Dracula's Guest And Other Weird Tales (55 page)

The Lambton Worm was now, in fact, the terror of the North County. It had not been left altogether unopposed. Many a gallant knight had come out to fight with the monster, but all to no purpose; for it possessed the marvellous power of reuniting itself after being cut asunder, and thus was more than a match for the chivalry of the North. So, after many conflicts, and much loss of life and limb, the creature was left in possession of its favourite hill.

After seven long years, however, the heir of Lambton returned home, a sadder and wiser man – returned to find the broad lands of his ancestors waste and desolate, his people oppressed and well-nigh exterminated, his father sinking into the grave overwhelmed with care and anxiety. He took no rest, we are told, till he had crossed the river and surveyed the Worm as it lay coiled round the foot of the hill; then, hearing how its former opponents had failed, he took counsel in the matter from a sibyl or wise woman.

At first the sibyl did nothing but upbraid him for having brought this scourge upon his house and neighbourhood; but when she perceived that he was indeed penitent, and desirous at any cost to remove the evil he had caused, she gave him her advice and instructions. He was to get his best suit of mail studded thickly with spear-heads, to put it on, and thus armed to take his stand on the rock in the middle of the river, there to meet his enemy, trusting the issue to Providence and his good sword. But she charged him before going to the encounter to take a vow that, if successful, he would slay the first living thing that met him on his way homewards. Should he fail to fulfil this vow, she warned him that for nine generations no lord of Lambton would die in his bed.

The heir, now a belted knight, made the vow in Brugeford chapel. He studded the armour with the sharpest spear-heads, and unsheathing his trusty sword took his stand on the rock in the middle of the Wear. At the accustomed hour the Worm uncoiled its ‘snaky twine’, and wound its way towards the hall, crossing the river close by the rock on which the knight was standing eager for the combat. He struck a violent blow upon the monster’s head as it passed, on which the creature, ‘irritated and vexed’, though apparently not injured, flung its tail round him, as if to strangle him in its coils.

In the words of a local poet –

‘The worm shot down the middle stream

Like a flash of living light,

And the waters kindled round his path

In rainbow colours bright.

But when he saw the armoured knight

He gathered all his pride,

And, coiled in many a radiant spire,

Rode buoyant o’er the tide.

When he darted at length his dragon strength

An earthquake shook the rock,

And the fireflakes bright fell round the knight

As unmoved he met the shock.

Though his heart was stout it quailed no doubt,

His very life-blood ran cold,

As round and round the wild Worm wound

In many a grappling fold.’

Now was seen the value of the sibyl’s advice. The closer the Worm wrapped him in its folds the more deadly were its self-inflicted wounds, till at last the river ran crimson with its gore. Its strength thus diminished, the knight was able at last with his good sword to cut the serpent in two; the severed part was immediately borne away by the swiftness of the current, and the Worm, unable to reunite itself, was utterly destroyed.

During this long and desperate conflict the household of Lambton had shut themselves within-doors to pray for their young lord, he having promised them that when it was over he would, if conqueror, blow a blast on his bugle. This would assure his father of his safety, and warn them to let loose the favourite hound, which they had destined as the sacrifice on the occasion, according to the sibyl’s requirements and the young lord’s vow. When, however, the buglenotes were heard within the hall, the old man forgot everything but his son’s safety, and rushing out of doors, ran to meet the hero and embrace him.

The heir of Lambton was thunderstruck: what could he do? It was impossible to lift his hand against his father; yet how else to fulfil his vow? In his perplexity he blew another blast; the hound was let loose, it bounded to its master; the sword, yet reeking with the monster’s gore, was plunged into its heart; but all in vain. The vow was broken, the sibyl’s prediction fulfilled, and the curse lay upon the house of Lambton for nine generations.

1
.
kine
: Cows.

2
.
rowan tree
: The European rowan tree was thought to possess magical properties, in particular, protection against malevolent beings.

3
.
eft
: A newt, or lizard-like animal.

1
.   
Munich
: Harker recalls having travelled through Germany in the opening sentence of
Dracula: ‘3 May. Bistritz.
– Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning’ (Bram Stoker,
Dracula
, ed. Maurice Hindle (London: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 7).

2
.   
Walpurgis nacht
: In German folklore, a feast of the powers of darkness or witches’ sabbath celebrated on the night of 30 April.

3
.   
the horses… suspiciously
: Compare this with the reaction of the horses to the arrival of Count Dracula: ‘Whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so the driver had to hold them up’ (Stoker,
Dracula
, p. 16). Similar textual and stylistic comparisons with
Dracula
can be made throughout this story.

4
.   
burying suicides at cross-roads
: To take one’s life was considered a sin by Christians, and suicides were buried at crossroads with a stake through their bodies and their property confiscated by the State.

5
.   
men and women… red with blood
: Whilst the Eastern Orthodox Church believed that incorrupt corpses denoted sainthood, the Roman Catholics held them to be a sign of vampirism.

6
.   
yew and cypress
: Whilst yew is commonly planted in graveyards and is regarded as a symbol of sadness, branches or sprigs of cypress are often used at funerals as a symbol of mourning.

7
.   
a beautiful woman… sleeping on a bier
: The image of the ‘undead’ women is a frequent feature of Stoker’s stories, from Lucy Westenra in
Dracula
to Queen Tera in
The Jewel of Seven
Stars
(1903) and Lady Teuta in
The Lady of the Shroud
(1909).

8
.   
the sacred bullet
: It was believed that a werewolf was immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or a blade), although this is more a reflection of nineteenth-century fiction than folk legends.

1
.   
Jacobean style
: An English art, architectural and furniture style dominant during the reign of James I (1603–25), Jacobean design followed the general lines of Elizabethan design, but used classical features with greater complexity and with more extravagant ornamentation.

2
.   
a judge… Assizes
: Bram Stoker probably found inspiration for his malicious protagonist in the figure of Judge George Jeffreys (1648–89), Lord Chancellor under King James II (r. 1685– 1701), who was perhaps the most notorious ‘hanging judge’ in English history. Henry Irving’s son, Henry Brodribb, wrote a biography of him,
The Life of Judge Jeffreys
(London: William Heinemann, 1898).

3
.   
Tripos
: The final honours examinations for university degree subjects at Oxford and Cambridge. The name derives from the three-legged stool on which the examinee would sit.

4
.   
Harmonical Progression… Elliptic Functions
: The listing of such mathematical terminology, continued in later pages of the story, highlights the battle between rational logic and the supernatural threat of the Judge.

5
.   
a Senior Wrangler
: The head of the ‘wranglers’, i.e. of the first class of those who are successful in the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge University.

6
.   
Greenhow’s Charity
: Stoker could possibly be referring to Dr Edwin Headlam Greenhow (1814–88), physician, sanitarian, clinician and lecturer, whose academic studies and negotiations with the government led to the environmental clean-up in the later nineteenth century and the end of cholera and typhoid epidemics.

7
.   
Saint Anthony… the point
: Born about the middle of the third century at Coma, Egypt, Anthony disposed of his worldly possessions at an early age to devote himself exclusively to an ascetic life, abnegating human contact for twenty years. St Anthony is frequently hailed as the founder of Christian monasticism, and
is also the patron saint of gravediggers – an ominous indicator, perhaps, of this ascetic student’s fate.

8
.   
Laplace
: Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) was a gifted French mathematician and astronomer who established the stability of planetary motion. He also excelled at, and made considerable advances in, integral calculus, finite differences and differential equations.

9
.   
the diamond-paned bay window
: The earliest glass was extremely expensive and only available without severe distortions in relatively small panes. As a result almost all windows of the Tudor and Jacobean periods were made up of leaded light panels, often with diamond shapes, called ‘quarries’. The quarries were joined together to form the window light using strips of lead, called ‘cames’, which were soldered together to make up one large glazed area.

10
.   
Shake! as they say in America
: Throughout his stories, Stoker displays a fondness for the colloquial dialect and aphorisms of his foreign or provincial characters. Subsequent reviewers have taken a less enthusiastic stance to this, one review of
The Watters Mou
(1895) remarking: ‘Conscious of his weakness in the manner of Scottish dialect, Mr Stoker has indulged in that luxury as little as possible, but the little that he does introduce is truly awful’ (‘New Books’,
The Dundee Advertiser
, 10 January 1895).

11
.   
he trembled like an aspen
: The aspen tree is characterized by elongated, flexible leaves that give it the appearance of ‘shivering’ in the slightest breeze. The aspen’s idiosyncrasy was immortalized in ‘Binsey Poplars’ (1879), by Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844– 89), who moved to Dublin in 1884.

12
.   
a black cap
: A square of black cloth that was part of English judges’ full dress. It was traditionally donned when passing a death sentence.

 In the summer of 1885 Bram Stoker, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry journeyed to Nuremberg and Rothberg in southern Germany in preparation for the Lyceum Company’s production of
Faust
. In Nuremberg’s castle they visited a torture tower, in which the Iron Virgin was displayed.

1
.   
Irving… Faust
: Mephistopheles was one of Henry Irving’s most celebrated roles and
Faust
the Lyceum Company’s greatest
success. Written by William Gorman Wills,
Faust
opened on 19 December 1885 and was performed 792 times.

2
.   
Methuselah… Yurrup
: Cf. Genesis 5:27: ‘Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died.’ Methuselah is thus used as a means by which to ascribe great age.
Yurrup
: Europe (slang).

3
.   
the Burg
: A fortress or walled town of early or medieval times.

4
.   
Claude Lorraine
: The artist Claude Gené (1604–82) was better known as Lorraine after the place of his birth. Chiefly concerned with the picturesque, Lorraine often depicted romantic old castles or ruins set against the rough textures of wild nature.

5
.   
the Torture Tower
: Nuremberg’s Max Tower was the location of the offices of the Nuremberg Inquisition during the period when Duke Albert V of Bavaria (1550–79) attempted the forcible restoration of Roman Catholicism. The Iron Virgin was the final destination of those prisoners who refused to recant their heretical beliefs.

6
.   
tender as a Maine cherry-tree
: The American north-eastern state of Maine is famous for its fruit orchards, particularly blueberries and apples. Possibly Stoker is here referring to the native Pin Cherry (
Prunus pensylvanica
), a rapidly growing cherry tree with soft and light wood, most commonly used as a grafting and budding stock for the sour cherry.

7
.   
the Gothic restorers of forty years ago
: In the late eighteenth century there was a revival of Gothic styles of architecture, with the emphasis on a romantic interest in the medieval. This was followed in the nineteenth century by a more scholarly style of Gothic, the architectural proponents of which included A. W. Pugin (1812–52) and Gilbert Scott (1811–78). The widespread adoption of the Gothic style transformed the appearance of English towns and cities. Buildings of this later style of Gothic architecture include the Palace of Westminster and St Pancras Station, London.

8
.   
the Pantheistic souls of Philo or Spinoza
: Pantheism is the philosophy that God is immanent in or identical with the universe. Philo Judaeus (
c
.25
BC
–
AD
c
.50), a Hellenized Jewish philosopher, was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Born in Amsterdam to Sephardic Jews, Benedict De Spinoza (1632–77) is best known for his five books of
Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata
(1677), which worked towards the conclusion that ‘God’ and ‘Nature’ are two names for the same reality that underlies the universe, of which all lesser entities are made.