Zamiel … Feuergeist: in Weber’s opera Der Freischütz (1821), Zamiel or Samiel the Black Hunter is a devil. A Feuergeist is a fire-spirit.
since the Place de la Grève … heroes: the Place de la Grève, renamed as the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in 1806, had been the principal site of executions in Paris since the fourteenth century, and had therefore witnessed many of the deaths of ‘heroes’ and others in the Revolution; but the place of execution had recently been transferred to the Barrière St Jacques on the Left Bank in 1830.
‘Monsieur de Paris’ … hand: customary title given to a Parisian executioner, a post that was passed from father to son in the family of Sanson (here Anglicized by Gore, perhaps for the sake of biblical resonance) for several generations. The incumbent referred to here is Henri Sanson (1767–1840), the fifth executioner of that name, who took over from his father, the more infamous Charles-Henri, in 1795.
the judicial assassination … adduced: a confused reference to a real miscarriage of justice in 1833 involving the Dupuytren household. The former cook, Gillard, was in fact the victim not of the murder but of a false accusation of complicity in the murder of the chambermaid Idate by his friend Lemoine. It was Lemoine who was (justly) executed by Sanson in September 1833, while Gillard, originally sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, was pardoned upon appeal a few weeks later (Pierre Bouchardon, Le Cuisinier de la baronne Dupuytren (Paris, 1930)).
priest of a new sect: Lemoine (see note above) was accompanied to the scaffold by the self-styled ‘Primate of the Gauls’, a former army chaplain named Ferdinand-François Châtel who had founded in 1830 a sect calling itself the New French Catholic Church, of which he made himself bishop.
the monomaniac Papavoine: Louis-Auguste Papavoine, executed in 1825 for stabbing to death two young children in the Bois de Vincennes.
Tyburn … Surgeons’-hall!: Tyburn, near what is now Marble Arch, was the site of most public executions in London until 1783, and Newgate was the city’s principal prison; Jack Ketch was a notorious hangman of the later seventeenth century, whose name came to be applied to hangmen of later periods as a generic title; Surgeons’ Hall was part of the Old Bailey site in central London, where the bodies of recently executed criminals were dissected and exhibited.
Thurtell: John Thurtell was hanged in 1824 for the murder of a Mr Weare, a gambling partner to whom he owed money; at Gill’s Hill, Hertfordshire, he shot Weare in the face and clubbed him to death with the pistol.
fascis: tied bundle.
Cuvier: Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), French anatomist, noted for his method of reconstructing whole bodies from partial remains.
The times of the Frédégondes and Brunéhauts: the period of violent feuding among the Merovingian royal houses of the late sixth century, provoked by Frédégond or Fredegund, the mistress of Chilperic I, King of Soissons. Fredegund first persuaded Chilperic to murder his queen, Galswinthe, and went on to arrange the assassination of Chilperic’s half-brother Sigebert I, husband to her arch-enemy Brunéhaut or Brunhild. Frédégonde is thus one of the most notorious figures of medieval French history, a byword for murderous cruelty.
Parvis de Nôtre Dame!: the square in front of the cathedral.
the first revolution: the Revolution of 1789–94, here distinguished from the more recent insurrection of July 1830.
massacre at the prison of L’Abbaye: one of the most notorious massacres of September 1792, in which suspected counter-revolutionary prisoners were killed by mobs who feared that Paris was under imminent military attack.
the Lauzuns and Polignacs: powerful families of French nobles from what is now Lot-et-Garonne and the Haute Loire.
a hired berline: a four-wheeled covered carriage.
Post-Mortem Recollections of a Medical Lecturer
Published in the June 1836 issue of the Dublin University Magazine (7/42, 623–8). This tale by Charles Lever was renamed ‘The “Dream of Death” ’ and inserted into his high-spirited novel Arthur O’Leary (1844), apparently at the request of Lever’s close friend Samuel Hayman, who described ‘Post-Mortem Recollections’ as ‘powerfully written’ and O’Leary as ‘one of [Lever’s] very best books’. When Maria Edgeworth praised ‘Post-Mortem Recollections’, Lever described them to her as ‘little else than a transcript of my own feeling during recovery from the only severe illness I ever had. [They] have so much of truth about them that they were actually present to my mind day after day’ (W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of Charles Lever (2 vols.; London, 1879), i. 198; Edmund Downey, Charles Lever: His Life in His Letters (2 vols.; Edinburgh, 1906), i. 249–50).
Hamlet: III. i. 64–5 (slightly misquoted).
the awful punishment … compared to this: the Etruscan king Mezentius meted out this punishment to his enemies (see Virgil’s Aeneid, viii. 482 ff.).
I had heard … at his own bosom: Lever visited North America in 1829, and stayed several months with an Indian tribe, during which time he undoubtedly ‘heard’ this legend. His friend Samuel Hayman notes that Lever ‘easily found the red man’s haunts, and … got so thoroughly in accord with them, that the Indian sachem formally admitted him into tribal privileges, and initiated him into membership’. The legend of the male suckling the child is also found in ch. 23 of the Icelandic Flóamanna saga (Fitzpatrick, The Life of Charles Lever, i. 53).
The Bride of Lindorf
Published in the August 1836 issue of the New Monthly Magazine (47/188, 449–65). While most of Landon’s prose work is highly sentimental historical fiction, this tale is unusual as an exercise in the Gothic vein, complete with themes of madness and incest.
‘something more exquisite still’: quoted from Thomas Moore’s poem ‘The Meeting of the Waters’.
Salvator Rosa: the Neapolitan painter (1615–73) much admired in England by such Gothic novelists as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe for the ‘sublime’ quality of his gloomy landscapes.
Velasquez …‘… vexation of spirit’: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599–1660), Spanish painter best known for his portraits. The biblical phrase ‘all is vanity and vexation of spirit’ is repeated several times in Ecclesiastes.
Beatrice Cenci: a young Roman noblewoman (1577–99) who was, with her brother and stepmother, tried and executed in 1599 for the murder of her father, Count Francesco Cenci. Her case aroused much sympathy, as Francesco had subjected his daughter to imprisonment, brutality, and (it was widely understood) incestuous assault. Percy Bysshe Shelley made Beatrice the heroine of his unperformed verse drama The Cenci (1819), and claimed inspiration from the portrait of Beatrice attributed to the Bolognese painter Guido Reni. The portrait has since then been re-assessed as neither a representation of Beatrice Cenci, nor by Guido Reni.
Prometheus: in Greek myth, the Titan who rebels against the gods by giving fire to Man; Zeus punishes him by chaining him to a rock while a vulture eats his liver.
Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
Published in the November 1838 issue of the Dublin University Magazine (12/82, 502–19). This tale by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is the fifth of twelve ‘extracts’ that make up ‘The Purcell Papers’, a series of tales that Le Fanu published in the Dublin between January 1838 and October 1840, and that were all purported to have been written or discovered by ‘the Reverend Francis Purcell of Drumcoolagh’. In a prefatory note to ‘Passage in the Secret History’, Purcell observes that ‘the following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much regretted friend, by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D——. She is no more—she long since died, a childless and a widowed wife.… Strange! two powerful and wealthy families, that in which she was born, and that into which she had married, have ceased to be—they are utterly extinct. To those who know any thing of the history of Irish families, as they were less than a century ago, the facts contained in this paper will at once suggest the names of the principal actors; and to others their publication would be useless; t
o us, possibly, if not probably, injurious.’
Sullivan points out that Le Fanu borrows part of the plot of ‘Passage in the Secret History’ from the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764): ‘Sir Arthur T——and his son Edward plot their kinswoman’s death in order to inherit her considerable property, but as in Otranto mistake the daughter of the house, Emily T——, for their intended victim and bludgeon her to death.’ Le Fanu reprinted ‘Passages in the Secret History’ as ‘The Murdered Cousin’ in his collection of Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851), and then expanded the tale into one of his finest full-length novels, Uncle Silas (1864) (Kevin Sullivan, ‘Sheridan Le Fanu: The Purcell Papers, 1838–40’ in Irish University Review, 2 (1972), 5–19).
I was Yorkshire too: ‘Yorkshire’ here means cunning or full of trickery.
Faulkner’s newspaper: The Dublin Journal, published and edited by George Faulkner (1699?–1775) from 1728 until his death; the paper survived until 1825.
eclaircissement: moment of clarification.
Sir Giles Overreach: a character in Philip Massinger’s comic play A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633). He swindles his own nephew out of his property, but is eventually driven mad when tricked out of it in turn.
Appendix A: Preliminaries for The Vampyre
Rousseau … under its roof: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), philosopher and writer, was born at 40 Grand’ Rue, Geneva. His bust and memorial are located at the Plainpalais, just south of Geneva, where Byron, Polidori, and the Shelleys visited in late May 1816. Rousseau’s major works include La Nouvelle Héloise (1761), Émile: ou De l’éducation (1762), Du Contrat Social (1762), and Les Confessions (1782).
Ferney the residence of Voltaire … Europe: born François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), French philosopher, scientist, moralist, and man of letters. From 1758 until 1777 Voltaire lived on his estate at Ferney, just north-east of Geneva, where his crusades against tyranny and cruelty made him one of the most famous men in Europe. His writings include Lettres Philosophiques (1734), Candide (1759), and Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764).
Bonnet’s abode: Charles Bonnet (1720–93), Swiss naturalist and philosopher, noted for his discovery of parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization) and his development of the catastrophe theory of evolution.
Madame de Stael: Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker (1766–1817) was the daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI’s minister of finance, and the author of two novels and several important works of political and literary theory, including De l’Influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (1796), De la Littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800), and De l’Allemagne (1810). Her family estate was at Coppet, near Geneva.
days of Heloise … her works: Pierre Abélard (c. 1079–c. 1142), French philosopher and theologian, fell passionately in love with his pupil Héloise (c. 1098–c. 1164), and though their secret marriage caused Héloise’s father to have Abélard brutally castrated, they continued a passionate correspondence until his death. Héloise was known for her learning, and for her effectiveness and piety as a monastic administrator. August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845), in addition to his work as a translator of Shakespeare, was one of the most influential disseminators of the ideas of German Romanticism, notably in works such as Ueber dramatische Kunst und Litteratur (1809–11). After studying Schlegel’s writings for a number of years, Madame de Staël met him in 1804, after which he became her frequent companion and counsellor, as well as one of the most brilliant members of her salon at Coppet.
Gibbon, Bonnivard, Bradshaw: Edward Gibbon (1737–94), English scholar and historian best known for his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88); from 1783 to 1793 he lived at Lausanne, where he finished the Decline and Fall in 1787. François Bonivard (1493–1570), Genevan patriot and the hero of Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ (1816); Bradshaw has not been identified.
Diodati, the friend of Milton: the poet John Milton (1608–74) did not in fact stay at the Villa Diodati during his visit to Geneva in June 1639, though he did spend a good deal of time with the distinguished theologian Giovanni Diodati, whose residence seems to have been in the centre of Geneva’s old city. Giovanni was the uncle of Milton’s closest friend Charles Diodati, whom Milton had met at St Paul’s School, and whose death he memorializes in ‘Epitaphium Damonis’ (1645). The Villa Diodati was built over a period of several years in the first half of the seventeenth century by Gabriel Diodati, a distant relative of Giovanni’s, and is located just outside Geneva, at Cologny, on the south side of the lake. Byron and Polidori moved into the Villa on 10 June 1816.
many months in this neighbourhood: in fact, Byron spent only about four and a half months in Switzerland, from May to October 1816. He composed the Third Canto of Childe Harold in May and June.
I found a servant … English boat: for Byron’s routine and behaviour during the summer of 1816, see L. A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography (3 vols.; New York, 1957), ii. 609–59.
and of me!: misprint: Byron’s text reads ‘and of thee!’ (Byron, Complete Poetical Works, ii. 111).
the swift Rhine: misprint: Byron’s text reads ‘the swift Rhone’ (ibid.).
M. Pictet and Bonstetten …his apologies: Marc-Auguste Pictet (1752–1825) was a leading member of the Genevan Société des Arts and the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelles, and with his younger brother Charles helped to found the Bibliothèque britannique (1796); Charles Victor von Bonstetten (1745–1832) wrote a number of works in philosophy but is best known for his comparative study of national characteristics, L’Homme du midi et l’homme du nord, ou l’influence des climats (1824), and for his collection of autobiographical sketches, Souvenirs (1832). Polidori records that on 26 May ‘Pictet called, but L[ord] B[yron] said “not at home”.’ Byron later defended his actions by explaining that Polidori had not consulted him about the invitation: ‘He asked Pictet &c. to dinner—and of course was left to entertain them.’ Byron did not visit the Château de Chillon until nearly a month after this episode, when he and Shelley were touring Lake Geneva (Rossetti, Diary, 98; Byron, Letters, vi. 127).
Lady D——H——: Lady Dalrymple Hamilton (1779–1852) was the eldest daughter of the first Viscount Duncan of Camperdown; she married Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton in 1800.
as an outcast: Byron later remarked that the incidents at the Hamiltons’ and at Coppet were ‘true’. He added: ‘I never gave “the English” an opportunity of “avoiding” me—but I trust that if ever I do, they will seize it’ (Byron, Letters, vi. 127).
Countess of Breuss … sought for society: Countess Catherine Bruce, who in 1815–22 lived near Geneva in the splendid Maison D’Abraham Gallatin, where Polidori frequently enjoyed the ‘pleasures of society’ (see Viets, ‘Polidori’s The Vampyre’, 87–8).
Aθεοζ in the Album at Chamouny: in July 1816, under the ‘Occupation’ column in the hotel register at Chamonix, Shelley signed himself ‘Δηµοκρατικος, Φιλάνθρωποτατος, κάι ‘αθεοζ’ —Democrat, Philanthropist, and Atheist. The scandalous entry was quickly seized upon by Shelley’s enemies in England, particularly Robert Southey.
Miss M. W. Godwin and Miss Clermont … Mr Godwin: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who began Frankenstein as her contribution to the ghost story contest of June 1816; she married Shelley in December of that same year. Claire Clairmont became Byron’s mistress immediately before he left England in April 1816; their daughter Allegra was born in January 1817. William Godwin, best known for his An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and the terror novel Caleb Williams (1794), was Mary’s father and Claire’s step-father. In early June 1816, Mary, Claire, and Shelley lived in a little cottage called the Maison Chappuis, about an eight-minute walk up a hill to Byron’s Villa Diodati.
German work … Phantasmagoriana: according to Mary Shelley in her 1831 Introduction to Frankenstein, the party read ‘some volumes of ghost stories, t
ranslated from the German into French’. The work in question is Fantasmagoriana, ou recueil d’histoires d’apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc.; traduit de l’allemand, par un amateur (Paris, 1812) translated by Jean-Baptiste-Benoît Eyriès from the first two volumes of the five-volume Gespensterbuch (1811–15), edited by Friedrich Schulze and Johann Apel (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. Marilyn Butler (Oxford, 1994), 194).
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre Page 33