The Vampyre by John Polidori

The Vampyre by John Polidori is a very short story, just 20 pages. The narrative feels rushed as events pile up on each other. With in one or two pages we are introduced to a character and they are killed off before we can become remotely attached to them. None of the characters are fleshed out. There is no poetic prose, romantic scenery, or immersion in a foreign world. There is also little detail about vampire lore. So it probably sounds like I am totally trashing this story, but I’m not. After I set the book aside I thought a lot about it’s place in history and what it really was vs the vampire legend that has been built up around it.

First of all, I think it’s important to understand that Polidori did not plan on publishing The Vampyre. The story reads like what it was, a ghost story or folktale written in just 2 or 3 days. Polidori actually wrote it a few days after he was dismissed from the legendary Lake Geneva chateau where he, Byron, and the Shelleys spent the summer. We all know the tale of how Byron challenged the group to each write there own ghost story and how Frankenstein was born out of this. Byron began writing a vampire tale. He only got so far as about 6 pages detailing how a younger man went on a journey with his friend Augustus Darvell across Europe. Along the way Darvell dies and makes the narrator promise to “conceal his death from every human being”. Bryon’s story basically ends there and he never continued it but apparently he told Polidori that the next chapter would entail Darvell reappearing in London and making love to the narrator’s sister. Lol.

When Polidori left Byron’s company he told a friend, Lady Breuss, about Byron’s partial vampire story. That lady challenged Polidori to write a complete tale based on that outline and The Vampyre was born. So as you can see, this is not a novel that was sweated over for months or years. You do get the feeling reading it though, that it could have been rewritten into a great novel. It’s very much like an early draft, where all the events are outlined, with detail and depth to be filled in later. Unfortunately, Polidori never did rewrite it and it was left to future generations to build upon his sketch.

So while The Vamprye is no amazing work of literature, what Polidori did do was invent the modern vampire. The original vampire legends described an ugly creature that lived in the earth and crawled out to attack it’s victims. More like a zombie than what we think of as a vampire. Polidori used the character and reputation of his friend, Lord Byron, to turn the vampire into a sophisticated, aristocratic, lady killer. No longer did a subhuman creature drag you off to the dark ages. This was a much scarier modern villian that preyed on society’s awe of money and power.

Certainly Byron sparked the flame of this sophisticated vampire but Polidori ran with the story and Byron had no desire to take credit for it. On this he said, in typical Byron style,

I desire the responsibility of nobody’s dullness but my own.

Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is known to be a direct representation of Lord Byron. Polidori describes him as cold yet fiery. Beautiful, yet terrifying. Anti-social and entirely absorbed in himself, yet always in the company of woman, of both high and low repute.  Men and woman feared him, yet constantly desired his presence.

The story’s narrator, Aubrey, also reminds me of someone Polidori knew. I wonder if this character is based on Percy Shelley. Later in the story you see perhaps a reflection of Polidori himself in Aubrey. But at the beginning, while he is describing Aubrey’s character flaws, I had to laugh at the thought of it being jabs at Shelley. Aubrey is described as rich, handsome, and frank. But with all imagination and no judgement. His high romantic feelings lead him to believe that vice and the poor exists simply to make the world more picturesque.

He thought that the dreams of poets were the realities of life

Women, after his money, lead him to false notions of his talents and merits.

To me this just has Percy Shelley written all over it lol. Especially considering Polidori did not like Percy, and was no doubt jealous of his writing talent and personal attractions, to the point of one day threatening to shoot him and challenging him to a duel (Percy’s response being a hearty laugh in his face).

As I said, later in the story, you get the feeling that the Aubrey-Lord Ruthven relationship is a reflection of Polidori’s frustration at being a companion of Lord Byron. ****spoiler*** The vampire Ruthven ruins every woman that Aubrey loves and Aubrey becomes a shell of a man after his influence. This reminds me of an extract from Polidori’s diary, where he says (paraphrased)

Introduced to a room where Lord Byron’s name was alone mentioned; mine, like a star in the halo of the moon, invisible.

So approached in a historical context, there is a lot to find interesting in The Vampyre. But if you are looking for great literature about a monster, stick to Frankenstein.
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This post is for the Classics Circuit pre-1840 Gothic lit tour.