0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,

0:12

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry,

0:14

and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy.

0:16

The story that begins with Jonathan Harker's

0:19

travels to Transylvania on a business trip

0:21

to complete a real estate deal is

0:23

one almost everybody knows. If I tell you

0:25

that phrase, you would say, I

0:27

would say Dracula, right, because

0:30

Dracula is iconic. And we have talked

0:32

about Dracula on several episodes of this podcast,

0:35

when we talked about the lives of Christopher

0:37

Lee and f. W. Murnow and Bella

0:39

Lugosi and Dwight Fry,

0:42

And it seems like we must have talked

0:44

about the life of Bram Stoker

0:46

before. Yeah, we have not.

0:48

No, we had a whole conversation where you were like, I

0:50

can't believe we haven't done this, and I was like, but we did,

0:53

though, No, it

0:56

has come up. I feel like what's come up more than

0:58

Bram Stoker himself is his estate

1:00

and his widow not giving people permission

1:04

to adapt his work. But

1:06

really we have not talked about him at

1:08

all. Uh It

1:11

this is a case where once I started getting

1:13

into the research. After you and I had that discussion,

1:16

I knew we had not talked about it at all, because

1:18

there's part of his story I

1:21

would have remembered and have been texting all

1:23

of my friends about for the last several days

1:27

leading up to this recording. So today we

1:29

are going to talk about Bram Stoker. Abraham

1:32

Stoker was born on November eight

1:34

eight His

1:37

parents lived in the Clontarf suburb

1:39

of Dublin, Ireland. His father was also

1:41

named Abraham Stoker. His mother

1:44

was Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley

1:46

Stoker, and this was a large family. Braham

1:49

had two siblings when he was born, and

1:51

the Stokers had another four more children after

1:53

him. And as a child, Bram,

1:55

who was still going by Abraham at that age but to

1:58

separate from his dad go ahead and go to his

2:00

adopted name of Brann, was not

2:03

healthy. He was confined to

2:05

his bed or wherever an adult would carry

2:07

him for the first seven years of his

2:09

life. And we don't actually

2:11

know what the nature of this illness was, and

2:14

there have been all kinds of theories, from it

2:16

possibly having been some sort of a

2:18

fever, to a psychological

2:20

element being part of it, possibly a

2:22

trauma of some kind, but this is

2:24

absolutely all speculation.

2:26

We do not know what was up here. Most

2:29

biographers make the case that this early

2:31

phase of Stoker's life definitely

2:33

influenced everything that came afterward.

2:36

Braham's mother told him about the cholera

2:38

epidemic that she had lived through, and

2:40

specifically people being buried

2:42

alive. His father would

2:44

tell him family stories, including military

2:47

battles, and also

2:49

described plays that he had seen.

2:51

All of this seated Stoker's

2:53

imagination, and he had a lot

2:56

of time alone with his thoughts since

2:58

he couldn't really get up and go with

3:00

his siblings and his peers. But

3:03

despite this early start in this mystery

3:05

ailment, Stoker made a full recovery.

3:08

Biographer Barbara Belford, who was one

3:10

of several biographers that wrote about

3:12

him, mentions how very odd it is that Stoker

3:15

never gave any detail of his illness

3:18

in his writing about himself. This

3:20

was not a family that was ignorant

3:23

of medical matters. His uncle, William

3:25

Stoker was the family doctor. He

3:27

also had three brothers who became doctors.

3:30

But the truth of those early years seems

3:32

to have been obscured and lost to

3:34

time. Although a lot of scholars of

3:37

Stoker's work have scoured his

3:39

writing for clues like any time he mentions

3:41

a child being ill, or they like is this a reference

3:43

to his youth? But details

3:45

regarding the end of his illness are as

3:48

murky as the illnesses itself.

3:50

He would later write, quote, this early

3:52

weakness passed away, and I grew into

3:54

a strong boy in time, in large

3:56

to the biggest member of my family. In

3:59

eighteen sixty four, when Stoker was seventeen,

4:01

he enrolled at Trinity College at the University

4:03

of Dublin, And while he may have

4:06

started life in pretty poor health as a college

4:08

student, he was actually really athletic. He

4:10

was an accomplished gymnast and a rugby

4:13

player. He also participated

4:15

in endurance racewalking. He

4:18

won prizes in five and seven mile

4:20

walks. He also cut a pretty striking

4:23

figure. He was six ft two with red hair,

4:25

and he was popular. Invited

4:27

to join both the Historical Society

4:29

and the Philosophical Society, and he

4:32

was elected to positions of responsibility

4:34

in each of them. His time at Trinity

4:36

overlapped with that of Oscar Wilde,

4:38

who was younger than Stoker. The two

4:40

of them knew each other, and Bram had

4:43

actually nominated Wild for membership

4:45

of the Philosophical Society. Yeah,

4:47

that's an interesting overlap. It

4:50

will come up again in just a bit. So

4:53

here's the thing. Stoker's performance in school

4:55

did not really hint at his future legacy.

4:58

While he excelled at sports,

5:00

was kind of an average student academically,

5:03

but he was writing essays and papers

5:05

about things that sparked his interest in his

5:08

societal participations, including

5:10

one's titled Sensationalism

5:12

in Fiction and Society and

5:14

the Necessity for Political Honesty.

5:17

In eighteen seventy, he graduated from Trinity.

5:20

He would later say he graduated with honors

5:22

in mathematics. This is untrue.

5:24

Trinity College actually has a biography

5:26

of him, and they're like, we don't know where he got this. If

5:30

you're wondering about it taking six years

5:33

for him to earn a bachelor's degree, that's because

5:35

he was also working for all but the first

5:37

two years of that schooling. Stoker

5:40

took a civil service job at Dublin Castle

5:42

thanks to an assist from his father, who had

5:44

also worked there as a civil servant until

5:47

his retirement in eighteen sixty five.

5:49

So he was working six and

5:51

a half days a week while also taking

5:54

classes. So at that point six

5:56

years is past to me. Yes, me

5:59

as well. And it's one of those things where it's almost

6:01

like this sets the stage for his whole life

6:03

of just being constantly

6:05

working on a lot of things and making time

6:08

for more things than anyone humans should fit

6:10

in a day. But after he finished school,

6:12

he continued in his civil service position,

6:14

although he also continued to be interested in literature.

6:18

In his last years of school, Stoker

6:20

became somewhat obsessed with

6:22

Walt Whitman, and that deep

6:24

interest in the man and his work continued

6:27

long after graduation from Trinity.

6:29

In February seventy two,

6:31

Stoker wrote Whitman a two thousand

6:34

word letter in which he said, among other

6:36

things, quote, you have shaken off

6:38

the shackles and your wings are free.

6:41

I have the shackles on my shoulder still,

6:43

but I have no wings. Stoker's

6:46

letter continues on to describe himself

6:48

and detail including

6:50

the sorts of things that a person today might

6:53

normally share, maybe with a therapist,

6:56

including how he chose to interact with people,

6:58

as well as the sort of things he might tell pen pal,

7:00

and then it concluded with quote, now I have told

7:03

you all I know about myself. So

7:05

couldn't actually mail this letter to Whitman,

7:08

though instead he left it in his desk

7:10

for the next four years, intending

7:13

to make a clean copy to send. This

7:15

is a level of procrastination I

7:18

feel like I can experience

7:21

in my life. I think we

7:23

all can. There's also the possibility,

7:26

and again this is a matter of speculation that some

7:28

people have theorized that he

7:30

recognized how sort of raw and familiar

7:33

this letter was, and like, while

7:35

that may have been his truest feelings, he was

7:37

also a little trepidacious about

7:39

actually sharing it, Like maybe I shouldn't

7:42

send this to someone. Maybe

7:44

I don't even want to acknowledge that I just wrote

7:46

all of these things to my literary hero, because

7:49

that's weird. We'll talk more

7:51

about this whole thing

7:53

on Friday. But after a gathering

7:56

at which Whitman's work was criticized and

7:58

rebutted in eighteen seven six, and we

8:00

should point out that, you know, Whitman

8:03

was controversial in his time. There were

8:05

poems, for example, that were part of Leaves of Grass

8:07

that were left out of some publications

8:10

of that work, particularly in Britain. There was a

8:12

lot of discussion about whether his work

8:14

was appropriate in some cases, but

8:16

at that gathering Stoker provided the

8:19

defense position of the poet, And afterwards

8:22

he wrote another letter to Walt Whitman, similarly

8:24

familiar and kind of intimate. He

8:26

talked about having defended him because he thinks

8:28

he is such a great man. And this time

8:31

he actually mailed it, as well as

8:33

that one that had sat in his destroyer all

8:36

of the intervening time. And

8:38

Whitman got these letters and replied

8:40

that he hoped that the two of them would one day

8:42

meet, and he commented on the unconventional,

8:45

manly and affectionate way in which

8:47

Stoker had addressed him. Those are all adjectives

8:50

that I am quoting from Whitman regarding

8:53

Bram Stoker's writing. If if

8:55

you want to know more about Walt Whitman and his writing,

8:57

we have a previous episode on him that I feel

9:00

has been a Saturday classic, not that long

9:02

ago, but it has

9:04

been long ago enough ago since we recorded

9:06

it that I have no recollection. If it mentions Bram

9:08

Stoker in any way, I

9:10

don't think so, because I think I would have remembered.

9:15

Uh so anyway, Whitman

9:17

had been particularly delighted

9:19

in all this by a passage in

9:21

which Stoker called him the quote father,

9:24

brother, and wife to his soul. Whitman

9:27

later told a friend that he felt that Stoker

9:29

had actually been writing to himself

9:31

and kind of working through his own thoughts, and

9:34

that he felt compelled to respond to

9:36

the young man. Although Stoker

9:38

had hoped that Whitman might one day

9:40

travel to Ireland and they could meet, Whitman's

9:43

health at the time kept that from ever happening.

9:46

Yeah, he was not able to travel, um,

9:49

but don't give up on that thought. This

9:51

writing, these letters to Walt Whitman are

9:53

the only instances of writing from Stoker's

9:56

youth where he speaks so openly

9:58

about himself and his inner world.

10:01

He tends to kind of keep his private

10:03

thoughts private for most

10:05

of the rest of his writing, so they have become

10:07

a really important part of his history. In

10:10

eighteen seventy six, Stoker was promoted

10:12

into the newly created position

10:15

of Inspector of Courts of Petty

10:17

Sessions, and this money had to travel

10:19

to various municipalities and audit

10:21

their small claims courts. Three

10:23

years into the job, he published a book on this

10:26

subject called The Duties of

10:28

Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland.

10:30

Bless him. This sounds dull as dirt. I mean

10:32

it's literally like going to a court and hearing

10:34

people talk about things. Uh. In one

10:37

biography they mentioned like him

10:39

him sitting in on hearings about things

10:42

like dog licenses. Uh,

10:45

you know, neighbors complaining against one another.

10:47

But meanwhile, while working in his civil

10:50

service job by day and probably finding

10:52

it a little less than intellectually

10:54

stimulating, Stoker started a side

10:56

hustle in the evenings as a writer

10:58

on more interesting topic. He

11:01

first wrote theater reviews. He did

11:03

not get paid for these, but he did create a significant

11:05

change at the Dublin Evening Mail in

11:08

working on them. Up to that point,

11:10

theater reviews normally published two days

11:12

after the show that was being reviewed, so if you went to

11:14

a show on Friday night, the review of

11:16

it would appear Sunday. But Stoker,

11:19

who again was a very busy bee and would

11:21

pack a lot of work into any day, instigated

11:23

a shift so that next day

11:25

reviews would run at the paper. So if you saw that

11:28

Friday show, the review would run

11:30

on the Saturday morning and learning

11:32

the discipline of writing and doing this

11:34

on a deadline enabled him to turn his pen

11:36

to more creative efforts, and he started

11:39

writing short stories as well. In

11:41

eighteen seventy two, he had actually already published

11:43

the first of his short stories, that was one called The Crystal

11:45

Cup. But in the late eighteen seventies

11:48

he also started editing a fiction magazine.

11:50

In eighteen seventy five, he published

11:52

a novella over several installments

11:55

in the periodical The Shamrock. That

11:57

story is called The Primrose Path

12:00

was published under the name A Stoker Esquire

12:02

that unfolds over ten chapters. This

12:05

is a morality tale about the dangers of

12:07

alcohol, and it tells the story of a carpenter

12:09

from Dublin who moves to London

12:12

and becomes an alcoholic, which ultimately

12:15

leads to misery, so much misery.

12:17

It's a very dark, dark

12:20

story in many ways. In

12:22

late eighteen seventy six, bram Stoker

12:24

wrote a theater review that changed the course

12:27

of his life. And we're going to talk about that. After

12:29

we first paused for a sponsor break,

12:37

as we said before the break. In eighteen seventy

12:40

six, bram Stoker wrote a review

12:42

this review was of Henry Irving's performance

12:45

as Hamlet, and it was glowing. Bram

12:48

was already something of a Henry Irving fan.

12:50

He had seen the famous actor on stage

12:52

for the first time in eighteen sixty seven, when

12:54

he had attended a performance of The Rivals in

12:57

Dublin, and he had, when he

12:59

saw that first performance, been thinking

13:01

about a career in acting himself, and

13:03

Irving asked Stoker out to dinner

13:06

as a thank you for this. This was a start of

13:08

a long and very close friendship. Henry

13:10

Irving became a pivotal figure

13:12

in Bram Stoker's life, so it's worth giving

13:14

his biography a little attention, just for context.

13:17

So Irving was born John Henry

13:20

broad Rib in Somerset, England, on February

13:24

and when he was six his parents moved to Bristol,

13:26

where his father had found a new job, but they

13:28

left John Henry with an aunt and uncle in

13:30

Cornwall rather than moving him to a city.

13:33

He did rejoin his parents a few years later in

13:35

London at the age of ten. He

13:37

started work as a clerk as a young man, but

13:40

really always wanted a life in the theater,

13:42

so with financial assistance from a

13:44

relative, he started purchasing costumes

13:47

and wigs, and then he bought a role for himself

13:49

in a local production of Romeo and Juliet.

13:52

He appeared in that as Henry Irving.

13:55

From there he started working with stock companies.

13:58

This a bit performer and was an hund of

14:00

shows touring Great Britain. Yeah,

14:02

I read one statistics that said something like over

14:04

the course of three years he was in four hundred

14:06

different roles, so he

14:08

was doing a lot of very small bit

14:11

players kind of acting. Irving

14:14

really started gating recognition in the mid

14:16

eighteen sixties, and in eighteen seventy

14:18

one he became very famous for his appearance

14:21

in The Bells at the Lyceum Theater. He

14:23

appeared at the Lyceum as the star of the

14:26

company for the next several years, and it was

14:28

in late eighteen seventy six that he starred

14:30

in Hamlet, which was of course reviewed

14:32

by Bram Stoker for the Dublin Evening

14:34

Mail, and after reading that review

14:36

in the morning, Irving wanted to have dinner

14:38

with Stoker that very evening. The

14:41

two men wrote letters to one another for

14:43

several years, and in eighteen seventies seven,

14:46

Irving made a move that really changed

14:48

Stoker's life. He purchased

14:50

the Lyceum Theater in London and asked

14:52

Stoker to be its manager. Irving

14:55

would work as the director of the productions

14:57

and of course also star in them, and

14:59

then Stoker would handle the business, from

15:01

tickets to press releases and managing

15:04

the staff. This was a really big

15:06

ask. Henry Irving was

15:08

the most famous actor in late nineteenth

15:10

century England, and he was also known to

15:13

be intense and demanding and

15:15

uncompromising. And Bram

15:17

Stoker, who adored Irving, didn't

15:19

think twice about it. He bid a jew to Ireland

15:21

and his civil service job to start

15:23

a new as Henry Irving's business

15:26

manager, essentially in eighteen seventy eight,

15:28

and this job was not a hobby

15:31

job, so the two of them could hang out. The Lyceum

15:34

was large, with a seating capacity

15:36

of two thousand, and it was a

15:38

social hub for London society in

15:40

addition to all the regular business of his position,

15:43

entertaining the illustrious patrons

15:46

of the theater after shows with luxurious

15:48

dinners that also fell under Stoker's

15:51

job description. This is a gigantic

15:53

job for one person. Yes, it is

15:56

in doing this though he met numerous

15:59

luminaries, including Mark Twain,

16:01

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Prime

16:03

Minister Gladstone. This is so

16:05

much work, and despite these long hours

16:08

demanded of this job, Stoker

16:10

still found time to write, and this

16:12

was on top of the fact that he was

16:14

writing several dozen letters a day

16:17

on behalf of Henry Irving, so

16:19

handling both his business correspondents

16:21

and his personal correspondents and things like

16:23

fan mail. Somehow, while doing

16:26

all of this, Stoker also got

16:28

married in eighteen seventy eight to Florence

16:30

Malcolm. Florence was eleven

16:33

years younger than he was and was

16:36

pretty outgoing, whereas he was more shy

16:38

and reserved. Her claim to historical

16:40

fame is being the exquisitely pretty

16:43

girl that Oscar Wilde fell in love

16:45

with, and she didn't apparently tell

16:48

wild that she had married his

16:50

friend from Trinity. While he was off traveling.

16:53

Oscar Wilde wrote her a letter

16:55

that he wished to have a gold cross back

16:57

that he had given to her because it represents

17:00

the sweetest time of his youth. She

17:02

told him that he could come to their home and get

17:04

it, but he thought that would be inappropriate

17:06

and asked that they meet at her parents

17:08

home instead, and Florence,

17:10

for her part, also wanted something back. She

17:13

wanted all of the letters that she had sent Oscar

17:15

Wilde when they were corresponding and courting.

17:18

It is unclear if these things were ever

17:20

exchanged and given back to each other. Uh

17:23

This whole interaction, and

17:26

this sort of triangle of relationships is

17:28

often summarized as Florence having

17:31

the choice to marry either Bram Stoker

17:33

or Oscar Wilde. But while Oscar Wilde,

17:35

in his writing to her, does seem to have really

17:37

been hurt by Florence

17:39

marrying his friend, there's no evidence

17:41

that he was ever suggesting that he should be her

17:43

husband or that they should get married, and

17:46

wild An Stoker did remain friends

17:48

despite this whole thing. Bram

17:50

and Florence had one child, a son

17:52

named Noel. That was the first year after

17:55

they were married, maybe in response

17:57

to finding himself a father. In eighty one,

17:59

Stoker published a book of children's stories

18:02

called Under the Sunset. There didn't

18:04

seem to be a lot of discord in the Stoker

18:06

marriage, but there also didn't seem to

18:08

be that much closeness or devotion

18:10

between them either. No, they did

18:12

a lot of stuff separately. Um

18:15

Stoker was a man who valued efficiency

18:18

and organization, and he was absolutely

18:20

excellent at managing Irving's every

18:22

need at the theater, and he

18:24

seemed to put his job and Irving ahead

18:27

of everything else in his life, including

18:29

his own family. For example,

18:31

the newlywed Stoker's even skipped a honeymoon

18:34

instead, Bram and Florence had traveled

18:36

to Birmingham so Bram could work. Stoker

18:39

had not even told his boss that he was

18:41

getting married. In eighteen

18:43

eighty three, the Lyceum Theater mounted

18:45

a tour in North America. Stoker

18:48

managed all of the logistics, so

18:50

the first of many such tours, and

18:52

Stoker collected his experiences into

18:55

a travelog called A Glimpse

18:57

of America that came out in eighteen eighties

18:59

six. On these travels

19:01

to the U S, Stoker met two presidents,

19:03

McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, and

19:05

more importantly, he was finally

19:08

able to meet Walt Whitman. And

19:10

at this point these two writers had been trading

19:12

letters for years, so there was a pretty

19:14

easy friendship to their meeting. Although descriptions

19:17

kind of make it sound like Stoker was initially a little

19:19

nervous there was one blemish

19:22

to mar this beautiful occasion, though Henry

19:25

Irving had insisted on going to meet Walt

19:27

Whitman as well, so Stoker felt a little

19:29

bit cheated of the intimate conversation that

19:31

he had dreamed of having with his idol. Woman

19:34

noted also that Stoker had switched

19:36

from going by Abraham Stoker to Bram

19:39

Stoker, and he did not particularly

19:41

like that shift in name. He just didn't think it

19:43

was very dignified. But overall

19:45

it was a really, really good meeting, and Stoker

19:48

declared Walt Whitman to be quote, a man

19:50

amongst men. During the

19:52

eighteen nineties, Stoker was still

19:54

publishing novels, including The Waters

19:57

Moo and that feature star crossed lovers

19:59

as part of the story. There's also The

20:01

Shoulder of Shasta, which is a romance

20:04

set in northern California. Even

20:06

as these books were being published, he was also working

20:08

on what would become his masterpiece, Dracula.

20:12

While Bram Stoker was normally a very

20:14

fast writer, Dracula took

20:16

him far longer than his previous novels.

20:18

He wrote it over the course of seven years, and

20:21

perhaps even longer, but that's how

20:23

long we know he was working on it while he

20:25

was touring with Irving and working on

20:27

other writing projects. We'll talk

20:29

a little more about some of the research that went into

20:32

the most famous of Stoker's books

20:34

after we first take a break for a word from the sponsors

20:37

that keep stuff UMIs in history class going.

20:46

If you look at the notes that Stoker compiled

20:48

as he was assembling his Vampiric Tail,

20:51

it becomes really apparent that he was, as

20:53

we mentioned earlier, meticulous. He

20:56

had carefully plotted out Jonathan Harker's

20:58

journey to Transylvania by train,

21:00

using actual train schedules

21:02

and only using connections that he believed

21:04

would have actually worked, and he created

21:07

a table of all of the correspondents that

21:09

would appear in the book to ensure that the dates

21:11

that they posted in the dates that they would

21:13

arrive in the recipient's hands was realistic.

21:16

It also seems as though all of his work running

21:19

at theater and tours kind of informed the

21:21

way he constructed narrative. He

21:23

also was a writer who really believed in

21:25

research, and his work researching

21:28

what would become the novel Dracula

21:30

is really deeply associated with the town of

21:32

Whitby, England, on the country's

21:34

east coast. He is said to have visited

21:37

a library in Whitby to look at a

21:39

specific selection of the Special

21:41

Collections title by William Wilkinson,

21:44

which is an account of the principalities

21:46

of Wallachia and Moldavia with various

21:48

political observations relating to

21:51

them. It is from this book that

21:53

he is said to have learned of the name Dracula

21:55

in relation to lad Tepeesh. Prior

21:58

to this, Stoker was planning to name

22:00

his villainous character Count vomp

22:02

Here. This was a rare book. It's

22:05

an odd thing for Stoker to have just known about.

22:07

But a friend he knew from his theater circle,

22:10

Arminius van Berry, had told

22:12

him about the story of the locking a

22:15

count and the book that he could find

22:17

it in. Yeah, piece

22:20

of knowledge. It's a very strange

22:22

thing, right. I can only imagine as

22:25

a librarian having someone walk in

22:27

and be like, hey, you know that rare book that

22:29

you don't even tell people you have. I would like to see

22:31

it please. I

22:33

mean, it's literally that strange um.

22:37

Stoker then visited the Whippy Museum

22:39

to work on that route that we mentioned a moment

22:41

ago for Harker to take, including

22:43

making notes about latitude and longitude,

22:46

and next Stoker consulted with the

22:48

Royal Coast Guard at the nearby harbor

22:51

and discussed the topic that would figure prominently

22:53

in the story of Dracula. In five,

22:56

the ship Dmitri had left the port of Narva

22:58

in Estonia and had on the ground near

23:00

Whitby. According to the locals,

23:03

only a few members of the crew survived,

23:05

and there was a black dog that emerged from the

23:07

ship and ran off while rescue efforts were

23:09

under way. The Dmitri had

23:11

been carrying crates of silver sand.

23:14

That may sound mysterious, but silver sand

23:16

is actually a fine white sand

23:19

that is commonly used in construction

23:21

mortar. But if you've read Dracula,

23:23

that might sound familiar, but not exactly

23:26

the way you remember it. Stoker

23:28

borrowed the story of the Dimitri for

23:30

the novel, making the ship the conveyance

23:33

of Count Dracula from his home country

23:35

to London, but in the fictional

23:37

version the name is changed to the Demeter,

23:39

which also invokes the Greek goddess

23:41

and its associations with the cycle of life

23:44

and death, and Narva changes

23:46

to Varna, Bulgaria as the departure

23:48

point for the ship, and Stoker's

23:51

fictionalized version the silver sand

23:53

remains, but the ship is also filled

23:55

with crates of earth from Count Dracula's

23:57

homeland, and then, of course the black

24:00

Dog becomes an embodiment of the vampire

24:02

himself. Stoker's research wasn't

24:05

confined to Whitby. He continued to consult

24:07

the library regularly to make notes that

24:09

would contribute to Dracula once he was back

24:11

in London, but would be is very closely

24:13

associated with the book at this point. Vampire

24:16

stories long predated Dracula,

24:19

and like there are a vampire like entities

24:23

like all over the world in various

24:25

mythology and folklore and fiction.

24:28

But Stoker's version of vampireism is

24:30

really what we've come to know as like the classic vampire

24:32

tropes, the vampire being

24:35

able to shape shift into animals, the

24:37

Count suddenly becoming almost crazed

24:39

with thirst when Harker cuts himself shaving,

24:42

and the vampire needing to be invited

24:44

into a home. All that's present here

24:47

in the nineteen o one Icelandic edition

24:49

of Dracula titled Mocked Meer Crana

24:52

which translates to powers of darkness. The

24:54

preface that Stoker wrote includes

24:56

insistence that the events relate

24:58

in the Dracula story are true, writing

25:00

quote, I am quite convinced that

25:03

there is no doubt whatever that the events

25:05

here described really took place, however

25:07

unbelievable and incomprehensible

25:09

they might appear at first sight, and

25:12

I am further convinced that they must always

25:14

remain, to some extent incomprehensible,

25:17

although continuing research in psychology

25:19

and natural sciences may in years

25:21

to come give logical explanation

25:24

of such strange happenings, which at present

25:27

neither scientists nor the secret police

25:29

can understand. I state

25:31

again that this mysterious tragedy which

25:33

is here described is completely true

25:35

in all its external respects, though

25:38

naturally I have reached a different conclusion

25:40

on certain points than those involved

25:42

in the story. But the events are incontrovertible,

25:45

and so many people know of them that they cannot

25:48

be denied. So this has

25:50

led to all kinds of speculation

25:54

since it came out about whether Stoker

25:56

was referencing Jack the Ripper here. The

25:59

Icelandic version of the book is different

26:01

from the originally published version though

26:04

having been abridged quite a bit when

26:06

it was translated back into English,

26:08

and it became really apparent

26:11

that the original translator of Stoker's

26:13

work into Icelandic Vladimar Asmondson,

26:16

had reworked the plot significantly

26:18

and created a very different story. I

26:20

remember when the English speaking world found

26:22

out about this and

26:25

was like, what, Yeah, it's actually

26:28

really good. Um. If anybody

26:31

wants to seek it out,

26:33

I think right now as we record this in October,

26:36

Uh, if you have an Amazon Prime

26:39

account, I think you can download the Kindle version

26:41

for free, and Audible has the audio

26:43

version available as a freebee.

26:46

Um. And it's really quite delightful.

26:48

And if you are a person who loves Dracula,

26:50

it's very interesting because there are characters

26:53

you have never seen before in the story are

26:56

events play out very differently. Some things are

26:58

condensed, some things are gone completely. Uh.

27:00

And it's just a new way to experience

27:03

this piece of lore. Yeah. I also

27:06

feel like I should just clarify that most

27:08

people in Iceland also speak English. When

27:10

I say the English speaking world, I

27:12

mean like places like the United

27:15

States in Britain. Yes. Uh.

27:18

When Dracula was originally published in seven

27:21

it was really well received, but it really didn't

27:23

hit the global long reaching popularity

27:26

it would eventually achieve. It was kind

27:28

of like, you know, if you see a movie and it's like a

27:30

great movie that year, but you don't

27:32

think, like, oh, this is going to launch a kajillion

27:34

things. Uh. Stoker's mother, Charlotte,

27:37

is said to have quite liked it and actually

27:39

believed it would be a huge success and

27:41

and be one of the things for which her

27:43

son would be remembered. Publishers

27:45

in the United States were not initially interested

27:47

in this story, so Stoker actually purchased

27:50

the U S copyright for himself. The

27:52

first American edition of the book appeared in eight

27:56

Analysis of the text alongside

27:58

Stoker's life story has sometimes

28:01

led people to believe that Dracula

28:03

as a character is based at least partially

28:05

on Henry Irving and his demanding

28:08

nature. It's also possible

28:10

that rather than modeling it on Irving, Stoker

28:13

was kind of thinking about how Irving could

28:15

play the count in a stage version

28:17

of the story that actually did not work

28:19

out. Stoker had arranged a reading of

28:21

the Dracula story in play

28:23

form at the theater before the novel came

28:26

out, Irving declared

28:28

it dreadful the fool Um.

28:31

At this point in time, the Lyceum was

28:34

faltering. The plays that they staged

28:36

were not doing as well as they once had,

28:38

and Stoker had thought that Dracula might be an

28:40

opportunity to regain some interest

28:42

in financial footing for the business, but Irving

28:45

would not have it, and then

28:47

the theater had a fire. The building

28:49

was not destroyed, but they lost a lot of their

28:51

stock, props, and scenery. It was expensive

28:54

and messy as all of these

28:56

problems piled up, and the Lyceum

28:58

had to enter into a receivership so that

29:00

its assets could be liquidated to cover

29:03

its debts. The productions continued,

29:05

although in less grand stagings

29:08

than the theater had once seen. Henry

29:10

Irving gave his last performance in October

29:13

nineteen o five. He died that night,

29:15

just after returning to his hotel. Stoker

29:18

got there soon after his friend had collapsed,

29:21

but it was too late to save his life.

29:23

After Irving's death, Bram Stoker

29:25

wrote about his own life and his long business

29:28

partnership and friendship with Irving in

29:30

a two volume book titled Personal Reminiscences

29:33

of Henry Irving. This was Stoker's

29:35

most popular work in his lifetime.

29:38

Although this was not some scandalous

29:40

reveal of the man behind the public face.

29:42

Bram Stoker wrote of Irving in the most

29:45

positive, agilation

29:47

soaked way imaginable. At

29:49

this point, Stoker was without the

29:51

job that had required all

29:53

of his attention for so many years, and

29:55

so he turned to writing full time. From

29:58

nineteen o five to nineteen eleven, he published

30:00

several short stories and novels in

30:02

addition to his Irving memoir. The

30:04

last of these was The Layer of the White Worm.

30:07

It's a very strange horror tale with a lot

30:09

going on in terms of plot threads, including

30:11

a story about Mongoose's

30:14

Yeah, there's a whole lot going on in that. Some

30:16

of it is um very outdated

30:19

in terms of how different people so

30:21

the worlds are perceived. In

30:23

his last year, Stoker found himself

30:25

financially strapped. He did some

30:27

more theater management to make ends meet,

30:29

but primarily he continued to

30:31

focus on writing. Dracula

30:34

continued to be popular enough to earn some royalties,

30:37

and Stoker also wrote a bit as a

30:39

journalist for the Daily Chronicle, profiling

30:41

notable figures of the day. He

30:43

also did something that seems a little bit odd,

30:46

which is that he took up the flag of censorship,

30:48

as in he was pro censorship. He

30:50

advocated for banning inappropriate

30:53

books and writing that quote. A close

30:55

analysis will show that the only emotions

30:57

which in the long run harm are those

31:00

arising from sex impulses. During

31:02

that time, his health also declined.

31:04

He had a series of strokes starting in nineteen

31:07

o six, and in nineteen ten he had

31:09

what he described as a breakdown

31:11

from overwork. That was on

31:13

a petition for a grant from the Royal

31:15

Literary Fund in nineteen

31:18

eleven. Continually, dwindling

31:20

finances led Bram and Florence to move

31:22

into a more modest apartment. They left

31:24

the one that had been their home in London for more

31:26

than three decades. Bram Stoker

31:29

died at the age of sixty four in nineteen

31:31

twelve. That was the same week that

31:33

the Titanic sank. In the

31:35

days leading up to his passing, he had, like

31:37

all of London, been transfixed by the

31:39

story of the ship's demise and the investigation

31:42

that was soon to begin. Even

31:44

in death, Stoker left something of a mystery.

31:47

There are three causes of death listed

31:50

they are kidney disease, exhaustion,

31:53

and locomotor ataxia, So

31:55

that last one, locomotor ataxia, was

31:58

generally used as a synonym

32:00

for tertiary syphilis, and

32:02

that, of course has led to all kinds of

32:05

speculation about various,

32:07

usually salacious ways that he

32:09

could have contracted syphilis. But looking

32:12

at all of his symptoms and his behavior leading

32:14

up to his death, that doesn't really add

32:16

up. It's possible that he was

32:18

misdiagnosed due to some of the lingering

32:20

effects of the strokes he had had, but

32:22

we will not ever really know. Yeah,

32:25

I have read. Uh some biographers

32:27

are like, We're not even sure why the

32:30

corner put multiple causes

32:32

of death when just saying kidney disease

32:34

would have covered it. Um.

32:37

But this fascination with the possibility

32:39

that Stoker could have had syphilis is

32:41

really part of a much bigger speculation

32:43

that has gone on for over a century about

32:46

the author's sexuality, and

32:48

he seems in so many ways to be a tangle

32:50

of repression and confusion regarding

32:52

sexuality and desire in his writing,

32:55

with so much erotic content that it sometimes

32:57

seems he doesn't even realize he is, including

33:00

There are multitudes of papers

33:02

analyzing the sexuality of Dracula

33:05

and the disdain for the Victorian new

33:07

woman that is present in a lot of Stoker's

33:09

work. His obsession with figures

33:11

like Whitman and Irving, and his friendship with Oscar

33:14

Wilde, who he saw goes through the trial

33:16

that ultimately, you know, kind of ruined

33:18

Oscar Wild's life, have naturally

33:20

led to speculation about an attraction to

33:23

men that he may never have truly recognized.

33:25

But this, like his childhood infirmity and

33:27

his cause of death, can never be conclusively

33:30

known. What we do know, though, is

33:32

that Dracula has never been out of

33:34

print. It has been adapted into films

33:36

and musicals and ballet, and

33:38

has inspired innumerable other

33:40

vampire stories, and it also just continues

33:43

to do so. Oh Bram Stoker's

33:45

Dracula. Um, we

33:48

can talk more about it in the behind the scenes.

33:51

Yes, he's so um

33:54

fascinating and complex. And I really

33:56

did not know all of that while Whitman stuff

33:58

to the degree that laid well

34:01

and I took a second while

34:03

we were kind of in our in in a sponsor

34:06

break movements um to

34:08

see, I don't think we mentioned any

34:10

connection to bram Stoker in the Walt Whitman episode.

34:12

Yeah, I don't think so. Um

34:15

I yeah, I want to rewatch all of the

34:18

Dracula now and

34:21

think about him in this way. Um.

34:25

I don't have regular listener mail, I

34:28

have an illustrative tale. I'm

34:32

eager for this. Well, it's just one

34:34

of those things where it's kind of a peek

34:36

behind how this works. And you mentioning

34:39

that you looked up in the Walt Whitman episode whether

34:41

we mentioned bram Stoker kind of plays into it.

34:43

Um. This is uh. I got a

34:46

Facebook message from our listener

34:49

and our friend Mariam, who

34:51

I met through the podcast and and have

34:53

you know, exchanged notes with

34:55

back and forth. We met her also at one of our live shows

34:58

and she mentioned that she was doing paper on pandemics

35:01

and she had found an older

35:04

episode of Stuff You Missed in History class that talked

35:06

about the Black Plague and she thought there

35:08

had been a more recent one with the two of us, but

35:10

couldn't find it. And it gave me

35:12

a moment where I was like, I have to look this up

35:14

because I don't remember. Um.

35:17

And it is one of those things that I feel like comes

35:19

up often and We've talked about it a little

35:21

before, but I I always like to illustrate

35:24

it. It literally just the same as we were,

35:26

like, did we do a bram Stoker episode? Um,

35:29

there are moments where the

35:32

Black Death and things like plague in particular,

35:34

and bram Stoker is another good example, and Walt

35:36

Woman because he comes up in many things where

35:39

it's really hard to remember

35:42

what we haven't haven't not done as a full episode,

35:44

particularly when that

35:47

topic comes up in many

35:49

other episodes as sort of a secondary

35:51

piece of the story. So

35:53

it it always cracks me up a little

35:55

bit because people will often be like, you

35:58

did an episode on this, and we're like, no, we'd and

36:00

sometimes we will realize that what has

36:03

happened is that they have stitched

36:05

together what they thought was a longer episode

36:07

in their head. Uh. Sometimes

36:11

it is people confusing our show for other

36:13

shows. Yeah, and I'm

36:16

not making fun of anybody, because I have absolutely

36:18

done this before where I've been like I remember

36:21

hearing this on an episode of n Invisible

36:23

and it was like actually on Criminal or something like

36:25

it was those shows are very dissimilar.

36:28

I don't know how. I don't think that's a real example

36:30

from my actual life. But we have for sure had

36:33

people email us and say, hey, I just

36:35

I'm trying to find this episode you all did and

36:37

I can't find it anywhere, and I'm like, that

36:40

was not us. I'm really sorry. Yeah,

36:42

it's just uh an interesting illustratous

36:45

example of how and sometimes

36:47

we don't even know for sure. We literally have to

36:49

go back to an index that Tracy put together

36:52

a while back when we were changing um

36:55

over the way our website worked, and

36:57

she just gathered all of our metadata into

37:00

a big document, especially when

37:02

you go back to shows that were before you and I hosted.

37:04

I I have a lot of gaps

37:06

in my knowledge of that, even though we try

37:09

to keep track of it and look at it periodically. But

37:11

it is an interesting thing and I feel

37:14

like it's a good illustrative example

37:17

of what has often

37:19

come up in the show. I feel like it's come up a lot lately

37:22

of cases like Bram Stoker where

37:25

he misremembers things about his past,

37:28

and there are oftentimes it came up to in

37:30

the Elena Blovotsky episode. People

37:33

will report even their own biographies

37:36

incorrectly, and sometimes in

37:39

some cases the initial response is

37:41

to presume a sort

37:43

of nefarious level that they're lying or

37:45

covering something up. But it's also

37:49

worth noting that people have

37:52

faulty memories. Is

37:54

often also what occludes

37:57

historical records is that even

37:59

when you're talking is someone fairly

38:01

recently after an event has taken place, they

38:04

will relate the events incorrectly.

38:06

Um. Just just a little

38:09

point of reference for everyone as we all talk

38:11

about history all the time,

38:13

to remember personal personal

38:16

accounts are great, uh

38:18

and sometimes like the most primary

38:21

source you can get. But also to remember

38:23

that they are not remembering

38:25

necessarily right. And

38:28

one day someone will

38:30

um be like, Holly

38:33

and Tracy remembered stuff incorrectly, and we'll

38:35

be like, that is correct. Yeah, I definitely

38:37

remembered it incorrectly all the time. Anyway,

38:43

that was my little trip down. I wonder

38:45

if people realize how tricky it is

38:47

to keep dragon what we've actually done episodes.

38:51

If you would like to write to us and ask us

38:53

questions about episodes we may or may not remember

38:56

doing, you can do so at History Podcast

38:58

at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us

39:00

on social media as missed in History, and

39:03

you can subscribe to the show them. Just

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remember to do that you only have to remember for a second. You

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or wherever it is you listen. Stuff

39:17

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