooth face. His figure had something—I cannot say what—serpentine about it. The features were refined; and he had long, slender, magnetic-looking hands, a somewhat long sinuous nose, a graceful mouth, and an attractive smile, which belied the intense sadness of the expression of the eyes. When he arrived his eyes were half closed—indeed they were habitually so—so that I could not decide their colour. He looked worn and wearied. I could not possibly guess his age.

Suddenly Gabriel burst into the room: a yellow butterfly was clinging to his hair. He was carrying in his arms a little squirrel. Of course he was bare-legged as usual. The stranger looked up at his approach; then I noticed his eyes. They were green: they seemed to dilate and grow larger. Gabriel stood stock-still, with a startled look, like that of a bird fascinated with a serpent. But nevertheless he held out his hand to the newcomer Vardalek, taking his hand—I don’t know why I noticed this trivial thing,—pressed the pulse with his forefinger. Suddenly Gabriel darted from the room and upstairs, going to his turret-room this time by the staircase instead of the tree. I was in terror of what the Count might think of him. Great was my relief when he came down in his velvet Sunday suit, and shoes and stockings. I combed his hair, and set him generally right.

When the stranger came to dinner his appearance had somewhat altered; he looked much younger. There was an elasticity of the skin, combined with a delicate complexion, rarely to be found in a man. Before, he had struck me as very pale.

Well, at dinner we were all charmed with him, especially my father. He seemed to be thoroughly acquainted with all my father’s peculiar hobbies. Once, when my father was relating some of his military experiences, he said something about a drummer-boy who was wounded in battle. His eyes opened completely again and dilated: this time with a particularly disagreeable expression, dull and dead, yet at the same time animated by some horrible excitement. But this was only momentary.