Who Was Dracula? (10 page)

When the first American edition of the book was published, by Doubleday in 1899, there was an addition to the text, presumably made by Stoker, that only accentuated this point.

In the first British edition, after Harker's initial meeting with the brides—“This man belongs to me!”—he later overhears Dracula whispering to the women, outside his door. The vampire tells them, “Wait. Have patience. Tomorrow night, tomorrow night is yours.” In 1899, the line was changed to, “Wait! Have patience! Tonight is mine. Tomorrow night is yours!” It's the only clear hint that Dracula bites and draws blood from another man. This scene is a curious twist on Le Fanu's
Carmilla
and has invited a century of speculation about the author's intentions.

—

Bram Stoker's favorite place for writing had been Cruden Bay, in Scotland. But he found a similar respite in Whitby. The port town was the perfect mixture of Old World and New, and he immediately recognized that it should be the place where his Count arrives in Western Europe—the ragged, colorful medieval town that would serve as a physical and emotional transition to London.

In July 1890, Bram, Florence, and Noel visited Whitby, and Stoker found several books in the local library that became important sources.
An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
was written by a former British consul to Bucharest, William Wilkinson, and published in 1820. Transylvania was not a part of the book's title, but this province figured in the book, separated by Wallachia and Moldavia by the Carpathian Mountains. In Bram Stoker's time, Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Wilkinson's book was probably where Stoker first encountered the names Dracul and Dracula, the names applied to father and son rulers in Wallachia in the fifteenth century. Wilkinson himself seemed to jumble the roles of father and son, and Stoker's later account of the historical Dracula is a similar pastiche taken directly from Wilkinson. But Stoker was attracted to a footnote that explained, “Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil.”

An article on Transylvania, “Transylvanian Superstitions,” seemed to confirm the setting for Stoker's story. The article on superstitions was written by Emily de Laszowska Gerard and published in
Nineteenth Century
magazine in July 1885. Gerard was an Englishwoman; she married a Hungarian cavalry brigade commander who had been stationed in Transylvania. Her article described a colorful, backward, and deeply superstitious area of Eastern Europe where centuries-old traditions of ghosts, werewolves, and vampires were still accepted by the population.

Transylvania's deep traditions of the supernatural made this land an ideal setting for Stoker's story. Even the name, which translates as “The Land Beyond the Forest,” sounds like a mysterious fairy tale. Gerard's article included mentions of Saint George's Day eve as the witches' Sabbath; the Sholomance, a demonic school in the mountains where the Devil supposedly teaches his disciples; and the belief that it is “unlucky to look in a glass [mirror] after sunset.” These were all elements that later figured in Stoker's mythology. Stoker also made careful note of Gerard's instructions for killing a vampire: “Vampire or nosferatu: to kill vampire drive stake through corpse or fire pistol shot into coffin or cut off head and replace in coffin with mouth full of garlic, or extract heart and burn it and strew ashes over grave.” Gerard later incorporated “Transylvanian Superstitions” into a book published in 1888,
The Land
Beyond the Forest
, although there is no evidence that Stoker was aware of this book.

In refining his own mythology, Stoker ignored the advice about shooting a vampire; this would be far too ordinary for his purposes.

—

We can see the transition in Stoker's notes. A sheet labeled “Book 1, Chapter 1” has notes about “Count Wampyr,” but the name Wampyr was later crossed out and Dracula was inserted. By the last note on the page, it seemed as if Stoker was writing “Dracula” at his first stroke, without hesitation.

—

Similarly, his “Historiae Personae” showed a dramatic explosion of ink, as if Stoker's newest discoveries left evidence of a celebration. The name was written into the margins and Wampyr was crossed out. Stoker added the new heading, three times, across the top of the page, as if convincing himself: “Count Dracula, Dracula, Dracula.” He had not yet decided upon the title of book, but he was clearly enamored with this dark, simple name. On the same page, Whitby was woven into the plot, and Transylvania was the setting for the first and last part of the novel; often it was put in place of the deleted “Styria.”

—

Like a detective, Stoker prowled the streets of Whitby, noting any scenery, local color, or recent history that might be of use in his novel. He chatted with local fishermen about their recollections and talked to a coast guard named William Petherick, obtaining details of a Russian ship, the
Dimetry
, that had run ashore at Whitby Harbor. He drew maps of the coastline; he took note of wind conditions and wrote descriptions of the countryside and buildings; he copied down information from tombstones so that he could invent local residents with the proper surnames. Stoker even compiled a long dictionary of Yorkshire slang—attesting to his love of writing in dialect—so that he could make his Whitby sailor wheeze and whine with the proper slang words. One long passage in his notes details the appearance of the town at nine a.m., with “sheep and lambs bleating . . . band on pier, harsh waltz . . . Salvation Army in street off Quay, neither hearing each other, we hearing both.” Later he used these details, at exactly this time of day, in the novel.

As he continued gathering material, he consulted over a dozen additional books. These included
Magyarland
by “A Fellow of the Carpathian Society,”
Round About the Carpathians
by A. F. Crosse,
The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
by Isabella L. Bird,
On the Track of the Crescent
by Major E. C. Johnson, and
Transylvania: Its Products and Its People
by Charles Boner. These were filled with information about the area, the dress of the inhabitants, food, traditions, and language. A curious source was
The Theory of Dreams
, by Robert Gray. While Stoker used very little from this book, he realized that the quality of unusual dreams and clairvoyance would be an important element of his plot.

Before plotting all the chapters, Bram Stoker's skills as Acting Manager were utilized to meticulously plan a timeline for his story. He started with blank calendar pages, filling in dates starting in the month of March. Then he noted key events in the novel opposite the run of dates. For example, the first entry is on March 16: “Dracula's letter to Hawkins (dated 4 March old style).” After correspondence to and from Transylvania—allowing time for each letter—Jonathan Harker leaves London on April 25, “8:[30] p.m.” and arrives at Paris on the following day, “5:50 a.m. Leave Paris 8:25 p.m. Arrive Munich 8:35 p.m.” The travel schedule was arranged with guidebooks and railway schedules, ensuring accurate times.

The novel takes place between March 16 and November 6, in one calendar year. Researchers have noted, from the days and dates as well as several events during the course of the book, that Stoker was probably using 1893 as his model. This suggests that he was in the process of plotting his novel in 1893, copying dates out of a current calendar. But Stoker's dating isn't flawless. Certain statements within the novel seem to contradict this year. For example, at the conclusion of the book, Jonathan Harker wrote that it has been “seven years” since the events. This was impossible if the events took place in 1893 and the book was published in 1897. More than likely, Stoker used a current calendar to plan his novel, but then adjusted the story as was convenient, avoiding the suggestion of any specific year.

For all of his work on the novel, it's curious which elements seemed to elude the author's plans. Stoker never set foot in Transylvania, and his description of the cragged cliffs and imposing Gothic castles are essentially imaginary. The Borgo Pass, a link between Wallachia and Transylvania, looked remote and forbidding on a map. In fact, the landscape is one of rolling hills and grass-covered mountains.

Similarly, Stoker's London is a busy metropolis with very little definition. The Count moves from house to house, from his abbey in East London to the docks on the Thames, but city landmarks disappear into the fog of the story. Dracula is described as being enamored of the new city, but the author had, long ago, grown bored with it. For these reasons, the single great setting in Stoker's novel is the one that most readers forget: Whitby. This little port, the transition between Transylvania and London, is carefully and colorfully described.

Van Helsing, a central character in the book, is named very late in the author's notes. He apparently first took shape as an assortment of characters, including a detective, a physical research agent, and a German professor.

Renfield, the lunatic who falls under Dracula's spell and begins eating flies, never appears by that name in his notes. The character is called “Flyman” early in his notes, Stoker's placeholder for the character, and the name was decided upon at the last moment, appearing only in the finished manuscript. Stoker seems to have first named him Renfold, and finally as Renfield.

Stoker worked on the novel during two trips to Cruden Bay in 1893 and 1896. The contract for the book was signed in 1897, to be published by Archibald Constable and Company in London. Even then, Stoker had not yet decided upon a title; his initial contract labeled the book
The Un-Dead
.

—

Then there is the problem of the voivode.

The name Dracula became one of the most insidious and enigmatic hints in literary history. It was a fortuitous result of Bram Stoker's afternoon at the Whitby Library. In Wilkinson's book,
An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
, a footnote reads: “Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at the present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning.”

Unfortunately, Wilkinson's explanation made a number of errors, which were translated into Stoker's book. He compounded a father-and-son ruler and misunderstood the intended meaning of Dracul. Obviously, the notion of “Devil” must have been appealing, and “courage, cruel actions, or cunning” also seemed to complement his character. In the novel, Van Helsing commented authoritatively on the history of the old ruler, but this brief history was basically fiction, designed to incorporate Stoker's brief facts and lend credibility to the novel. The noted
Dracula
researcher Elizabeth Miller has demonstrated how Van Helsing's account was completely drawn from Wilkinson's book and four other sources, as noted in Stoker's papers, and then stitched together with assumptions. For over fifty years these historical references lurked within the novel, awaiting discovery.

Several authors made the connection in the late 1950s and 1960s, researching the original Dracula and citing his horrific tortures as inspirations for the novel. Stoker's first biographer, Harry Ludlam, claimed in his 1962 book that Stoker had consulted “fifteenth century manuscripts,” one of which spoke of Dracul “as a ‘wampyr.'” (Such a manuscript, with this reference, has never been found.) Grigore Nandris, in a 1966 article, claimed that portraits of the real Voivode Dracul must have been used by Stoker to describe his white-haired Count with the long mustache.

A fascinating 1972 book,
In Search of Dracula
, written by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, finally tied the fictional Count to his historical predecessor. In their telling, the real Dracula proved to be every bit as notorious as Stoker's later literary villain.

Vlad (the father of Dracula) was a Wallachian military commander who, in 1431, was awarded a special chivalric order, the Order of the Dragon, by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor. This marked his devotion to the emperor and his battles against the Turks. To enshrine the honor, Vlad proudly added the name Dracul, meaning “dragon.”

His son, later known as Vlad Tepes, was probably born that same year. When he became a ruler, he adopted the name Dracula, meaning “son of Dracul.” Curiously, these sobriquets had positive connotations for the father and son, although Stoker's sources had indicated the opposite.

Young Vlad and his brother spent part of their childhood as prisoners of the sultan of Turkey, political blackmail to ensure his father's cooperation. When Vlad was finally returned to Wallachia as a young adult, he found that his father had been murdered.

Vlad reigned as voivode on three separate occasions, over a span of seven years, battling fiercely with the Turks as well as the Hungarians. During that time, he was infamous for his horrific displays of power. In 1457 he reportedly invited his enemies, the noble families, for an Easter feast, and then killed the elders by having them impaled on tall upright spikes. Several years later, when the Turks were led by the sultan to attack his castle, they found it surrounded by a virtual forest of impaled victims. It was an effective deterrent. The sultan considered his enemy not only bloodthirsty but also psychotic, and he withdrew his troops. His nickname, Vlad Tepes, translated to “Vlad the Impaling Prince.”

Dracula was killed in battle in 1476. According to tradition, his head was carried back to Constantinople as a prize for the sultan.

To weave together the narrative for their 1972 book, McNally and Florescu made several assumptions. They speculated that Arminius Vambery told Stoker about the Voivode Dracula, and then directed him to several books in the British Museum that explained his reputation and atrocities. Similarly, a footnote in Wilkinson's book could have directed Stoker to the seventeenth-century
Generall Historie of
the Turkes
by Richard Knolles, which included an account of Dracula's gruesome execution of twenty thousand victims. Altogether it was just too tempting a story—a ruler known for murderous cruelty, nicknamed “Devil,” or “Dragon,” and situated in Transylvania. Readers of
In Search of Dracula
became convinced that Stoker must have carefully read the history of this middle-European voivode and then concealed much of the history within his text.