Dracula's Guest And Other Weird Tales (57 page)

14
.   ‘
Oh! To see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which is the divinest
’: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship: A Romance of the Age’ (1844), ‘Oh, to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which is divinest’, line 173.

15
.   
the rabble
: Horror of mob violence is a recurrent theme in the Gothic genre, from the vengeful, mindless mob that tears apart the prioress in Matthew Lewis’s
The Monk
(1796) to James Whale’s film version of
Frankenstein
(1931) in which a hollering throng sets fire to the windmill in which the monster is trapped.

16
.   
bridge of Arcola… Old Guard at Waterloo
: The Battle of Arcola (15–17 November 1796) was notable for Napoleon Bonaparte grabbing a flag and personally leading an assault across the Arcola bridge. At the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815), the Old Guard fought to the end to enable the Emperor Napoleon to escape from the battlefield as the Allied troops closed in. General Cambronne is reputed to have answered a call to surrender with the words ‘The Guard dies but does not surrender.’

17
.   
Hobson’s choice
: An apparently free choice that is really no choice at all.

1
.   
a flaming sword
: According to the Bible, a Cherub with a rotating flaming sword was placed by God at the gates of Paradise after Adam and Eve were banished from it (Genesis 3:24).

2
.   
a soul is typified by a butterfly
: Many ancient civilizations believed that butterflies were symbols of the human soul. The Greek goddess Psyche, for example, the personification of the human soul, was often represented in the shape of a butterfly, and the Greek word
Psykh
ē
can be translated either ‘soul’ or ‘butterfly’.

 In the 1890s Bram Stoker took numerous holidays to the Scottish east-coast village of Cruden Bay. The village itself was overlooked by Slaines Castle, ancestral home of the Errolls, from where it was said the elderly nineteenth Earl was in the habit of walking around Cruden Bay in a tweed suit of antique cut and high Glengarry bonnet with the family’s falcon crest pinned upon it. Certainly, the story lampoons the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ nostalgic romanticizing of a powerful yet largely inchoate idea of Celticism.

1
.   
the Goodwins
: The Goodwin sands, a stretch of shoals and sandbars about fifteen kilometres long, lie off the east coast of
Kent. They are a notorious hazard to shipping and are littered with wrecks.

2
.   
Copthall-court
: Copthall Court lies near to the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange in central London.

3
.   
cairngorm brooches… sporran
: A precious stone of a yellow or wine-colour, cairngorm stone was commonly used for brooches, seals and for ornamenting the handles of dirks (a kind of dagger). A sporran is a large purse made of animal skin, usually with the hair left on, that is worn in front of the kilt (or philibeg) by Scottish Highlanders.

4
.   
Royal Stuart dress tartan… Balmoral
: The Royal Stewart is the tartan of the British Royal House of Stewart and the personal tartan of Her Majesty the Queen. The Balmoral Estate, situated in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, was purchased by Queen Victoria in 1848 and has been the Scottish home of the British Royal Family ever since.

5
.   
claymore
: The two-edged broadsword of the ancient Scottish Highlanders.

6
.   
Girdle Ness lighthouse
: Situated at the south entrance to Aberdeen harbour, Girdle Ness lighthouse was designed by Robert Stevenson and built in 1833.

7
.   
Glengarry cap
: Invented by Alasdair Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry, a Glengarry cap (or bonnet) is a boat-shaped cap without a peak made of thick-milled woollen material with a
toorie
, or bobble, on top and ribbons hanging down behind.

8
.   
mulls
: Snuffboxes.

9
.   
‘Vanity of vanities… one of these’
: Cf. Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth)1:2: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity’ and Matthew 6:28–9: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’

10
.   
döppleganger
: Traditionally, seeing one’s double was an omen of ill-luck, ill-health or death. The theme of the doppelgänger was popular in nineteenth-century literature, especially Gothic fiction, examples including James Hogg’s
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
(1824), Robert Louis Stevenson’s
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(1886) and Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1890).

1
.   
Bertha Nicoll
: A friend of Bram Stoker’s who first made him aware of the ‘Bisley Boy’ legend attached to Overcourt manor house in Bisley, Gloucestershire. The legend held that the young Queen Elizabeth had died in infancy there, and had been replaced by a male child. The episode formed a section in Stoker’s penultimate book,
Famous Impostors
(1910).

1
.   
the Great Eastern Hotel
: Large hotel adjacent to Liverpool Street railway station. Opened in May 1884, the Great Eastern was for many years pre-eminent among London’s elegant railway hotels. It also features in
Dracula
as Abraham Van Helsing’s hotel of choice when staying in London: ‘Have then rooms for me at the Great Eastern Hotel’ (p. 123).

2
.   
West Australia
: James Cook (1728–79) ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770, claiming possession in the name of George III (1738– 1820). On 26 January 1788 the British government assumed control over the eastern half of the country, exploiting its potential as a trading, whaling and penal colony. In the nineteenth century, with a rapidly expanding and diversifying immigrant population, Australia underwent a transition from penal colony to free and self-governing dominion, and finally became a nation in its own right on 1 January 1901.

3
.   
Mercia
: After the end of Roman rule in 409, the British Isles became a patchwork of territories founded by both indigenous and immigrant communities and led by chieftains and kings. Mercia emerged as one of the most powerful of these kingdoms, between the sixth and eighth centuries fiercely maintaining its independence and often waging war with other major kingdoms to preserve, or expand, its area of control. At the height of its power Mercia stretched from the River Thames to the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and from the coast of Lincolnshire and the borders of East Anglia to the Welsh border. After a series of strong warrior kings, most notably Offa, who ruled from 757 to his death in 796, Mercian hegemony declined in the ninth
century, the kingdom losing much of its territory to its neighbours. It was finally and irrevocably annexed by King Edward the Elder of Wessex (
c.
874/7–924) in 919.

4
.   
Stafford
: In 913 Stafford was fortified by Queen Æthelflaed (r. 911–18) and became the new capital of Mercia. It was also home to a royal mint for 250 years from 924 to 1189.

5
.   
William IV
: William IV of England (1765–1837).

6
.   
ribbons
: Reins.

1
.   
the ‘donkey’ engine
: A small steam-engine, usually for subsidiary operations on board ship, for instance feeding the boilers of the propelling engines.

2
.   
Salisbury… Stafford
: All of these towns and cities are ancient settlements dating back to Anglo-Saxon, Roman or pre-Roman times. Stoker’s reference to these locations reinforces the sense of Adam Salton’s journey into the heart of ancient Britain.

3
.   
the British Romans
: Following Julius Caesar’s reconnaissance expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54
BC
, Emperor Claudius (10
BC
–
AD
54) ordered its forcible invasion in 43
BC
. Despite meeting with fierce resistance from British tribes, by
AD
47 the Claudian armies occupied Britain as far as the Severn and the Trent and by
AD
84 Roman control had extended to the far north of Scotland with garrisons to the edge of the Highlands.

4
.   
all the various nationalities… became Britain
: Britain only became so-called after the 1707 Act of Union which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The early history of the country is dominated both by foreign invasion (Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman) and the division of the country itself into tribal territories.

5
.   
Salisbury Cathedral
: Relocated from its original position in Old Sarum, Salisbury Cathedral was started in 1220 and finally consecrated in 1258. The spire, the tallest in England (123m), was added in the middle of the fourteenth century. Although it escaped relatively unscathed from the religious architectural purging of the Commonwealth, in 1790 permission was granted for the architect James Wyatt (1746–1813) to ‘restore’ the interior of the cathedral. Porches, chapels, screens and stained glass were destroyed and the interior was white-washed. The campanile, which rose almost 61 metres over the north side of
the churchyard and housed the original bells which rang at Old Sarum, were also destroyed at this time.

6
.   
The aquiline features… close and curly
: Dracula’s face, too, is described as: ‘very strong – aquiline… His eyebrows were massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion’ (Stoker,
Dracula
, p. 24). Many of Stoker’s stories pay homage to the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pseudo-science of physiognomy, pioneered by Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801), which held that the true character of an individual could be deduced by the structure of the head and body, and from facial expressions and physical gestures.

7
.   
partly hypnotic, partly mesmeric
: Mesmerism was first popularized by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), who claimed that all animal life was underpinned by a ‘magnetic’ fluid which, in illness, became unbalanced. Mesmer maintained that he could realign a patient’s magnetic field through the influence of his own ‘animal magnetism’. Although mesmerism was discredited by a scientific commission established by Louis XVI of France in 1784, Mesmer’s techniques had great popular appeal and were variously developed by other practitioners in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ultimately forming the basis of the modern practice of hypnosis, itself first developed by Dr James Braid (1795–1860).

8
.   
in propria persona
: ‘In proper person’ (Latin).

1
.   
the coup d’œil
: A comprehensive glance (French).

2
.   
Welsh Marches… Humber to the Wash
: The term ‘march’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon
mearc
meaning ‘boundary’, the Welsh Marches thus roughly encompassing the area between the Welsh mountains and English river beds that divide the two nations.

3
.   
seriatim
: OED: ‘One after the other; one by one in succession’ (Latin).

4
.   
Druidical
: Belonging to the Celtic tribes of Gaul and Britain, the Druids, according to Julius Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
, were priests and teachers. Their name is synonymous in native Irish and Welsh legend with magician and sorcerer, however. Druidism was suppressed after the Roman conquests of Britain and Gaul, but retained its influence in Ireland until the coming of Christianity.

5
.   
Vilula Misericordiæ
: Literally ‘House of Mercy’ (Latin).

6
.   
Queen Bertha… King Penda… St Augustine
: Augustine arrived from Rome in Kent in May 597, under the direction of Pope Gregory the Great (
c.
540–604), and he and his mission were received hospitably by Kent’s pagan king, Ethelbert, whose Frankish queen, Bertha, was already a Christian. The account of Augustine’s mission suggests that English Christianity began in the year 597, but the English had been exposed to Christianity from more than one direction throughout the sixth century. Kent was the first kingdom to convert in the late 590s/early 600s, East Anglia followed in the early seventh century and Wessex set up a bishopric at Dorchester-on-Thames in 634. The Mercians held out against outright conversion for most of Penda’s reign (633– 53) and it was only under King Wulfhere (r. 658–75) that official sanction was given to Christianity.

7
.   
savage Wales
: Welsh military might ensured that the country resisted capitulation to Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasion. It was only finally conquered in 1282 when Edward I (1272–1307) defeated Llywelyn the Last (
c.
1228–82).

8
.   
each fresh wave… the Normans
: The traditional dates applied to these various invasions of Britain are: Anglo-Saxons,
c.
450; Danes, 865 (with smaller raids on Lindisfarne in 793, Jarrow in 794 and Iona in 795); Normans, 1066. This history of invasion roots the novel in a culture of national conflict, making it a tale of physical
and
spiritual boundary disruption.

9
.   
Henry I
: Henry I of England (1068–1135).